Hi Folks
We conduct a monthly IRC on India Programs on the first Thursday of every month. I'm writing to invite you to attend tomorrow's IRC. I've scheduled it for 9pm IST - based on feedback I've gotten from the community when discussing this at the various meet-ups I've been attending that this time slot might be more convenient.
Something different that I thought we would do in the IRC tomorrow is to have some guests. Specifically, I wanted to invite Frank, Annie, PJ & Srikeit - all of who are supporting the Wikipedia India Education Program's Pune Pilot. Frank & Annie are with the Foundation. PJ is from the Campus Ambassador program in the US - and has offered to come down to Pune to support this initiative for just under the next 3 months. Srikeit is an existing Wikipedia and has offered to support the program for the next 1 year.
I thought it would be a great way of getting to know them and for you to interact with them and to discuss the (very early) signals that we would have on the program (given that we are starting formal outreach today.) We'd love to hear your views as well.
As always, we will also give a quick summary of India Programs and discuss any other issues you'd like to.
Do join us!
Best
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs
skype : hisham.wikimedia
gtalk : hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
twitter : @mundol
hi,
Cross-posted on the GLAM mailing list, Mumbai and India lists.
We're having our first GLAM related event in Mumbai, India on June 18, 2011.
We're starting off with a talk/workshop by Shishir Jha, Project Lead,
Creative Commons India and an Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of
Technology, Bombay.
The talk is aimed at the Wikipedian and GLAM community to help both of us
better understand the Creative Commons set of licenses and its nuances. I'm
writing to this list for suggestions on specific set of CC-related topics
that we should discuss at such a meeting that would help clarify concepts
for both the Wikipedia and the GLAM community related to licensing. The GLAM
community in Mumbai will also utilise this to understand CC and its benefits
more clearly and use it to approach other GLAM institutions in Mumbai in
particular and India in general.
If we have Shishir Jha's permission, we hope to video tape and upload the
meeting onto the Wikimedia Commons.
Thanks in advance and warm regards,
Pradeep Mohandas
We have a couple of interesting meetings yesterday with 2 Symbiosis institutes (SIMC & SIBM)
I know I had said we would write daily updates this week - but I'd like to change that to a weekly summary because that is probably going to be a better way of providing a comprehensive picture.
Trust that's ok!
Best
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs
skype : hisham.wikimedia
gtalk : hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
twitter : @mundol
>
Hi All
Do any of you have contacts with local media in Pune? Would love to get name of correspondents, name of publication / radio or TV channel as well as email IDs or phone numbers. Could you share these with me and Moka offline?
We are looking at providing a diverse mix of media with the opportunity to cover the Wikipedia India Education Program - and the Campus Ambassadors who are associated with this.
I'm particularly keen on getting local publications (especially Marathi) and local radio channels.
Many thanks
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs
skype : hisham.wikimedia
gtalk : hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
twitter : @mundol
Dear all,
Transliteration js add-on has been added to Kannada Wiktionary, Kannada
WikiQuotes and Kannada WikiSource. Now users can type in Kannada on these
projects easily.
Cheers,
Suma Krishna Addoor
Hi Pune / India
As you are aware, India Programs has been working on kicking off the Wikipedia India Education Program. As part of this, we received a huge response from hundreds of interested volunteers and we have selected 22 bright, passionate and motivated Campus Ambassadors. They come from an incredibly diverse background - and all have impressed us with their potential.
I'm writing to formally introduce the initial set of 22 Pune Campus Ambassadors to you. Their names are (in no particular order)
Gurudas Nulkar
Gurmeet Singh
Arnav Sonara
Prateek Saxena
Ram Shankar Yadav
Kailasam B
Seva Panda
Arnav Chaudhary
Rohit Patnaik
Wasim Mogal
Deepti Chaudhari
Sandeep Pherwani
Poonam Deshpande
Pallavi Agarwal
Mihir Khatwani
Kiran Attal
Parag Tambe
Raghavendra "RG" Rao
Sagar Makode
Abhishek Suryawanshi
Alex James
Deepesh Chaudhari
As we go along, I'm sure they will need your help and support and advice and guidance and motivation.
Do welcome them into your fold as you have warmly welcomed everyone else.
(I've marked PJ, Srikeit, Annie & Frank on this mail)
Warmest Regards,
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs
skype : hisham.wikimedia
gtalk : hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
twitter : @mundol
" The Sunday Indian" magazine on its recent cover story heavily bashes
Wikipedia, Google etc.
