Dear all,
This year, we received 11,000 images if monuments in Wiki Loves Monuments
India 2013. Over a month, the jury team has been working on to select and
nominate best images for the WLM international contest and thus also
selecting the winning images of India contest. Here are they:
http://www.wikilovesmonuments.in/here-are-the-winners-of-the-wiki-loves-mon…
I would like to take a moment to thank all those who helped to make this
happen. Thank you Naveen and Kiran Ravikumar for sharing your shoulders.
Thanks to jury <http://www.wikilovesmonuments.in/jury/> for sending their
valuable time in reviewing images. Also thanks to Pavithra, Arun Ganesh and
Manoranjan for been part of special jury. Never to forget the international
team for their kind help at all the times!
Thanks to Wikimedia India for funding the contest, to INTACH for partnering
it for the first time. Apologies if I have missed anyone, but you shall
also owe a thousand of thanks from the WLM team.
*PS: *Could you help us spread the work through media, get in touch with me
or Naveen or Kiran!!
Regards,
Karthik Nadar.
On behalf of WLM India team.
FYI,
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Matthew Roth <mroth(a)wikimedia.org>
The Wikimedia Foundation has published a blog post announcing that we have
sent a cease and desist letter to WikiPR. The letter demands the firm cease
editing Wikipedia sites until it complies with the conditions of the
Wikipedia community's ban, as well as any further conditions that might be
set out by the Board, the community or the WMF.
Read more on the Wikimedia blog here:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/19/wikimedia-foundation-sends-cease-and-…
thanks,
Matthew
--
Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
www.wikimediafoundation.org
*https://blog.wikimedia.org <https://blog.wikimedia.org>*
Dear all,
We thank you all for your support and collaboration. Please find below the details of our work in the month of October 2013.
Train the Trainer Program
Wikipedians, about 20 of them, from 10 different cities, speaking 8 different languages, joined together for the first ever four days "Train the Trainer Program" organised by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team in Bangalore from October 3 to 6, 2013. CIS-A2K organised the residency training program to build capacities amongst different language Wikimedia communities. A good diversity of Wikipedians from various language communities such as Bengali, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Odia, came over for the event. Two prominent reasons identified for organizing the event were the limitations of a virtual sphere and the limited number of Wikipedians leading outreach activities. Seventeen people participated in the event: http://bit.ly/18hjw0n
► Events Organised
Workshop on Wikipedia in the Indian Undergraduate Language Classrooms (October 1, 203, Christ University, Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop: http://bit.ly/HIiC30.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/బెంగుళూరు/అక్టోబర్ (UTC, Bangalore, October 12, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk: http://bit.ly/1hpmXrt.
Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization (Goa University, October 19-20, 2013). CIS-A2K team conducted the workshop. Thirty-seven people participated in the event: http://bit.ly/1a9m8N2. Nitika Tandon shares a detailed blog post on the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC License: http://bit.ly/1cm9wBH.
► Event Participated In
Re-sourcing Indian Cinema: Humanities Research, New Archives and Collaborative Knowledge Production (organised by the Centre for Contemporary Studies and the Centre for Study of Culture and Society, October 29, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan gave a talk on “Let Cinephiles Collaborate: Pleasures and Perils of Indian Film History on Wikipedia”: http://bit.ly/18Obr2P.
► Media Coverage
CIS gave its inputs for the following media coverage:
Mangalore: Konkani writers resolve to form all-India forum at JKS conference (Daijiworld, October 1, 2013): http://bit.ly/1ek8AzW.
Wikipedia in Indian Languages on Mobile Phones (by Megha Prakash, Sci Dev Net, October 15, 2013): http://bit.ly/Hfh7sI.
कोंकणी विश्वकोश ‘विकिपीडिया’वर (Navprabha Daily, October 22, 2013). A detailed article about the digitalization of Konkani Vishwakosh: http://bit.ly/18J3YlB.
Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of six members, four based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Muzammiluddin Syed, one member Nitika Tandon in Delhi and one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here (http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters). Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.
About CIS
The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.
Follow us elsewhere
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://cis-india.org
Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.
Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil(a)cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant(a)cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu(a)cis-india.org
CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.
Thanks
Nitika Tandon
Panaji: DKA organizes two day Konkani Wikipedia workshop
http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=202110
Panaji, Nov 18: Inorder to showcase Romi Konknni on a global platform, Dalgado Konknni Akademi (DKA) organized a two day Konkani Wikipedia workshop November 16 and November 17 for Romi Konknni writers in collaboration with Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme, Bangalore.
The workshop which was held at Krishnadas Shama Central Library was attended by 30 Romi Konknni writers including editors of Romi Konknni periodicals.
The workshop was conducted by enthusiastic Nitika Tandon, Goa incharge and Programme Manager of Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme.
Among those who attended the Romi Konknni Wikipedia Workshop were young writers Nevena Furtado, Frank Fernandes, Venisha Fernandes, Anselmo Fernandes, tiatrist Mario Menezes, Konkani scholar and researcher Fr Pratap Naik, besides editor of ‘Gulab’ and ‘The Goan Review’ Fausto V da Costa, newly appointed editor of ‘Vavraddeancho Ixtt’ Fr Eusebio Gomes and editor of ‘Amcho Avaz’ weekly Tomazinho Cardozo.
DKA President Premanand A Lotlikar while welcoming the participants explained the importance of building up Romi Konknni Wikipedia. Treasurer Walter Menezes proposed the vote of thanks, and secretary Jose Salvador Fernandes co-ordinated the two days workshop.
