Hiya,
This is to inform you that Bishakha and I had a meeting with the team at the
Akshara Centre (http://www.aksharacentre.org/),
a Mumbai based NGO that works on womans rights and
runs a library in Mumbai yesterday. The
meeting was organised by Bishakha, who knows some
of the people running the organisation, as there
was some interest from their end to see if they
could collaborate with us in any way. I was asked
to join in as a Wikipedian to conduct a small
workshop for the team at Akshara so that they
could understand the principles and basics of
editing.
The scope is unimaginably big. As we realised,
rights issues in India are not covered much, even
on English Wikipedia. We have proposed starting of
a "Collaboration of the Month" initiative with
them, wherein we will choose a topic (i.e. one article) where both
Wikipedians involved and the NGO are comfortable
with - using Akshara's library resources as
references. They sounded excited about running
such a COTM on a pilot basis and have suggested we
organise a WikiAcademy for which they will invite
interested persons to come and attend, thus making
it easier for them to start off.
From our end, we are looking for atleast a couple
of Wikipedians who can help support such a project
online on a regular basis - the Wikipedian need not be Mumbai (or even India) based, as this is an online collaboration. Do contact Bishakha/me if your interested in helping out/ forward this to other lists where you feel we might get a response on the above.
Inputs on the above are most welcome.
Kind Regards,
Moksh and I went to the Text100
office at Nariman Point on 6 January 2012. Aprox 25 people attended the
Workshop in person which was webcast live to Text100 offices in Delhi
and Bangalore. Through the 1 hour Workshop we covered the below and
answered several questions raised by attendees.
We covered the following:
1. Wikipedia Philosophy/5 Pillars (and that we do not have editorial control, that admins are nothing but editors with additional responsibilities. On what is done when there is an issue we explained the process upto Arbcom and that Jimbo has a veto which he has never used so far and has stated that he doesnt think he will).
2. Licensing (Explained Wikipedia is free licensed under CC-BY-SA)
3. What Wikipedia is NOT
4. NPOV/YESPOV
5. Be Bold and edit anything that is incorrect
6. Etiquette/AGF
7. Tutorial (Editing/Citations etc)
8. RS
9. CoI (Bell Pottinger affair)
Moksh
also gave a live editing example and we showed them how to sign on a
page with 4 tides (the attendees had actually typed their names on the Wiki page for
the workshop).
One of the participants mentioned official company photos
on Wikipedia articles. Explained that such photos on have been donated
to Commons and suggested that Text100 could also donate their photo
archives to Commons, which would be useful for several articles. They
sounded positive on this aspect - will be following up with them on this.
http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/nxg/article2919794.ece
Curriculum is always a few years, if not decades, out of date. Only by
getting out can you get knowledge and skills that are current and useful.
For example, I did the Google Summer of Code (internship) with mediawiki
last year, and am an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, where I help run
Wikipedia, an amazing job with a huge impact. Would've never happened if I
stuck to my “curriculum”. - YUVARAJ PANDIAN
Go Panda!
--
Regards
Srikanth.L
Dear all,
Greetings from Wikimedia India !!!
The Wikimedia Chapter (India) celebrated its first anniversary on 3rd
January 2012.
Organisational Updates Formation of Task Forces:
The formation of the different task forces are still in progress. The
various task forces are a) Fundraising, b) Special Projects, c)
Administration, d) City and Language Special Interest Groups, and e)
Communications, PR & Media Relations.
We are seeking more volunteers for the task forces. If you are interested,
please feel free to contact the respective task force stewards or find more
information here [1]
Membership:
The Chapter membership stands at 196 members as of 31 January 2012. Six new
members were added to the chapter membership in this month. We extend a
very warm welcome to the family.
Donations:
Total donations received in Jan 2012 - INR 10700
Average donations in Jan 2012 - INR 3566
FCRA:
Our application for prior permission under the Foreign Contribution
(Regulation) Act FCRA 2010, with the Government of India is under process.
