Bhagat Singh was an Indian freedom fighter, considered to be
one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence
movement. Interestingly rumour smses and forwarded emails
started circulating on Feb 14 ( also happens to be Valentine's Day) on
similar lines like
*"On 14th February 1931, Lahore, in morning time, the legendary
Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, & Sukhdev were hanged to their deaths. But we only
celebrateValentine Day. Let’s pass this message."*
Very soon these rumours moved on social media sites like Twitter &
Facebook. And it was one of the trending topics on Twitter India all day.
Curious enough, the first change on the Wikipedia article on Bhagat Singh
was on 13 feb, 23:13 hours [1], even before this news started circulating.
People kept on changing and reverting it between Feb 14, 1931 and March 23
as his death date [2]. Even a regular user changed it to Feb 14 once.
It was even tweeted by an Exective Director of IBN7 and later retweeted by
Actor Madhaven ( tweeted by somebody else)
Blogs on this also started coming up [3]
By noon, I saw this on twitter and fully protected it temporarily. [4] At
that time, i believe there were more than 30+ changes on death date.
I began to check for sources & later I added it to the Wikipedia article
[5] with references to reliable sources like history artcles of gov.in
Later , I reduced the protection of the page to semi-protection for a week.
[6]
These kinds of sensational vandalism always occurs, but I am sharing this as
an example of how those monitoring social media can watch out for similar
activities on Wikipedia.
When I tweeted that March 23 is the actual date , one person replied that
similar to "yes, why the confusion?.. Wikipedia says so. " . It also
explains how people look upon Wikipedia as a reliable source of
information.
I had similar examples when there was rumors of the death of leader like YSR
and Jyothi Basu. Social media "killed" Jyothi Basu days before his actual
death and I had to semi protect the page similarly to prevent the next day
newspaper saying "Wikipedia killed Jyothi Basu". :)
There were also some new reports on the Bhagat Singh controversy last 2days.
[7]
Regards
Tinu Cherian
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhagat_Singh&action=historysubmit…
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhagat_Singh&action=historysubmit…>
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhagat_Singh&action=history
[3] http://nimbupani.us/2011/02/why-bhagat-singh-is-trending-on-twitter-14th-fe…
[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhagat_Singh&action=historysubmit…
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhagat_Singh&diff=next&oldid=4138…
[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bhagat_Singh&diff=next&oldid=4138…
[7] The Hindu : Bhagat Singh page ‘vandalised' on Wikipedia
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article1458455.ece
IBN Live :"Twitter blooper: Bhagat Singh hanged on V-Day"
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/twitter-blooper-bhagat-singh-hanged-on-vday/1433…
Mid-Day : " An online Valentine's Day blooper "
http://www.mid-day.com/news/2011/feb/150211-news-bangalore-valentines-day-b…
Bangalore Mirror : " Bangalore Mirror: Bhagat Singh gets new death
anniversary on Twitter "
http://www.bangaloremirror.com/index.aspx?Page=article§name=News%20-%20…
Dear Wikimedians,
Here is a short report of the first workshop for Hindi wiki projects that
was held on 2011 February 12 at Sarai-CSDS, Civil Lines, New Delhi.
The workshop was attended by more than 35 participants. The complete list of
participants is available at http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/विकिपीडिया:हिन्दी
विकि कार्यशाला सम्मेलन/नई दिल्ली
१<http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%AA%…>
The workshop was divided into two sessions. The first session was an
Introductory presentation about wiki, Wikipedia, and Hindi wikiprojects. In
the second session we introduced wiki editing to the participants. There was
also a short introduction about WikiBhasha by the representatives form
Microsoft.
The participants asked many questions about wiki, Wikimedia Foundation,
Wikipedia, sister projects and so on. They also asked some queries regarding
featured articles, protected pages typing tools, policies of Hindi
wikipedia, and so on. The participants are introduced to wiki wiki editing
in a simple way.We also gave them information regarding transliteration tool
and taught them to write in Devanagari on Hindi wikipedia.
At the end of the workshop all were introduced to WikiBhasha tool by
Microsoft representative, Ashwini. He demonstrated the tool by translating
an English Wikipedia article to Hindi.
Since this is the first Wiki workshop for Hindi there were participants came
even from neighboring states like Punjab, UP, and so on.Hindi wiki community
is planning to organize many more workshops in the near future.
With Regards
Mayur
Dear colleagues, (please feel free to cross-post this to local lists
within India)
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Hisham Mundol as a
consultant to the Wikimedia Foundation to support us in our program
initiatives in India.
