Hi all,
I am extremely pleased to announce the 22nd Wikipedia /Wikimedia
Wikimeetup , Bangalore on *Dec 18, Satuday* with *Erik Möller *( Deputy
Director , Wikimedia Foundation) , * Danese Cooper* ( Chief Technical
Officer, Wikimedia Foundation) and* Alolita Sharma* (Engineering Programs
Manager, Wikimedia Foundation).
More details can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MBL22
Please do signup on the meetup page & participate ...
Regards
Tinu Cherian
N.B. Please note the change of date/day of the usual Wikimeetup for
Decemeber month.
Dear Hindi Wikimedians,
A proposal was made in May 2008 to incubate and start-up the Hindi
Wikisource Project. Before the transition, the Oldwikisource Hindi
project had over 1500 pages. This content needs to be exported to a
new Wikisource platform which has not yet been approved because Hindi
interface requires further translation of messages. There are over
250 messages that need to be translated before the project may be
approved. This should be treated on a priority basis.
If you are interested in supporting the localization efforts, please
visit the proposal page on Meta[1] and comment. If you require
translator rights assigned on translatewiki.net please contact either
John Vandenberg[2] or me offlist. Thanks.
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikisource_Hindi
[2] jayvdb at gmail dot com
anirudh
00 91 9328712208
Hi Anay,
I saw your email to Jimbo on the Wikimedia-India email group, forwarded by
Bishakha for info of all. I recall meeting your reps in the lecture, one of
whom was a lady. I had mentioned some issues to them. These are the same
issues that are not addressed/appear not to be understood in your email.
Firstly, Wikipedia, whether English or Marathi, is an encyclopaedia. For
uploading complete texts, the correct Wikimedia project is Marathi
WikiSource not Marathi Wikipedia.
Secondly, if the desire is to introduce this material into Marathi
Wikipedia, the large amount of material you offer to make available has to
be sifted and converted and integrated, fact by fact with Neutral Point of
View, and proper citation. The material can be converted into new articles
or added to existing articles, but will have to conform to the writing style
of an encyclopaedia, as per the format indicated in the Manual of Style for
Marathi Wikipedia. En masse copying is not possible, even for copyright-free
or public domain material. At the very least, editing to fit into the
existing article and citation is a must, even if you want to copy-paste
small chunks of text. All content creation work in Wikipedia/Wikimedia
projects is done by volunteers without renumeration. Thus, the uploading,
article-creation, editing, etc will have to be done by your people or by
volunteers whom you can get to agree to help you. This is not at all a
trivial task.
Thirdly, the government has to explicitly state that the material provided
has been released into public domain, or under a free license, else the
material cannot be uploaded to Wikisource, Wikimedia projects use the Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
License<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution…>.
No restrictions in use, such as "No commercial use"or "No derivatives" etc,
are permitted in Creative Commons licenses used in the Wikipedia world. The
only restrictions permitted are that the reused Wikipedia material
(article/book/material etc) must be offered under the same or similar free
license as Wikipedia downstream to other users and that the use must be
attributed.
Lastly, I strongly recommend your team who will be handling the project
become Wikipedia editors as there are a large number of domain knowledge
issues, which will affect your progress and success.
I hope this email is helpful in helping you understand the larger picture. I
wish you all the very best in this and other noble ventures that the
Observer Research Foundation Mumbai is involved in.
Happy Editing,
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur or User:AshLIn on English Wikipedia.
------------------------------------------------------
Forwarding two emails from Anay Joglekar, one below the other - related to
Marathi wikipedia. Highlights are his; will upload the report separately and
inform the list.
Sudheendra Kulkarni, who heads ORF is a former IIT alumnus and journalist
who was a close aide to AB Vajpayee and quit the BJP in 2009.
All thoughts welcome.
Bishakha
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anay Joglekar <anay.joglekar(a)gmail.com>
Dear Jimmy Wales,
Your lecture and interaction on Wikipedia in India was delightful. I feel
lucky to know about it just 24 hours earlier completely by chance (while
surfing Wikipedia Marathi) and getting an opportunity to interact with you.
I am thankful to Kundan and Bishakha for being so responsive and
forthcoming. We look forward to meet soon and discuss possibilities of
cooperation and the role Observer Research Foundation can play in further
popularising Wiki movement in Indian languages.
I am sharing with you the note I shared with Bishakha which summarises work
and point of view of ORF Mumbai. Also find attached a report by IAMAI on
content in Indian languages.
I will appreciate if you could forward me a copy of your presentation. Many
of my friends would like to see it.
