Friends,
Due to popular request and all colleges being closed, the Saturday 13th
August Meeting is postponed. Fresh date will be given later. We regret that
PJ Tabit, Patricia Sauthoff will not get to meet the Pune community up close
and that the Campus Ambassadors will miss what they have planned for. We
shall let you the next meetup date well in time.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Hiya,
I have been requested by the WikiOutreach Team (Organising Committee, WikiConference India) to announce the beginning of the 100 days WikiOutreach Program that will run from today until the opening of WikiConference India 2011 in Mumbai. This project which aims at promoting the event online and spreading awareness of the same will entail:
India Loves Wikipedia
100 days of photos collecting online event (for Commons)
Creative Commons
100 days of creating awareness of creative commons licenses
Adopt-an-ArticleWP:IND initiatives on English Wikipedia
We request everyone to come together and partake in these activities.
Kind Regards,
User:AroundTheGlobe
Fantastic article on citation and the written word......."When Knowledge
Isn't Written, Does It Still Count? That NYT article was wrtitten By NOAM
COHEN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/noam_cohen/ind…>
I almost sent a congratulations to Tinu Cherian for a well written piece!
I fully support other forms of audio and other visual references and have a
few decades worth of material I'd be happy to share when I find the time to
index it well and convert it to a digital format.
Regards
Harriet
See our work at: monsoongreay.wordpress where we use digital stories to
record childrens voices.
Harriet Vidyasagar
www.outofindia.netwww.womenofindia.net
INDIA: 91-99011 66276
USA: 1-301-649-2240
On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 2:31 AM, <
wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Send Wikimediaindia-l mailing list submissions to
> wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> wikimediaindia-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikimediaindia-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: [Press] : New York Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written,
> Does It Still Count?" (Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 12:01:49 +0530 (IST)
> From: Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia <mahitgar(a)yahoo.co.in>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : New York Times : "When
> Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
> To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <1312871509.19166.YahooMailRC(a)web137618.mail.in.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Dear All
> NewYork Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowled…
>
>
> This is a nice article.
>
> 1) On mr-wiki I am trying to convince the community to be more flexible on
> info
> coming from rural Maharashtra. For an example in an village related
> articles
> some one writes about which farm produce which educational institutions are
> there, we need not ask reference for such aspects.In rural India as there
> are
> good institution which we can take note of but risk part is there are
> equal or
> more number of fake institutions and they may end up taking undue benefit
> of
> having mention of their institution in fooling rest of the ignorant
> population
> that is the risk.
>
> 2) Way back on strategy wiki I did put a Proposal:Audio/visual
> Presentation
> Competition While there I did not get anticipated support but I wish
> Wikimedia
> India Chapter and/Or India program and Indic wikipedians revisit this
> proposal
>
>
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Audio/visual_Presentation_Compe…
>
>
> Regards
> User Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: "wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org"
> <wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Sent: Tue, 9 August, 2011 6:04:19 AM
> Subject: Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 38, Issue 13
>
> Send Wikimediaindia-l mailing list submissions to
> wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> wikimediaindia-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikimediaindia-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: [Press] : New York Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written,
> Does It Still Count?" (wheredevelsdare(a)hotmail.com)
> 2. Re: [Press] : New York Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written,
> Does It Still Count?" (Naveen Francis)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 05:00:39 +0000
> From: <wheredevelsdare(a)hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : New York Times : "When
> Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
> To: Wikipedia India Mailing List
> <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <SNT117-W52033416B0BB25ED58A517BD200(a)phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
>
> Sure - offline or non-english refs are accepted AGF!
>
> From: naveenpf(a)gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 07:31:47 +0530
> To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : New York Times : "When
> Knowledge
> Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
>
> Nice article ... :)
>
> Hi Tinu,
>
> One doubt in referencing; can we keep text indic languages as reference in
> English wikipedia ?
>
>
>
>
> Naveen Francis
>
>
> Signature powered by
>
> WiseStamp
>
> On 8 August 2011 23:13, CherianTinu Abraham <tinucherian(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> NewYork Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowled…
>
>
>
>
>
> ?MAKING fun of Wikipedia is so 2007,? a French journalist said recently to
> Sue
> Gardner, the executive director of the foundation that runs the Wikipedia
> project.