The article also features an interview with Jay Walsh, Wikimedia
Foundation’s Head of Communications.
*Some background : *
The publication is supported by Arindam Chaudhuri , Head of IIPM, who was
heavily criticized by bloggers for alleged misrepresentations and false
advertisements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institute_of_Planning_and_Management_ad…
You can read more about the article here :
*The Sunday Indian : "Internet Hooliganism"*
http://www.thesundayindian.com/en/story/internet-hooliganism/15181/
( The article is very huge and hence only few relevant extracts copied here)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Institute_of_Planning_and_Management_ad…>
Why
internet vandals and slander supporting entities like Google must be
criminally prosecuted and made to pay for promoting defamatory links and
suggestions, and how the new IT act is a step in the right direction and
gives Indians the right to get justice against such vandalism.
...First, as I mentioned earlier, is the wicked anonymity that the web
provides to Internet posters, which gives them protection from being
identified and prosecuted. Second is the hand-in-hand conspiratorial
connivance of Internet companies like search engines, social networking
sites, blog site hosts and even ISPs (intermediaries, in summary) that
refuse to delete or block out the execrable comments and links and also
refuse to confirm the identities of the anon-posters. Google, Wikipedia,
Twitter... all of them fall within the same indecent category of companies.
Third has been the unfortunate legal protection given till now to such
intermediaries, who apparently could not be held responsible for material
that others were posting on their websites (for example, in the US, Section
230 of the Communications Decency Act has protected intermediaries from
liability for defamatory content posted on their sites, even if they allowed
the content to remain despite having been notified about the same).....
...But Google is only one side of the story. There are others in the same
league and perhaps as worse. One of the infamously notable ones is
Wikipedia, which touts itself as the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit
– a metaphor for allowing any anonymous author to post details about any and
every topic. And as the Wikipedia link almost always comes on the first page
of any search engine's results, the nuisance value Wikipedia and its army of
unidentifiable contributors command is immense and as dangerous.
Stories of even Wikipedia being taken to court are well known. Recent years
have seen temporary bans on Wiki pages from various governments, including
the Dutch and German ones. UK’s largest internet service provider banned
Wikipedia pages containing child pornography a few months ago. The
Australian government has blacklisted Wikipedia pages permanently along with
“child porn sites.” University of California professors refuse references to
Wikipedia. BusinessWeek has called Wikipedia “awash in controversy.” New
York Times, US government’s patents office and various other highly credible
entities have official policy documents against Wikipedia. US Senators like
Ted Stevens in Alaska have introduced bills to pull Wikipedia out of schools
and libraries. The US Appeals Court now has an official ruling against
Wikipedia sources being quoted.
On April 4, 2009, Financial Times certified Wikipedia as “hilariously
unreliable free-for-all.” USA Today’s founding editorial director John
Seigenthaler Sr went to the courts when his Wiki biography concocted up that
he was connected with the assassinations of both John F. Kennedy and his
brother Bobby Kennedy. While Wharton writers confess, “It's unclear how the
Wikipedia model will evolve...,” Harvard professors cast more caustic doubts
saying, “No, is the short answer here [to whether Wikipedia transfers to a
good corporate environment model].”
When San Francisco-based Jay Walsh, Wikimedia Foundation’s Head of
Communications, was questioned by TSI in May 2011 (read the full interview
later in this article) on the ongoing defamation of personalities on
Wikipedia, and on the concept of Internet hooliganism, he replied, “Our
project strongly supports free speech, but it also represents the power of
communities to remove vandalism, protect quality information, and generally
respect the importance of having high quality, non-vandalised information.
We're proud of that reputation.” In fact, as recently as on May 9, 2011,
UK-based billionaire Louis Bacon won a case in a London High Court, to force
three websites to reveal the identities of the bloggers who were posting
besmirching remarks online. One of these websites was Wikipedia (the two
other were WordPress and Denver Post). What entities like Wikipedia, Google,
Twitter et al are blatantly overlooking is the fact that freedom to express
should never be assumed to be freedom to defame. Citizen journalism is not
about promoting gossips, displaying profanities in words and making biased
mockery of humans and organizations. But easier said than done.........
.....” Even Barkha Dutt of NDTV sent blogger Chyetanya Kunte a legal notice
for posting his opinion (based on some excerpts from Wikipedia) that her
coverage of the 26/11 attacks might have endangered human lives. [Of course,
Kunte backed down after the reaction from Dutt]. ....
