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
------------------------------------------------------
Hi,
We welcome you to place a bid for hosting WikiConference India 2016.
The bid consists of two rounds. The first round will be a simple round
to encourage participation. The aim of the first round is to confirm
the local community support and strength. The first 5 qualifying
cities of the first round will participate in the second and final
round of bidding with an elaborate plan.
First Round Bidding Criteria
City and proposed venue. This city should have at least a domestic airport.
Wikimedia signatures of active Wikimedia projects editors who commit
to be involved in organizing this in your city
Link to any Wikimedia project village pump where the bid has been
approved with community consensus (not mandatory but highly
recommended)
Proposed overall budget to conduct an event with 500 registered
participants (including the accommodation cost for 100 scholarship
recipients for 3 days).
Prior experience conducting similar event(s)
Please place your bids here before 18th October 2015 11:59 PM IST.
Please do indicate the names and contact details of two people from
whom any clarifications or queries can be sought regarding your city
bid. Please do note that bids need to be supported by consensus from
the community and the link to the discussion where this is forthcoming
may please be indicated.
Regards,
WCI 2016 Volunteers
Hi All,
I've been working on visualizing editor behaviour on wikipedia over the
past few months. Below is the first set of graphs & some of the results.
- This presentation will help explain the data in the graphs & how to
interpret them. (
http://slides.com/cosmiclattes/edit-activity-graphs-analysis)
- The graphs https://cosmiclattes.github.io/wikigraphs/data/wikis.
Checkout the slides before you jump into the graphs :-)
- The project page
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Editor_Behaviour_Analysis_%26_Grap…
Some numbers about the graphs.
- For the graphs showing data from 'en' - the english wikipedia I
crunched 790~ million edits and turned it into a 180 * 180 matrix of data.
- All the graphs are plotted from this 180 * 180 matrix, so it might
take a few seconds to load.
- The graphs are interactive, they have a filter on the top of the page.
Play with them.
Some preliminary results
- The monthly decline in active editors in en may be attributed to the
old timers. We see this across other languages too.
- Only the articles in the (beginning - 2007) cohorts continue to see
active edit activity.
- Retention rates are much higher in languages like de.
- zh (continues to show uptrend on many fronts. Active Editors,
retention etc).
Jeph
Greetings from Wikimedia India.
The current WMIN EC is doing its best to bring better governance &
transparency initiatives.
Election for the 2 executive committee seats is just around the corner. As
we have no serving president right now, the WMIN Executive Committee has
appointed Yohann Thomas as the President for the interim period. As soon as
the new Executive Committee is formed, new office bearers will be elected.
WMIN EC has also appointed Election Committee which comprises of the
following members:
- *Srinivas Rao DB : Returning Officer *
- *Chinmayi SK: Polling Officer*
- *Subas Chandra Rout: Polling Officer*
- *Yogesh KS: Polling Officer*
The Election Committee will be notifying & conducting the election to
Wikimedia India Chapter EC for the term of two year.
They'll be announcing the election timeline & electrol list very soon
WMIN EC requests you all to please cooperate with the Election Committee
during the entire process.
Regards,
Sanket Oswal
Dear all,
We're planning to celebrate "Software Freedom Day" in Bengaluru tomorrow.
This wasn't planned before and it is such a short notice for you all. We
would keep it an open discussion related to software freedom, free software
policy lobbying and what each of us could do in our
individual/organizational capacity to take free software to more users. We
could also do a small sprint to install or share details about free
software tools for those who are interested. The registration page is here:
http://cis-india.org/openness/events/software-freedom-day-2015-bengaluru
We'd take the event details to an Wiki soon. Please bear with the very
quick last minute update, sincere apologies. Please do see if you could
take some time out after all your scheduled commitments and join. :)
Those who cannot make it could wave on social media with the hash
#sfd2015SFD.
best,
Subha
@subhapa
Dear all,
CIS-A2K would like to share with you the newsletter below for the month of August 2015. We look forward to hear any feedback or input you might have.
Odia Wikipedia (available at <https://or.wikipedia.org> or.wikipedia.org), an Indian-language Wikipedia project, celebrated thirteen years of free knowledge contribution in June 2015. It was one of the first four Indic Wikipedias (Assamese, malayalam and Punjabi being the other three)to have started in 2002. The first edit on the Wikipedia was made on 3 June 2002. Currently the project has over 8,900 articles and about 17 active editors (also known as "uikiali"). The voluntary editor community has put its efforts into acquiring valuable content, re-licensing them under Creative Commons (CC) licenses, and building tools for acquiring more encyclopedic content from various sources.
Odia Wikipedia community assessment survey June 2015. It gives an overview about the various hindrances for the growth of Odia Wikipedia and the community.
During the thirteenth anniversary celebrations, the community came together to assess community needs, address issues that had been identified earlier via irc and mailing list discussions, and identify priority areas to focus on in the future. Odia Wikipedia administrators Mrutyunjaya Kar and Subhashish Panigrahi designed a needs assessment survey. (https://or.wikipedia.org/s/tnp) Participating Wikimedians were asked to discuss various problems they face in editing and outreach two major areas that ensures quality standards. .
Two-fifths of participants said that problems with the rendering of Odia characters in different operating systems, ignorance or lack of more documentation about enabling encoding for Odia, input methods and keyboard layouts, and other font- and keyboard-related issues as the major reason for low readership and contribution on Wikipedia.
