---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arjuna Rao Chavala <arjunaraoc(a)gmail.com>
Date: 2013/8/15
Subject: Wikimedia India Board(EC) Elections-2013 - Results
To: wmin-members <wmin-members(a)googlegroups.com>, Wikimedia India EC <
wikimedia-in-exec(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: <masked>
Hi,
We completed the election process for Wikimedia India Chapter Executive
Committee (EC) Elections for year 2013 in today's Annual General Body
Meeting. We are happy to announce the results of the Election.
Total eligible Voters: 66 (Excluding 3 members of the Election Committee,
who cant' vote as per the Election rules)
Votes polled: 27 (26 by post and 1 in person), (40.9%)
Valid votes: 26
Invalid vote:1
Candidate- Votes polled
Jayanta Nath - 17
Moksh Juneja - 17
Nikhil Kawale - 3
Santosh Shingare - 6
Yohann Thomas - 7
Hence, Jayanta Nath and Moksh Juneja are declared as elected to EC for the
two vacant positions for term 2013-2015.
We congratulate Jayanta and Moksh. We thank EC, all the candidates and
members for active participation in the Election process.
We thank the outgoing Executive Committee led by Sudhanwa for all their
contributions. We wish the new EC all the best for growing the movement
and the chapter in future.
Sincerely,
Arjuna Rao Chavala, Tinu Cherian, Radhakrishna A
Election Committee for EC Elections-2013
Wikimedia India Chapter
Dear all,
Sincere apologies for delay in sending the bulletin. We have worked on
changing the format of the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To
Knowledge (CIS-A2K) monthly bulletin. Please find below the details of
our work in the last two months (i.e. June and July 2013) as a single
bulletin. We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions on how
we can improve the bulletin at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge
Indian Language Wikipedia Statistics April to September 2013 (by T.
Vishnu Vardhan; Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi June 30, 2013):
The Access to Knowledge team carried out quantitative analysis to
identify trends and growth patterns in Indian Language Wikipedias over
the time period from September 2012 to April 2013. Though it is
difficult for the A2K programme to take direct credit for the growth
or lack of it the programme's support has been one of the key factors
in impacting the growth of the Wikimedia projects and communities in
India since the commencement of the project. Primary focus areas of
the statistics are: growth of articles, Active editors, Monthly growth
of new editors, Monthly pageviews and New editors statistics from
outreach events organized or supported by A2K programme. Link:
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics
￭ Workshops
● Wikipedia editing workshop for participants from 10 civil society
institutions from across India at the Institute of Internet and
Society, Bangalore (Organized by the A2K team members T. Vishnu
Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi, June 9, 2013)
● A 'Kannada' Wikipedia Workshop for Bloggers (organized by CIS-A2K
Team, Suchitra, Bengaluru, June 23, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted
the workshop. Link:
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-bloggers
● Digital Humanities for Indian Higher Education (co-organised by
HEIRA-CSCS, Tumkur University, CILHE-TISS and CCS, Indian Institute of
Science, July 13, 2013). Link:
http://cis-india.org/openness/events/digital-humanities-for-indian-higher-e…
● A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (organized by CIS-A2K team, July 21,
2013, Hubli). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave training to the participants on
Wikipedia. Leading newspapers like Times of India, Vijaya Karnataka,
Deccan Herald, VijayaVani, Prajavani, Samyukta Karnataka and
HosaDiganta covered the event. Scanned versions of the published
articles can be viewed here
(http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/hubli-workshop-press-coverage.zip).
