The article is on national editions of The Hindu newspaper and back cover
page on many editions.
*
*
*The Hindu : "Contest to add files to Tamil Wikipedia gathers steam"*
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2719118.ece?textsiz…
*The Tamil Wikimedia community has organised an international contest to
get more photos, videos and audios related to Tamil, Tamilians and Tamil
culture to the Tamil Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.*
*
*
*The aim of the contest (themed “Eluthu mattum arivanru” or “Knowledge
beyond text”) is “to increase the quality media content related to Tamil
and Tamilians in Wikimedia projects, to attract non-text contributors such
as photographers, graphic artists, animators, mapmakers and videographers
to Tamil Wiki projects and to create a model precedent for cooperation with
Wikimedia Foundation [WMF] in organising projects,” according to Bala
Jeyaraman, Wikipedia volunteer and lead co-ordinator for the contest.*
*
*
*People may send photos of places where Tamils reside, Tamil people
themselves, studies, heritage symbols, institutions, species (plants and
animals) and Diaspora; temples, places of worship and buildings. They can
send educational resources such as files used to teach in Tamil. Also
invited are maps, graphs, illustrations, diagrams, charts, audio and video
files that contain explanations in Tamil, pronunciation files for Tamil
words and phrases, audio recordings of literary works; audio and video
recordings of Tamil cultural practices, arts, dances or sports.*
*
*
*Foreign contribution*
*
*
*Contributions were coming in from Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Norway, America,
Canada, Germany and India, Mr. Jeyaraman said.*
*
*
*Kalaiarasy Kugarajh, who lives in Norway, is one of five persons
co-ordinating the project. She said she was delighted to know that a Tamil
Wikipedia existed. Using an encyclopaedia online was convenient and, being
of Tamil origin, she found getting information in Tamil very useful.*
*
*
*She initially began contributing to the Tamil Wikipedia and then added to
Tamil Wiktionary and other projects. She thought that contributing to Tamil
content online could help Tamil people with limited knowledge of English or
other languages. “Especially, when we live in a foreign country, we lack
the printed version of books, and dictionaries, encyclopaedias in Tamil. To
people who want to refer to something in Tamil or who want the Tamil
meaning for something, or want some old Tamil writings, the Tamil Wikipedia
and the sister projects are much helpful. The Tamil Diaspora can gain a lot
from Tamil Wiki projects,” she said. Besides, storing information online
was necessary and efficient.*
*
*
*Categorisation*
*
*
*“We are categorising the uploads and checking for any copyright
violations. We have already started to make use of the suitable uploads in
Wiki projects continuously too. Finally, we will evaluate the uploads to
select the winners.” The contest, while increasing the media files on
Tamil, would increase awareness among people of the Tamil Wiki as a source
of information and get contributions from them to Tamil Wiki projects in
future.*
*
*
*Chennai student Surya Prakash S, who suggested the theme name of the
contest, has uploaded more than 120 images taken on his campus (Anna
University), photos of film stars and Chennai monuments.*
*
*
*He said: “I just capture images using my cell phone and camera for this
contest. I haven't chosen any subject at all. I just captured images that
are useful for knowledge such as orchids and ‘bonsai' trees in the
“Semmozhi Poonga” [botanical gardens] and some rare herbs from my native
[home].”*
*
*
*He was adding files as he “knows well the status of Tamil content in
Internet.” The Tamil Nadu government should support such initiatives in its
academic institutions to increase the student community's activity in the
free, collaborative encyclopaedia-building project, he said.*
*
*
*Prize money*
*
*
*The Tamil Wikipedia Community and the WMF have sponsored a prize money of
$850 (with nine prizes) for winners. (The first, second and third prizes
are $200, $100 and $50. Three prizes of $100 each are for those uploading
the maximum number of quality entries.*
*
*
*A special prize of $150 is for media files on traditional Tamil arts and
crafts.*
*
*
*Winners would be announced on March 15, 2012 and they would get
certificates with their entries displayed on the front pages of Tamil Wiki
projects, said the invitation to contributors.*
*
*
*The contest (http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/contest, November 15, 2011 to
February 29, 2012) is open to all and is on Facebook (
http://www.facebook.com/tawmc).*
*
*
*
*
** People may send photos of places where Tamils reside, heritage symbols,
institutions, plants and animals*
** Tamil Diaspora can gain a lot from Tamil Wiki projects'*
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news
Important Note : The publisher ( The Hindu) of the above news article owns
the copyrights of the article / content. Request to kindly not reproduce or
circulate the content further. The information is only shared only with an
internal community who have been featured on this article. All copyrights
are duly acknowledged.
