Hello friends,
The India report for the July issue of the GLAM Newsletter is a red link at
the moment. Could editors please let me know what GLAM events took place in
their city or on their Wikipedia?
For example, we had the British V&A WikiLounge for Tipu's Tiger. Antything
else?
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Interesting "Warning" given to me by mail ! Did somebody told him that I own
Wikipedia ? ;)
-TC
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bala Atibala Social Service Organization India <bassoindia(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2011/7/25
Subject: Please change it
To: tinucherian(a)gmail.com
Dear sir, you using India map on <INDIA> is wrong and if you use the use
only real India map other vice please do't create miss think in mind. And
you using wrong Pakistan map <PAKISTAN>.
Like <MADHYA PRADESH> or any of state India contain wrong map of India(Some
of part of KASHMIR is missed here and also Arunachal Pradesh area missed
here by China side) Why..??
We give you only few days for correction other vice we take a action against
you.
जो क्षेत्र विवादित हैं अगर आप उनको भारत में नहीं दिखा रहे हैं तो उनको आप
पाकिस्तान या चीन में क्यों दिखा रहे हैं | और पूरी दुनिया में भारत का जो
मानचित्र आज है, वही आपको दिखाना चाहिए |
अगर कोई पाकिस्तान सर्च करता है तो उसको पूरी तरह से इंडिया का कश्मीर वाला
हिस्सा पाकिस्तान के मानचित्र में मिला हुआ दिखाई देता है और जम्मू क्षेत्र का
भी हिस्सा हल्के हरे रंग का किया हुआ है, और जब भारत को सर्च करते हैं तो जम्मू
कश्मीर दोनों को दिखाया ही नहीं जाता ( मध्य प्रदेश सर्च कीजिये) |
Thanks and your services is really good and much more help full on study.
Thanks for give best support.
--
*वैदिक भारत !!*
Bala Atibala Social Service Organization, India
Dushyant kumar Shivhare
08109963448
*DNA : Mumbai blasts: Ajmal Kasab's birthday confusion*
http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_mumbai-blasts-ajmal-kasab-s-birthday-…
*As Mumbai reeled under shock, despair and anger over being attacked again
on July 13, a message started clogging the jammed telephone networks and set
the internet on fire. Though other information — another blast in Navi
Mumbai, suspicious bag found in Santa Cruz — was also flying thick and fast,
this one had the potential to spill mass anger onto the streets.
The blasts were apparently a ‘birthday gift’ for convicted 26/11 terrorist
Ajmal Kasab, it said, and no less than Wikipedia said so.
The user-generated online encyclopaedia insists on verifibility, says Tinu
Cherian, a Bangalore-based Wikipedia administrator: “It is all about
verifiability, not necessarily of the truth, but whether readers and editors
can check that the material has been published by a reliable source, and not
whether they think it is true.” the resource has become a definitive go-to
for unbiased information.
But on that fateful Wednesday, verifiability itself was the problem. Three
sources — Indian Express (2009), IBNLive (2009) and Hindustan Times (2010)
had mentioned Kasab’s date of birth (DoB) as September 13, 1987, while two —
The Times of India (February 2011), The Hindu (2008) said it was on July 13
that year.
The entry on Kasab was created on November 29, 2008, three days after the
attacks, and since December that year, his DoB has been mentioned as July
13.
No wonder then that when a Chennai-based user changed it to September 22 at
8.18pm (the last blast occurred at 7.05pm), there was consternation among
Wikipedians, and minutes later, an ‘edit war’ as the community calls such
rapid changes, had begun. Unable to verify the date, an administrator locked
the page.
Wikipedians say such problems are not uncommon, two recent cases being the
rumour that freedom fighter Bhagat Singh was born on Valentine’s Day
(February 14), and premature reports that West Bengal chief minister had
died. Though there is no laid-down code, and no one in particular monitors
changes to the database, the loosely organised community says it
self-regulates and decisions are arrived at on case-to-case basis and
actions depend on creating consensus.