....And in this context, the rules notified on April 11, 2011, under the
Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules, 2011, by the
Government of India, deserves a loud applause. Something as good as this, is
a rare sight in the sector. What the notification clarifies is that, hereon,
it is not just bloggers with malicious intent, who will get dragged to the
table of interrogation. Even intermediaries like all search engines and
websites (which would include Google, Wikipedia, or even online payment &
auction sites, social networking sites and hosted blogs), Telecom and
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and even cyber cafes, will be held liable
for all harm caused to the party – individual or a body of individuals –
which has lodged a complaint. This war is not just a blogger versus an
innocent tale anymore. The intermediaries are neck-deep in too......
....Also, all Internet businesses in India (and if possible, around the
world) should be made answerable for their local operations, in accordance
with the law of the Indian land. Else, they should be blocked. This way, we
will not have a Wikipedia US operation evading legal notices because an
Indian court passed an order against it, or a Google India claiming
innocence because a Mumbai High Court passed an order. ....
*"We support free speech"*
Jay Walsh, Head of Communications, Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia)
TSI: A lot has been debated over time that bloggers have received more than
enough headspace to defame personalities over the Internet in an unchecked
fashion. So does this call for ethical and strict government regulations and
soon (like was passed on privacy)?
Jay Walsh (JW): Wikimedia's projects are operated by thousands of volunteers
from all over the world. Although the projects (our servers) are housed in
the US, and we're ultimately required to abide by US laws around privacy,
our users in many countries will generally make their best efforts to adhere
to relevant privacy laws in the countries where they reside. In other words,
the users appreciate that the information they post on Wikipedia in their
own country should be done so within the scope of the laws of that country.
When there are issues with vandalism on Wikipedia, our community is able to
address the issues rapidly. Volunteers work hard to keep the information
high quality – and perhaps most importantly, for living people who are
represented by articles on Wikipedia, volunteers want to ensure that the
right information is there at all times. Vandalism on all articles, but
particularly on articles about living people, is not tolerated and is
rapidly removed. So, our system is working quite well, and our community
isn't seeking out better or tougher government regulations around personal
privacy.
TSI: How do you view the concept of Internet hooliganism, where bloggers
write anything about any person or institution – which are mostly hearsay
and wrong, and worse, defamatory. Should the law take strict actions against
such people?
JW: The Foundation doesn't have a specific point of view on this matter. Our
project strongly supports free speech, but it also represents the power of
communities to remove vandalism, protect quality information, and generally
respect the importance of having high quality, non-vandalised information.
We're proud of that reputation – it's about a massive, global effort to
present the best quality information on the web.
TSI: Wikipedia has been held up many time for allowing bloggers to generate
and display content that is defamatory. How does Wikipedia handle the vast
amount of defaming content?
JW: My previous answers speak to our overall and continuous efforts to
remove vandalism in articles. This is partly an automated process of
deleting edits that are clearly vandal-oriented (using swear words for
example), but largely the work of thousands of volunteers who constantly
assess and review new edits to Wikipedia and its sister projects. They
review edits one at a time, reverting vandalism and blocking users who seek
to contravene our basic policies.
TSI: Does Wikipedia feel legally responsible for such content?
JW: Wikipedia is about providing the highest quality, neutral information to
the visitors of Wikipedia. All Wikipedians share in the responsibility to
ensure the quality of content, and new users are welcome to take part in the
process.
TSI: How many court cases globally are currently pending against Wikipedia
where Wikipedia is cited as a defendant?
JW: Occasionally individuals reach out to the Wikimedia Foundation, the
official non-profit organisation that operates Wikipedia, to request action
on content. Sometimes this comes in the form of correspondence from lawyers.
There are far fewer situations where active litigation is necessary. I'm not
aware of any current legal cases.
TSI: What are the lawsuits that Wikipedia has lost globally?
JW: I'm not aware of any situations where the Foundation has not won a legal
situation.
TSI: Should there be a separate law governing blogs and other Internet
public display websites?
JW: That's a question best left to those who use or edit Wikipedia, but from
the Foundation's perspective we believe that our project works well within
the pre-existing laws in the US to protect information relating to living
people. We are more concerned with seeing better laws developed
internationally to protect free speech on line, and to ensure that every
person on the planet can participate freely in the creation and sharing of
all human knowledge.