Thanks
Nitika Tandon
Dear all ,
Some happy news for all of us .
The School curriculum steering commitee of Kerala Govt's SCERT(State
Council Educational Research and Training) decided 3 majors points in our
interest yesterday
1. SCERT is improving Book printing infrastructure by shifting from Adobe
's softwares to FOSS based XeTeX and free licesned fonts.
2. They will shift from ASCII to Unicode . This will also help in universal
access for differentially abled via technologies like Text to Speech even
in Malayalam Language .
3. The books will be licensed under CC-BY-SA .
Official Order is still pending. But I am posting this since it is already
in media reports.
Read a repotrt in TOI
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/Now-free-software-to…
The Change will be applicable to all newly publishing books from now
Starting from Malayalam Text books in 5, 7, and 11th standards
Myself, Hrishikesh K.B and a team from Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (
http://smc.org) are working closely with SCERT from last to help them in
initiating this change process.
Thanks to Dr. P.K Thilak, Research Officer SCERT , Director SCERT, and
Biju Prabhakar IAS (Director of Public Instruction, Govt of Kerala ) for
initiating this Change.
~ regards
Anivar Aravind
Secretary
Swathanthra Malaalam Computing
http://smc.org.in
Ph. 09448063780
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/business/media/editing-wikipedia-pages-fo…
--
Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD
Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications
(HEIRA)
Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS)
Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)
Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Humanities, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
Advisor, Access to Knowledge Programme, Centre for Internet and Society
Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute
of Science (CCS-IISc)
t: 91-80-41202302
http://heira.inwww.cscs.res.in
On Fri, 2013-11-15 at 22:52 +0530, A. Mani wrote:
> > Read a report in TOI
> > http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/Now-free-software-to…
>
> As usual "The committee on Wednesday also took a bold step to make
> all the educational material copyright-free. "
>
> How is "CC BY-SA 3.0" copyright-free?
>
Usual misconception! recently I met people who are vocal advocates of
CC in India, they also hold this misconception.
--
GN
One of the major policies of Wikipedia is the idea that content should
cite reliable sources. With libraries having good content in short
supply in the country it is not surprising that many editors cite
blogs, non specialist websites or stray news reports and these are
often reverted, particularly on the English Wikipedia.
A suggestion that we need to complement such systems as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RX (which is doing a great job as far
as scholarly journals in English go) has gathered some interest from
both the A2K project and the India Chapter. Perhaps either of these
bodies could apply for the needed funds and appoint specific
individual editors who would have members to the specific libraries
and act as clearing agents - gathering requests from bonafide editors,
obtaining digital versions of the sources needed and providing them in
a time bound way. This post is just to open out this suggestion for
discussion. Suggestions on quality libraries, research services, costs
and ways in which this ought to operate are welcome.
A model to examine is the German
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Literaturstipendium (use
Google translate to get some sense of what it is)
A few libraries that might be worth examining for India specific content
http://www.hathitrust.org/http://www.goethals.in/http://www.delnet.nic.in/
Non-copyrighted content that is obtained could be contributed to the
Internet Archive http://www.archive.org while the rest could be
privately archived for the sake of keeping record. Of course all this
would require that checks to see if content is already available on
free and open-access digital libraries, dspace repositories and so on.
In addition editors seeking research material may need to demonstrate
some interest in improving specific Wikipedia articles that they
indicate.
In addition, perhaps there should be an effort to work with librarians
themselves to see if the can consider pro bono support for Wikipedia
researchers esp. working with Indian language content. Let us not
forget the L and the A in GLAM.
best wishes
Shyamal
en:User:Shyamal
Hello,
Some of you may know that I was in Berlin, Germany attending the Wikimedia
Diversity Conference [1].
I presented on the language diversity in India and the kind of challenges
and opportunities it presents to the Wikimedia movement at large. Other
than reflecting on the work Wikimedia communities in India, WMIN and
CIS-A2K are doing, I have also proposed and talked briefly about a new
project called WikiSpeech.
As per the 2013 PLSI there are 780 languages in India and we have just
about 20 Indian language Wikipedias. Most of these languages are oral
cultures and are spoken by small pockets of the population. Thus it may not
make much sense for these communities to have a Wikipedia or any of the
Wikimedia projects that are text/script intensive. I deeply believe that
WikiSpeech can go a long way in preserving the language diversity in India
and the world at large. I was thinking through a model based on the work
done by a) George A. Grierson during 1898-1928 (the first Linguistic Survey
of India); b) the recent PLSI work (2013); c) CG Net Swara (which
effectively leveraged mobile in creating a community led journalistic
venture in the tribal language of Gonds of central India); and d)
www.pad.ma(a platform that allows one to annotate visual and audio.
The code is
open-source).
These are initial ideas and are very much unbaked. The presentation, I
did, only has one slide and may not give a lot of detail, but if any one of
you is interested, I will be more than glad to discuss this off-list. I
have also had a long conversation with Gerard Meijssen about Wiki-Data and
the possibilities of opening up knowledge for diverse linguistic
communities in India.
You can find the link to the presentation [2] and the etherpad [3]. A
Round-up session on Geographic diversity and Language pluralism on
Wikimedia was also organized. You can see brief discussion here [4].
I am thankful to the Wikimedia Diversity Conference organizers for the
travel and stay scholarship they have provided. Look forward to hearing
your thoughts and ideas on, if and how could we develop these ideas further.
Best,
Vishnu
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Diversity_Conference
[2]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:So_Many_Languages-_Challenges_and_O…
[3] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/wikimedia-movement-india
[4] https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/roundup3