WikimediaIndia-l April 2012

wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

43 participants
59 discussions

Please add your name to the Geographical List of Indian Wikipedians
by Ashwin Baindur 31 Jul '18

31 Jul '18

Hello friends, This is a link I recommend you to bookmark. http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Geographical_distribution_of_Indian_Wikipedians This list is useful for outreach & also whenever someone needs Wiki-Help in a particular city. It would be great if Wikipedians could update this list.:) We have the following completely unrepresented states/UTs: * Andaman & Nicobar Islands * Arunachal Pradesh * Assam * Chandigarh * Chhattisgarh * Dadra, Nagar & Haveli * Daman & Diu * Goa * Himachal Pradesh * Jammu & Kashmir * Jharkhand (AngPradesh is in Mumbai) * Lakshadweep * Manipur * Meghalaya * Mizoram * Puducherry * Punjab (oye, ye ki hoya!) * Nagaland * Uttar Pradesh * Uttarakhand Okay, all you admins, please update your status (Mikey my boy, that means you too)! Abroad, we dont have Indic Wikipedians listed for: * Africa * Australia * Asia (other than India) * Middle East * North America * South America Unless you would like to stay off list, of course that's acceptable too. May I also request Tinu / list admins to please forward it all the Indic language & city Wikimedia lists. We need this resource to be as comprehensible as possible. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------

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Mobile sites of Indic Wikipedias
by Srikanth Lakshmanan 28 Feb '13

28 Feb '13

Hi all, Needless to repeat the <India-Indic-Mobile-Growth> story. But I was surprised even with that, many Indic wikipedias do not have a mobile site(or some have gone dead since they failed to update for MobileFrontend[1] changes), even the ones that had weren't very much usable. Lets not cite, mobile phones do not have fonts, no one uses Indic on mobile, we all know lot of people do use Opera-mini with complex script rendering support. * Please visit <yourlanguage>.m.wikpedia.org and see if there is a page. If it has nothing but 'search, license, and action control' links, here[2] are the steps that an admin need to do to get a mobile site running with content. If you have problem in doing those, come and ask at #wikimedia-tech (or #mediawiki {?}). * When I visited Tamil wikipedia mobile site, I was restricted to content that was put on mainpage, the links in it. Since my Symbian phone doesnt have Indic input system, I cant search anything. The solution to this is to have a list of articles in alphabetical order *and* display it in mobile front page, like Assamese wikipedians have done[3]. Many Indic wikis have this template, but few show it on main page. This might be incredibly useful on mobile versions. More thoughts on improving Mobile sites welcome :) Mobile sites are important since, 1. Lot of people will be using this. 2. The Wikipedia app uses this(?) [Correct me if am wrong] [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MobileFrontend [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/Mobile_Gateway#Mobile_homepa… [3] http://as.m.wikipedia.org/ -- Regards Srikanth.L

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Fwd: [Wikikn-l (kannada wikipedia)] Global Vandalism through IP 212.121.219.1 on Indian territory info
by Harish 30 Dec '12

30 Dec '12

This has been observed and reverted in Kannada wikipedia. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tejas jain <teju2friends(a)gmail.com> Date: 2012/2/2 Subject: [Wikikn-l (kannada wikipedia)] Global Vandalism through IP 212.121.219.1 on Indian territory info To: wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, wikikn-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Some one has done global vandalism through IP 212.121.219.1< http://toolserver.org/%7Eluxo/contributions/contributions.php?user=212.121.… >on Indian territory info. User's edit list: http://toolserver.org/~luxo/contributions/contributions.php?user=212.121.21… Arunachal pradesh <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arunachal_Pradesh> and Jammu_and_Kashmir <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammu_and_Kashmir> are hatched as disputed. Was there any discussion before these changes? All the edits on Kannada wiki <http://kn.wikipedia.org/> have been reverted because of following reasons, 1. No discussion prior to the changes 2. No references were made 3. Changes done anonymously 4. No change log message 5. No such changes are done on English wiki If it is sure case of vandalism, changes have to be reverted globally. Thanks, Tejas jain < http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B2%B8%E0%B2%A6%E0%B2%B8%E0%B3%8D%E0%B2%AF:… > _______________________________________________ Wikikn-l mailing list Wikikn-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikikn-l -- Harish 9740069624

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Android ICS support for Tamil and Indic languages
by Ravishankar 09 Jul '12