>
>
>
>
> And so Ms. Gardner, in turn, told an auditorium full of Wikipedia
> contributors
> and supporters on Thursday in Haifa, Israel, the host city for the seventh
> annual Wikimania conference, where meetings and presentations focus on the
> world?s most used, and perhaps least understood, online reference work.
>
>
>
>
> Once routinely questioned about its reliability ? what do you mean, anyone
> can
> edit it? ? the site is now used every month by upwards of 400 million
> people
> worldwide. But with influence and respect come responsibility, and lately
> Wikipedia has been criticized from without and within for reflecting a
> Western,
> male-dominated mindset similar to the perspective behind the encyclopedias
> it
> has replaced.
>
>
>
>
> Seeing Wikipedia as The Man, in so many words, is so 2011.
> And that?s a problem for an encyclopedia that wants to grow. Some critics
> of
> Wikipedia believe that the whole Western tradition of footnotes and sourced
> articles needs to be rethought if Wikipedia is going to continue to gather
> converts beyond its current borders. And that, in turn, invites an entirely
> new
> debate about what constitutes knowledge in different parts of the world and
> how
> a Western institution like Wikipedia can capitalize on it.
>
>
>
>
> Achal Prabhala, an adviser to Ms. Gardner?s Wikimedia Foundation who lives
> and
> writes in Bangalore, India, has made perhaps the most trenchant criticism
> in a
> video project, ?People are Knowledge,? that he presented in Haifa (along
> with
> its clunky subtitle, ?Exploring alternative methods of citation for
> Wikipedia?).
>
>
>
>
> The film, which was made largely with a $20,000 grant from the Wikimedia
> Foundation, spends time showing what has been lost to Wikipedia because of
> stickling rules of citation and verification. If Wikipedia purports to
> collect
> the ?sum of all human knowledge,? in the words of one of its founders,
> Jimmy
> Wales, that, by definition, means more than printed knowledge, Mr. Prabhala
> said.
>
>
>
>
> In the case of dabba kali, a children?s game played in the Kerala state of
> India, there was a Wikipedia article in the local language, Malayalam, that
> included photos, a drawing and a detailed description of the rules, but no
> sources to back up what was written. Other than, of course, the 40 million
> people who played it as children.
>
>
>
>
> There is no doubt, he said, that the article would have been deleted from
> English Wikipedia if it didn?t have any sources to cite. Those are the
> rules of
> the game, and those are the rules he would like to change, or at least
> bend, or,
> if all else fails, work around.
>
>
>
>
> ?There is this desire to grow Wikipedia in parts of the world,? he said,
> adding
> that ?if we don?t have a more generous and expansive citation policy, the
> current one will prove to be a massive roadblock that you literally can?t
> get
> past. There is a very finite amount of citable material, which means a very
> finite number of articles, and there will be no more.?
>
>
>
>
> Mr. Prabhala, 38, who grew up in India and then attended American
> universities,
> has been an activist on issues of intellectual property, starting with the
> efforts in South Africa to free up drugs that treat H.I.V. In the film, he
> gives
> other examples of subjects ? an alcohol produced in a village,
> Ga-Sabotlane, in
> Limpopo, South Africa, and a popular hopscotch-type children?s game,
> tshere-tshere ? beyond print documentation and therefore beyond Wikipedia?s
> true-and-tried method.
>
>
>
>
> There are whole cultures, he said, that have little to no printed material
> to
> cite as proof about the way life is lived.
> ?Publishing is a system of power and I mean that in a completely pleasant,
> accepting sense,? he said mischievously. ?But it leaves out people.?
>
>
>
>
> But Mr. Prabhala offers a solution: he and the video?s directors, Priya Sen
> and
> Zen Marie, spoke with people in African and Indian villages either in
> person or
> over the phone and had them describe basic activities. These recordings
> were
> then uploaded and linked to the article as sources, and suddenly an article
> that
> seems like it could be a personal riff looks a bit more academic.