While this may sound bad, it really isn't all that bad.
There are plenty of other transliterators. I personally prefer Bing to
Google. You also have Quillpad and Baraha. Apart from this, I use a tool
called Keymmanweb on the English wikipedia which works as an on screen indic
keypad. There are plenty of alternatives to Google. Just as we don't use
Google Maps for locations, but use all providers including OSM, we can try
something new this time.
Regards,
Rsrikanth05
On May 27, 2011 11:35 PM, "Sudhanwa Jogalekar" <sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Google shutting down translate and transliterate APIS.
Many Indic websites & applications will now be affected
Read more here:
http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-some-of-our-apis…
Looks like this is the right time for WMF tech team to create their own APIs
--Sudhanwa
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!
web: www.sudhanwa.com blog: www.sudhanwa.in
Twitter: sudhanwa Check on FB, Linkedin for more.
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Hello friends,
There is a lot happening in Pune next week. We have a lot of visitors in
town who would especially like to interact with the Pune Community. Our help
and cooperation has been sought for the Campus Ambassador training event
next weekend. Our *MEETUP DATE IS NOW CHANGED FROM 11 JUN TO 04 JUN* *2011
(Saturday)* at 1800 hours at SICSR, Atur Centre, Model Colony. Room No 704.
7th floor.
Hisham Mundol, National Program Coordinator, who is leading the Campus
Ambassador programme, will be in Pune for a week for masterminding the
event. Bishakha Datta, Trustee, will be gracing the event on Saturday. Tinu
Cherian, the quintessential Indian outreach activist, will also be coming
for and participating in the meet - a rare treat for us. I spoke to Arjuna
Rao Chawala and he has promised to confirm attendance by an Indian Chapter
representative soon.
We have a number of people visiting us from abroad. Frank Schulenburg, Head
of Public Outreach and Annie Lin, who leads the Ambassador Program are
visiting Pune for the Campus Ambassador training event on 04-05 Jun 2011. We
also have P.J. Tabit coming down to India between June 1st and August 21st
to support the launch of the Wikipedia India Education Program. PJ is a
Campus Ambassador in the US and is on the Ambassador Steering Committee for
Wikipedia. We, the Pune community, welcome Frank, Annie & PJ to Pune and
hope they have a wonderful stay.
We also welcome any members of the Wikimedian community in India from
outside Pune who are going to be with us for this event. Do let us know if
we can help you in any way.
Broadly speaking, the campus ambassadors will be trained on 4th and 5th Jun
by the outreach team comprising lndian and foreign Wikipedians. In the
evening on Saturday, the campus ambassadors and the outreach team will be
present for our meetup.* After the meetup, the Outreach Team has invited the
Pune Wikipedia community for a* *SOCIAL EVENING WITH DINNER*. Venue for
social evening will be indicated at the meetup.
Coming to another issue, the Campus Ambassadors themselves.
The first batch of Campus Ambassadors has been selected. To those selected,
we say - heartiest congratulations, you will shortly be learning to edit and
to evangelise Wikipedia. It is a most challenging task and we assure you of
the community's support. We invite you to be part of our community and we
promise to help you, guide you and partner you in this extraordinary journey
you will undertake.
We also know that some other aspirants have not been selected this time
round. In most cases, this is due to their lack of Wikipedia skills. To all
of them we say - there will be another round of selection coming up in a few
months, so have a great heart and wait. The fact that all of you stood tall
and came forth means you already belong to the select batch of people who
are doers and achievers. We, the Pune community, invite you to join us for
this meetup and become part of us. We will help you get the skills to make
you ready for the next round of selections.
*Many of you all who are interested in becoming Wikipedians are requested to
join all of the above :*
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mr-wiki/ (Marathi Wikipedia Group)
- https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l (Mailing
list for Wikimedians in Pune, India)
- https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-pun (Mailing
list for Wikimedians in Pune, India)
*Also please join the following groups on Facebook*
- Wikimedia India
- WikiPuneri
*IMPORTANT*: All those attending the meetup from Pune (excepting those
selected for the Campus Ambassador program or those organising the event or
visiting from outside Pune) need to confirm attendance so that we can plan
accordingly. Send your confirmation to :
ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com with subject : "Attending Pune meetup". Those not
attending need not respond.
So till then, Au revoir & Namaste, Khuda Hafez and Sat Sri Akal,
Jai Hind
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Ashwin Baindur