As the stated time for response is over recently, chapter will be following
up with the authorities. [ As we write this report, our application was
approved by the Government of India]
Internet Relay Chat(IRCs):
>From time to time, Wikimedia India conduct planned online IRC chat
sessions. The IRC on Jan 05, 2011 was anchored by Sudhanwa Jogalekar with
the focus on Chapter Specia Interest Groups (SIG) co-ordination [2]. The
IRC on Jan 07, 2010, anchored by Arun Ramarathnam discussed on the Jan 15th
Celebration plans, SIGs and GLAM projects. [3]
Board Meetings:
The Wikimedia Chapter Executive Committee had two tele-conference EC
meetings (dated 04 Jan and 18 Jan, 2012) in the month of January.The
Wikimedia India chapter and Wikimedia Foundation had one joint
co-ordination call on 25 Jan 2012, which was attended by Arjuna Rao
Chavala, Naveen Francis, Tinu Cherian and Hisham Mundol. The main agenda
of the call was on Chapter - Foundation India programs Collaboration
Framework .
WikiConference 2011
The Chapter and Mumbai Conference organisers are working closely for the
closure and audit of accounts related to WikiConference Mumbai 2011.
Community & Special Interest Groups. SOPA and Wikipedia Blackout: The
global community of volunteers who edit the English Wikipedia had decided
to support the protest against the introduction of the “Stop Online Piracy
Act” (SOPA) in the US House of Representatives and the “Protect IP Act” in
the US Senate. To that end, the English Wikipedia was blacked out globally
for a period of 24 hours on 18 January 2012. The black out in India
commenced at 10.30am IST on 18 January 2012. The Press release and
Communication to the members related to Wikipedia Blackout can found here
[4],[5].
Wikipedia eleventh anniversary :
Wikipedia turned eleven on the 15th of January 2012. The eleventh
anniversary of Wikipedia was celebrated in different parts of the country
[6]. More than 8 Indian cities and towns and over 200 Wikimedians & Wiki
enthusiasts celebrated this occasion of Wikipedia anniversary, around the
nation.
Some of the meetups had a Wikipedia anniversary cake to celebrate the
occasion. Google Hangout was also conducted between different cities
celebrating at the same time.
The New Wikimedia India portal ( wikimedia.in ) was launched on this day.
It is designed to provide quick and rapid access to Indic wikimedia
projects - Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikinews,
Wikiquote and Commons.
A full collection of images related to the celebrations, around the nation,
can be found here [7].
Events:
A round-up of Wikimedia events, academies and initiatives around the nation
is as follows.
Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad (3 Jan 2012): Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad [8] is a
scavenger hunt for free content photography in Ahmedabad, Gujarat,
organised by Noopur Raval , Anirudh Bhati and Srikeit Tadepalli. The aim
of this exercise is to encourage participants to compete to take
photographs of as many local sights and city specific objects of cultural
heritage as possible for Wikipedia articles. Over 75 participants attended
and around 815 images were uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons as a part of
this initiative [9].
Wikipedia Takes Mumbai II ( 28 Jan 2012) : This is the second photography
drive in Mumbai. [10] The event was led by Nikita Belavate, Anshuman
Fotedar and Karthik Nadar and other members of the Mumbai Community. Over
625 images were uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons as a part of this
initiative [11]
Wiki Academies/Workshops : Several Wiki Academies were held in different
parts of the nation , organised and conducted by the Chapter, its members
,WMF India Programs and the Wikimedia community in India. .
a) Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi , Kerala (05-Jan) [12]
b) Workshop at Text100, Mumbai (webcast to Text100 Delhi and Bangalore)
(06-Jan) [13]
c) SSN College of Engineering, Chennai (11-Jan ) [14]
d) P S R Rengasamy college of engineering for women, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu.
(20-Jan) [15]
e) Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata, West Bengal (25-Jan) [16]
f) Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal (25-Jan) [17]
g) Amrita School of Communication, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu (28-Jan) (18)
h) Jamia Millia Islamia, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Delhi
(30-Jan) [19]
i) Kerala Sahitya Academy, Trissur, Kerala (8-Jan) [20]
j) Jnana Prabodhini - Wikiacademy, Pune (15-Jan) [21]
A session on Commons was conducted for photography group called
‘Tassavurrati’. [22] They have successfully started uploading pictures of
their trips (most recent: Surajkund Mela) to the Wkimedia Commons.
Other News:
- Telugu SIG celebrated the Wikipedia day on 29 Jan 2012 at Hyderabad.
Top 10 contributors in the articles category and non article category were
recognised at the function. [23]
- Sanskrit Wikipedia saw an excellent editor growth (50%) compared to
last month, and a 234% increase in the number of edits.