>
>
>
>
> For example, in his interview with a South African villager who explained
> how to
> make the alcoholic drink, morula, she repeatedly says that it is best if
> she
> demonstrates the process. When the fruit is ready, said the villager,
> Philipine
> Moremi, according to the project?s transcript of her phone conversation,
> ?we pry
> them open. We are going to show you how it is done. Once they are peeled,
> we
> seal them to ferment and then we drink.? The idea of treating personal
> testimony
> as a source for Wikipedia is still controversial, and reflects the concerns
> that
> dominated the encyclopedia project six years ago, when arguably its very
> existence was threatened.
>
>
>
>
> After a series of hoaxes, culminating in a Wikipedia article in 2005 that
> maligned the newspaper editor John Seigenthaler for no discernible reason
> other
> than because a Wikipedia contributor could, the site tried to ensure that
> every
> statement could be traced to a source.
>
>
>
>
> Then there is the rule ?no original research,? which was meant to say that
> Wikipedia doesn?t care if you are writing about the subway station you
> visit
> every day, find someone who has written reliably on the color of the walls
> there.
>
>
>
>
> ?The natural thing is getting more and more accurate, locking down
> articles,
> raising the bar on sources,? said Andrew Lih, an associate professor of
> journalism at the University of Southern California, who was an early
> contributor to Wikipedia and has written a history of its rise. ?Isn?t it
> great
> we have so many texts online??
>
>
>
>
> But what works for the most developed societies, he said, won?t necessarily
> work
> for others. ?Lots of knowledge is not Googleable,? he said, ?and is not in
> a
> digital form.?
>
>
>
>
> Mr. Lih said that he could see the Wikipedia project suddenly becoming
> energized
> by the process of documenting cultural practices around the world, or down
> the
> street.
>
>
>
>
> Perhaps Mr. Prabhala?s most challenging argument is that by being
> text-focused,
> and being locked into the Encyclopedia Britannica model, Wikipedia risks
> being
> behind the times.
> An 18-year-old is comfortable using ?objects of trust that have been
> created on
> the Internet,? he said, and ?Wikipedia isn?t taking advantage of that.?
> And, he
> added, ?it is quite possible that for the 18-year-old of today that
> Wikipedia
> looks like his father?s project. Or the kind of thing his father might be
> interested in.?
>
>
>
>
> Ouch.
>
>
>
> RegardsTinu Cherian
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>
> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>
>
>
Hi everyone,
I am a subscriber to NYT online for almost ten years (its free so far at
least but about to change). I was most pleasantly surprised to find this :
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowled…
Great exposure & great publicity.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
Dear All
NewYork Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowled…
This is a nice article.
1) On mr-wiki I am trying to convince the community to be more flexible on info
coming from rural Maharashtra. For an example in an village related articles
some one writes about which farm produce which educational institutions are
there, we need not ask reference for such aspects.In rural India as there are
good institution which we can take note of but risk part is there are equal or
more number of fake institutions and they may end up taking undue benefit of
having mention of their institution in fooling rest of the ignorant population
that is the risk.
2) Way back on strategy wiki I did put a Proposal:Audio/visual Presentation
Competition While there I did not get anticipated support but I wish Wikimedia
India Chapter and/Or India program and Indic wikipedians revisit this proposal
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Audio/visual_Presentation_Compe…
Regards
User Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia
________________________________
From: "wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org"
<wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Tue, 9 August, 2011 6:04:19 AM
Subject: Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 38, Issue 13
Send Wikimediaindia-l mailing list submissions to
wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
You can reach the person managing the list at
wikimediaindia-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Wikimediaindia-l digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Re: [Press] : New York Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written,
Does It Still Count?" (wheredevelsdare(a)hotmail.com)
2. Re: [Press] : New York Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written,
Does It Still Count?" (Naveen Francis)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 05:00:39 +0000
From: <wheredevelsdare(a)hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : New York Times : "When
Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
To: Wikipedia India Mailing List
<wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <SNT117-W52033416B0BB25ED58A517BD200(a)phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
Sure - offline or non-english refs are accepted AGF!