As you know, the Wikimedia Foundation declared India to be a strategic
priority during the strategic planning process [1]. I announced our
plans for the formation of an office in August 2010 and the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees approved the creation of the Wikimedia
India chapter in June 2010. India is a priority for the Wikimedia
movement as it has a strong and growing community of Wikimedians
building the Indic and English language projects. It is a country where
the Wikimedia movement can achieve our mission and learn important
lessons for achieving impact elsewhere. The engagement of Hisham will
enable the Wikimedia Foundation to pilot new initiatives aimed at
accelerating the growth of the community in India. I am very happy we've
now reached this point.
As I have mentioned in the past, we have a lot of momentum in India but
we have a long way to go to achieve our full potential as a movement.
Indians represent 4% of the world's Internet users today (and this
share is growing), yet they only represent 1.5% of page edits on
Wikipedia. We should be able to rapidly increase this share - across all
projects - and expand readership in a corresponding fashion.
Hisham's title will be Consultant, India National Programs. He will
report to me. His role will be to design and implement specific pilot
programs that encourage many more Indians to become contributors to our
projects in Indic languages as well as English. The National Programs
initiative will focus on the following areas in the first year:
*
Design and implement an India-wide program to increase Wikimedia's
footprint on university and college campuses with students and
faculty with the aim of encouraging contributions to Wikimedia
projects
*
Support the launch and implementation of community-initiated
programs that seek to increase the editor base for Wikimedia projects
*
Engage with the community and chapter to build a strong
relationship among these stakeholder groups and create
communications forums that allow for effective partnerships
As a newcomer to the Wikimedia movement, Hisham's first task will be to
deepen his understanding of us: our history, goals, values, culture and
mission. To that end, he will be spending the coming weeks (not months!)
in learning mode: Hisham and I will be meeting with community members in
Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore on Feb 23-25 and then Hisham will join
community meetings across the country as they occur. Hisham will also
spend time in San Francisco with the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation,
as well as with other like-minded individuals and organizations and he
will attend the chapter conference in Berlin.
Hisham will be creating a workspace on strategy wiki where he will share
what he is learning and develop the core elements of the action plan
going forward. We encourage active community engagement on this wiki. We
aim to move to action quickly and welcome input and guidance from across
the community.
Hisham was most recently a consultant with the Public Health Foundation
of India (in a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). He
designed and implemented large-scale national programs on HIV/AIDS
prevention. He worked to understand the dynamics of hard-to-reach
communities by conducting in-depth, on-the-ground analysis (ask him to
tell you about his experience talking to drivers while sitting under
their trucks). The programs he designed and implemented sought to
convince people in large numbers - 400 million young people across the
nation - to change very personal behaviours. While we are not tackling
issues of such an intimate nature, we do aim to convince large numbers
of people across the country to contribute their personal time to
Wikimedia projects. During this assignment, Hisham worked closely with
public, private and community groups (local and international) to work
through the details of the programs and build partnerships for
implementing them at scale. He did so in a manner that used persuasion
rather than power to build support to move things forward. We think his
experience navigating these varied groups position him well to work in
the Wikimedia community. His earlier career was in marketing and
business development with a number of well-known businesses: Infosys,
Accenture, Cadbury and Unilever. This experience positions him well to
engage with a movement and organization that is global in nature, in
particular to work with a team that is based halfway around the world.
We have scheduled an IRC chat with Hisham and myself for Thursday,
February 17 at 22:00 India Standard Time (16:30 UTC).
I want to thank everyone who helped in the selection process that
identified Hisham. It was a five month process in which we made an open
call for consultants (using my visit in September to drum up interest
via conversations with the community and the media) in India and around
the world. We had 197 applicants from a wide range of professional
backgrounds. Egon Zehnder's India office, part of a leading global
executive search firm, helped screen candidates and manage the process.
Egon Zehnder conducted indepth interviews with 25 candidates based on
the inputs from Bishakha and I who helped shortlist. I interviewed 12
candidates via Skype in the first round and then I had the help of
Bishakha Datta and Achal Prabhala to interview the top seven in person
in Bangalore. Our top two candidates met with Sue and Erik in Delhi and
then Hisham met with the entire WMF leadership team and a broad group of
staff members in San Francisco.