Link: http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-at-hubli
● Telugu Wikipedia Training Workshop (organized by CIS-A2K Team in
collaboration with Telugu Jati Nava Nirmana Samstha, Hyderabad, July
21, 2013). Dr. Rajasekhar (Telugu WP admin) and T. Vishnu Vardhan
conducted the workshop. Link: http://bit.ly/13Z00Ue
● A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Sagara (organized by CIS-A2K team,
Sagara, July 28, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Wikipedia and
Kannada Wikipedia. Link:
http://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wiki-workshop-at-sagara
● Odia Wikipedia Training Workshop at the Veer Surendra Sai University
of Technology (Organized by Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal and
supported by CIS-A2K programme, July 26, 2013). Event link:
http://or.wikipedia.org/s/gqw
● Telugu Wiki Academy at Centre for Good Governance (co-organised by
A2K team and Telugu Wikipedia community, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad,
April 9, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan was a speaker at this event. Link:
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/telegu-wiki-academy-at-centre-for-good-g…
￭ Meetups
● First Telugu Wiki Meetup @ CIS, Bangalore (co-organised by Telugu
Wikipedia community and A2K on June 2, 2013). S.J. Veera conducted the
meet-up. Link: http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/telegu-wiki-meet-up-at-cis-june-2-2013
● Second monthly Telugu Wiki Meetup @ CIS, Bangalore (co-organized by
Telugu Wikipedia community and A2K on July 13, 2013). Event link:
http://goo.gl/zVueaO
● Telugu Wikipedia Meetup @ Theatre Outreach Unit, Hyderabad
(co-organised by TE WP community, ToU and A2K on July 21, 2013). T.
Vishnu Vardhan spoke on Copyright-Creative Commons and Wikipedia.
Link: http://bit.ly/14ctSxr
￭ Upcoming / Ongoing Events
● A Workshop on Posting Articles in Kannada on Wikipedia (organised by
the Centre for Proficiency Development Placement Service, University
of Mysore, CPDPS premises, Manasagangotri, August 6, 2013). Dr. U.B.
Pavanaja will conduct a workshop. The announcement
(http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/stress-on-pos…)
was made in an article by R. Krishna Kumar in the Hindu on August 2,
2013. Link: http://cis-india.org/news/hindu-r-krishna-kumar-august-2-2013-stress-on-pos…
● Wikipedia Training workshop for students at the St. Xavier College,
Goa Wikipedia
● Training workshop for students from Library Science Department at
the Goa University, Goa Wikipedia
● Training workshop for students from Konkani language Department at
the Goa University, Goa
￭ Events Participated
● Free Software (organized by Free Software Movement of Karnataka in
partnership with Jnana Vikas Institute of Technology, Bidadi, July 24,
2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja presented about Wikipedia in this event.
Link: http://cis-india.org/news/free-software
● Institute of Internet and Society, Bangalore (participated by A2K
team, T. Vishnu Vardhan presented about “Building Knowledge Bases and
Platforms via Mass Collaboration on the Internet” Presentation Link:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Building_Knowledge_Bases_and_Platfor…,
Event Link: http://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/instit…
￭ Media Coverage (including videos)
● A Feature on Wikipedia and Telugu Wikipedians (HMTV, May 30-31,
2013). Watch the video:
http://cis-india.org/news/hmtv-may-30-2013-wikipedia-and-telegu-wikipedians
● Wikipedia Live Phone-in Programme (HMTV, June 1, 2013). T. Vishnu
Vardhan took part in a one hour live phone-in programme on Wikipedia.
Video: http://cis-india.org/news/wikipedia-live-phone-in-programme
● Wiki donors (by Akhila Seetharaman, TimeOut Bengaluru, June 21,
2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja are quoted. Link:
http://cis-india.org/news/timeout-bengaluru-akhila-seetharaman-june-21-2013…
● Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hasan (Prajavani, June 5, 2013). Dr.
U.B. Pavanaja conducted the workshop on June 4, 2013. Link:
http://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-june-5-2013-kannada-wikipedia-workshop-…
● Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hasan (Samyukta Karnataka, June 5,
2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop on June 4, 2013. Link:
http://cis-india.org/news/samyukta-karnataka-june-5-2013-kannada-wikipedia-…
● Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hasan (Vijaya Karnataka, June 5,
2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop on June 4, 2013. Link:
http://cis-india.org/news/vijaya-karnataka-june-5-2013-report-of-kannada-wi…
● Wiki Rahasya: Panel Discussion (Suvarna News, June 13, 2013). Dr.
U.B.Pavanaja participated in a panel discussion around Wikipedia in
general and about Kannada Wikipedia in specific. Link:
http://cis-india.org/news/suvarna-news-june-13-2013-wiki-rahasya-panel-disc…
￭ Blog Entry
● Wikipedia Visual Editor (by Nitika Tandon, June 27, 2013). Link:
http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/visual-editor.pdf/view
● My First Wikipedia Training Workshop – Theatre Outreach Unit,
University of Hyderabad (Organized by A2K team, attended by T. Vishnu
Vardhan) Link: http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop
Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia
movement in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in
Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish
Panigrahi and one member Nitika Tandon in Delhi. 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.