09 Jul '12

Hi, I did some testing on how the recently released Android ICS supports Indic languages. *Tamil, Bengali, Marathi and Hindi are the only Indian languages supported for now*. Oh ya, it can also show English well without a problem ;) You can view the findings in details at http://microblog.ravidreams.net/2011/12/android-ics-support-for-tamil-indic… Screen shots with description can be found at https://picasaweb.google.com/115896376016313561916/AndroidICSSupportForIndi… I could not view the web fonts in Kannada, Telugu Wikipedias as Gerard has indicated at http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-android.html Please let me know if I have to configure anything. One major To Do for all Indic Wiki projects: The mobile version homepage of most of the Indic Wikipedias is not showing anything except the search box. Please configure this well. You can see ta.m.wikipedia.org for example. Ravi

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Experimenting with Virtual Outreach
by Nitika 09 Jul '12

09 Jul '12

Hi Folks, I was thinking of experimenting conducting online outreach. I want to try out if we can do an effective outreach event using a google+ (video) hangout. Virtual outreach has a number of advantages: * No investment of time/effort/cost in travel * Personal attention to each participant (because of individual video/screenshare facilities.) * No complications of no laptops available at the venue or a limit on creating user names from a single IP address during the event * Lower dependency on institutions/college fests to organize an event for us. * Not limited by physical presence. Sitting in Kanyakumari, one can conduct outreach for interested folks in Kashmir! This is just a trial to test if online outreach is effective, doable and manageable. This could be one of the ways forward! (Potentially, we could have more community members doing more events with a more diverse audience.) I'm really excited. Fingers crossed! Thanks Nitika

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Ads Injected into Wikipedia?
by Aditya Sengupta 18 May '12

18 May '12

A friend got in touch with me about this. He is currently seeing advertisements on Wikipedia pages (on all pages except the home page). Here is a link to a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/dhKyR.jpg These advertisements were not visible to him when I asked him to check through the secure WM server. These advertisements are also not visible to him on any other web page. To the bottom right of each ad, there is some text that says, "ads not by this site". I've taken a quick look through the page source he forwarded, nothing looks untoward. His right-click menu does not appear when he right-clicks on the ad. He is based out of Mumbai and ISP is "Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Ltd". His IP address is 114.143.88.193 (or was, while he accessed this page; I've since had him change his IP address since I'm sharing this one). I'm not sure if this issue is restricted to Mumbai; since the IP address shows up in Pune when I try to geolocate it (though I understand this is fairly common). The link he is directed to when he clicks the ad is this: http://www.inkfruit.com/combo-landing?utm_source=CMP1002Combo&utm_medium=CP…. I'm adding this here and copying the founder of Inkfruit since the campaign data in the URL parameters may help identify the problem (also, I'm not sure if Inkfruit is aware of this campaign). I've copied my friend here in case there are further questions he could help answer. Could this be a case of DPI by his ISP, or simply malware on his machine? If it were the former, what would be the legal status of the issue?

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Wikimania 2012 scholarships
by Bala Jeyaraman 14 May '12

14 May '12

Hi all, Wikimania 2012 scholarships have been announced. Indian wikimedians who have been awarded full/partial scholarships - please enter your details in the page: http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wikimania2012 This will be helpful for mutual help with visa application, travel etc (last year it proved very helpful) - Bala

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Fwd: [Wikitech-l] GSoC announcement of students for 2012
by Srikanth Lakshmanan 09 May '12

09 May '12

Congrats to all folks who got through, specially to Ankur Anand, Akshay Chugh, Ashish Dubey, Suhas HS, Nischay Nahata who are the 5 Indians to get through under WMF. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 00:58 Subject: [Wikitech-l] GSoC announcement of students for 2012 To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/04/23/wmf-selects-9-students-for-gsoc/ Ankur Anand, integrating Flickr upload and geolocation into UploadWizard. Mentor: WMF engineer Ryan Kaldari Harry Burt, TranslateSvg ("Bringing the translation revolution to Wikimedia Commons"). Mentor: WMF engineer Max Semenik Akshay Chugh, making a convention/conference extension for MediaWiki. Mentor: volunteer developer Jure Kajzer Ashish Dubey, realtime collaboration in the upcoming visual editor. Mentor: WMF engineer Trevor Parscal Suhas HS, improvements to the OpenStackManager extension. Mentor: WMF engineer Ryan Lane Nischay Nahata, optimizing the performance of the Semantic MediaWiki extension. Mentor: volunteer developer Markus Krötzsch Aaron Pramana, watchlist grouping and workflow improvements. Mentor: volunteer developer Alex Emsenhuber Robin Pepermans, working on Incubator improvements and language support, Mentor: WMF engineer Niklas Laxström Platonides, a desktop application for mass-uploading files to Wikimedia Commons. Mentor: me (as project manager and mentor of record; Platonides will consult with technical experts) Congratulations. You are the most promising students among the 63 who applied, so we chose you to participate in our Google Summer of Code program. Please consult your mentor to discuss what you ought to do during the community bonding period (now till May 21). Students whom we did not accept: please don't despair. As you can see, you had a lot of very strong competition, and we only had nine slots. We encourage you to keep learning about open source, use our IRC channels and mailing lists, and even work on your projects as volunteers! Most of us got into this hobby without GSoC, and you can too. :-) -- Sumana Harihareswara Volunteer Development Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Regards Srikanth.L