We are very happy with the selection of Hisham. We recognize that we did
not manage to hire someone from inside the Wikimedia community or the
open source community. We did look for people with this background and
one of our finalists was a long time open source advocate. We also
engaged with a long time Wikimedian for a role, though he ultimately
decided to withdraw for personal reasons. We are committed to seeing
Hisham integrate himself into the community quickly and to seeing him
add people to his team from the community. We hope that the community
will engage actively with him to bring him into the fold. Hisham will
most definitely bring fresh perspectives to the movement that will help
us grow and change for the better.
Please join me in welcoming Hisham to the Wikimedia movement.
Note: An FAQ will follow shortly.
Best,
Barry
[1] _http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF_
[2]
_http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-August/000850.h…
--
Barry Newstead
Chief Global Development Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel: +1-415-839-6885 x. 6634
Skype: barry.wikimedia
Twitter: @bazanews
Hi all,
There is a discussion going on at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:India#Map
about compliance to indian laws about representation of India in maps.
According to Indian law it is illegal to show a map that differs from the
official map (which includes, Pakistan controlled Kashmir and the Aksai
Chin). An editor has raised the concern that using the current map (which
shows only areas administered and not areas claimed) is exposing Indian
editors to legal liabilities and prosecution.
Since the Indian govt has successfully forced organisations like Google and
National geographic to show the official map previously and now the
foundation has plans for an India office, shouldn't this issue be considered
seriously? Should we contacting the foundation legal office about this?
regards
Bala
Hi Hisham,
Welcome to the community. We hope you'll start auspiciously by doing a
few edits on Wikipedia on a subject you love. The community in India
is alive and kicking and we hope this new year is one where all
stakeholders get together and achieve great things.
Welcome, once again.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Here is the link to the FAQ. Feel free to add questions if you have them
and I'll attempt to answer ;)
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQ_Consultancy_for_National_Programs,_I…
--
Barry Newstead
Chief Global Development Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
Tel: +1-415-839-6885 x. 6634
Skype: barry.wikimedia
Twitter: @bazanews
Well said, Ashwin ...
A few good things... Some mistakes .. some goof ups...lots
of misunderstandings, concerns and anger..We are all tired... But it is time
to move on.
Let us discuss how we can be more productive, instead of any personal
mudslinging. A few humble suggestions from my side.
1) There is a wide spread agreement for the need for more admins for the
India mailing list. It is important that these people should be neutral, and
in good standing & possibly not connected with the chapter or EC.
2) Let us appreciate the hard work and the struggle behind setting up the
chapter ( by the current EC members and many others) through a very painful
registration process.
3) Like Ashwin commented, let us give some time for the chapter to stablise
and operate. It is an important action item from the chapter to open the
membership asap and conduct a general body meeting as time permits.
4) It is important that there is a clear communication between the chapter /
EC and the community. Hence forth, it will be good that
the Executive committee announce the agenda of the meetings and make public
the meeting minutes & resolutions as early as possible.
5) Re-electing office bearers among the EC members each time is a very bad
idea, IMHO. Even if there is any plan of such re-election, kindly announce
the elections in public & in advance. How & Why the election takes place is
still a dark area for all of us..In future, we would like to know who voted
for whom or whether the election was unanimous and the reason why a
re-election is needed in the first place. Request not to redirect us to MoA
as a reason for re-elections.
6) In line with the process of Wikimedia Foundation itself, the resolutions
of EC should be made public with information on who supported, opposed and
abstained. A collective decision doesn't mean right to individual members'
stand, objection & opinion can be ignored or go undisclosed.
7) I think it is a good idea to have a non-voting member, appointed by the
Wikimedia Foundation in the EC as an observer ( future National Program
Director ?) . The member must have no voting rights but have access to
meetings and exec mailing list. This member should be in good standing with
Foundation , other EC members and the community in general.
8) Any international travel representing the India chapter should be
announced.
9) It is important to ask hard questions on this mailing list to
ensure transparency & accountability , but kindly avoid personal attacks.
Time to formulate an email etiquette policy page for the India list ?
10) This mailing list continues to unmoderated except with those mails which
are obvious spam.
11) The India chapter should be/will be a great enabler for the growth of
the Wikimedia movement in the country. Let us support it whole-heartedly.
All the best wishes.