Regards,
Anay Joglekar
Associate Fellow
Observer Research Foundation Mumbai
9769474645
[image: orf-logo.jpg]
*
*
*ORF Research Report: ICT for Maharashtra, ICT through Marathi*
* *
*Summery *
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are transforming our world
in revolutionary ways. However, the doors of the New World being created by
ICT are mostly shut for a majority of the people in India. For at the
signboards at its entrance is written: "English-speaking People Preferred."
Those who speak only Marathi (and this is true for other native Indian
languages, too) cannot (*by default and easily*) use computer and mobile
phones in Marathi or send email and sms in Marathi. There is very little
useful information in Marathi on the Internet, even though it offers an
ocean of information in English. Ironically, the much-trumpeted e-Governance
measures have remained mostly English-Governance initiatives. Thus, the
linguistic divide is further deepening the Digital Divide in Maharashtra and
the rest of India. This has also created a mortal threat to the future of
Marathi and other Indian languages, since the young generation has come to
believe that learning in Marathi is useless and English education alone
provides the passport to prosperity.
The Observer Research Foundation Mumbai believes that this situation of
exclusive development is unacceptable. Maharashtra, which is celebrating its
golden jubilee year, must take determined steps to secure for Marathi an
honoured placed in the ICT Revolution. Hence we published “*महाराष्ट्रासाठी
माहिती तंत्रज्ञान**,** **मराठीतून माहिती तंत्रज्ञान**”* (ICT for
Maharashtra, ICT through Marathi) report along with Marathi Abhyas Kendra.
The report describes how other countries in the world, such as Israel,
China, Japan and Korea have developed ICT in there own languages, thereby
achieving phenomenal results. It shows promotion of ICT in Marathi can
create employment, self-employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for
Marathi-speaking people on a large scale, both in urban and in rural areas,
besides bridging regional disparities in the state. It calls for a big boost
to be given to e-education, telemedicine, e-banking, e-commerce, ICT-assisted
agriculture and e-justice throughMarathi. E-Governance in Marathi can bring
government closer to the common people, and make it transparent and
accountable. Most importantly, ICT in Marathi can help protect and further
enrich Maharashtra’s priceless heritage of arts, culture, literature,
cinema, and endangered folk traditions.
To realize this vision, the report urges the Government to (a) ensure
affordable broadband connectivity, with speeds comparable to the highest in
the world, in every corner of the state; (b) make it compulsory for computer
and mobile companies to make their products and services Marathi-compatible;
(c) universalize use of Unicode Marathi, beginning with its introduction in
all official communication and websites; (d) *incentivise* *digital content
creation in **Marathi** on a massive scale*; and (e) give special focus to
bring Marathi-speaking youth women, SC/STs, OBCs and other weaker sections
of society within the ambit of ICT Revolution.
In short, promotion of ICT in Marathi is indispensable for the all-round,
accelerated and inclusive development of Maharashtra. Can we aim for
anything less in the Golden Jubilee Year of the state?
Important announcements made by the chief minister while inaugurating the
ORF Report –
1. Government to allocate Rs. 10 million for digitization of copyright free
literature, manuscripts and important documents.
2. Government will make 18 volumes of Marathi Encyclopedia available on the
internet in Unicode text format.
3. Government will make sure that In-script (bi-lingual) keyboards will be
easily available everywhere in the state.
4. All the websites of the Government of Maharashtra will be made available
in Unicode Marathi.
5. Promised to call a meeting of representatives of leading ICT companies
and asked ORF to decide agenda for localization in Marathi.
*Some Quick Facts/Points – *
*
*
1. Total Telephone subscriber base reached to 706.37 Million (Wireless
670.60 + Wireline 35.77)
2. Broadband subscription is 10.08 million. *TRAI Report Aug 2010*
3. Peak connection speed – 4.7 mbps (0.5%), Above 2 mbps speed (4.3%)
average connection speed – 800 kbps, Below 256 kbps (30%) *AKMAI Q2** ***
4. Internet Users – Claimed – 71 million, Active users 52 million (use
internet more than once a month) and Users aware of vernacular content 13
million *IAMAI Vernacular Content Report 2009 ** ***
5. Rural Internet Users – 6.46 million, Active Users – 4.18 million (Rural
Population: > 750 million)
6. Times of India (World’s highest circulated English newspaper) ranks
8thamong top 10 Indian Newspapers (readership). Other 9 are Indian
languages.
Same is true about television viewership in India. Out of around 250 TV
channels, most popular channels are in Indian languages.
7. On the other hand when it comes to Wikipedia pages – Hindi(57,287),
Marathi(31,400), Bengali (21886), Tamil (25,627) against 3.4 million pages
in English, 1.13 million in German, 1.01 million in French – Even Hebrew has
1,10,364 pages.
