Hi All,
Here is a abridged summary of the 37th Bangalore Wiki Meetup Summary
on 11thSeptember 2011 at CIS, Bangalore
*Talk: Technology related issues in Wiki projects and their solutions (By
Santhosh Thottingal)*
*
*
This Skype session was presented by the foundation member Santhosh
Thottingal. First of all he was formally greeted by the Wikipedians from
Bangalore for the new position. Santhosh introduced the Narayam project and
its advancements, participation of Malayalam Wikimedian Junaid.V for the
development of typing tools for all the Indian Wikimedia projects and
Myanmar Wikipedia, fixing several bugs and further improvements.
Then answering a question raised by Naveen Francis about how foundation is
going to take initiatives for solving display problems for Iphone/Android
based handheld devices he explained how this technological gaps would be
narrowed in the coming days though foundation doesn’t have any project soon
specifically for this project. FYI the latest Iphone 4 and Android 2.0
supports Indic font rendering while Android 2.2 has rendering issues.
As there are many users who are failing to use Indic Wikipedias because of
font and rendering related issues Santhosh shared his experience, past
issues and their solutions. He also has shared how the typographer of the
Sourashtra language font has come up to release it in PD so that it could be
used by all. The current project for web fonts especially for Indic fonts
have successfully been tested in
www.Translatewiki.net<http://www.translatewiki.net/>which will be soon
launched for all the Indic Wikipedias. The web font
project has even gone beyond the Indic WPs and is also successful for
Hebrew, few
European languages and Myanmar which has rendering issues even in Win 7.
Santhosh also shared his experience related to Text-To-Speech application
development for Indian languages which would be a boon for the visually
impaired people. There would be a common high volume word and phonetic sound
database which would be used to generate downloadable mp3/ogv files so the
Wikipedia articles could be converted to audio files. Though the complexity
of Indian languages doesn’t make this an easy task there had been lot of
advancements in this project which is available for testing at www.silpa.in.
Santhosh explained the thought of outreach programs such as Wiki Maratrhon
to bring more developers into the community which would be one of his talks
in the Mumbai WCI who will address issues in Indian language Wikipedias.
Then he moved onto question based discussion about OCR (Optical character
Reader) and machine translation or TDI, expllained the complexity of the
developing tools to for Indic languages.
Then there was a discussion about WikiProjectIndia by Naveen Francis. Naveen
explained the hierarchy of the project, campus collaborations like
Symbiosis, Pune for Economy subject under this major project. He also
focussed how outreach programs driven in both regional as well as in English
Wikipedia to bring more editors into the project which would be beneficial
for all the Wikipedias. Wikimedians also discussed glimpses of using
different tools in Wiki, Assessment, Analysis of web hits for regional Wiki.
Then there was a small discussion for the regional Wikipedias, how more
editing sessions would help developing Wikipedias. Subha explained the
statistics of Odia Wikipedia followed by a discussion for promoting regional
Wikipedia using social sites like Facebook, taking the Wikipedias to school
children and the government for creating bigger Wiki projects.
regards
*
ସୁଭପାSubhaPa
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia Odia (Oriya) mailing list
wikipedia-or(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-orfacebook.com/OdiaWiki
Tweet @OdiaWiki
..............................
Mailing list for Wikimedians / Wikipedians in & from Bangalore, India
wikimedia-in-blr(a)lists.wikimedia.org
*
Hello all,
Untill July, Site notice in Tamil Wikpedia used to give only prominent links
to Fonts / typing tutorial / Village pump. Occasionally when
meet-ups/workshops happen, we would announce them. We thought to put this
system into good use and we are already seeing positive results.
Starting July we introduced "Please correct errors, you too can edit". There
was a significant jump in anonymous edits in the weeks that followed. After
discussions, we planned to showcase faces of Tamil Wikipedia.