Dear all,
These are my insights from GLAMcamp Amsterdam. I have put them in form of
some key questions. For me it was a brilliant learning experience. So, most
of these answers are not mine, rather they have been generated as
collaborative responses by various people from different chapters. I am
grateful to WMF, WM-NL and WM-UK for their special interest in helping
encourage GLAM participation in India.
This is the link to the programs:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAMcamp_Amsterdam#Schedule and in each
session you will find an etherpad link to the live discussion!
Why GLAMwiki is becoming all the more important?
Flickr: popular mass upload tool but is no longer available; it has pending
requests and flickr commons has no money to support more file sharing.
Wikimedia Commons allows almost the same functions and metadata sharing,
open licensing with a bonus Wikipedia link (something that institutions go
by). Since most institutions don’t really know what Wikimedia or commons
is, the Wikipedia name leverages partnerships and allows them similar
archiving benefits. For us, it is also outreach.
Common questions by GLAM institutions in other countries:
-
Why Wikipedia, why not our own website?
Because of the abysmal disparity in web-view. Simply, Wikipedia is the
5thmost visited, gives far more visibility in web traffic as compared
to your
own website. However, integrating wikis and providing links is not hard
either. So, it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
-
This is complicated, is there an easier way to collaborate?
Advice to GLAM and cultural/outreach people: Carry presentations (PPT),
simple statistics, don’t go into metrics jargon, show in simple numbers,
percentage, fractions how people can make a difference or vice versa. Use
things like color coding, emphasize on the importance and seriousness of
‘free knowledge’, larger things that Wikipedia is also in service of. This
helps people connect at different levels. Most importantly, break your
hierarchies and trash your rule books (or make simpler ones that use less
jargon). If you are concerned about quality editing there are two solutions
(get content specific editathons and organize a Wiki academy EVERY week).
What happens once partnership is over? How to sustain?
This is why a GLAM coordinator is not simply a GLAM person. S/he is also
someone who does massive outreach: Wikipedia takes your city; Wiki loves
monuments, wikiacademies, PR and network building with local, regional and
national resource persons outside the community. While in capacity as a
fellow, the idea is also to do value addition, train employees (at least
train in minor edits, article making, image uploading). Source one contact
through another.
(My take: As I see it, there has to be a crucial change in orientation.
>From exhaustive internal debates, discussions and tool building exercises,
it has to move and adapt to the larger Open and free scene, involving
people albeit on a temporary basis and expanding. Monopolizing Wikipedia as
a city, state or indic language space is only going to create a highly
concentrated yet a very niche community)
-
(Question asked to me) 52 cultural partnerships listed on GLAM request
page, why not India?
Frankly, I had no answers why. My hunch is that since traditionally science
and technology oriented courses and vocations have been encouraged, few lay
people really know their culture or feel as passionately about
conservation. On the other hand, placement of government officials to
unrelated departments (museums) included leaves them little motivation to
go beyond their regular duties. On the other hand, there is also a large
communication and visibility problem since Wikimeetups aren’t really a
matter of common knowledge even to journalists. Wikimedia India really
needs to carve out a place and get involved in academic and art spaces,
have people just talk about their experiences, present smaller individual
pilots (Sumanna)
-
Why no Indian participation in ‘This month in GLAM’?
Because there is really no ‘Indian’ GLAM or ‘Indian’ community. As
wonderful as the Indic language efforts are, it would be great if there
were biannual national meet-ups, regional meets and more frequent local
meets. Identify at least 4-5 cities that can act as pivotal regional
meeting and resource points. This will also help generate smaller goals and
activities and we can have our own newsletter as well as TMIG updates.