Regards
Tinu Cherian
On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Ashwin Baindur
<ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I think the time has come to assume good faith and let the office
> bearers get their act together. We have had enough emails expressing
> the community's concerns at lack of transparency, lack of
> communication, etc, etc. The new office bearers are in an un-envious
> position. I'm sure that they must now be feeling that all the work of
> putting up a chapter is a thankless job. It was an important task and
> let us recognise that tackling any state bureaucracy is not an
> occupation of pleasure. So let us thank them for doing this task and
> ask them to henceforth function in a manner which meets the concerns
> of the community.
>
> It would have of course been great if the community had been brought
> in before establishing the foundation, but that is all water under the
> bridge now. It is time for us to let them be and go about doing
> whatever they planned. This spate of attacks/accusation/discourse I'm
> sure has halted them in their tracks. Such a limbo is the worst
> situation possible. In expressing our legitimate concern, we have
> virtually accused them of every possible wrong without concrete
> evidence and now they stand here already condemned in public eyes. If
> they have to serve us - make no mistake - chapter activities are meant
> to serve the community, not govern them - then we have absolutely
> demotivated them from doing so.
>
> To the EC committee, I would like to say, you have my unqualified
> support for the period of a year and I request you to get your act
> together and deliver what you have promised. At this point of time, my
> support is unqualified but henceforth after this grace period, it will
> be based on your performance and output. I'm giving you the rope,
> gentlemen of the EC, now either construct a rope bridge and span the
> gap between you and the community or hang yourselves with that rope
> (figuratively speaking).
>
> To the community, I further request that the tone on the list be
> lowered to gentlemanly discourse. I am not saying that we stop
> expressing our concerns but let us do it in a constructive way. Also,
> we must not make mountains out of mole-hills and we must be even more
> tolerant than before. If the EC have to achieve ambitious targets,
> they have to act. When people act, they make mistakes. Only those who
> dont act, make no mistakes. In my eyes inaction is the greater sin
> than acting and making mistakes. The EC will make a few mistakes but
> they may be discussed in a non-accusatory way and lessons should be
> learnt from them instead of seeking to crucify the EC members at every
> instant.
>
> Also, I will request that all feelings/issues that the community feels
> strongly about be discussed openly on the list rather than offline and
> that no efforts be made to influence the EC offline or in an
> undemocratic fashion.
>
> For those who feel, that they would like to be part of the setup in
> the Wikimedia India chapter - that is a great and good ambition and
> the way to go about it is by working in constructive manner so that
> the community's aims are progressed.
>
> This email is not meant to point fingers towards any one person, but
> definitely I feel the community needs to heed my message and if you
> don't agree, to discuss it politely.
>
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Ashwin Baindur
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
Hi,
We are working on a Complex script PDF rendering library named
PyPDFLib(https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/pypdflib/). One of its
test case (or use case) is to render a wiki page in complex script(any
Indian Language) to PDF. Currently PDF export feature is not
available(not working) for Indian language wiki projects because of
technical incapability of Python Reportlab library.
Just wanted to give an early preview of this software library through
an online interface : http://silpa.smc.org.in/Render
You can try with a Wikipedia page in your language and verify the generated PDF.
You can also access this using this URL
http://silpa.smc.org.in/Render?wiki=http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/இலங்கை
(replace that wiki URL with other page addresses too - any Ianguage -
not limited to Indian languages)
There are lot of items not implemented, but your feedback is requested
on the current version.
The library uses Pango for text rendering and Cairo for graphics and
PDF features.
ps: Don't get surprised if you get a 500 Error page for the random
page you are trying. Just try another wiki page ;)
Thanks
Santhosh Thottingal
http://thottingal.in
Dear all,
A group of us here in Bangalore have been arranging GLAM sessions on Feb
18/19.
NGMA (the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore:
http://ngmaindia.gov.in/ngma_bangaluru.asp) will host a semi-public
discussion with Liam, NGMA staff, and invited curators/ art gallery
owners at their premises on Feb 18, Friday, 3 pm in the NGMA staff
boardroom. The other organisations invited are: 1 Shanthi Road
(http://www.1shanthiroad.com/), Gallery SKE (www.galleryske.com), Colab
(an art and architecture curatorial concern) and pad.ma (www.pad.ma).
Wikipedians and other interested folk from Bangalore are welcome to
join, but since space is slightly limited, NGMA would prefer to keep
this a private event (without press) and ask that you send in your names
beforehand. Therefore, if you are interested in this event, could you
please add your names here:
http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Projects:GLAM_2011/Bangalore_Feb2011#18-Feb
Will update http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/India after the
event.
There are many other events in the planning, and there will be more
notifications here as these events are finalised.
Cheers,
Achal