From: naveenpf(a)gmail.com
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 07:31:47 +0530
To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : New York Times : "When Knowledge
Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
Nice article ... :)
Hi Tinu,
One doubt in referencing; can we keep text indic languages as reference in
English wikipedia ?
Naveen Francis
Signature powered by
WiseStamp
On 8 August 2011 23:13, CherianTinu Abraham <tinucherian(a)gmail.com> wrote:
NewYork Times : "When Knowledge Isn?t Written, Does It Still Count?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowled…
?MAKING fun of Wikipedia is so 2007,? a French journalist said recently to Sue
Gardner, the executive director of the foundation that runs the Wikipedia
project.
And so Ms. Gardner, in turn, told an auditorium full of Wikipedia contributors
and supporters on Thursday in Haifa, Israel, the host city for the seventh
annual Wikimania conference, where meetings and presentations focus on the
world?s most used, and perhaps least understood, online reference work.
Once routinely questioned about its reliability ? what do you mean, anyone can
edit it? ? the site is now used every month by upwards of 400 million people
worldwide. But with influence and respect come responsibility, and lately
Wikipedia has been criticized from without and within for reflecting a Western,
male-dominated mindset similar to the perspective behind the encyclopedias it
has replaced.
Seeing Wikipedia as The Man, in so many words, is so 2011.
And that?s a problem for an encyclopedia that wants to grow. Some critics of
Wikipedia believe that the whole Western tradition of footnotes and sourced
articles needs to be rethought if Wikipedia is going to continue to gather
converts beyond its current borders. And that, in turn, invites an entirely new
debate about what constitutes knowledge in different parts of the world and how
a Western institution like Wikipedia can capitalize on it.
Achal Prabhala, an adviser to Ms. Gardner?s Wikimedia Foundation who lives and
writes in Bangalore, India, has made perhaps the most trenchant criticism in a
video project, ?People are Knowledge,? that he presented in Haifa (along with
its clunky subtitle, ?Exploring alternative methods of citation for Wikipedia?).
The film, which was made largely with a $20,000 grant from the Wikimedia
Foundation, spends time showing what has been lost to Wikipedia because of
stickling rules of citation and verification. If Wikipedia purports to collect
the ?sum of all human knowledge,? in the words of one of its founders, Jimmy
Wales, that, by definition, means more than printed knowledge, Mr. Prabhala
said.
In the case of dabba kali, a children?s game played in the Kerala state of
India, there was a Wikipedia article in the local language, Malayalam, that
included photos, a drawing and a detailed description of the rules, but no
sources to back up what was written. Other than, of course, the 40 million
people who played it as children.
There is no doubt, he said, that the article would have been deleted from
English Wikipedia if it didn?t have any sources to cite. Those are the rules of
the game, and those are the rules he would like to change, or at least bend, or,
if all else fails, work around.
?There is this desire to grow Wikipedia in parts of the world,? he said, adding
that ?if we don?t have a more generous and expansive citation policy, the
current one will prove to be a massive roadblock that you literally can?t get
past. There is a very finite amount of citable material, which means a very
finite number of articles, and there will be no more.?
Mr. Prabhala, 38, who grew up in India and then attended American universities,
has been an activist on issues of intellectual property, starting with the
efforts in South Africa to free up drugs that treat H.I.V. In the film, he gives
other examples of subjects ? an alcohol produced in a village, Ga-Sabotlane, in
Limpopo, South Africa, and a popular hopscotch-type children?s game,
tshere-tshere ? beyond print documentation and therefore beyond Wikipedia?s
true-and-tried method.
There are whole cultures, he said, that have little to no printed material to
cite as proof about the way life is lived.
?Publishing is a system of power and I mean that in a completely pleasant,
accepting sense,? he said mischievously. ?But it leaves out people.?
But Mr. Prabhala offers a solution: he and the video?s directors, Priya Sen and
Zen Marie, spoke with people in African and Indian villages either in person or
over the phone and had them describe basic activities. These recordings were
then uploaded and linked to the article as sources, and suddenly an article that
seems like it could be a personal riff looks a bit more academic.