The idea was to put a notice featuring a picture, brief profile on editing
topics and suggesting one to start creating articles[1]. The short profile
showcased the diversity of editors across region / age / interests.Putting
faces of Tamil Wikipedians into sitenotice was not a big effort since we
already had profiles of people featured on main page. We just needed to
summarize them into a couple of lines. We have got atleast 10-15 new
contributors (> 50 edits and continuing) through this exercise. One editor
who came in after this drive is editing prolificly and already has 2000
edits now in ~ 2 months and is now being featured on the main page :) We had
more new users signing up as registered users. We roll over 4-5 banners over
a parser code during each campaign, so that people dont get the same banner
all the time.
Now we have separate notices for logged in / anonymous users. While
anonymous users get "Contribute" campaign with faces of tamil wiki with
Anonnotice[2], logged in users get messages about policies / help pages /
talk pages / DYK etc with help of Sitenotice[3]. DYK nominations has seem a
jump off late with 100+ entries coming in from contributors who didnt know
about it after the notice. We plan to introduce policies of Wikipedia slowly
through these notices, so editors who come in are aware of them. At present
we lack extensive help pages, and plan to expand them as part of this
exercise which will also improve help pages coverage in parallel.
There was a posting related to same on the list way back in Nov / Dec 2010
regarding Contribute Indic campaign[4] central notices by Salmaan, We find
these localized notices too work well and might be a good idea for other
Indic wiki's to try it out.
[1] http://defn.me/r/ta/2gav
[2] http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediawiki:Sitenotice
[3] http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediawiki:Anonnotice
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Contribute_Indic
--
Regards
Srikanth.L
Hiya,
Just a reminder that Mumbai Meetup XIII is scheduled for 17 September 2011 (Saturday).
Venue: Centre for Education and Documentation (CED), Colaba. This is behind Regal Cinema, opposite Hotel Suba Palace.
Time: 4pm to 6pm
Wikipedia Page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Mumbai/Mumbai13 (Do sign up if your coming, if you dont sign up you can still come but signing up gives us an idea on the number of people to expect)
Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WikimediaMumbai
Getting there: By rail, This is about 15 mins walking from Churchgate on
the Western Line as well as CST on the Central and Harbour Lines. By
BEST bus, route 1A13 Exp, A74 Exp, A75 Exp, A76 Exp, C-2, 1, 2L, 3, 4L,
6L, 9, 11L, 14,
17L, 19L, 21L, 22L, 28, 44, 51, 68, 69, 70, 74, 83, 86, 101, 103, 106,
108, 111, 112, 122, 123, 124, 125, 130, 131, 133, 137, 139, 803L, 806L
will stop at Regal Cinema/Prince of Wales Museum/Dr. S.P. Mukherjee
Chowk.
Look forward to seeing you there.
Kind Regards,
Hello Hisham, Everyone,
Both these articles will go a long way in generating more awareness and interest in Wikipedia and its Programs. The Telegraph article is on an fully open-access website, while the Times Crest site requires sign-up. I do not know if Times Crest is widely known or is available in print. I learned of if from a previous post to this list giving the link and also the text of the article.
Could the Times Group be requested to also carry the Times Crest article on an open site. Respecting copyrights and then given the title/headline of the article, I would not like to copy-paste the text from the said previous post. Yet, I'd like to share it with a few academics in one or two schools and colleges who, I think, would be interested, but may not have read the article. [Posting the text on this list though is "Fair Use", imho.]
A thought. I wonder how some popular columnists, known for their incisive styles and penchant for word-play, would treat [if they decided to] the subject/s of these articles.
Meanwhile, though probably off-topic on this list, may I share with you in the celebration of the lives of two memorable Mumbaikars, recently passed; with this : http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/erratica/entry/conqueror-of-maladi… .
Thanks & Regards,
VivekM
[iqp,ra]
===
On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:38:04 +0530
Hisham Mundol <hmundol(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi Folks
In the last couple of days, we've had a couple of really insightful, well-written articles on Wikipedia and you, the community. ...