--
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
https://bitly.com/CISA2K
Hi,<br/><br/>After the visit of the Creative Commons team in February, 2013, we've put together a mailing list for India. The same can be accessed here - http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-india/.<br/><br/>Please subscribe if you're interested. If you were at any of the events in Delhi, Mumbai or Bengaluru where they took down email ids, and had expressed interest in being part of the list, an invite was sent today evening.<br/><br/>Warm regards,<br/>Pradeep Mohandas<br/><br/>Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPhone
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pranav Curumsey <curumsey(a)gmail.com>
Date: 13 August 2013 18:31
Subject: [WMIN-Members] NCERT portal goes CC-BY-SA
Hi folks,
Savithri just gave me some wonderful news. The new National Repository of
Open Education Resources has been launched, and Dr. Tharoor, the HRD
Minister announced its licensed under CC-BY-SA! *http://nroer.in/home/*
Iv been following up with Dr. Tharoor and NCERT for about 6 months now,
pushing for this. Thanks to Gautam, Tinu, Savithri, Dr. Nagarjuna and
everyone else who helped make this happen. It is certainly a major win for
us as a chapter to be a part of this and a major win for OER in India.
--
Kind Regards,
Pranav Curumsey
Thanks Pranav for sharing.
<to WikimediaIndia-l>
Hi
2013/8/14 Savithri Singh <singh.savithri(a)gmail.com>
> Hi,
>
> 30 (Classes IX and X) of the 334 NCERT textbooks are already available.
> The rest should be up in time!.
>
> http://nroer.gov.in/home/
>
> We need to get more people to contribute to the site by way of images,
> text, whatever!!
>
> NCERT books are in English, Hindi and Urdu. We need to get States
> activated so that they give in their books in the the local languages!!
>
> Congratulations all - its been a long struggle - several of us have been
> in discussion with educators/NCERT over a long time for materials to go CC
> By SA - and Pranav's interaction with Shashi Tharoor clinched it!!
>
> :-) Thanks for the update and background to this milestone.
Congratulations to yourself, Pranav and everyone associated with this
accomplishment. I hope this can help in convincing similar state government
bodies also to release their content under free license.
Cheers
Arjuna
Dear All,
My self Santosh Shingare, Nominated candidate for the Executive Committee
Elections-2013. As per last IRC meeting with Election Committee, I
requested to display voter list publicly (without email id or mobile no)
but the Election Committee said it will not be published online even
though in rules ( for Wikimedia chapter official positions) it is
specifically mention that voter list should be displayed 21 days before
election date.
Please check following link for detail :-
*
*
1)IRC Meeting log :-
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats/July_30,2013
2) Elections and Appointment Rules for WIkimedia Chapter Official
positions:-
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/images/7/75/WMINElectionAndAppointmentRules.pdf
B. Voter’s List :-
*3. Copy of Final Voters’ List shall be available at Registered office of
the Society at least*
*twenty one days ahead of the Election Day and in the Election premises (if
some other*
*Venue is selected as for conduct of Ballot) on the day of voting for
inspection of Voters*
*In protest of not displaying voter list publicly, I kindly request to all
Wikimedia voter member please don't vote for me, I am not participating in
Election.*
Thank you
---
Santosh M. Shingare
Congratulations to Wikimedia India Chapter, Pranav , Savithri and all
those who had been part of this effort.
I want to especially acknowledge the efforts of Pranav Curumsey. who has
been putting his heart to this, following up and meeting the Minister
Shashi Tharoor. I hope the NCERT textbooks also will be available in CC by
SA license soon.
Thank you, all.
Regards
Tinu Cherian
On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Pranav Curumsey <curumsey(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Savithri just gave me some wonderful news. The new National Repository of
> Open Education Resources has been launched, and Dr. Tharoor, the HRD
> Minister announced its licensed under CC-BY-SA! *http://nroer.in/home/*
>
> Iv been following up with Dr. Tharoor and NCERT for about 6 months now,
> pushing for this. Thanks to Gautam, Tinu, Savithri, Dr. Nagarjuna and
> everyone else who helped make this happen. It is certainly a major win for
> us as a chapter to be a part of this and a major win for OER in India.