* *
*Making keying of Indic content default, easy and in standardized form will
take few more years. Therefore we believe that Wikipedia India shall
collaborate with governments, publishers and other institutions which have
large volumes of textual resources, copyrights free and suitable for
encyclopedia projects and make it available on the internet and
organizations like ORF which share this agenda. It will create greater
awareness among Netizens in India about vernacular content and will
encourage them to edit and add new content.*
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anay Joglekar <ajoglekar(a)orfonline.org>
Date: 30 October 2010 14:56
Subject: About Observer Research Foundation Mumbai and Possibility of
meeting with Mr. Jimmy Wales
To: kundanamitabh(a)gmail.com
Dear Kundan Amitabh,
I am glad to email you on the backdrop of the 3rd Wikipedia Meet-up in
Mumbai. I would like to attend the event along with few colleagues of mine
from Observer Research Foundation Mumbai.
Observer Research Foundation (ORF) is a leading non-partisan Indian think
tank that seeks to influence public policy formulation. It was established
in New Delhi in 1990 by the late R.K. Mishra, a widely respected public
figure, who envisaged it as a broad-based intellectual platform pulsating
with ideas needed for India’s nation-building.
In its journey of twenty years, ORF has brought together leading Indian
policymakers, academics, public figures, social activists and business
leaders to discuss various issues of national importance. ORF scholars have
made significant contributions toward improving government policies. ORF has
so far produced a large body of critically acclaimed publications.
Until recently, ORF’s activities were based mainly in New Delhi. Beginning
in 2010, ORF Mumbai has been established to pursue the Foundation’s vision
in India’s business and financial capital. *Shri Sudheendra Kulkarni*,
former aide to Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Shri L.K. Advani and a
columnist in the Indian Express is its chairman.ORF Mumbai conducts research
and advocacy in six broad areas: Education, Public Health, Inclusive
Development, Urban Renewal, Youth Development, and *Protection and Promotion
of India’s Priceless Artistic and Cultural Heritage*.
Indian languages which represent India's rich ethos, culture and heritage
and are facing the threat of extinction. Our neglect towards making
available benefits of ICT revolution through Indian languages has caused
widening digital divide. On one hand, there are issues related to
standardization (complete localization) and making various softwares and
operating systems in Indian languages available by default and on the other
hand, there are serious issues of content creation in Indian languages. ORF
organised a roundtable on *ICT for and through Marathi* in March 2010 and
brought together representatives of state govt., media, IT companies along
with grass root activists. As a followup ORF published a research
report - *महाराष्ट्रासाठी
माहिती तंत्रज्ञान, मराठीतून माहिती
तंत्रज्ञान*<http://orfmumbai.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/marathi-report-final-060610.pdf>.
It was released by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra Shri Ashok Chavan on 07
Sept. 2010.
ORF Mumbai is willing to work closely with the government and private sector
to make more content available in Indian languages. As part of this - we
have pledged to increase content on Wikipedia (Marathi) 10 times within a
year through public participation. We are working with the state government
to make available - voluminous Encyclopedia (मराठी विश्वकोश) on the internet
in Unicode Marathi (currently they are in scanned format).
It will be our great pleasure for us to participate in tomorrow's meeting,
get to know more about the plans of Wikipedia foundation and explore
possibilities of working together. It will be great if you could explore
possibility of a meeting between Mr. Wales and Mr. Sudheendra Kulkarni (this
time or next time) or working together to spread wikipedia movement in
Indian languages.
Looking forward to see you tomorrow.
Regards,
Anay Joglekar
Associate Fellow
*Observer Research Foundation *
NKM International House, 5th Floor,
178, Backbay Reclamation, Babubhai Chinai Marg,
Mumbai 400 020.
Ph: 022-6131 3800
Fax: 022 - 2288 6264
Cell: 9769474645
http://www.observerindia.com
Hi all,
The Ahmedabad Wikipedia Meetup was organized on 21 November 2010 at
CEPT University. It was received with enthusiasm from the tech
community of the city. Twenty-seven people attended the meet
including the members of the press.
The meeting began with a round of introductions. Most of the
participants were from the marketing and PR side of the tech industry
and expressed a keen interest in understanding how Wikipedia works. I
began with a brief history of Wikipedia and the philosophy that guides
our projects. Further discussions entailed [[WP:CORP]], naming
conventions, difficulties faced by new users on English Wikipedia;
localization with Gujarati projects; local events for Ahmedabad (viz.
Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad for photographers and Gujarati WikiAcademy).
Kartik Mistry, who was formerly associated with Gujarati Lexicon,
informed me that he had met the representatives of Wikimedia India at
the last Mumbai meetup and expressed that his former associates would
be interested in transferring content to the Gujarati Wiktionary.