-
How do we identify, regulate and strengthen local community based
interactions?
Most important: Every chapter must have a national outreach coordinator.
Have mandatory sections in agenda: Gender gap, Indic, English, GLAM, tools,
updates, outreach. Invite guest speakers or professors who can give a talk
or attend and that way get to see the internal workings of the local
community. Try and concretize a press team, media releases, word of mouth,
social networking channel so that every time news passes by, we have a
loyal reader, enthusiast base.
-
What tools are used to digitize artifacts?
Proposed GLAMtoolset, more on etherpad, apart from this proposal to move
GLAM to a different portal from Outreach redirect. More on etherpad
-
Do people really know who a Wikipedian is, what Wikimedia projects are
about?
Andy Mabbett, Fae from UK chapter spoke about their fund raising and
outreach activities, also on how to recruit new editors and how to recruit
new Wikimedians
Important task is to categorically do outreach and editor involvement
together.
-
Who all do you invite in a wikimeetup?
Go to institutions and say how can we help you
Go with groups to cultural institutions and get volunteers so that you get
focused group
Organize a fb group and event
Is there a monthly update?
Need for a cultural outreach coordinator position
Need for a monthly newsletter that binds all indic and English community
members
Need to look at GLAMs more seriously because women’s outreach and GLAM are
intricately connected.
Need to move to more friendly UIs and keep discussions going. Of course,
mailing lists exist and they can be for people specifically involved in a
community but for the novices and to attract more people, there is a need
to get FB groups going, have more Wiki academies.
These are a few salient questions. I will appreciate your suggestions,
advice, comments and questions. Let us try and be civil about criticism,
like mature, secure adults :) Look forward to your responses!
Warmly
Noopur
--
Noopur Raval
Student
Arts and Aesthetics
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Ph: 9650567690
Hi all,
Attention : Indic communities using Narayam extension. Other Indic
communities which don't have Narayam please do read below, I have a note
for you too
As of now Malayalam,Tamil,Odiya,Sanskrit,Assamese,Sinhala communities use
Narayam. Narayam is also deployed on Commons. Most of the communities had
got the extension few months back, but there have
been consistent improvements / bug fixes. Looks like people are not aware
of those changes and started asking Shiju where can they know more.I am
writing on 2 major things that was done to Narayam recently because of the
bugs we(Tamil community) filed and fixes for them had caused an
overall impact.
Shortcut key on Mac :- Refer bug[1] for details, in summary the shortcut
key is now dynamic based on browser / OS combination so that the shortcut
works. Control+G is new shortcut on Mac largely. This was done
during Hackathon. //Surprise surprise, more Indic users on mac :)
Beta maps :- Refer bug[2] for details, in summary, if you have seen more
input methods previously and started seeing lesser methods in last couple
of days, its probably because of this. We did not want untested keyboard
mappings live on WikiProjects. Beta maps will enable people to test newly
added maps(bunch of inscript maps were added as part of Hackathon /
Translation sprint) to be tested on translatewiki, only after a community
member certifies it, it will be seen in wikimedia sites. This was done last
week.
There are more bugs reported by others and the software keeps changing, so
If you want to follow Narayam in close detail, subscribe to the feed[3].
i18n team,
Some of us know, you push i18n patches every Monday. Can you also give a
feed for recent changes in patch *every week*, so we could see if something
relevant to us changed in the patch and test so that we may not miss any
regression caused and be quick to report issues. I know wikitech wiki has
the logs somewhere on deployment(forgot now), but a plain text feed will
help and save much time for many folks.
To those communities who have not taken up Narayam and use old javascript
solution :-
The Javascript solution is not an ideal one now, though it served the
purpose when it was built. Narayam is supported better / technically
superior and as an extension is fairly stable. Unlike webfonts, Narayam
will be deployed only if someone asks for and that should be the way..You
can test through http://translatewiki.net report bugs(Ideally
narayam shouldn't have bugs since Junaid took the maps which already
existed in typing solution), get things fixed, call for
community consensus and getting them deployed. I also request Shiju (who
keeps interacting with various communities, to give a push on this to Indic
wikipedians)
To those communities which don't have any input method solution :-
Please invest some time, the returns are really great. Juniad / i18n team
will help you get Narayam.
