I am happy to share a tiny web application to help people get started with
using Indian languages on Computers in public places, using wiki sites.
Check it out
http://gyanpad.appspot.com/
Cheers
Arjun
Changed the subject line again.. ( Subject deviation again :) )
Hi Praveen,
May I ask , what is not really clear about the chapter ? Wikimedia India
chapter is registered now as a legal entity in India [1] in Jan 2010 ; there
is an Executive committee with 7 members , the office bearers are [2] Arun
Ramarathnam, President ; BalaSundaraRaman Lakshmanan, Secretary ; Arjuna
Rao Chavala, Treasurer etc
May be it is time for the chapter to open up the membership to the
community?
or even making the agenda & meeting minutes of the Wikimedia India chapter
EC available to all like the Wikimedia Foundation Board [3] ( so that these
confusions to "common Wikimedians" can be avoided) ?
If there are still any misunderstandings/unclear things, the EC members must
be happy to answer them.
I'm all excited to see the Wikimedia India chapter getting more active and
the chapter & community working closely in the coming days.
[1] http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Chapter_Registration_accomplished
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA-PostChapComVer
[3] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings
Regards
Tinu Cherian
N.B. I am not speaking on behalf of the chapter , neither am I a EC
member/ordinary member. My understandings are based on various threads on
the mailing lists.
On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 1:40 AM, praveenp <me.praveen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I like that "incidental fallout" phrase. ;-) I can now understand why
> chapter and none of its activities are clear to common wikimedian. :)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
So I was attempting to write a 2000 word piece on the history of
Wikipedia in India. Any pointers you have will be most appreciated -
historical stuff too.
Sundar pointed me to this:
http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tamil_Wikipedia:_A_Case_Study
What would be helpful is some sort of chronology on the history of of
Indic language Wikipedias and Indian involvement with Wikimedia
projects.
Thank you.
Best,
Gautam
________
http://social.prathambooks.org/
Dear all,
Pl. find below a report on the 10th anniversary celebrations of Wikipedia at
Indore.
Regards,
Srinivas.
Wikimedia projects handle: Gurubrahma
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The tenth anniversary celebrations of Wikipedia were held at Indore in
partnership with the Indian Institute of Management Indore, as a part of the 3rd
edition of the National Youth Conference. The celebrations were held on 12th
January and comprised three events: A presentation on Wikipedia followed by a
panel discussion; A workshop on editing Wikipedia; and a critical viewing of the
documentary, “Truth in Numbers?” (http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indore#Agenda)
10 to 10.30 AM
The day’s proceedings were started by Professor Rahul Nilakantan, the
coordinator of the National Youth Conference, who introduced Professor Srinivas
Gunta, the first speaker for the day. Professor Srinivas kicked off the
proceedings for the day with a short message by Jimbo Wales, the founder of
Wikipedia. After the message, there was a talk by Professor Srinivas who started
off with the premise that anonymity on internet does not presage a phenomenon
like Wikipedia. Arguing that ensuring both competence (valid and reliable
information) and governance (appropriate behavioral norms) is important for a
project of this nature, he posited that Wikipedia manages these through its 3
P’s – Philosophy, Platform and Policies. Then, he dwelt a while on how diverse
Wikipedias can be, drawing from his experiences as a contributor to English and
Telugu Wikipedias. He concluded his talk by giving a brief preview of other
Wikimedia projects and exhorting the 250+ people in the audience to try editing
Wikipedia.
10.30 to 11.30 AM
A panel discussion titled “Role of Wikipedia in fostering Web 2.0 Revolution”
followed the talk immediately. The panel comprised Professor Abha Chatterjee
from the General Management area (Communication), Professor Sanjog Ray from the
Information Systems area and Shreyas Panse, a second year student of the
flagship PGP programme, all from IIM Indore. The panel discussion comprised a
5-minute talk by each of the panelists followed by an open house discussion.
Professor Srinivas moderated the proceedings.
