Could I make a practical suggestion to help those that might be
challenged in public places or when going into institutions?
In the UK we are looking at making "official" press cards for
established Wikinews reporters. I know from experience that taking
photographs in India can be problematic for many reasons, not just the
police. If the local chapter could produce letters of authority or
"press ID" for regular contributors, this might make our contributers
feel a bit more confident about having something to produce when
questioned about what they are doing.
The "press ID" in the UK would work by the person having their
identity on file with the London office. If there are questions about
their work (for example photographs being taken or interviews) then
the person's real life ID can be checked by phoning the chapter
office. This does not have to compromize their on-line identity if
anonymous, as real-life identity is kept confidential by the chapter.
In most cases we would expect that having an "official" looking card
or letter would solve most problems on the spot, particularly when the
Wikimedian can say "please phone my office if you want to confirm my
details".
You can find a discussion about the press ID system for the UK at
<http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Microgrants/Wikinews_reporter_IDs>. WMUK
would be open to supporting an internationally recognized system along
these lines.
Thanks,
Fae
--
http://enwp.org/user_talk:fae
Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/faetags
Hello everyone,
I am pleased to announce the beginning of the voting of steward elections
2012 [1]. Eligible voters are now encouraged to give their valuable votes
to elect new stewards this year. To find out more about voter eligibility,
please take a look on our guidelines page. [2] Vote page will remain open
to vote until February 27 2012, 23:59 (UTC).
This year, we have made some modifications so it will be easier for voters
to vote compared to the last years. You just have to follow the following
steps.
- Click on the big gray vote button on the vote page, a box will appear;
- Select your vote (yes/no/neutral), and write your comments (if you
have any) in the comment box;
- And click "vote" on that box and it will save your vote automatically.
Additionally, we are using template and bot so it will be easy to check the
votes and verify the eligible ones.
This year, we are also arranging the confirmation of existing stewards [3],
so you are also welcome to give your valuable comments/feedback about their
works. Confirmations are a good opportunity to check if we are still happy
with our current stewards. So please speak your voice there.
if you have any queries related to anything about to the election, you can
ask us on the talk page [4]. You are also free to poke us on IRC channel
#wikimedia-stewards-elections.
We hope you will participate as soon as possible to speak your opinion and
make this year's election a successful one (as you did in past).
Please feel free to forward this e-mail to any other lists if you think it
will be useful. :-)
Regards,
Tanvir Rahman
Wikitanvir on Wikimedia
(On behalf of the Election Committee.)
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Elections_2012/Guidelines
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/Confirm/2012/en
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stewards/Elections_2012
Dear All,
We, the team of Marathi Wikipedia is putting lot of efforts in increasing the content and no. of edits. The participation from online editors, active contribution by bots and various out-reach activities including wiki-academies done in Pune and Mumbai are helping a lot.
The edit percentage has increased by 199%in the month of December 2011 over the last month !!!
Here is the snapshot for the confirmation....
The count of active Marathi Wikipedians is also increasing and the quality of edits is also improving.
With this email, I want to congratulate all the Marathi Wikipedia contributers and request all of them to keep the good work....
With Regards,
Mandar V. Kulkarni
http://mr.wikipedia.org
Pune SIG
Deal all,
As a part of helping the community to reach out to more people apart from
the presentations, handouts, FAQs and mailing list support we also have
need for more visuals. Audio/Video clips containing Indian Wikipedians
sharing their message "I EDIT WIKIPEDIA" or "I EDIT AN INDIAN LANGUAGE
WIKIPEDIA" or "WIKIPEDIA IS HELPING ME DOCUMENTING MY HERITAGE" will create
impact among people and motivate them to contribute to Wikipedia. Many
people use Wikipedia in a daily basis without being aware of they can also
[Edit] it, social media, Youtube, mails containing link to such a video can
be used to reach this message to them. Moreover, such videos which are
already there in Outreach (outreach.wikimedia.org) Bookshelf might make
some people feel it's project being managed by some foreigners. Seeing some
real Indians editing Wikipedia with the Main page of an Indian language
background will definitely make this message clearer.
If there is a fairly good no of community members located in anywhere in
India (e.g Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai community) we can ask the community
members say it altogether aloud apart from one/two community members
speaking in their own language. I will be posting the details in the
community village pumps, you are allowed to send as many people's footage
as you can provided the video and audio quality are reasonable good. We
will be collecting footage from all the communities and do a post
production.
Subha
Community & Program Support, India Program
Wikimedia Foundation
Hey,
This is to inform you all that the Second Coimbatore Meetup will take place
on Sunday, 12th of February at 11am at the KGISL Institute of Technology
[KITE], Saravanampatti, Coimbatore..
There are a few formalities before entering.
Come to the gate of KGISL, fill out an Entry Pass, ask for Mr. Devraj.
Like last time, I'll try and arrange with Security to direct people asking
for Wikipedia to the KITE block.