For example, in his interview with a South African villager who explained how to
make the alcoholic drink, morula, she repeatedly says that it is best if she
demonstrates the process. When the fruit is ready, said the villager, Philipine
Moremi, according to the project?s transcript of her phone conversation, ?we pry
them open. We are going to show you how it is done. Once they are peeled, we
seal them to ferment and then we drink.? The idea of treating personal testimony
as a source for Wikipedia is still controversial, and reflects the concerns that
dominated the encyclopedia project six years ago, when arguably its very
existence was threatened.
After a series of hoaxes, culminating in a Wikipedia article in 2005 that
maligned the newspaper editor John Seigenthaler for no discernible reason other
than because a Wikipedia contributor could, the site tried to ensure that every
statement could be traced to a source.
Then there is the rule ?no original research,? which was meant to say that
Wikipedia doesn?t care if you are writing about the subway station you visit
every day, find someone who has written reliably on the color of the walls
there.
?The natural thing is getting more and more accurate, locking down articles,
raising the bar on sources,? said Andrew Lih, an associate professor of
journalism at the University of Southern California, who was an early
contributor to Wikipedia and has written a history of its rise. ?Isn?t it great
we have so many texts online??
But what works for the most developed societies, he said, won?t necessarily work
for others. ?Lots of knowledge is not Googleable,? he said, ?and is not in a
digital form.?
Mr. Lih said that he could see the Wikipedia project suddenly becoming energized
by the process of documenting cultural practices around the world, or down the
street.
Perhaps Mr. Prabhala?s most challenging argument is that by being text-focused,
and being locked into the Encyclopedia Britannica model, Wikipedia risks being
behind the times.
An 18-year-old is comfortable using ?objects of trust that have been created on
the Internet,? he said, and ?Wikipedia isn?t taking advantage of that.? And, he
added, ?it is quite possible that for the 18-year-old of today that Wikipedia
looks like his father?s project. Or the kind of thing his father might be
interested in.?
Ouch.
RegardsTinu Cherian
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
*NewYork Times : "When Knowledge Isn’t Written, Does It Still Count?"*
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowled…
*“MAKING fun of Wikipedia is so 2007,” a French journalist said recently to Sue
Gardner, the executive director of the foundation that runs the Wikipedia
project.*
*
*
*And so Ms. Gardner, in turn, told an auditorium full of Wikipedia
contributors and supporters on Thursday in Haifa, Israel, the host city for
the seventh annual Wikimania conference, where meetings and presentations
focus on the world’s most used, and perhaps least understood, online
reference work.*
*
*
*Once routinely questioned about its reliability — what do you mean, anyone
can edit it? — the site is now used every month by upwards of 400 million
people worldwide. But with influence and respect come responsibility, and
lately Wikipedia has been criticized from without and within for reflecting
a Western, male-dominated mindset similar to the perspective behind the
encyclopedias it has replaced.*
*
*
*Seeing Wikipedia as The Man, in so many words, is so 2011.*
*
*
*And that’s a problem for an encyclopedia that wants to grow. Some critics
of Wikipedia believe that the whole Western tradition of footnotes and
sourced articles needs to be rethought if Wikipedia is going to continue to
gather converts beyond its current borders. And that, in turn, invites an
entirely new debate about what constitutes knowledge in different parts of
the world and how a Western institution like Wikipedia can capitalize on it.