- The 1st Delhi Odia Wikimeetup and Academy was conducted on 29 Jan 2012
by Odia SIG Chair and WMF India Programs Consultant , Subhashish
Panigraphi. [24]
- One of the first Assamese Wikipedia community meetup and Wikipedia
Workshop was held on Jan 29 at Guwahati University, Guwahati, Assam [25]
Milestones & Anniversaries January 2012
24
- The Sanskrit Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sa:> has
reached 200 entries with the addition of over a dozen entries all
apparently meaning "sun".
20
- The Divehi
Wikipedia<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Dv:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 100,000 page edits.
- The Assamese
Wikipedia<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=As:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 500 uploaded files.
17
- The Bengali
Wikipedia<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Bn:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 1,000 uploaded files.
- The Oriya Wikipedia<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Or:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 2,000 articles.
15
- The Bengali
Wikipedia<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Bn:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 1,000 uploaded files.
- The Urdu Wiktionary <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ur:> has reached
10,000 entries.
13
- Wikimedia Commons <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/> has reached
12,000,000 files.
- The Tamil Wikibooks<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=B:ta:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 10,000 page edits.
10
- The English
Wikibooks<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=B:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 40,000 book modules.
7
- The Marathi
Wikipedia<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=Mr:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 100,000 total pages.
- The Assamese
Wikipedia<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/index.php?title=As:&action=edit&redlink=1>has
reached 1,000 articles.
Media Coverage
There was a huge coverage for Wikipedia on Indian media in this month,
mainly related to Wikipedia Blackout. A comprehensive list of the coverage
can be found here [24]
We look forward to your continued support and active participation.
Report compiled by Executive members,SIG chairs and The Communications team.
Best,
On behalf of Wikimedia Chapter (India)
Naveen Francis
Secretary
Notes:
1) http://members.wikimedia.in/Main_Page#Task_forces
2) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats/Jan_05,2012
3) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats/Jan_07,2012
4)
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Press_Releases/2012/_English_Wikipedia_to_go_dark_…
5)
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Announcements/Communication_regarding_SOPA_and_Wik…
6) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Eleven
7) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_11_in_India
8) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Ahmedabad
9) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ahmedabad_1
10) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Mumbai_II
11) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_Takes_Mumbai_2
12)
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Cochin_University_of_Science_and_Tech…
13) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Workshop/Mumbai_Workshop_2
14)
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/SSN_College_of_Engineering,_Chennai
15)
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/P_S_R_Rengasamy_college_of_engineering_for_women,_…
16) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Netaji_Subhash_Engineering_College
17) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Jadavpur_University
18)
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Amrita_School_of_Communication,_Coimb…
19) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MDHJMI1
20) http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WATSR2
21)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Pune/W11_celebration_Pune_wit…
22) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tassavurrati_1.jpg
23)
http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%95%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%AA%…
24) http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MDEL1
25)
http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%…
24) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news#Jan_2012
On 02/22/2012 07:00 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> From: Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak(a)gmail.com> To: Wikimedia India
> Community list <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Cc: WMF
> Localisation team <localisation-team(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re:
> [Wikimediaindia-l] Localisation and internationalisation bugs affecting
> Indic language communities Message-ID:
> <CA+30aUNZiw70guq189DLp0wF2ttgiJxL5VNDZeBP3+R3pBqGyQ(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at
> 10:54, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org>wrote:
>> > On 02/20/2012 07:00 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.orgwrote:
>>> > > Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:23:08 +0530
>>> > > From: Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak(a)gmail.com>
>>> > > If you are asking only about technical issues, many communities do log
>> > bugs
>>> > > from time to time. But when they remain open beyond certain period and
>> > the
>>> > > person who logged becomes inactive, they go into black hole and there is
>> > no
>>> > > one to follow up(even if its fixed, they remain open).
>> >
> There is nothing to be distressed here.
>
>
>> > Srikanth, this is distressing to hear! If you could point to some
>> > specific Bugzilla reports that have gone into the "black hole",
>> > including ones that no longer reflect reality, I could help ask the
>> > localisation team to follow up and at least put some updated information
>> > in the issues at bugzilla.wikimedia.org .
>> >
> They are called "black hole" for the reason anyone(apart from the filer /
> folks who conversed) might not be able to easily spot them. In most cases
> the bugs lack update from the filers / language communities. But again if
> the filer is from one generation and has retired, who does the follow up?