Professor Abha Chatterjee spoke of how she first heard of Wikipedia more than
five years ago and how she had serious misgivings about the model given that
anyone could edit it. Today, however, she views Wikipedia in a more positive
light. She believes that this would be the best resource for pre-research,
especially on topics of recent provenance and current interest. For instance,
she raised the question as to which other encyclopedia can be expected to have
an article on “Vuvuzela.” Furthermore, the fact that Wikipedia is written by
multiple volunteers often implies that the breadth of coverage is broader than
in a conventional encyclopedia. Offering an example, she argued that a subject
like “Cattle” could be approached on Wikipedia through a variety of dimensions
such as species, domestication, cultural significance etc. Yet she opined that
the model of Wikipedia poses concerns in terms of maintaining consistency in
style and tone apart from the usual questions about its reliability.
Professor Sanjog Ray adopted the tack that the idea of Wikipedia is probably as,
if not more, important than the Wikipedia itself. He opined that the proof of
concept of Wikipedia has enabled corporations across the world to start using
internal Wikis even more rapidly. Agreeing with Ward Cunningham’s assessment
that Wiki is the simplest and the easiest database to edit, he felt that the
challenges for its adoption in the corporate world lie elsewhere, primarily
organizational. While the two predominant modes of organizing known to the
mankind are the market and the hierarchy, phenomena built on open philosophies
and collaborative models offer a new alternative. Yet, using Wikis in the
corporate world which is a hierarchical system would imply a hybrid model with
far-reaching consequences. He entered into a lively debate on these attendant
issues with the moderator and their implications for management education,
research and practice.
Apart from being a second year student of the MBA programme at the IIM Indore,
Shreyas Panse had been an active Wikipedian. He had garnered over 40K+ edits on
English Wikipedia with a competence in vandal fighting; On Wikimedia Commons, he
has been a trusted user. He dwelt primarily on his experiences in vandal
fighting on English Wikipedia and how volunteers and bots ensure the reliability
and validity of Wikipedia, thus allaying the concerns of a section of the
audience. He also spoke of how active editors form a strong virtual community.
Opining that active editors feel attached to their projects, he drew from his
experience to suggest that people either edit heavily or withdraw completely if
they cannot give adequate time. He also felt that Facebook and Twitter may be
acting as substitute competition for today’s youth, thus reducing the potential
time they would be spending in contributing to Wikipedia. The moderator also
pitched in with his own experiences.
The audience came up with interesting questions and suggestions, ranging from
the provision of recommendation and personalization systems to the implications
of providing monetary aids for contributions to Wikipedia.
11.45 AM to 1 PM
While a workshop for editing Wikipedia was arranged as a parallel session, it
was announced a priori that editing Wikipedia does not require a workshop as it
is easy to figure out. In fact, most of the instructors for the workshop had
started editing Wikipedia just 3 to 7 days before the tenth anniversary
celebrations at Indore. Abhishek Apurv, a second year PGP student walked the
audience through a basic acquaintance with Wikipedia. Shreyas Panse stepped in
to dwell on basics of editing Wikipedia, licensing issues in uploading media and
effective tools for fighting vandalism. Madhur Parihar, an academic associate in
the area of Information Systems at IIM Indore, spoke of the wealth of tools
available on Wikipedia, which help even a newcomer on Wikipedia to contribute
positively and with confidence. The workshop was concluded with a talk by Tulika
Chatrath, an independent professional translator where she evaluated the
efficacy of Wikibhasha, a tool by Microsoft Research to help translate articles
from English Wikipedia to Indic language Wikipedias.
2 to 3.30 PM
In the post-lunch session, a screening of the documentary “Truth in
Numbers” was organized on two screens in a large classroom. While the audience
numbering over 60 was keenly attentive, its responses to some key segments in
the document were clearly instructive in illustrating that its sympathies lay
with the Wikipedia movement. For instance, there was an enthusiastic response
during end credits when most of the ardent critics of Wikipedia confess that
their biography on Wikipedia suffers from negligible errors.