Keyur Parmar came up with a proposal for automated updation of cricket
related facts, figures and stats from commercial websites. I have
asked them to join this mailing list for following up with us.
The pictures from the event are available here[1] and future
notifications about the Ahmedabad meet up will be posted on the India
mailing list and the newly created Ahmedabad mailing list.[2] The
meetup was covered by DNA[3] and Divya Bhaskar.[4]
Special thanks to CEPT Councilmen Vishnu Kolleri and Mustaqeem Khan
for making this happen.
[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ahmedabad_Meetup_Nov2010
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-amd
[3] http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_free-knowledge-for-all-in-gujarati…
[4] http://www.divyabhaskar.co.in/article/MGUJ-AHM-free-knowledge-for-all-in-gu…
anirudh
00 91 9328712208
Hi,
We are glad to inform that inbuilt Tamil typing tool has been added in Tamil
Wikipedia and Tamil WikiNews. After some testing, we will add it in other
Wikimedia projects and release the code for use in all sites using
MediaWiki.
We hope that this will help many first time editors and increase Tamil word
searches in the site search box.
This was possible as a follow up of the recent Chennai Wikimedia meetup when
Malayalam Wikimedia user Shiju Alex urged us to have this tool. Then
Malayalam Wikimedia user Junaid. P. V. joined the team to transfer the code
from Malayalam Wiki and modified it for Tamil needs. All work done in a week
and three cheers for the interwiki collaborative spirit of Malayalam
Wikipedians.
Regards,
Ravi
This is invaluable - thank you Erik, and thanks Gerard for bringing it to
attention.
Erik, I know that you report geographic trends on EN on the main stats page,
is there any way you can easily and comprehensibly integrate India edits and
readership to EN on the India page? That would be very helpful, esp. as it
probably dominates all other Indian languages currently (and since English
is an official Indian language too).
Also, Shiju has been putting out India stats for some time now, and (Shiju)
perhaps you can share/integrate what you do, in terms of depth, article
quality and editorship with this information - perhaps you can have a
conversation with Erik about this.
Good wishes,
Achal
Yes Gerard, I assumed it was obvious that we're talking about India-based
traffic and edits to EN - the information is reported on the main stats
page, my point was simply that it would be interesting to see in the same
table (though we're measuring slightly different things, since the Indian
language Wikipedia stats are not based on geographical origin but
destination).
Speaking at this tomorrow; came up suddenly. Apart from all else it does,
Comet Media Foundation is developing GNUKhata, a free and flexible software
for accounting and inventory management. See
http://www.cometmedia.org/gnukhata
I am in touch with a couple of Pune wikipedians to see if they could do the
Dec workshop in Pune referred to below.
Bishakha
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Comet Media Foundation <cometmediafdn(a)gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 4:01 PM
Subject: Your session at Filmi Chashma Workshop
To: Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com>
Dear Bishakha
This is further to our telephone talk on Saturday regarding the Filmi
Chashma Workshop for school teachers. Please have a look at
www.filmichashma.org for an overview of the project
To go over the workshop requirements:
Your session, scheduled 2.00 to 3.30pm on Thursday 25 Nov, will be on
" Intro to the phenomenon of the wiki world, finding what you need in
the wiki world and contributing what you know back to it." Beyond the
utility of it please bring out the philosophy, the altruism and
self-correcting mechanisms and all the things that make it an
authentic upto-the-moment encyclopedia. Please also encourage them and
their students to contribute to it, particularly in Indian languages.
A visit to teh Hindi and Marathi wikipedias would be good.
Plus we want you to please address another similar meeting in Pune on
17 Dec at 11.45 to 1.15. Please tell me if you are free to make a
trip.
The venue as you know, is in the conference room on 6th floor of the
Times of India Building opposite VT station.
Thank you and looking forward to an exciting time!
Chandita
Hi,
Based on Erik's Indic Wiki stats, I did an analysis for reach of Indic
Wikipedias.
Wikis having at least 1000 views an hour and 1 Million population were taken
for this.
Page views per article per hour indicates the overall usefulness of
articles.
Page views per million speakers indicates the reach of Wiki and also
normalises the ranking by page view ( For example, Tamil has roughly 1/8th
of Hindi speaking population but has more than half its traffic)
The results can be seen at
http://bit.ly/gdH21O
Malayalam and Tamil Wikis are performing comparably and have a higher reach.
Hindi and Bengali which have a huge population seem to have lesser reach.
I hope Indic Wikimedia strategy will consider such analyses and focus to
have a better return on their efforts and not mislead by plain article count
and page views.
Regards,
Ravi