Soon after the edit war, a group of Wikipedians went into a huddle on the
‘Talk’ page of the website. Among them was Utkarsh Raj Atmaram, a
27-year-old Wikipedia administrator from Hyderabad.
Though he too had learnt about the controversy on Twitter, he was initially
circumspect about the real date being July 13. However, when he checked the
revision history of the article, he realised the truth was at best a shade
of grey.
“Though the DoB had always been July 13, somewhere down the line the
reference was deleted. This fuelled the confusion further,” Atmaram says.
A Washington Post blog later attributed a part of this confusion to: “Those
who are making the Wikipedia entry changes [to September 13] are trying to
delegitimise the terrorists behind the attack.”
It was finally decided at 11.26pm that both the dates should be reflected
after one contributor, ‘kangzan’,pointed out: “Right now Kasab’s birthday is
both in September and in July at the same time, exactly like Schrodinger’s
hypothetical cat is both dead and alive at the same time — a thought
experiment used to illustrate physics’ aptly named uncertainty principle”.
Later, when Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad chief Rakesh Maria confirmed
the date to be September 13, the issue was laid to rest.
The incident highlights the fragile nature of ‘truth’ on the internet —
Wikipedia doesn’t know something happened until a credible source doesn’t
ratify it. “That is why, even though Twitter can be ahead of us in breaking
news, we do not create articles based on what is said there,” Atmaram says.
Perhaps that is why Kasab’s birth date being mentioned as July 13 on
Wikipedia created such a furoreas people trust its content more than even
conventional sources of information.
The flip side, however, especially in countries like India where only a
fraction of government records are online, is a lot of information does not
meet the encyclopaedia’s ‘notability factor’, which determines whether
particular information can be added to the database. To circumvent the
problem, Wikipedians in India are experimenting with a novel idea.
“We have started using oral citations for non-controversial content. A
tayyam dance form has been documented using such citations of proponents,”
says Cherian, who is also at the forefront of creating Wikipedia content in
Indian languages.
As the dust settles on the debate, one thing is clear: Information wars of
the future will be fought online, and in crises, what transpires between
netizens will shape reality on the ground.*
Regards
Tinu Cherian
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news#July_2011
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arjuna Rao Chavala <arjunaraoc(a)gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 6:30 PM
Subject: Appointment of Nominations Committee for EC elections
To: wmin-members(a)googlegroups.com
Dear Wikimedia Chapter Members,
As per Chapter MOA, Rules and Regulations, elections are to be conducted to
fill the Executive Committee(EC) vacancies. In order to do that, EC is
pleased to appoint the following chapter members as members of Nominations
committee (in alphabetical order)
a) Achal Prabhala
b) BalaSundara Raman Lakshmanan
c) Pradeep Mohandas
The terms of reference for Nomination committee is as follows:
- Draft process for EC elections in alignment with MOA, Rules &
Regulations and obtain EC approval
- Call for nominations, validate nominations, announce a slate of
candidates and arrange for conduct of election.
- Count the valid votes and announce winners in the AGM( Scheduled for
Sep 24, 2011)
EC will provide the number of vacancies to the Nominations committee and
extend all help to conduct the elections
EC thanks all the Nomination committee members for accepting the Chapter
invite to serve on Nomination Committee. EC requests all members to extend
their cooperation for smooth election process.