The icing on the cake of celebrations at Indore was when Professor
Srinivas received a call during the screening of the documentary from another
Executive Committee member of the Wikimedia India chapter informing that the
registration certificate has finally been issued and obtained, thus making it a
legal reality. Professor Srinivas announced this heartening news at the end of
the screening to yet another round of warm applause, concluding the celebration
events at Indore on a high.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: Abhishek Gautam, an academic associate at IIM Indore in the area of
Strategic Management, helped in drafting the minutes of the event. Ankit Sharma,
a second year doctoral student helped in capturing the images from the event and
in uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. Bhupendra, Koteswara Rao and Sharad,
academic associates at IIM Indore, assisted in organizing the celebrations.
Some of the pictures of the event can be accessed on Wikimedia Commons via the
URL http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_10_Indore.
Hi everyone,
During the weeks running up to Wikipedia 10 event, there was a talk on
requesting a developers list for India specific discussions.
The need for an India specific developers list is quite obvious considering
that we have several Indian language projects on Wikimedia, each needing
specific attention in terms of technology to improve contributions and
community.
Considering that there is growing interest in India about Wikimedia, about
mediawiki - platform that runs Wikipedia and related projects; taking into
account that there is a growing community of developers interested to
contribute, develop on India specific projects, an India specific list of
developers seems to be a necessity.
The initial request for a mailing list was made in December:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26436
However, there hasn't been consensus yet. There was discussion on whether
this would create unnecessary fragmentation.
Here's inviting thoughts, opinions. Or support, if we can gather some for
creation of this mailing list.
--
Hari Prasad Nadig
http://hpnadig.net | http://twitter.com/hpnadighttp://flickr.com/hpnadig
Part 3 - Witty Lama's response!
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2011/1/31
Subject: Re: The challenge : Was Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Liam Wyatt's
visit to India
To: Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>
Cc: shirish शिरीष <shirishag75(a)gmail.com>, Bishakha Datta
<bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com>, "Jogalekar, Sudhanwa"
<sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com>
Dear all,
Thank you for adding me to this thread. I will reply to various
people's comments all in this email as best as I can.
Ashwin wrote:
It would help if WikiMedia Foundation made some guidelines and
documentation on these materials.
This is, in part, one of the purposes of my fellowship. You can see
the first attempts of mine to lay out an idea for how this should
happen here: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Documentation_%26_Case_studies
Ideally, by the end of the year we will have a set of "how to"
documents for different kinds of things we want to do with GLAMs, with
equivalent "case study" documents written by a GLAM themselves who has
already done it, explaining why it worked and how.
Ashwin wrote:
In such a complex environment, what is our standing to engage the
GLAM institution such as Kelkar Museum?
Let WikiMedia Foundation (Witty Lama, Bishakha et al) work out the
modalities for a GLAM project in India.
Should the pointsmen (who should "own" the project) be an editor or a WMF rep?
This is also a complex question but one that is not going to be solved
in the next month, probably not the next year. This is the kind of
long term issue that we as a worldwide movement are slowly working
out. However I have a couple of things that I think are clear: it is
important to note that outreach is not the Wikimedia Foundation's
role, it is the community and especially the chapters who do this
[obviously it's a bit different in the USA for the moment]. For the
richer chapters [e.g. UK, Germany...] I am trying to get them to hire
a person to be the "outreach coordinator" to professionally manage
relationships, but for individual cities, poorer chapters, or areas
where there is no chapter presence (therefore - most of the world) I
am currently suggesting the model of the "Wikimedia GLAM ambassador":
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Ambassadors_%26_Interns This
is by no means a solid idea but we're working on it :-) The most
crucial part of working with a specific GLAM is that there is a local,
competent and trusted person [trusted by both Wikimedia community and
the GLAM] to be the contact person. There is no formal title required
for this, but it can be arranged if it helps e.g. "ambassador". Also
important is that that person doesn't feel like they personally "own"
that museum otherwise the great advantage of our community - the many
volunteers - gets stifled by the bottleneck of one person trying to
promote their own power.
shirish wrote:
The point I wanted to make is because there is only digital american
and European art that is the culture which is ingrained and known
about, the rest of the world is just not known and games have been an
influencer atleast to young and middling age group audiences world
over.