11am. The venue is on the ground floor of the KGISL Institute of Technology
which in turn is on Thudiyalur Road.
Accessible by buses from Gandhipuram/Ukkadam.
>From G'puram, you have 111/111A that comes to the gate while any other bus
going to Sathyamangalam, or Saravanampatti will drop you 500m away from
there.
I hope someone will create a Facebook page for it.
Please use this image for it:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21232862@N00/6441297319/
The Twitter hashtag is #WPMCB2
Hope to see you here.
Please sign up here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore/Coimbatore2
--
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coimbatore_bypass
Coimbatore bypass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysore_Ring_Road
Mysore Ring Road.
*First Post : Good News: Indians most willing to donate to Wikipedia*
http://www.firstpost.com/tech/good-news-indians-most-willing-to-donate-to-w…
/Wikipedia recently concluded its annual fundraiser, which was quite
successful with the online encyclopedia collecting nearly $20mn dollars
which will be used for the daily operations of the site. Jimmy Wales,
founder of the site had appealed passionately to all users to donate to
help keep the site free from advertisement. More recently the Wikipedia
blackout to protest SOPA/PIPA was seen as a strong anti-censorship stand
taken by the website, for which it was widely supported by readers and
users alike. (We chronicled how readers/users of the web survived that day!)
Post the donation drive, Wikipedia has just published results from a
readers survey as a way of understanding the major donors to the site.
Some of the facts that come out from the survey are rather surprising.
For once Indians are number ONE, when it comes to a desire to donate to
Wikipedia. According to the survey 42 percent of Wiki readers from India
were ready to donate, followed by Egypt and US where nearly 33 percent
users were keen to donate. The survey also noted that users from
Germany, France and Japan were less prone to making a donation.
However a constant a problem that many users said prevented them from
donating was the lack of affordability. Ayush Khanna, Data Analyst,
Global Development at the Wikimedia foundation wrote in a detailed
blogpost that
The high value of the dollar may also have an effect, with 68
percent of Japanese readers and 57 percent of Indian readers citing
affordability as a reason. However, about 60 percent of UK readers also
cite this reason.
While dollar rates could be a possible issue for not donating, Indian
users who don't possess a credit card were probably stumped on how to go
about donating to the website.
But perhaps the biggest shocker is that nearly half of Wikipedia users
are not aware that it's a non-profit organisation. The number is quite
high with 47 percent of readers being blissfully unaware of this crucial
fact. Being non-profit has helped Wikipedia remained ad-free since it
began 2001. Russia (64 percent), Brazil (56 percent) and the United
States (56 percent) were countries where this lack of knowledge was
woefully high. The fact the US figures on this list too is quite
interesting, since the US also had a sufficient majority of readers who
were willing to donate to the site.
What was even more bizarre, according to the survey numbers, was that
nearly 28 percent of its users who had edited pages on Wikipedia were
unaware that it was a non-profit organisation.
Wikipedia has been putting out quite some information from this survey
for nearly a month now on the Wikimedia global blog. Other key facts are
that only 6 percent of its users have ever edited a Wikipedia page and
most of the users are happy to just read the content.
Many felt that they didn't have the grasp of a particular subject to
actually edit a page (Around 28 percent felt that they didn't have
enough info). Six percent of the users also felt that they were afraid
their edits would be removed. The survey also confirmed that Wikipedia
is still being edited by very few people and a lot of people are
hesitant to make edits. In an earlier survey the site had stated that
80 percent of our editors are from the Global North. In most other
countries, a very small number of respondents as percent of total sample
say that they had edited Wikipedia.
Once again it seems that the editors for Wikipedia are still largely
based in the developed countries, despite Wikipedia launching pages in
several languages other than English. Expectedly men are far more likely
to edit pages than women on Wikipedia, for there are more men online
than women. The number of young readers who edit is also increasing.
The study was conducted during the summer of 2011. A 15-minute survey
was administered to a total sample of 4,000 participants within the
following 16 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, France,
Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, Spain, South
Africa, UK, and United States. To read about all the blogposts on
Wikipedia survey click here/
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 ( First Post) of the above news article owns the
copyrights of the article / content. All copyrights are duly acknowledged.
Hi Folks,
I am happy to inform you that a basic Wikipedia workshop
was successfully conducted for the students of Cummins College of
Engineering for Women(CCOEW), Pune on 4th February 2012.
The main purpose of the workshop was to spread awareness about editing
Wikipedia and to encourage the female editors. The program was conducted by
(CA's) Pratik Lahoti, Ram Shankar Yadav and myself. The students were
excited to be at the workshop and were present in huge numbers.
The workshop details, detailed report and some snaps are uploaded here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workshop_at_CCOEW_Pune
Please let us know your suggestions/Ideas to help us improve and organize
such events in future.
Thanks & Regards,
Wasim Mogal.