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Wikimedians work for personal satisfaction, not politics or personal gain
by Ashwin Baindur 02 May '12

02 May '12

(In response to a certain remark in ‘Malayalam Wikipedia could be emulated’) (url - http://expressbuzz.com/topnews/%E2%80%98malayalam-wikipedia-could-be-emulat…) The Malayalam Wikimedian community definitely deserves kudos. A diverse bunch of people volunteered their effort and skills gratis for many years to build up what is already a major educational aid in Malayalam. This will play an actual positive role in community development and that is what the greatest reward to the participants. We are confident that they will go on with their exemplary work and prove to be sources of inspiration to us all in the years to come. That kind of satisfaction, at being part of something bigger than oneself and being able to make a difference in the world, motivates Wikimedians all over the world, as it does in India also. Human nature causes wikimedians to look to the statements of WMF officials for encouragement, advice and guidance (though imho they should not). In this context, Newstead's comment at the Wikisangamotsav in Kollam last weekend - "they don’t focus on politics or personal gains" - can be construed as mischievous in the worst case and mistaken in the best. Though the WMF does dole out some grants to individuals and communities, all Wikimedians are essentially unpaid volunteers, the vast majority of which do not have access to resources provided by the Foundation. Such a remark casts aspersions wrongly on the rest of the Indian wikipedian community, giving the casual reader the idea that the Malayalam Wikimedians are paragons of virtue while the remainder of the Indian Wikimedian community “focus on politics and personal gain”. The remark indicates a deep distrust of the WMF for the general community for reasons best known to them. Such a remark is hardly constructive in motivating the entire bunch of Indian Wikimedians who, as a collective whole, are making extremely valuable contributions to society despite being unpaid volunteers and at the cost of a large amount of personal time and often at their own expense. The question arises at what could be the reason for politics and what personal gains are to be found in doing Wikipedia editing or outreach? Satisfaction, learning, peer approval, interaction with intelligent fellow-believers, social service and fun are the personal gains for editors - all legitimate rewards which one can partake off with integrity and pride. Politics arises when scarce resources are pursued by many. It cannot be money, since all funds in Wikipedia are in the hands of the Foundation which directly receives donations. Nor is it power, as the community insists on it being a society of equals. The India Chapter with its few executive members and completely budgetted by the WMF and with its limited role & mandate cannot be considered worthy target of Newstead’s remark either. So what politics are we talking about and who is it that Newstead is referring to? Perhaps the WMF feels offended by the criticism from Wikimedians worldwide at the failure of a flagship educational program in India last year or perhaps at local criticism in their mode of operation in India and the cost-benefit analysis of their country program where hundreds of thousands of dollars have been poured in with mediocre results. Newstead may feel unhappy about these issues but public statements like these do not add to the confidence of the community in the WMF either. In today's world, participants in citizen science or collaborative projects such as Wikipedia expect the highest levels of transparency, democracy and debate - in part, Wikipedia’s open ethos itself is responsible for the extremely democratic aspirations of participants. Wikipedians routinely engage in large debates on major and minute issues. They absorb from their experience in the Project the idea that all action is open for debate and that such criticism/dissent is not only constructive but vital. It would be a strange quirk of fate, should an office-bearer of WMF feel threatened by the values encouraged by their own projects. This distrust may also be seen as a clash of cultures - on one side, a corporate culture where actions are expected to be accepted at face value and not to be justified to those not in power, and on the other, an open culture where nothing is sancrosanct and responsible action and respectful response from all, including and especially Jimbo Wales, is expected as a matter of moral right by volunteers. The meaningful solution lies through engaging the community as equals and stakeholders, not with public remarks like these. Wikimedian volunteers understand and express their gratitude to the foundation for creating and operating a vehicle which enables their useful contribution to society. Reciprocally, it is time that WMF representatives realise that it is the Wikimedian community that is the living flesh and blood of Wikipedia, without whom the WMF cannot exist, and who need to be engaged with mutual respect and consideration, if the encyclopedia is to prosper in the long run. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------