*
*
*
*Achal Prabhala, an adviser to Ms. Gardner’s Wikimedia Foundation who lives
and writes in Bangalore, India, has made perhaps the most trenchant
criticism in a video project, “People are Knowledge,” that he presented in
Haifa (along with its clunky subtitle, “Exploring alternative methods of
citation for Wikipedia”).*
*
*
*The film, which was made largely with a $20,000 grant from the Wikimedia
Foundation, spends time showing what has been lost to Wikipedia because of
stickling rules of citation and verification. If Wikipedia purports to
collect the “sum of all human knowledge,” in the words of one of its
founders, Jimmy Wales, that, by definition, means more than printed
knowledge, Mr. Prabhala said.*
*
*
*In the case of dabba kali, a children’s game played in the Kerala state of
India, there was a Wikipedia article in the local language, Malayalam, that
included photos, a drawing and a detailed description of the rules, but no
sources to back up what was written. Other than, of course, the 40 million
people who played it as children.*
*
*
*There is no doubt, he said, that the article would have been deleted from
English Wikipedia if it didn’t have any sources to cite. Those are the rules
of the game, and those are the rules he would like to change, or at least
bend, or, if all else fails, work around.*
*
*
*“There is this desire to grow Wikipedia in parts of the world,” he said,
adding that “if we don’t have a more generous and expansive citation policy,
the current one will prove to be a massive roadblock that you literally
can’t get past. There is a very finite amount of citable material, which
means a very finite number of articles, and there will be no more.”*
*
*
*Mr. Prabhala, 38, who grew up in India and then attended American
universities, has been an activist on issues of intellectual property,
starting with the efforts in South Africa to free up drugs that treat H.I.V.
In the film, he gives other examples of subjects — an alcohol produced in a
village, Ga-Sabotlane, in Limpopo, South Africa, and a popular
hopscotch-type children’s game, tshere-tshere — beyond print documentation
and therefore beyond Wikipedia’s true-and-tried method.*
*
*
*There are whole cultures, he said, that have little to no printed material
to cite as proof about the way life is lived.*
*
*
*“Publishing is a system of power and I mean that in a completely pleasant,
accepting sense,” he said mischievously. “But it leaves out people.”*
*
*
*But Mr. Prabhala offers a solution: he and the video’s directors, Priya Sen
and Zen Marie, spoke with people in African and Indian villages either in
person or over the phone and had them describe basic activities. These
recordings were then uploaded and linked to the article as sources, and
suddenly an article that seems like it could be a personal riff looks a bit
more academic.*
*
*
*For example, in his interview with a South African villager who explained
how to make the alcoholic drink, morula, she repeatedly says that it is best
if she demonstrates the process. When the fruit is ready, said the villager,
Philipine Moremi, according to the project’s transcript of her phone
conversation, “we pry them open. We are going to show you how it is done.
Once they are peeled, we seal them to ferment and then we drink.” The idea
of treating personal testimony as a source for Wikipedia is still
controversial, and reflects the concerns that dominated the encyclopedia
project six years ago, when arguably its very existence was threatened.*
*
*
*After a series of hoaxes, culminating in a Wikipedia article in 2005 that
maligned the newspaper editor John Seigenthaler for no discernible reason
other than because a Wikipedia contributor could, the site tried to ensure
that every statement could be traced to a source.*
*
*
*Then there is the rule “no original research,” which was meant to say that
Wikipedia doesn’t care if you are writing about the subway station you visit
every day, find someone who has written reliably on the color of the walls
there.*
*
*
*“The natural thing is getting more and more accurate, locking down
articles, raising the bar on sources,” said Andrew Lih, an associate
professor of journalism at the University of Southern California, who was an
early contributor to Wikipedia and has written a history of its rise. “Isn’t
it great we have so many texts online?”*
*
*
*But what works for the most developed societies, he said, won’t necessarily
work for others. “Lots of knowledge is not Googleable,” he said, “and is not
in a digital form.”*
*
*
*Mr. Lih said that he could see the Wikipedia project suddenly becoming
energized by the process of documenting cultural practices around the world,
or down the street.*
*
*
*Perhaps Mr. Prabhala’s most challenging argument is that by being
text-focused, and being locked into the Encyclopedia Britannica model,
Wikipedia risks being behind the times.*
*
*
*An 18-year-old is comfortable using “objects of trust that have been
created on the Internet,” he said, and “Wikipedia isn’t taking advantage of
that.” And, he added, “it is quite possible that for the 18-year-old of
today that Wikipedia looks like his father’s project. Or the kind of thing
his father might be interested in.”*
*
*
*Ouch.*
Regards
Tinu Cherian
Hi Folks,
I'm really pleased to send out this email welcoming the first 2 new members of the India Programs team. Just before I introduce them, I thought I'd share with you the background of their selection.