===
Dear all,
The Wikimedia Localisation team and volunteer Junaidp have taken an
important hurdle towards better support for Indic languages. After a rocky
start with the Narayam[1] extension on the Tamil language Wikipedia, today a
new version of Narayam was deployed on several wikis in Indic languages and
added to ta.wikisource and ta.wikibooks[2]. It also features a new
interface.
Please give it a try and provide feedback[3] in feature requests, bug
reports. Praise is allowed to go to this list ;). We expect to be adding
many more keyboard mappings in the near future. If you are particularly
looking forward to one, please do not hesitate to make a request for it or
submit a patch you get it even quicker[3].
--
Siebrand Mazeland
Product Manager Localisation
Wikimedia Foundation
M: +31 6 50 69 1239
Skype: siebrand
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Narayam
[2] mlwikiquote, mlwikibooks, mlwiktionary, mlwikisource, mlwiki,
tawikibooks, tawikisource, sawiki, sawikibooks, sawikisource, sawiktionary
[3]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions…
component "Narayam")
hi,
Just saw this update from Vivek Cherian, a former Mumbai community member
who is now working in Chennai, on Facebook:
Just back from a meeting with the IT Secretary Department of Information
Technology, Government of Tamil Nadu. The happy news is that a FOSS OS will
be used in the Laptops planned to be distributed by the Tamil Nadu
Government to School students.
This is followed with the official notification sent to the press barely
half an hour later -
http://www.thehindu.com/education/issues/article2423376.ece
warm regards,
Pradeep Mohandas
--
Pradeep Mohandas
How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
Well, thank you for the resonse: certainly better late than never! And in
this case, though the deadline is upon us, it is fortunately not *too* late!
The work you are doing is very incredible, and we would be happy to be a
part of it. I think our content would be an invaluable addition to your
suite of materials provided, and we'd love to make that a reality.
Currently, the solution we can offer you is two-fold:
- Kiwix <http://www.kiwix.org/>: a reader of the Wiki content that can be
installed on your Ubuntu system
- English Wikipedia Offline
Edition<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WPRV>:
this is a set of ~45K articles which are filtered for both quality and
"importance."
If this is of interest to you, we can provide you with a package bundling
these and indexing them etc. This would only give you a couple weeks to
test, of course, but we trust you will find it incredibly useful.
I will pass these instructions along to you in a separate email so that you
can begin prototyping. Meanwhile, Hisham Mundol - the head of our India
Programs, who is based in Delhi, would be happy to meet with you in person
to talk through any questions regarding the project. Please do let us know
what you would prefer!
Thanks and thrilled about the potential here!
Jessie
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 10:25 AM, M K Yadava IFS <in(a)amtron.in> wrote:
> Corrigendum:
> Please insert "NO" appropriately after "been" in the following sentence
> "There has been carry home stuff for students who are
> aspiring to become economists, historians, psycholo..."
> ---------------------------
> Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other
> format is acceptable. Sending such information in other formats is at your
> own risk. Please be assured that non ODF formats will not be opened.
>
> To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit
> http://www.openoffice.org/
> ---------------------------------------
> Visit my blogs at http://letsbetteroursociety.blogspot.com/
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> > Dear Jessie,
> > I am sorry for responding almost more than a week late as i had been
> > mostly traveling and attending a series of meetings. I wish I could
> > responded little earlier.
> >
> > We distribute free computers (all based on GNU/Linux, currently on
> > Ubuntu), and from last two years, laptops, to meritorious students of the
> > State of Assam (India) who secure >=60% marks in the 10th standard
> > examination. Every year about 15-20,000 systems are distributed. So far,
> > we have distributed 92,000+ system, and this year about 19000+ students
> > are about to get benefited.