Dear All,
You are cordially invited for the Wiki academies getting conducted in
GNUnify 2012 (http://gnunify.in) at SICSR, Pune.
GNUnify is an annual Free/Open source software conference conducted by
SICSR (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and research) and PLUG (Pune
Linux users group). This is the tenth year of the conference.
Details of the academies are as follows:
Date - 11 Feb. 2012
English Wikipedia academy - 10am to 1 pm
Marathi Wikipedia academy - 2:30pm to 5:30 pm
We have created a form on the GNUnify website for wikiacademy
registrations. You can check it out here:
http://gnunify.in/register/wiki-academy.
You are kindly requested to register on the above page to ensure proper
logistics during the academies.
Please note that the number of PCs available are about 30 as the lab cannot
accommodate more people. The registrations are open on 1st come 1st serve
basis. Request to rush your registrations.
For the technically oriented people, Wikimedia hackathon is also going to
be there between 10 to 12 February. You are welcome to join the hackathon
And you can also attend the main conference GNUnify itself.
For any of these events, there are no fees charged, however registration is
required.
Thanks and regards,
- GNUnify, wikiacademy, hackathon organisors
~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!
web: www.sudhanwa.com blog: www.sudhanwa.in
Twitter: sudhanwa Check on FB, Linkedin for more.
Hi all,
Apologies for much delay for the report on Bangalore
Wikimeetup 41 / Wiki Eleven Celebrations.
The Bangalore Wikimeetup 41 / Wiki Eleven Celebrations was held at the
office of The Centre for Internet & Society, Domlur , Bangalore ( also
the India chapter official office) on 15 Jan 2012, Sunday 4-6 PM. [1]
The regular second Sunday Bangalore meetup of January was postponed to
the third Sunday, to coincide with the Wikipedia 11th anniversary.
The Bangalore Meetup banner which we had used for a whole year, got a
small promotion this year. [2] :)
Only 11 people attended the meetup, thanks to popular festivals like
Pongal and Sankranthi falling on the same weekend. You may compare this
with attendance of 250+ participants for the 10 the anniversary
celebrations in Bangalore, a year ago. [3]
The participants introduced themselves, after which Arun Ramaratnam led
the meetup with an introduction to Bangalore Meetups and Wikipedia 11th
anniversary. We also experimented Google hangout with other cities in
India, who were conducting similar events [4]. Unfortunately, the
audio-video quality wasn't very good, probably due to the low internet
bandwidth. Nevertheless, It was great to see the live celebrations
happening in the different parts of India.
The Wikimedia India chapter also completed its first anniversary of
official operations. The Chapter President, Arjuna Rao Chavala explained
the history of the chapter and its future plans. Naveen P Francis
announced the launch of the revamped Wikimedia India Portals and the
project gateways.
The Kannada SIG Chair, Omshiva Prakash briefed about the recent Kannada
Wikipedia 9th Anniversary celebrations, held in Bangalore, earlier that
week. The crowd discussed on how to intensify the outreach work around
Bangalore and in India.
The last, but not the least, was the most awaited part - Wiki 11
celebrations cake cutting ! [5] . The meetup concluded with the
customary group photo sessions [6]. A full collection of meetup photos
can be found here [7]
We thank everyone who attended the meetup and celebrations.
Regards
Tinu Cherian
Notes:
1) http://wiki.wikimedia.in/WikiMeetups/Bangalore/Bangalore41
2)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bangalore_W11_Meetup_Jan2012_16.03.2…
3) http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore
4)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bangalore_W11_Meetup_Jan2012_16.50.3…
5)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bangalore_W11_Meetup_Jan2012_16.10.5…
6) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikiEleven_Blore_the_group.jpg
7) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bangalore_Meetup_January_2012
Moksh, Thanks for the report. Do upload the VJTI photo on wiki - the article does not have a good one.
From: moksh.juneja(a)avignyata.com
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 17:42:12 +0530
To: wikimedia-in-mum(a)lists.wikimedia.org; wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Report on the Technovanza, VJTI festival Wikipedia Workshop
Dear All,
We were invited to have a workshop at Technovanza, VJTI festival.
The total session strength was 15 students. The students were very curious to know how the editing does take place. The session included
* Elaborate discussion on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
* Editing the actual Wiki page. The selection was based on interest in the workshop
* Creating a new Wiki Page. Post explaining the modalities of creating
the page the selection was based on interest in the workshop
Common Queries included
* How does Wikipedia run?
* Who manages and
maintains the Wikipedia?
At the same time, students who attended the
session were completely new editing, so they were very happy to know get
a demonstration of editing an article. Also at the end of the session
they surely promised to try their hand at editing on their favourite
subjects.
Was also given a small memento with the photograph of VJTI college in it, thanking for the session.
Thank you for the opportunity! I would encourage everyone on the list to have these workshops, cause they are very enlightening for students who were just copy pasting content from Wikipedia!
Moksh Juneja
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