Context
As you might be aware, the Foundation had decided to undertake a catalyst operation in India to promote the growth of the community and projects here. The team is expected to be a small, nimble 5 person group. We had put out 2 job postings - for Indic Initiatives and for Participation. (Please refer: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-May/003007.html) We posted them on linkedin and on the Indian FOSS community list as well as announcing them on various Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.
The response was wonderful. >110 applications for Indic Initiatives and nearly 175 applications for Participation. These were short-listed to 10 (3 for Indic Language and 7 for Participation.) These were a mix of existing & previous Wikipedians, Wikipedia newbies and open source advocates.
In June, the shortlisted 10 were interviewed and further down-selected to 4. These 4 were then further interviewed by a group of other staff members from the Foundation. I am pleased to inform the community of the final selected 2.
Shiju Alex - Indic Initiatives
Most of you already know Shiju. For those who don't, Shiju is a long-time Wikipedian [User: shijualex] and is active on Malayalam Wikipedia, English wikiprojects and Wikimedia Commons, as well as Wikisource and offline. He has been passionately involved with the establishing and building of Indic language Wikipedias. He's participated in a series of outreach activities and is also (jointly) undertaking a grant from the Foundation for outreach across India. He's a regular member of the Bangalore community.
Shiju is from Palakkad, Kerala and is married with a 2 year old baby. He currently works as a Senior Technical Writer with ABB in Bangalore.
Even those of you who know him might not know the following 2 things that I was lucky to discover during the selection process. Shiju is an MSc in Physics with a specialisation in Astronomy and Astrophysics - and he retains a deep interest in anything astronomical. Feel free to quiz him vigorously on this! He also enjoys trekking and misses his time in Pune where he could be up & close the gorgeous Sahyadri Hills.
Shiju is going to lead our work on promoting Indic language projects across India. The challenges are enormous - from technical constraints to low levels of awareness of these projects to vibrant but nascent communities. However, these only point to the massive size of the opportunity for Indic language projects - which is the joint top-2 strategic priority of the movement in India. After he joins, he'll collaboratively put together a plan for Indic language projects and work towards quality execution of high-impact initiatives.
Shiju is currently serving out his notice period so will be able to join us only around September - October.
Nitika Tandon - Participation
Nitika [User:nitika.t] is relatively newer to the community - and has been brushing up her editing. She's been immersing herself in the Wikimedia world and attended community meet-ups as well as reviews of the Wikipedia India Education Program. She is from Delhi - and is currently based in Mumbai - where she works as a Strategic Partnerships Manager with Directi. (If you're not aware, they are one of the most prominent internet domain & solutions providers in India.)
Nitika has an MBA and has also worked on research analytics. A fascinating detail I discovered about a previous assignment of hers - and you must ask her about it - is how African drums can be used for management coaching! She also reliably informs me that there are 7 Spanish dance forms and she instructs in all of them!
Nitika is going to be working on Participation - which is primarily focussed on increasing the contributor base of non-Indic language projects, primarily Wikipedia. One of her first tasks will be to expand the Wikipedia India Education Program from the Pune pilot to a more national footprint. She'll also work on other initiatives to promote participation - and I can foresee Wikimedia Commons being a potential initiative.
Nitika will join us on August 1st.
Introductions
I'm going to be scheduling the August Monthly India Programs IRC on Thursday August 18th to introduce them both to you. Please do join us. I'll send a reminder closer to the date. Also, needless to say, they'll be attending a series of community meet-ups over the next months.
In the meantime, please do join me in welcoming them onboard. I'm really excited because this means that we will now have the capacity and capability to dramatically accelerate our activities in India.