> Ideally language support teams must do it. But all of us know Indic
> communities have very few people to look into these and the common pattern
> I have found across few communities I have interacted is that spending time
> on bugzilla / improving technology/language support is not going to change
> things big way, so I might as well be contented (Ex:- "Why Narayam when js
> works fine") with whats there and do my editing. But at some point,
> communities need to focus on these, as and when the communities grow, they
> will also get contributors who are interested in supporting the language
> technically.
>
>> > But the larger
>>> > > issues are common and pretty much known to i18n team. (like say PDF
>>> > > rendering). I tried cleaning up Tamil related bugs recently which were
>>> > > documented here[1] since 2006, also created a tracking bug[2].
>>> > >
>>> > > But then as someone else said, "People are just waiting for one more
>>> > > tracking bug to fix those. !" //So tracking bugs don't help beyond a
>> > point !
>> >
>> > This is also distressing to hear! I'm not quite sure what was implied
>> > there -- did the speaker mean that the localisation team won't address
>> > certain problems until there are more tracking bugs to help track
>> > issues, or something else?
>> >
> The quote was from one of the bugs I remember seeing on bugzilla, said by
> someone on a totally different bug nothing related to localization. The
> point I implied quoting it was "process for the sake of it doesn't help
> much beyond a point". Adding tracking bugs does not impact the age of the
> bug. The bugs remain open either because they are hard to solve / lack of
> bandwidth / lack of input / variety of other reasons, not because no one is
> tracking them. Adding a tracking bug wont magically fix the bug / help in
> the getting it to closure. But tracking bug serves useful especially for
> anyone new to see what are problem areas, how can I help fix / test / not
> report duplicate bugs etc.
>
>
>
>>> > > Most, if not all Indic issues would be tagged with i18n keyword on
>> > bugzilla.
>>> > >
>> > Yes, adding the i18n keyword to an issue in Bugzilla will help bring it
>> > to the attention of the localisation team.
>> >
> Another point, Not all Indic wikipedia related issues are i18n issues,
> though there might be heavy overlap. There are site requests like changing
> logo,namespace, installing extensions <<whatever>>. The point to note is,
> when someone does these things in any Indic community(which already have
> tiny community), please keep the community widely posted / document these
> somewhere.Not just issues, but solutions/workarounds, gadgets used, things
> like abuse filter rules(if any) and its rationale behind etc. This will
> help someone else in your community(who may come years later) to follow up
> even if you retire / had forgotten. Fortunately Tamil Wiki community did
> that from the beginning(at least the major ones,if not everything) in the
> form of a page[1] and I was able to go through,know the past issues,update
> it after almost 2 years! I felt a tracking bug might be easier to track on
> issues than a page, so I just created one.
>
>
>> > Thanks for mentioning this problem, Srikanth.
>
> This problem is not restricted to bugzilla. This may even happen in say in
> translation or anything, where only a subset (ideally 1-2 in a community of
> 10) involve in the activities and do not document / pass over the knowledge
> properly.Smaller Wikipedias must not rely on select individual on anything
> so much that they become extinct/dormant after their wiki-time
> (Insert story of Bishnupriya Manipuri) I hope Shiju is reading and might
> be able to relate to it / research on solutions :)
>
>
> [1] http://tawp.in/r/3hl
>
> -- Regards
Thanks for the reply and for giving more perspective on these issues,
Srikanth. I know that other people who work actively on localisation
and internationalisation, and on helping nurture smaller Wikimedia
projects, can speak with more experience and knowledge than I can. But
I do want to mention here the language support teams
https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Language_support_team
which are a structure that could help with some of the problems that you
mentioned.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Volunteer Development Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
Dear All,
I am writing to share with you a very inspiring initiative regarding health
and medicine articles on Wikipedia. Crores of Wikipedia readers read up
about health related issues either when they or their loved ones fall ill
or before or after they have consulted doctors or when they are curious
about a particular disease or drug. In fact, quite a few doctors and
nurses also read up these articles to improve their knowledge.
Wikipedia's medical articles have 15-20 crore page views every month. The
top 300 articles are viewed more than 1 lakh times every month. The
challenge is that the majority of these articles are only available in
English.
This initiative (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_tas…)
has been conceptualised by WikiProject Medicine, Wikimedia Canada and very
interesting organisation called Translators Without Borders. It seeks to
translate a set of 80 of the most important health care articles into as
many languages as possible.