Yes - there is definitely a defect of cultural heritage available
digitally from non western countries, for a variety of reasons.
However, this sometimes goes the other direction (with the less
developed country getting their content more available than the
developed country - e.g. Argentina's Wikimedia Chapter has been given
national TV footage from the [[Falklands war]] to put on the Spanish
Wikipedia but the BBC in England has not given any footage for the
English Wikipedia!
I don't pretend to know all of the situation in India and it's
cultural heritage organisations, but I can make an educated guess that
one of the major problems in India is:
1) Vast amounts of objects/papers/materials that is uncatalogued and
poorly stored (probably deteriorating)
2) Lack of digitisation money and equipment.
This is not just a "developing world problem" - it is also the case in
the Australian national archives too...
But, this brings the problem of a lack of Indian cultural heritage
online back to a much more fundamental level than poor SEO, it is
about cataloguing, preserving and digitizing. Only then do we get to
questions of "what metadata format" or "what copyright" etc.
If this is true, perhaps then (and this is just an idea), one thing
that Wikimedia India could be doing with State/National Archives and
Libraries is funding the purchase and operation of digitisation
equipment. For example: there could be a "Wikimedia digitisation
officer" in the State Archives paid by WMF/WM-ID. In exchange for
doing good quality digitsation for free, the Wikimedia community gets
a copy of the scan. It could also be done as part of a "residency" at
the GLAM where Wikipedians ask for specific documents/facts to be
found and the resident does the research and makes the scan. It would
be a good way of extracting "new" history from these institutions
perhaps?
Ashwin Wrote:
this is a complex operation where the Wikimedia Foundation plays a
larger role, where editors better not promise more than they can
deliver and where commitments which are made must be honoured.
Correct. As I said in my blogpost "how to make cultural collaborations
scale" http://www.wittylama.com/2010/11/how-to-make-cultural-collaborations-scale/
it is important that we have professional, ongoing relationship
management with external organisations. by "professional" I do not
necessarily mean "paid" but I do mean "formal". It is no longer
appropriate for Wikimedia to be telling cultural organisations that
request to work with us to "leave a message on the talkpage" or for us
to talk about "liberating" their content. Of course, getting to that
stage is the tricky part, and that's what my job is about :-)
If people are particularly interested in continuing discussions about
GLAM-Wikimedia issues generally then I invite you to join the relevant
mailinglist, described here:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Contact
I hope this email has helped! Please forward it to any relevant
mailinglists if you wish.
Sincerely,
-Liam
wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata
Part 2 - Shirish's views.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: shirish शिरीष <shirishag75(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2011/1/29
Subject: Re: The challenge : Was Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Liam Wyatt's
visit to India
To: Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com>
Cc: Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>, "Jogalekar, Sudhanwa"
<sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com>, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com>
At bottom :-
On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 02:16, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Ashwin,
>
> Many thanks for this note - am ccing Liam Wyatt as suggested by you.
>
> Liam: on this thread are Ashwin, Shirish, Sudhanwa - wikimedians and free
> software folks from Pune.
Hi all,
I do not know how much I can help in this project. A bit embarrassed
as I have some strong opinions on this matter and a slightly different
take on it. No artist, no software developer either, just a blogger
and a FOSS user.
>From what little I know of museums they are a large repository of not
just historical documents and artefacts but also cultural, whether
they may be nice-looking artefacts such as motifs,symbols or/and
artefacts which makes us imagine how our ancestors lived.
Some of these cultural history is just lost. I am a foodie as well
like cooking (not much skillful but ok enough to make sure that I do
not go hungry) hence taking a cooking example.