Warmest Regards,
Hisham Mundol
Wikimedia India Programs
skype : hisham.wikimedia
gtalk : hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
twitter : @mundol
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
*The Hindu : "Experimenting with oral citations on Wikipedia"*
http://www.thehindu.com/arts/history-and-culture/article2330212.ece
*In a little-known forest temple near Kannur, Neeliyar Bhagavathi, a unique
form of Theyyam is performed. But if you want to document this folk
dance-ritual, its costume and the folklore associated with it on Wikipedia –
yes, everybody's own encyclopedia – then the chances are that you can't;
simply because it hasn't been put down in print.*
*
*
*The Wikipedia, in its current form, mandates that every entry be backed by
citations that are printed. So in essence, if it doesn't exist in print, it
can't exist on Wikipedia. For a hugely democratic and powerful concept like
Wikipedia, this is a huge limitation, believes Achal Prabhala, a Wikimedia
fellow and a member of the Foundation's advisory board.*
*
*
*This led Mr. Prabhala to embark on a project that explores alternative
methods of citation on Wikipedia. The current policy on citation, he points
out, assumes that people who come from cultures where little is documented
or published do not know anything. If that is so, then how can we document
aspects of everyday life, and that which is common knowledge in our culture
or country, he asks. Indeed, the sum of human knowledge is far greater than
the sum of printed knowledge. The problem becomes even more critical when it
comes to non-English language Wikipedias. Volunteers and contributors to
Indic language wikipedias have often found that the non-existaence of
citeable sources a huge impediment in writing articles, or enriching them.*
*
*
*What Mr. Prabhala, and his team-mates Shiju Alex, Mayur and Mohau Monaledi,
wanted to prove is that a feasible system can be evolved to cater to
geographies that publish less, such as India, Africa and many other emerging
markets where Wikipedia hopes to expand in coming years. Interestingly, this
problem surfaces in two different markets. Mr. Prabhala found that in some
sense there was an equivalence between languages with large media markets –
Hindi, for instance, where a vibrant media exists but there are no
peer-reviewed academic journals that can be cited – and languages in
Sub-saharan Africa where the media market is indeed miniscule.*
*
*
*The project, which has been documented in a film titled 'People are
knowledge', dealt with three languages: Malayalam, Hindi (both Indian
languages with a relatively-wide volunteer and article base) and Sepedi, one
of the official languages of South Africa. The film is useful for it
documents some articles, and the ground-work that goes into creating an oral
citation. It documents a variety of examples, such as creating articles on
traditional games that children play, a folk art and how a traditional wine
is made in Africa. Given that Wikipedia is a volunteer-driven project, and
investing time and resources to travel for research may not be feasible,
oral citation interviews are generally conducted over the phone or via
video-chat.*
*
*
*“The experience has been positive, and there is a lot of discussion on this
project on mailing lists,” says Mr. Prabhala. Though not close to becoming
policy yet, this pilot does not reflect a problem that is unique to
non-English speaking markets. In English too, Wikipedia often fails to
capture that which is not documented, and publishing, like everything in the
world, is a reflection of power. “While the symptoms are what we've observed
in India, the problem is a universal one... in every society, there's a gap
between what's printed and what's known. So the fact is that there are
things lost in transition from oral to print cultures. In the US, for
instance, native American cultures are not documented in print adequately,”
points out Mr. Prabhala.*
*
*
*But making oral citations a universal option across Wikipedias could pose
its own challenges. Will this take a toll on quality and how will Wikipedia
ensure that what goes into the world's largest encyclopedia is indeed fact,
one may ask. Mr. Prabhala believes any kind of change is always both
exciting and de-stabilising. Yet, there are issues that this can throw up,
as this would contradict the conditions of 'verifiability' and 'no original
research' that lie at the core of Wikipedia policy. “Yes, these are issues
we will have to work around. If the project is to be adopted and
implemented, there's a lot of discussion that will have to happen. Rules
will have to be evolved," he explains. *
*
*
*The Neeliyar Bhagavathi article, which is part of the pilot project in
Malayalam, is a good example of how this could work. Yes, the written word
is missing; but the article is nonetheless richer for it draws from a
variety of sources: an onlooker of the performance, a priest and a scholar
of folklore. Perhaps, this diversity in perspective can make up for the
absence of the hallowed printed word.*
Regards
Tinu Cherian