Given the state of our health care system as well as the increasing
readership of Indic language projects, there is huge positive impact that
we can have if we participate in this initiative and have these articles in
all Indic languages. The project page (referenced above) includes an
outline of the project, FAQs, useful links and a sign up for interested
volunteers.
The ways that we can participate are as follows
- English Editors to improve articles on en-wp
- English Editors to convert articles into simple English Wikipedia (so
that non-English editors who don't have a medical background can also help
out)
- Indic editors to help translating either by themselves or by helping
the translators at Translators Without Borders
Remember, you don't have to be a health care professional to help out. All
you have to do is simply care.
I am really happy to note that 5 editors from 5 Indic languages have
already signed up<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_tas…>for
this wonderful project. Of these 2 languages - Assamese and Malayalam
- have already started wiki project and started working on articles (really
big comprehensive articles) related to Medicine.
Assamese wikipedia medicine project page: ৱিকিপিডিয়া:ৱিকিপ্ৰকল্প
চিকিৎসাবিজ্ঞান<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%…>
Some of the articles created:
- কৰ্কট ৰোগ<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%95%E0%A7%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%9F_…>
(Cancer)
- সৰ্পদংশন<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AA%E0%A6%A6%…>
(Snakebite)
Malayalam wikipedia biology project page:
വിക്കിപീഡിയ:വിക്കിപദ്ധതി/ജീവശാസ്ത്രം<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%…>
Some of the articles created:
- ആസ്മ (Asthma) <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asthma>
- ന്യുമോണിയ (Pneumonia) <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonia>
- മസ്തിഷ്കാഘാതം (Stroke) <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke>
Please note that this project do not involve machine translation or bots.
It is really happy to note that both in Assamese and Malayalam wiki these
projects are run by doctor (or medicine students) wikipedians :) Yes, Indic
wikipedias has editors from all wakes of life.
There is so much potential on the articles related to medicine both in
Indic and English. I encourage interested wikipedians to join this project
by adding your name
here<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_tas…>
.
I welcome and invite everyone to join in.
Healthy Editing
Shiju Alex
As a person working in the relevant field, we would welcome Shiju's
comments on the article, its facts, proposed steps by the editors mentioned
and what Kannada Wikipedia needs for revival.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Tinu Cherian (Wikimedia India) <
tinucherian(a)wikimedia.in> wrote:
> *The Hindu : "The struggles of keeping Kannada Wikipedia afloat"*
>
> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article290900…
>
> *In the world of online Kannada content, blogs may be thriving but
> Wikipedia is struggling. The reasons vary from technology barriers to lack
> of contributors, say Wikipedians.
>
> While there has been a surge in Kannada content in the last two years,
> contributors to the language have been grappling with technology barriers.
>
> After floundering for years, the Kannada Wikipedia picked up with font
> availability, said Hari Prasad Nadig, a Kannada Wikipedian. The software
> to add to Kannada Wikipedia is not so user-friendly, and only geeks can
> edit it properly.
>
> Unlike English, which has a large community, technology issues are glaring
> in smaller communities. “Growth is slow with respect to technology in
> smaller communities,” he said. The lack of a good Unicode font has been a
> persisting problem so the reader ends up seeing boxes instead of Kannada
> text. After trying to write using the ‘Thunga' font, which had problems
> with vowels, besides other bugs, today, ‘Kedage' is the most complete font,
> though issues remain with this one too, Mr. Nadig said.
>
> Besides, various operating systems provide different levels of support for
> the script. “All these small factors together discouraged people from
> contributing. It's not that people don't want to use Kannada on the Net.
> Traffic on the Net is very high; there is Kannada on Facebook and Twitter
> too,” he said.
>
> Another challenge is writing and adding quality content. “The community
> has to grow if Kannada Wikipedia is to grow,” he said. The quality of
> content also matters. One person adding thousands of ‘stubs' on, say,
> Kannada films, does not help the reader, and in fact, drives them away from
> the site. Also, Kannada Wikipedia needs “starter” articles, to get people
> reading before they can start adding content, he said.
>
> In order to grow, Kannada Wikipedia requires an active, organic community,
> which is not imposed through a catalyst of paid content creators. Once,
> Google started a tool that had machine-translated content improved by
> manual translations. Yet the Kannada content was “looking like spam. They
> (manual translators) didn't understand markup, templates; (it was) all
> malformed”, he said.
>
> An observation about contributors is that people in metros prefer writing
> to the English Wikipedia though they know Kannada and are tech-savvy.
> “Bangalore has less than 10 people writing to Kannada Wikipedia,” he said.
>
> Omshivaprakash, Chair for Kannada Special Interest Group for Wikipedia,
> said people are not aware that Kannada Wikipedia now has simple tools to
> add content. He said “Wiki academies” would be set up to train people on
> adding Kannada content. “Everyone complains that the quality of Kannada
> Wikipedia is low, but they do not know that they can edit it themselves,”
> he said.*
>
> Regards
> Tinu Cherian
> press(a)wikimedia.in
> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news
>
> Important Note : Non-commercial reproduction for informative purposes
> only. The publisher ( The Hindu ) of the above news article owns the
> copyrights of the article / content. All copyrights are duly acknowledged.
>
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On 02/20/2012 07:00 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
> Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:23:08 +0530
> From: Srikanth Lakshmanan <srik.lak(a)gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia India Community list
> <wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : The Hindu : "The struggles
> of keeping Kannada Wikipedia afloat"
> Message-ID:
> <CA+30aUPsvLiA2YrjNz3KTWs7zgRuTCAiCPoFu4PZidYgu=Abgw(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:43, sankarshan <foss.mailinglists(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> > I guess what I am asking is whether all the issues that the various
>> > language communities in India face have been recorded on the bugzilla
>> > and, there is a page somewhere which allows anyone interested to track
>> > them.
>> >
> If you are asking only about technical issues, many communities do log bugs
> from time to time. But when they remain open beyond certain period and the
> person who logged becomes inactive, they go into black hole and there is no
> one to follow up(even if its fixed, they remain open).
Srikanth, this is distressing to hear! If you could point to some
specific Bugzilla reports that have gone into the "black hole",
including ones that no longer reflect reality, I could help ask the
localisation team to follow up and at least put some updated information
in the issues at bugzilla.wikimedia.org .
> But the larger
> issues are common and pretty much known to i18n team. (like say PDF
> rendering). I tried cleaning up Tamil related bugs recently which were
> documented here[1] since 2006, also created a tracking bug[2].
>
> But then as someone else said, "People are just waiting for one more
> tracking bug to fix those. !" //So tracking bugs don't help beyond a point !
This is also distressing to hear! I'm not quite sure what was implied
there -- did the speaker mean that the localisation team won't address
certain problems until there are more tracking bugs to help track
issues, or something else?
> Most, if not all Indic issues would be tagged with i18n keyword on bugzilla.
>
> [1] http://tawp.in/r/3hl
> [2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/32578
>
> -- Regards Srikanth.L
Yes, adding the i18n keyword to an issue in Bugzilla will help bring it
to the attention of the localisation team.
Thanks for mentioning this problem, Srikanth.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Volunteer Development Coordinator
Wikimedia Foundation
Dear all,
I've created a working Project page on en-WP for the Crafts museum project.
I welcome you all to join and put down your name as participants. Everyone
is welcome, including people interested in translations, making userboxes,
providing stats, creating articles and so on.
We've hit a few roadblocks getting the formal agreement finalized, while
that still happens I realized there was a lot of back end work which could
be finished.
Look forward to your support! Here's the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Crafts_Museum
--
Noopur Raval
Student
Arts and Aesthetics
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Ph: 9650567690
Hi,
A gentle reminder.
The office hours is at 23:30 IST (18:00 UTC)
Thanks
Santhosh
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Steven Walling <swalling(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:46 AM
Subject: IRC office hours with the localization team, on International
Mother Language Day
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi everyone,
I just wanted to give some advance notice about IRC office hours with the
localization team [1] at the Wikimedia Foundation, which will be aptly held
on International Mother Language Day.[2]
Date: 2011-02-21
Time: 18.00 UTC
Venue: #wikimedia-office
As usual, more logistical info and time conversion links are available on
Meta.[3] For a taste of what the localization team has been up to, I highly
recommend the blog posts they've been writing regularly.[4]
Thanks, and we'll talk to you later this month!
--
Steven Walling,
Wikimedia Foundation
1. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Localisation_team
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mother_Language_Day
3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
4.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/features/internationalization-and-lo…
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
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