>
> --
> Kind Regards,
> Pranav Curumsey
>
>
>
>
*Times of India : "Wikipedia will go ‘secure’ to beat NSA surveillance"*
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/internet/Wikipedia-will-g…
*Just days after reports revealed that National Security Agency (NSA) in
the US actively looked at what people read on Wikipedia, Wikimedia
Foundation announced on its website that it would implement HTTPS for
logged-in users.
The foundation, a non-profit organization, manages Wikipedia. The S in
HTTPS stands for secure.
Two days ago, Guardian newspaper revealed that with the help of a tool
called XKeyscore, NSA was monitoring web users who accessed Wikipedia, the
world's 7th most popular website.
Wikimedia said that to start with, it would offer HTTPS connection to all
logged-in users from August 21. It will then gradually roll-out HTTPS for
all users as well as implement additional security measures to make it
harder for governments to snoop on Wikipedia users. However, it did not
specify any deadlines for the additional security measures.
Following the Guardian report, Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia,
had revealed on Twitter that the website was planning to switch to HTTPS
from HTTP but there were a few bugs that had delayed the process.
"Our current architecture cannot handle HTTPS by default, but we've been
incrementally making changes to make it possible. Since we appear to be
specifically targeted by XKeyscore, we'll be speeding up these efforts,"
Wikimedia said on its website.
On Friday Wales announced the Wikimedia decision and tweeted, "I challenge
the rest of the industry to join us. Encryption is a human rights issue."
HTTPS is more secure compared to HTTP. Websites using HTTPS establish a
secure connection between their servers and the user's computer and greatly
minimize the privacy risk. The secure connection means that third parties
like government agencies or internet service providers (ISPs) can not read
the content of data that a website and its users exchange.
However, the government agencies, hackers and internet service providers
can still collect this data and possibly read it if they can break the
encryption.
Initially, only banks and other organizations mindful of cyber security
risks used HTTPS. But gradually email service providers and e-commerce
websites started using it on their login pages. Currently, popular websites
like Google, Facebook and Twitter use HTTPS but the majority of websites,
including big ones like Yahoo! still rely on HTTP.
*
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
Important Note : Non-commercial reproduction for informative purposes only.
The publisher ( Times of India ) of the above news article owns the
copyrights of the article / content. All copyrights are duly acknowledged.
*Times of India : "Malayalam Wikipedia chugs on as more contributions pour
in "*
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JS1JLTy8yMDEzLzA4Lz…
*
After two successful attempts to expand its database, the Malayalam
Wikipedia’s third edition of Malayalam Loves Wikipedia project is also
gaining strength.
The project aims at uploading copyright-free images to Wikimedia
Commons, an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media
files. More than 10,000 pictures have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons,
since the project was launched on July 25.
One of the biggest language wiki communities, Malayalam Wikipedia has
got overwhelming response for its first and second edition of Malayalam
Loves Wikipedia project in the past two years. In 2011, the duration was
two weeks and as many as 2,155 images were uploaded.
Last year, the number had risen to 11,159. This edition will conclude
on August 15. Images ranging from Malayali’s favourite snack, kumbilappam,
to rare birds have been uploaded.
“We are not free to use all images available in Google. Malayalam Loves
Wikipedia is a platform to share copyright-free images, videos, audio
clips, books, PDF files etc., to Wikimedia Commons for the benefit of
users. Wikimedia Commons has more than one crore media files and images.
But images related to Kerala are limited. Our aim is to persuade people to
contribute more,” said K Manoj, an active Wikimedian.
A similar programme, Wiki Loves Monument, was launched last year, where
copyright-free images of monuments were uploaded to Wikipedia. The project
witnessed huge participation from India and the prize winning picture, Tomb
of Safdarjung, was uploaded from the country.
Malayalam Wikipedia is active with other interesting projects such as
wiki nikhandu (wiktionary), wiki chollukal (wikiquotes), wiki grandasala
(wikisource), wiki padasala (wikibooks) and wiki sarvakalasala
(wikiversity) as well. Many people including school students are active
wikimedians in grandasala, where copyright-free books are being uploaded. *
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
Important Note : Non-commercial reproduction for informative purposes only.
The publisher ( Times of India ) of the above news article owns the
copyrights of the article / content. All copyrights are duly acknowledged.