> >
> > The current year's scheme is scheduled for launch on the 23rd of
> > September, 2011. Along with Ubuntu we bundle a host of application
> > software and content for the benefit of the students. Mostly, so far we
> > have ben very successful in providing rich application level content for
> > science students. There has been carry home stuff for students who are
> > aspiring to become economists, historians, psychologists,
> anthropologists,
> > English literature etc.. Further, broadband penetration being poor in the
> > remote areas of the state (a survey tells that 58% of the recipient
> > students belong to remote areas and come from poor families), we have
> been
> > thinking how we could provide wiki kind of content to the students
> offline
> > on the laptops to be distributed.
> >
> > We shot an email several months back, and it has generated lot of
> > enthusiasm. However, my programme is to start from the 23rd of September,
> > 2011. I am not sure whether, this year also we shall be able to provide
> > some offline content. As a language, ENGLISH is okay. We can think of
> > translation at a later date.
> >
> > Pl tell us how to proceed further on the issue. We have now very little
> > time to organize...
> >
> > Yours,
> > MK Yadava IFS,
> > MD, AMTRON
> >
> > ---------------------------
> > Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other
> > format is acceptable. Sending such information in other formats is at
> your
> > own risk. Please be assured that non ODF formats will not be opened.
> >
> > To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit
> > http://www.openoffice.org/
> > ---------------------------------------
> > Visit my blogs at http://letsbetteroursociety.blogspot.com/
> > ------------------------------------------------
> >
> >> Hi MK Yadava -
> >>
> >> Thanks for passing along this email!
> >>
> >> I am the project manager for the Offline Wikipedia work. I'm very
> >> interested
> >> in supporting your efforts in content circulation, and I am eager to
> >> learn
> >> more about your project referenced below. Who are you distributing your
> >> computers to? What sort of software are you looking for? Where exactly
> >> are
> >> you hoping to distribute?
> >>
> >> Thanks so much; I'd love to help out with this as much as possible!
> >> Jessie
> >>
> >> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 2:26 AM, M K Yadava IFS <in(a)amtron.in> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Dear All,
> >>> Sounds great! If we have sizeable content for school children from
> >>> standard V-XII in humanities, science and mathematics in English alone,
> >>> it
> >>> will be a great service for bridging the digital divide. We shall be
> >>> glad
> >>> to put such a content in our PC distribution program and make it
> >>> operational by middle of September, 2011.
> >>>
> >>> Regards,
> >>> Yours,
> >>> MK Yadava
> >>> ---------------------------
> >>> Please exchange editable Office documents only in ODF Format. No other
> >>> format is acceptable. Sending such information in other formats is at
> >>> your
> >>> own risk. Please be assured that non ODF formats will not be opened.
> >>>
> >>> To get a free editor supporting ODF, please visit
> >>> http://www.openoffice.org/
> >>> ---------------------------------------
> >>> Visit my blogs at http://letsbetteroursociety.blogspot.com/
> >>> ------------------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>> > Thanks Manuel!
> >>> >
> >>> > I think this will be a good group. I just put together a brief
> >>> > presentation
> >>> > with kind of the general overview of Offline and how all the pieces
> >>> fit
> >>> > together, but I can go through it quickly and allow the different
> >>> pieces
> >>> > to
> >>> > fill in the blanks throughout?
> >>> >
> >>> > I'm attaching it in case others want to take a look. I put it
> >>> together
> >>> > quickly so if there are errors please forgive me (and correct me!) :)
> >>> >
> >>> > Jessie
> >>> >
> >>> > On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 1:45 AM, Manuel Schneider <
> >>> > manuel.schneider(a)wikimedia.ch> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >> Hi offline folks,
> >>> >>
> >>> >> we will have our Wikimedia Offline session today at 15:15 in room
> >>> Tavor
> >>> >> (in Beit Hecht, 1st floor)
> >>> >>
> >>> >>
> http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikimedia_Offline
> >>> >>
> >>> >> The session was planned as an interactive workshop for all people
> >>> >> interested in the offline issues. This means that YOU are invited to
> >>> >> present your project, your ideas and ask your questions.