[1] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/31026
[2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/32768
[3]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?component=Narayam&product=MediaW…
--
Regards
Srikanth.L
Heya all,
This should've come in elaier but didn't as my lab was shut.
To Pradeep, who's been asking for two days,
And Noopur, the only other Wikipedian who asked about this meet.
Our meetup was held at the KG Inst. of Tech [KITE] who offered us an
A/C presentation hall for this event.
KITE, is a part of KG Information Systems Ltd, one of the city's most
respected IT establishments.
The meetup space was offered by Mr. Ashok Bkathavatsalam himself, the
MD of KGISL, who in turn was told about this meet by Gautam John and
Venkat Mangudi. Thanks you two.
The meetup started at 11am.
We had ~14-15 attendees, out of which 8 or 9 were part of ILUGC Pondy
[Indian Linux User Group Puducherry].
One Wikipedian saw the link to the meetup on my signature on an online
forum SkyScraperCity and came from Chennai.
Bala Jeyaraman, aka Sodabottle joined me a few minutes into the meetup
and it was him who spoke for the rest of the day.
Pre lunch, we basically spoke on how and why the Wikipedia model
worked, the principles of the project, with Bala using the age old
debate of whether Coimbatore or Madurai was the second largest city in
Tamil Nadu as an example for verifiability.
Bala explained the ease of typing in Tamil, etc.
Post lunch, we were joined by two faculty members of KITE, while Mr.
Ashok himself stepped in. Interestingly, he himself has an account on
the English Wikipedia and contributes too.
The meetup ended at around 4, we took a few photos. I shall ask
Prasanna to upload them soon.
It was a success, there were three existing Wikipedians, and the rest
were interested newcomers. I wouldn't call it an academy though.
We've not scheduled a meetup for January yet, as the most probable
date is 15th Jan [Wikipedia Day] because both Bala and I won't be in
town. If anyone from the chapter/foundation can help lead it, I can
get people to attend and myself attend virtually thru Skype or so from
Kakinada.
Comments, suggestions most welcome.
All brickbats my way, bouquets to Bala please.
--~~~~
--
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan,
Sathyamangalam-Gobichettipalayam Star Gazers
My Commons uploads, now exceeding 75.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ListFiles/Rsrikanth05
I just saw that web fonts facility have been added to Indic wikis. On Hindi
and Sanskrit wikipedia, there are Lohit Devanagari and Samyak Devanagari
fonts.
I request to add Sanskrit
2003<http://hi.wikipedia.org/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%95%E0%A5…>web
font to Sanskrit wikipedia (and if possible to other Devanagari script
based wikis) because it is the best Unicode font to display Sanskrit text.
It is also free, so there is no problem to use it for this purpose.
--
*Shrish Benjwal Sharma* *(श्रीश बेंजवाल शर्मा <http://hindi.shrish.in>)*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*If u can't beat them, join them.*
ePandit <http://epandit.shrish.in/>:* *http://epandit.shrish.in/
Dear Wikimedia community,
The highlights of the month of November for the Wikimedia Chapter (India)
are provided below:
Administrative matters Membership
The Chapter membership stands at 185 as of 30 November 2011. This is nearly
double the number of members we had two months ago. The Chapter saw an
increase of 72 members who applied for spot membership at WikiConference
2011 organized last month in Mumbai.
Donations
Dr Amit Keshri became the first person to donate to our Chapter. We express
our sincere thanks to Dr Keshri and others for their generous contributions
towards the young chapter.
Total donations received in Nov 2011 - INR 3601.
Average donations in Nov 2011 - INR 900.25.
FCRA
We have applied for FCRA prior permission under the Foreign Contribution
(Regulation) Act with the Government of India on 5 November 2011 to be able
to receive funds
[1]<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_IN/Bootstrap_Grant>from
Wikimedia Foundation. The expected time for processing is 3 to 4
months.