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<wikipedia-gu@lists.wikimedia.org>, <wikimedia-in-amd@lists.wikimedia.org>
by Konarak Ratnakar 01 May '12

01 May '12

*Hi all, There have been numerous outreach sessions organized all across India, so we decided to organize a WikiWorkshop of our own in Ahmedabad. :) We decided on the Electronics and Communication Engineering department at LD Engineering College as the venue a couple of weeks earlier. This was mainly because Harsh was confident that we would be able to obtain all the permissions to use a classroom in time. The date was pretty convenient since it was a state-wide holiday due to Parshuram Jayanti. We had also invited Hisham to be a part of the event during Office hours on 19 April 2012. Hisham accepted our invitation to fly in and help us conduct the workshop. Nitika followed up with the presentations and offered to help us with event planning. Arnav Sonara, a Gujarati and English Wikipedia volunteer translated parts of Nitika’s presentation into the Gujarati language. We received confirmation of participation from 42 students through a Google Docs based sign up page created by me. This was very heartening and we expected at least half of the students to actually turn up for the event. ;) Hisham landed in Ahmedabad at 8.40am and was available at the venue around 9.30am. Anirudh and I joined in later. Hisham guided Harsh and I through the presentation he was carrying so that Harsh could use them later for future workshops in the city. The time period before the scheduled time for the session was spent discussing ideas with regard to the purpose and objectives of outreach. Hisham opined that it is important to keep pursuing the newbies after they attend outreach sessions and workshops, while Anirudh said that was probably not the best use of scarce volunteer time, which could be better spent contributing to the projects themselves, and helping those editors who approach the veteran contributors on their own accord. We are interested in learning from the follow-up work that the WMF India team has done with regard to the programs it has run in the past and its direct success with the recruitment of new editors. We hope this will start a useful discussion. Seventeen people turned up for the workshop. This included Vyom Majmudar, a veteran Gujarati Wikipedia and a frequent Wikisource editor and Karthik Mistry, a Debian geek and FOSS advocate. I commenced the session by introducing Hisham to the participants. Hisham then began with his presentation. The agenda of this workshop was to acquaint the participants basics of Wikipedia editing - five pillars, notability guidelines, followed by a short editing session. Hisham guided the participants through the first four pillars of Wikipedia but did not speak about the fifth pillar ([[WP:IAR|There are no firm rules on Wikipedia]]). He told me that it would be a bit too advanced for new editors to understand, and then asked to explain it to the participants. Anirudh also elaborated on the third pillar of Wikipedia ([[Wikipedia:Wikipedia is free content]]) that Wikipedia not only provides content free of charge, but that the users of the website are free to edit, use, modify and distribute the content. Free as in free beer, and free as in free speech and free markets. :) After the presentation was concluded, eleven people stayed back in the workshop out of which five were completely new to editing. We edited both the English and Gujarati Wikipedia projects. [[w:gu:User:Shaildve]] created three stubs while being guided by Vyom. [[User:Chirayu.Chiripal]], who, by the way, does not speak Gujarati, has started contributing to Gujarati Wikipedia by making templates. \m/ The City Bhaskar covered the story on the workshop.[1][2] Many thanks to Noopur Raval for connecting us with the journalist. Overall, we think there is scope for improvement in the way we present Wikimedia projects to new users. Some of the topics we touched and discussed such as notability guidelines, referencing and the five pillars could have been presented in a more coherent manner. These are some of the things we will be working on in the near future and would really like to take help from more veteran Wikipedia editors to promote our projects in the state of Gujarat. (Ashwin, are you listening? :P) TL;DR: The Ahmedabad workshop was organized by Konarak Ratnakar and Harsh Kothari on 24 April 2012. Seventeen participants attended the event. Anirudh Bhati (Wikimedia India) and Hisham Mundol (WMF India Programs) were also present. Hisham addressed the new users initially with a presentation, and later the experienced contributors trained and answered the newbies. It was great to have two veteran contributors like Vyom and Anirudh around, who helped out greatly during the sessions. There is a lot of scope for improvement in the quality of our outreach sessions and each and every one of these events contributes to their constant improvement. Best regards, Konarak Ratnakar (with inputs from Anirudh Bhati) [1] http://epaper.divyabhaskar.co.in/detail.php?id=119618&boxid=42415839921&vie…<http://epaper.divyabhaskar.co.in/detail.php?id=119618&boxid=42415839921&vie…> [2] http://www.divyabhaskar.co.in/article/MGUJ-AHM-c-69-843564-3161426.html*

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WikimediaIndia-l April 2012