Just to take an stupid/simple example, look at 'Kadai'
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Kadai for reference.
I have seen implementations of Kadai over centuries in some of the
museums so do not think it is something which got/happened yesterday
but over centuries.
I do know that the Thais have a similar kind of utensil (made of wood
though) which they use for rice, noodles whatever. I forgot the name
however.
Do they share some kind of rich background, something I/We are not
aware of, do not know ? Did the Buddhists went with the Kadai to
Thailand and fashioned it with wood there (perhaps wood was more
abundant than steel,iron etc. in those times) I have no idea.
I am sure there are so many examples that my puny mind cannot
comprehend just have to say that this is a project which is needed
because sadly history is being wiped out here as elsewhere in the name
of modernism.
Another off-take would be because there is not so much content in the
commons of such historical and cultural pieces, digital games and art
pieces also have just American and European culture in it.
> Best
> Bishakha
So will end this mail with hopefulness that Ashwin and Sudhanwa can
take this project forward and atleast jump start the process.
<snipped>
--
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: shirish शिरीष <shirishag75(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2011/1/29
Subject: Re: The challenge : Was Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Liam Wyatt's
visit to India
To: Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com>
Cc: Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>, "Jogalekar, Sudhanwa"
<sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com>, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com>
Adding at bottom :-
2011/1/29 shirish शिरीष <shirishag75(a)gmail.com>:
> Another off-take would be because there is not so much content in the
> commons of such historical and cultural pieces, digital games and art
> pieces also have just American and European culture in it.
The point I wanted to make is because there is only digital american
and European art that is the culture which is ingrained and known
about, the rest of the world is just not known and games have been an
influencer atleast to young and middling age group audiences world
over.
--
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17
Please ref to the previous post titled "The GLAM Challenge).
Part 1 consisting of Posts (two) by Ashwin Baindur given below
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 7:52 PM
Subject: The challenge : Was Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Liam Wyatt's visit to India
To: Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com>, "Jogalekar, Sudhanwa"
<sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com>
Cc: "Agarwal, Shirish" <shirishag75(a)gmail.com>
Inline...
> On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>>This is a very big challenge in so many dimensions, I kid you not.
>>
> Let's discuss this in more detail.
>
The way I understand it, the objective of GLAM Wiki is to bring a host
of material in conventional repositories onto the free domain (I dont
want to call it public domain). WikiMedia Foundation has made some
progress in this issue as one occasionally sees :
* Bits of news from the blogs or Signpost mentioning them.
* The Commons page announces these deals prominently. They also
included details & links to Commons Projects wherein these images are
to be sorted/categorised/processed in some way by the editors.
The TropenMuseum is a museum in Amsterdam about the Tropics. The
museum has a large collection of objects and photographs about the
Tropics. The museum will donate images about two former Dutch
colonies, Suriname and Indonesia, to Commons. The first uploads are
about Suriname and particularly the Maroon culture from Suriname and
it is followed by material that has Indonesia as its subject.
Indonesian Wikipedians have agreed to translate all the Dutch captions
and metadata into Bahasa Indonesia so that the people of Indonesia
could interact with the material.
The State Library Of Queensland has donated 50,000 public domain
images, with metadata, to Wikimedia Commons. The ages fall under
50,000 subject headings, which need to be mapped to Commons
categories. Editors need to do this. A bot is uploading the images.
Now, what is not known are the exact specifics of what such an
engagement with a GLAM consists of and what are the responsibilities
and expectations. It would help if WikiMedia Foundation made some
guidelines and documentation on these materials. But using common
sense, I'm sure it will go along these lines...
* Liaison with the GLAM institution. Sell the idea to them.
* Work out the crux point - the freedom issues, especially in light of
copyright, local and international rights.
* Examine all stakeholder issues and resolve them.
* Work out the details of the activities, roles, responsibilities and
partnership to concurrence of all.
* Ideally create a CPM/PERT chart for monitoring.
* Arranging funding for some of the activities.