> >>> >> Interesting topics are selection of content, publishing, storage,
> >>> reader
> >>> >> applications... and what you think is.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> There will be at least three people talking today:
> >>> >> * Jessie Wild from Wikimedia Foundation
> >>> >> * Shiju Alex from Malayallam Wikipedia
> >>> >> * me from openZIM
> >>> >>
> >>> >> See you there! If you have questions or want to coordinate in
> >>> advance
> >>> -
> >>> >> please contact me.
> >>> >>
> >>> >>
> >>> >> /Manuel
> >>> >> --
> >>> >> Regards
> >>> >> Manuel Schneider
> >>> >>
> >>> >> Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
> >>> >> Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge
> >>> >> www.wikimedia.ch
> >>> >>
> >>> >> _______________________________________________
> >>> >> Offline-l mailing list
> >>> >> Offline-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> >>> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
> >>> >>
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > --
> >>> > *Jessie Wild
> >>> > Global Development, Manager
> >>> > Wikimedia Foundation
> >>> > *
> >>> > _______________________________________________
> >>> > Offline-l mailing list
> >>> > Offline-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> >>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
> >>> >
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Offline-l mailing list
> >>> Offline-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> *Jessie Wild
> >> Global Development, Manager
> >> Wikimedia Foundation
> >> *
> >>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Offline-l mailing list
> > Offline-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/offline-l
> >
>
>
--
*Jessie Wild
Global Development, Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
*
Hi Folks
(Some) students in the Pune pilot have copy-pasted copyright material onto their articles. We are taking these copyvios extremely seriously and here's a summary of the action that we have taken.
a) Conducted classroom sessions in all 3 colleges where the program is running and conveying the importance of not making this mistake - and the fact that they will be caught - and that too quickly. Between Nitika and I, we've conducted sessions in at least 10 separate classes last week (along with Campus Ambassadors.)
b) Conducted meetings with the directors and faculty members to convey the gravity of the issue and asking them to pass on the message to their students in the strongest possible terms.
c) Almost doubling the number of Campus Ambassadors to provide more on-ground support for students. We will be sending out an update on this soon. The issue of copyvios was taken up specifically during the training for these Campus Ambassadors.
d) Started work on establishing an Online Ambassador program (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-September/004299…) to provide additional support
e) Disabled the leaderboard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Leaderboard) so that we make sure that recognition is given only to deserving students.
Controlling the copyvio issue is the single biggest issue for the program and we will continue to do everything it takes to minimize it. Of course, some students who will still try and cut corners and the actions listed above should hopefully reduce the problem.
Having said all this, we must not cloud the fantastic work of many students by the errors committed by (some) newbies who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia. Do continue to support and celebrate the work of the good guys!
Thank you for you continued support on this.
Best
hisham
Hi Folks
In the last couple of days, we've had a couple of really insightful, well-written articles on Wikipedia and you, the community.
http://www.timescrest.com/life/you-cant-copypaste-this-homework-6226http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110911/jsp/7days/story_14492284.jsp
I want to acknowledge the behind-the-scenes work of Tinu and Moka. (Most of you know Tinu - who's a community member based out of Bangalore. For those of you who don't know, Moka handles Global Communications for the Wikimedia Foundation.) They have worked on making sure that we convey the right messages as well as making the articles as inclusive of as many community members as possible - by covering the stories of as wide a range of editors as possible. The result of their work is the high-quality articles I've referenced above.
We will continue to get requests from the press and I'd love to have them tell the tales of an even larger and more varied group of community members. It'll help to convey the diversity and magic of the community. Can I request you let Tinu and I know (offlist please) if you are willing to be interviewed by journalists in future? Every one of your stories will add emotion to an article - no matter how simple or otherwise your story is.
Also, a practical issue that we are facing is that we don't have enough print-quality images of community meet ups. Can you please add as many high-resolution images of as many community meet ups, outreach events, etc. as you can to Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) so that the press can access it more easily - and they can celebrate the human face of Wikipedia in newspapers and magazines?
Many thanks.
Warm Regards,
hisham