New organizations like ours can receive foreign contributions after seeking
project based prior permission from the Ministry of Home Affairs. We are
seeking permission so as to receive the grant amount allotted to us by the
Wikimedia Foundation in the United States
Another alternative is to apply for FCRA registration, which will
facilitate the receipt of foreign contributions. However, such permissions
are only granted to organizations with a proven track record of function in
their chosen field of work for a period of three years.
Wiki Conference India 2011
The first Annual India WikiConference 2011 [1] was organized in Mumbai on
18-20 November 2011 at the University of Mumbai. The conference was jointly
hosted by the Wikimedia community in Mumbai and the chapter, along with
scores of volunteers from around the country. This was the first time that
the Indian Wikimedia community has come together to participate at a
national level to organize a conference at this scale.[2] The conference
organizing team was lead by Pranav Curumsey (Chair), Pradeep Mohandas
(Treasurer) and Moksh Juneja (Secretary).[3]
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, inaugurated the conference by
delivering a keynote on "Community Building: The Wiki Way in India". He
also said that this event was probably one of the largest Wikimedia events
in the world. Approximately 700 delegates from all over the country
attended the three day national conference. Full and partial scholarships
were given to 98 awardees out of 7070 applicants. MOre than 50
sessions[4]focused on community building, improving quality of
articles, Mediawiki,
establishing partnerships, Wikipedia India Education Program and sharing of
experiences and best practices. Some of the invited speakers included
Professor Krishna Kumar, Anand Kumar and Arnab Goswami. The state of Indic
Wikiprojects track showcased the current state of each Wikimedian community
in India. The conference also received very impressive and enthusiastic
coverage from the national and international media.[5]
As a part of the Chapter track, an overview[6] was presented by President
Arjuna Rao Chavala. The "Noteworthy Wikimedian Recognition" ceremony[7] was
anchored by Arun Ramarathnam, member of the executive committee which
honored several Wikimedians across different Wikiprojects pertinent to
India.[8]
Images and presentations from the conference have been uploaded to the
Wikimedia Commons[9].
Chapter thanks the organizing team for doing a phenomenal job for making
this event successful, and to to all the chapter members and volunteers
spread across the country who contributed so much of their time and effort.
Chapter also thanks Wikimedia Foundation and all other sponsors for their
support and cooperation.
City and Language SIG
The Wikimedia Chapter is proud to announce the first batch of City and
Language SIG Chairs[10] from its members as given below:
- Odiya SIG - Subhashish Panigrahi (Odiya user page of
Subhashish<http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AC%AC%E0%AD%8D%E0%AD%9F%E0%AC%AC%E0%AC%BE%…>).
- Bengali SIG - Jayanta Nath<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jayantanth>.
- Sanskrit SIG Swaroop
Rao<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MikeLynch>.
We look forward to your continued support and active participation in our
activities.
Report is present at http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Reports/November_2011_Report
Best,
On behalf of Wikimedia Chapter (India)
Thanks,
Naveen Francis
Secretary, Wikimedia India Chapter
[image: File:Wikimedia India logo.svg] <http://wiki.wikimedia.in/>
Notes:
- 1) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011
- 2) http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/02/wikiconference-india/
- 3)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Community_and_Team
- 4) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Programs
- 5)
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/005203.…
- 6) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikimediaIndiaOverview.pdf
- 7)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/NWR_2011_and_Jury_mentio…
- 8) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/NWR_2011
- 9) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiConference_India_2011
- 10)
http://members.wikimedia.in/City_and_Language_Special_Interest_Group_subcom…
Dear all,
A report on the recent WebFonts deployment to 39 Indic language wikis at
Wikimedia is available. Please read it at
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-i18n/2011-December/000359.ht….
It's rather lengthy; there was a lot to be said. I'm trying to take away
the technical discussion from this list, because I think it should really
be a global discussion in the right forum. By all means, please continue
discussions on one of the following two mailing lists. I'm looking forward
to your input.
For those interested in MediaWiki development within Wikimedia, please
subscribe to wikitech-l:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
For those interested in (technical) language support development in
MediaWiki, please subscribe to mediawiki-i18n:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n
Cheers!
--
Siebrand Mazeland
Product Manager Localisation
Wikimedia Foundation
M: +31 6 50 69 1239
Skype: siebrand
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate