This is for your information.
Sincerely,
Anirudh Bhati
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Geoff Brigham <gbrigham(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 5:19 AM
Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and
Community Advocacy Department & Promotion of Philippe Beaudette
To: wikimediaannounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Today, we are excited to announce the start of our building of a new
department called the “Legal and Community Advocacy Department.” This new
alignment recognizes that we can combine the best of legal and community
advocacy to foster new ways to advance the interests of the community
consistent with the goals and strategies of the Foundation. For details,
please go to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/LCA_Announcement.
As part of this reorganization, I’m pleased to announce that Philippe
Beaudette has been promoted to Director of Community Advocacy. We will
start engaging our community shortly and enter into a consultation period
with it to brainstorm how to build the department. We anticipate that it
will take us about 6-12 months to get the right team and drive the new
department at full speed.
The community is invited to join us on Friday for office hours to discuss
the new Legal and Community Advocacy Department. Details for the IRC chat
can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours.
Geoff Brigham
General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
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Hello,
I would like to document the Calico Museum of Textiles in Ahmedabad
[1][2], one of the greatest textile museum in the world, but
photography is currently forbidden there.
There is currently nothing on Wikimedia Commons about it.
Maybe a formal request from Wikimedia India may help getting a permission.
Several days will be necessary, as the museum is pretty big.
Permission to use a tripod is also necessary.
In addition, I am proud to announce a new featured picture from India
on Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hindu_Bride,_Ahmedabad,_Gujarat.jpg
Translations into Indian languages would be great. ;)
Best regards,
Yann
[1] http://www.calicomuseum.com/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_Museum_of_Textiles
Hi,
I thought Id bring up something thats been at the back of my mind for the last few days. With offline activities increasing in the last couple of months, it is a good sign for the project overall in India. However, we sometimes tend to unintentionally ruffle a few feathers (or people wanting to take advantage of the situation pretend that we have). This got me thinking of what sort of backup we Wikipedians can expect if they get into trouble whiles taking part in volunteer activities? I dont mean getting caught doing something illegal, I mean any trouble whiles taking part in or organising routine activities. I dont mean to scare people, this is something that is the result of recent happenings. In Mumbai, Wikipedians have had to visit the Police Station twice in the last 3 months.
First time we had a battery of people including Chapter Secretary Naveen Francis, WMF Deputy Director Erik Moeller (who literally got off a flight and walked into the cop station), our Legal brain Gautam John, WMF Trustee Bishakha Dutta and WMF Advisor Achal Prabhala among others go down to the police station as a political party threatened to stage a protest at our event in November 2011.
Last month, we had another visit to the police station during the photowalk because a corporate house was paranoid when we took photographs of their headquarters. Hisham, Gautam and Achal were all unavailable, thankfully Bishakha was and she was able to get a legal opinion from some lawyer friends that what we were doing was totally legal as it was not a prohibited area. We cannot expect to fall back on such people all the time, after all they are here as volunteers as well (well, except for Erik and Hisham).
Reiterating, that though we were on the right side of the law, we were dragged to the police. I am worried what the case would be if a formal complaint or a case is filed against a Wikipedian (though Im hoping this will never happen) to trouble or scare him, what assurance does he have from the organisation? As most Wikipedians are doing volunteer-work in their spare time, I think its highly important that there is some sort of assurance that they will not be left to fend for themselves if something unforeseen leaves them personally in a spot of bother. Could someone from India Programs or WM-IN please advice the community of what sort of back-up and legal support/insurance the community can expect in the event of such eventualities?
Kind Regards,
Heya all,
Just wanted to share this with you incase you didn't know about it.
Shorthand, an SMS based content provider has a Wikipedia app.
Shorthand works entirely on SMS.
You only need to download the app once, and that's all.
Once you've downloaded it, all the content that is being sent or received
is via sms.
The only drawback is that your phone needs to allow Java applications to
access your messages.
You can either register for the service online on
http://www.shorthand.inOR via sms by sending
*'shorty'* as an sms to +91-9223170750.
Enjoy, Happy Wikipedia reading.
--
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan,
Sathyamangalam-Gobichettipalayam Star Gazers, Coimbatore.
hi,
I believe that this is relevant here since we have been trying to
access government data to improve Wikipedia articles.
Pradeep
Handheld
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pranesh Prakash <pranesh(a)cis-india.org>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:22:22 +0530
Subject: [datameet] National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy 2012 Approved
To: Datameet <datameet(a)googlegroups.com>
http://goo.gl/jb9Xc
Cabinet
February, 2012 12:22 IST
National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy – 2012 approved
The Union Cabinet today approved the National Data Sharing and
Accessibility Policy – 2012 (NDSAP-2012). The objective of the policy is
to facilitate access to Government of India owned shareable data and
information in both human readable and machine readable forms through a
network all over the country in a proactive and periodically updatable
manner, within the framework of various related policies, Acts and Rules
of the Government, therefore, permitting a wider accessibility and use
of public data and information.
The NDSAP policy is designed to promote data sharing and enable access
to Government of India owned data for national planning and development.
The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy will apply to all
data and information created, generated, collected and achieved using
public funds provided by Government of India directly or through
authorised agencies by various Ministries / Departments/ Organisations/
Agencies and Autonomous bodies.
***
SH/LM
(Release ID :80196)
--
Pranesh Prakash
Programme Manager
Centre for Internet and Society
W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283
--
Pradeep Mohandas
How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
*Education Times/ Times of India : "Knowledge Unbounded"*
http://educationtimes.com/educationTimes/CMSD/Newsroom/1/201202092012020913…
/
Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata along with Wikimedia
Foundation hosted the first WikiAcademy Conference in Eastern India
recently in the college premises.
Wikimedia Foundation operates Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and other
sister sites. It was a half-day workshop to sensitise participants about
Wikipedia and to help them add to the already vast source of knowledge.
The WikiAcademy workshop was part of the Kolkata Chapter of Wikimedia
Foundation with the objective of educating students and enthusiasts
about the availability and use of free and open educational content and
also to build the capacity to contribute such resources in various
Indian languages.
The conference began with a brief history and overview of Wikipedia
conducted by Hisham Mundol, consultant, Wikimedia Foundation, followed
by an interactive session which brought up interesting insights.
"Wikipedia is the first one-stop address for a wide range of topics and
the information available is provided by our passionate editors who
regularly contribute articles and even crosscheck others. WikiAcademy is
an attempt to encourage others to share their knowledge and also get to
know the fifth website in terms of highest page views," Mundol explained.
A live workshop on editing was conducted by Jayanta Nath, coordinator of
Bengali Wikipedia where the participants tried their hands at editing
various articles.
For those interested in Indian languages, a session was arranged to
enable the setting up of Wikipedia in their preferred languages.
A student and who tried his hands at editing, Shoubhik Bose shared,
"Wikipedia contributors like us can actually free education from cost
and language barriers. The fact that my edit will be visible to a
million users all over the world motivates me to edit Wikipedia
articles. I would love to be a part of more WikiAcademy workshops with
the Wikipedia readers and editors."
/
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 ( Education Times/ Times of India ) of the above
news article owns the copyrights of the article / content. All
copyrights are duly acknowledged.
In the backdrop of the hackathon, would this be a good thing to have ?
If not already planned.
--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog>
*Details of this event could be accessed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Chennai/Chennai4*
*
______________________________________________________________________________________________
*
Dear all,
An introductory session about "Introduction to Wikipedia" at
"Kurukshetra2012", an international tech fest at College of Engineering
Guindy, Anna University, Chennai was attended by 2 wikipedians Subhashish
and Surya and 45 students. This event was intended to bring awareness among
students attending this fest about writing articles in the Wikipedia.
Subhashish took the audience through a
presentation<http://prezi.com/9lwwxhv7vqtg/introduction-to-wikipedia-the-free-encycloped…>explaining
basics of Wikipedia, how they can edit Wikipedia, what they can
edit in Wikipedia. Later on the students questioned about authenticity of
articles edited by multiple editors and there was a discussion regarding
that. Students also questioned if Wikipedia editing will help them to gain
some qualities and certifications which will help them during their campus
placements. There were also questions regarding Technical projects and
questions regarding jobs at Wikimedia. There were curious folks who
questioned abut the cause of blackout against SOPA and PIPA!
The questions asked by students had lot of valid points regarding
notability and authenticity of Wikipedia articles, there is need for
documentation of them in the form of FAQs, So, majority of the important
questions and answers to them would be documented in the meta page of Outreach
Program Handbook
FAQ<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta/India_Program/Outreach_Progr…>
.
After the discussion Surya spoke about Tamil
Wikipedia<http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>and the on going
Tamil
Media Contest<http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%B2%E0%AF%88%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BE%…>
.
Attendees socialized and had a group photo session after the event.
regards
Subha