* Outreach with the community to get them to buy into helping out with
the crowdsourced activities.
* Legal vetting of the agreement. This has to be between WikiMedia
Foundation and GLAM Institution not us editors.
Only then...
* Write up an agreement.
* Begin operations, monitor, report, sort out issues, blah, blah.....
* Publicity and get good PR.
In this case, we need to understand, who are the stakeholders -
* GLAM Institution(s),
* Wikimedia Foundation,
* State Govt of India,
* Central Govt of India,
* Pointsman for GLAM activities on behalf of WMF (Witty Lama),
* WMF's India office (Bishakha till its established),
* Local Editors chapter of Pune ( us )
* Wikimedia India (Arun Ram)
* press
* society in general
* Editors around the world (including India)
* Funding agencies
* contractors
In such a complex environment, what is our standing to engage the
GLAM institution such as Kelkar Museum?
Let WikiMedia Foundation (Witty Lama, Bishakha et al) work out the
modalities for a GLAM project in India.
Should the pointsmen (who should "own" the project) be an editor or a WMF rep?
Ideally, WMF needs to hire a full time guy to be on this and work out
the specifics of a hundred issues who can mentor the Indian projects
thorough the project in case some editor takes up the pointsmans role
for a project.
>> Bishakha, we need integration for an India English Wikipedia community
>> because thats whom the Foundation will have to fall back on to support
>> it. We cant be talking on lists parochially as is happening in in
>> terms of Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore or in terms of Kn, Ml, Mr WPs for
>> GLAM projects as GLAM projects provide knowledge and resources to the complete world & wiki community, definitely India's (my additions in tis email)
>> independent of language of Wikipedia platform.
As regards, the integration etc which needs to be discussed in more
detail, I started off plannning to do that but wrote a wholly
different email instead :-).
These are my thoughts, for your consideration
Bishakha, you may like to cc this to Witty Lama if you feel it is appropriate
Ashwin
Ashwin Baindur previously wrote :....
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Liam Wyatt's visit to India
To: Sudhanwa Jogalekar <sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com>
Cc: Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta(a)gmail.com>
Inline..
On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 12:02 PM, Sudhanwa Jogalekar
<sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If there is some interest in doing something with Raja Kelkar Museum,
> Pune ( http://www.rajakelkarmuseum.com ), I can connect to the main
> person there.
>
> He is also "Sudhanwa" and I know him for ages :-)
>
> -Sudhanwa
Dear Sudhanwa,
Thanks for the offer about the Kelkar Museum. I have pondered over it
and, uncharacteristically for me, I feel we should wait for the
GLAM-Wiki scene to come about in Pune. The short time of Liam's stay
in India, little chance of his visiting Pune and our own commitments
at GNUNIFY are indicators against doing anything right now more than
meeting and exchanging ideas.
Another reason, we have not quite built up our Wikipedian community in
Pune as yet. The problem is not so much of Kelkar Museum agreeing to
provides its treasures for outreach but that we may not be able to
live upto the expectations. Tremendous amount of work will be
involved. Typically a museum may donate images in thousands or even
hundreds of thousands. The Troppenmuseum and Queensland Museum
examples come to mind. Typically, there are expectations on the editor
community for participating in batch process activities, such as going
over the material, sorting it out, uploading, categorising etc.
Bishakha, we need integration for an India English Wikipedia community
because thats whom the Foundation will have to fall back on to support
it. We cant be talking on lists parochially as is happening in in
terms of Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore or in terms of Kn, Ml, Mr WPs for
GLAM projects as GLAM projects provide knowledge and resources
independent of language of Wikipedia platform. This is a very big
challenge in so many dimensions, I kid you not.
So what should we do in the meantime? As per me for the Pune chapter-
we could finish our GNUNIFY event, and meet Witty Lama. After that, we
may reach out to Kelkar Museum and explore possibilities before we
commit. Our Community of Wikipedians both Puneri & National need
development before we commit to support any GLAM venture.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------