Sincerely,
On behalf of Executive Committee,
Arjuna Rao Chavala
President, Wikimedia Chapter
*Bangalore Mirror : "Not just the written word"*
http://www.bangaloremirror.com/article/81/20110724201107240043349229ed6f4b5…
*Bangalore-based Wikipedians are spearheading an experimental initiative,
the Oral Citations Project to overcome the lack of published material in
emerging languages on the online encyclopedia initiative, the Oral Citations
Project to overcome the lack of published material in emerging languages on
the online encyclopedia*
*
*
*There is more Wikipedia in India but it would be interesting if there could
be more India in Wikipedia...or more South Africa for that matter” — this
view put forth by researcher and Wikipedian Achal Prabhala in the film
People are Knowledge, probably sums up the need for capturing simple things
that we know and do in forms other than the published material. *
*
*
*And taking this thought forward is the Oral Citations Project, a pilot
project which explores alternative methods of citation that could be
employed on Wikipedia. Funded through a grant by the Wikimedia Foundation,
the essence of how this project was undertaken is captured quite lyrically
in the short 40-minute film. *
*
*
*“For most of our learning, a majority of us are trained to look at
something that comes in the published form because the written word is
considered sacrosanct. That way, we become prisoners of a system of
hierarchy of knowledge. But there are so many things that we know and do in
our everyday lives that are not documented in the written form or any other
form for that matter. Recording these things in some form would add to the
vast knowledge base,” says Bangalore-based Achal Prabhala who is also member
of the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board and makes South Africa his home
for three months in a year. *
*
*
*Achal adds that the nature of the project is experimental as nothing like
this has ever been done in Wikipedia before and if it finally gets
implemented, it would be a path-breaking venture. *
*
*
*The idea behind this project was this — Wikipedia privileges printed
knowledge (books, journals, magazines, newspapers and more) as authentic
sources of citable material. Restricting citation sources makes the
enterprise workable. But books and printed words generally are closely
correlated to rich economies: Europe, North America, and a small section of
Asia.*
*
*
*“Just to give an example — in 2005, 161,000 books were produced for a
population of 60 million people, while in South Africa there were 6,100
books for 48 million people and in India for a population of 1100 million
people, only 97,000 books were published. What this means for indigenous
language Wikipedias from India and South Africa is that there is very little
citable, printed material to rely on in those languages; in turn, it means
that it is very difficult for any of those languages to grow on Wikipedia,”
adds Achal. *
*
*
*The project was done with three Wikipedia languages — Malayalam, Hindi and
Sepedi (a South African language) and the subjects chosen to be documented
through audio interviews were two games Sur and Gillidanda in Hindi,
Naaliyar Bhagavathi Theyyam, a temple ritual and Dappa Kali, a folk game,
both from Kerala in Malayalam and in Sepedi, Mokgope, a country liquor made
from the marula fruit, and two games played in Limpopo in South Africa,
Kgati and Tsere Tsere. Collaborators for the project are Bangalore-based IT
professional Shiju Alex and Mayur, Mohau Monaledi of South Africa and Achal
Prabhala, with additional help from Vijayakumar Blathur. *
*
*
*“We wanted to take up languages that were varied in terms of number of
people who spoke them and the kind of media market they reperesent. Sepedi
is a South African language spoken by just 5 million people with hardly any
media market or any published material in that language. The fact that these
language Wikipedias had active editors also helped. The common thread for
picking these topics was that there is hardly any written material on them
and whatever exists cannot be accessed,” says Shiju, a Malayalam Wikipedia
editor, who travelled along with Achal to witness and document Dappa Kali
and Naaliyar Bhagavathi. Achal also travelled to Johannesberg and Limpopo to
collaborate with Mohau, who recorded audio interviews with women who made
the liquor and played the age-old games. *
*
*
*In the long run, Shiju feels that this project will help in capturing for
posterity traditional symbols of Indian society that may get lost to the
coming generations. “Nobody plays Dappa Kali these days. Kids in Kerala are
more interested in cricket,” he rues. The project will be presented at the
forthcoming Wikimania to be held in Israel.*
*
*
*
*
*RECORDING THE PROCESS*
*
*
*The film People are Knowledge was shot and directed by Priya Sen with
additional assistance from Zen Marie and Achal Prabhala and was completed
this month. It includes interviews with noted experts in the field of
language, anthropology and women studies such as Jon Soske, a scholar of
Indo-African history, Urvashi Butalia, a pioneering feminist publisher and
writer, Isabel Hofmeyr from the University of the Witwatersrand and also
various people who were directly involved in the project. It records the
process of audio interviews done through internet telephony and documents
discussions held with a priest in a remote village in Kannur district, women
making liquor from marula and playing their native games and children
playing folk games in remote Kerala villages. *
Regards
Tinu Cherian
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news#July_2011
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dGNxS…
Applications are invited for
travel/boarding scholarships for WikiConference India 2011. There are a very
limited number of such scholarships, and it is also possible to apply for
partial assistance, in case you can handle part of the costs on your own -
doing so will ensure that more Wikipedians will be able to get
assistance. Provisions have been made for participants from special interest
groups. Applications will be welcomed until Aug 15, and the decision process
will be completed by the first week of September 2011. Please study the form
carefully before submission.
We look forward to plenty of active participation at the conference, with
the help of all Wikipedians.
--
Vickram
Fool On The Hill <http://communicall.wordpress.com>
Thanks to Michael Dale and Erik Moller, the People are Knowledge film is
now available in an open video format on Wikimedia Commons. This is a
considerably better version than the one available on Vimeo (the link
circulated earlier).
Please see it at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv?withJS=Medi…
or in the standard player at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv
You will have to switch the subtitle track on (instructions on the pages). We are working on creating a full English subtitles track, not just for non-English sections as is currently enabled - help appreciated here and for translation.
Cheers,
Achal
Hi David, the audio interviews are up on Wikimedia Commons under the
Oral Citations Project category:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Oral_Citations_Project
For all interviews in South Africa, we have parallel Sepedi/English
translation in the main interview itself; for the Hindi and Malayalam
interviews, we're working on a way to provide transcripts in English.
(At the moment, the film contains excerpts of all interviews, subtitled
in English). I guess we should have transcripts on all the interviews
though, so that's something to work on...
Cheers!
Achal
On Friday 22 July 2011 07:29 PM, David Richfield wrote:
> Hi Achal,
>
> Congratulations, this is excellent work! I think Oral Citations are
> a great idea, and when used in the right context, and to support the
> right type of claim, they can be extremely useful.
>
> Do the interviews get transcribed, and if so, where are the transcriptions kept?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> David
>
As members on this list are likely aware, a very limited set of
travel/boarding scholarships are available for the WikiConference in Mumbai
(November).
We have created a form in Googledocs. It is right now in English only, but
we have already asked for help in making it available in other languages,
and hopefully this will happen soon.
However, my problem is slightly different. The form leads back to a Google
spreadsheet, so that applicants responses on the form can be collated in one
place. I need to make the form accessible publicly, but obviously, not the
spreadsheet. How does one do this? The form to be publicly
displayed itself does not have a 'Share' button, although the
spreadsheet does. So
does the editable form, but equally obviously, we cannot make the editable
form public either.
Can anyone who is familiar with the usage of forms on Googledocs please mail
me privately with the process to make the form publicly accessible?
Once that is done, I will share the link here on the list. At this stage,
members may please forward this to indic lists on which they participate, in
order to encourage people who would like to be present for the Conference,
but are unable to consider it for financial reasons. Separately, the link
will be published on Wikipedia to be visible to users from India.
--
Vickram
Fool On The Hill <http://communicall.wordpress.com>
Dear friends,
At the beginning of 2011, a group of us began working on a project to
explore alternative methods of citation on Wikipedia. We were motivated
by the lack of published resources in much of the non-Anglo-European
world, and the very real difficulty of citing everyday aspects of lived
reality in India and South Africa.
We are now at a stage where the project is almost complete, and we'd
like to share our work with the broader movement, especially within
India and South Africa.
There are three languages we worked within: Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi.
The project page documents the process and logistics employed, as well
as the findings and results:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations
A film made from the project is available here: http://vimeo.com/26469276
There have been discussions on oral citations for some time now within
the language communities we worked with for the duration of the project.
At this stage, we are really interested in *your* feedback, either on
this list, or on the Discussion section of the project page.
There are still some things to come, namely:
- Better (high resolution) versions of the film on Wikimedia Commons
with an open subtitle track for translation, in process
- Updates on events, meetings and discussions held around the project
(updated as they happen)
- Updates on articles created in Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi as a result
of the project (updated as they happen)
We would be very grateful to hear your feedback, and begin a broader
discussion.
Best wishes,
Achal