. . .Read more in the Wikimedia blog at: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/08/21/odia-wikipedia-celebrates-13/
== Event organized/participated ==
(CIS-A2K events page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events)
⬤ Telugu Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Annamacharya library (http://cis-india.org/openness/events/rare-telugu-religious-and-historical-w… ):
On 6 August a Telugu Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted at Annamacharya library to preserve rare Telugu literature text. Annamacharya library has a rare collection of the religious and historical works in Telugu language. This event was conducted by Telugu Wikipedia Community and the Centre for Internet & Society's Access To Knowledge program. The second iteration of the event was organized on 31 August.
⬤ Tamil Virtual University workshop (http://cis-india.org/openness/events/workshop-on-digital-collaborations-in-… ):
On 8-9 August, a two-day long workshop on digital collaborations in Tamil-language was organized by Tamil Virtual University, Anna University Campus, Chennai. U.B.Pavanaja, on behalf of CIS-A2K, participated in this event. Four major topics discussed during the event were: Digitization, Research and Development, e-learning and Open source and Outreach.
⬤ SDM Ujire Kannada workshop:
(http://cis-india.org/openness/events/kannada-wikipedia-workshop-at-shree-dh…)
CIS-A2K has ongoing partnership with SDM College, Ujire. The college's academic year started on 12 August. It was followed by a one-day workshop where the students were introduced to editing in Kannada Wikipedia. The head of the journalism department of the College Bhaskar Shetty and others supported the event.
⬤ Tulu Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Mangalore (http://cis-india.org/openness/wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-mangalore-to-bring-t… ):
A three-day edit-a-thon was organized between 14-16 August in Mangalore for bringing good quality content in Tulu Wikipedia. This event, organized in collaboration with the Tulu Sahitya Academy and Ramakrishna Pre University College, saw 30 Wikipedia editors participating and creating about 89 new articles. 12 of these 30 participants crossed more than 10 edits. Some of the new participants faced problems with using the input methods and the Wiki-markup. It is important to note that because of the lack of addition of Tulu-alphabet code points in the Unicode chart, and the speakers being well conversant in Kannada, they are using Kannada script for Tulu Wikipedia Incubator project. There is a plan to organize a monthly meetup and/or edit-a-thon to continue the momentum these editors have brought in.
⬤ Kannada Wikipedia workshop at DSERT (http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/edit-a-thon-to-improve-kannada-langu…):
A Kannada Wikipedia workshop was organized between 18-20 August at the Department of State Educational Research and Training to improve science-related articles that are part of the Government of Karnataka's high school syllabus. During the workshop the lecturers were taught about the basics of Kannada Wikipedia, article editing policies, Kannada input, creating and editing articles on Kannada Wikipedia. U.B. Pavanaja and Tito Dutta from CIS-A2K conducted the workshop, behalf of CIS-A2K.
=== Sau Dhuni Teen project ===
⬤ Wikipedia workshop in Pune (http://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-workshop-in-theme-of-sou-dhu…:
A Wikipedia workshop was organized at Srimati Savitribai Phule Pune University on 20 August 2015. Under the scope of “Sau Dhuni Teen” project, the workshop focused on building resources in Indian languages for women's studies on Wikipedia.
⬤ Wikipedia workshop in TISS, Mumbai:
(http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/sau-dhuni-teen-project-wikipedia-wor…)
A two-day long and multilingual Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Women's Studies Department of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai between 22-24 August. This was an outreach event conducted under the scope of the "Sau Dhuni Teen" project.
== Blog posts ==
⬤ Pavanaja, U. B. "Tulu Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Mangalore" (http://goo.gl/ZxJVnS) (18 August 2015)
⬤ Pavanaja, U. B. "Edit-a-thon to improve Kannada-language science-related Wikipedia articles" (http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/edit-a-thon-to-improve-kannada-langu…) (19 August 2015)
⬤ Panigrahi, Subhashish. "Odia Wikisource has a new Wikisourcer, and he is the youngest in the Odia Wikimedia community!" (http://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kisorachandrananachampu-on-odia-wiki…) (21 August 2015)
== Media coverage ==
1. ಬೆಳ್ತಂಗಡಿ:ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕಾಲಕ್ಕೂ ಲಭ್ಯ ಇರುವ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ಹಾಗೂ ಮುಕ್ತ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ-ಪವನಜ (http://cis-india.org/openness/news/sahil-online-august-14-2015 ) SahilOnline; 14 August 2015
2. ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣ ಪ್ರದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿಯಿಂದ ದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿ ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ ( <http://cis-india.org/openness/news/mangalorean-dotcom-august-13-2015> http://cis-india.org/openness/news/mangalorean-dotcom-august-13-2015 ) Mangalorean.com; 13 August 2015
3. Telugu religious and historical work preserved at Annamacharya library to come on Wikisource! ( <http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-08-07/Rare-Telugu-religious-an…> http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-08-07/Rare-Telugu-religious-an… ) The Hans India; 7 August 2015
This newsletter is also available on Meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/August_2015
Thanks Yohann for explaining the accepted mode of functioning of WMIN.
I have several objections to the specific proposal and more importantly I
think WMIN ought to have more general guiding principles and perhaps evolve
explicit guidelines so that proposals are treated fairly, in ways that are
more inclusive, long-term and not one-off, sustainable and offer greater
impact at lower cost.
* There are numerous contributor to Wikimedia Commons who have hitherto
travelled at their own cost and contributed images and media. Many of them
are extremely knowledgeable, identifying the subjects and choosing images
that have encyclopedic value. I suppose that in future, every WMIN member
is going to ask for travel expenses to be covered.
* There are a number of specialist organizations that exist to support
specialized interests. In other words, Special Interest Groups exist
independently of the Wikimedia movement. Partnership with these groups
ought to be the way to go, because it adds the greatest value and is a
viable long-term option. There are a very large number of mountaineering,
trekking and travel groups operating in the area of the proposal - many of
them with qualified subject matter experts involved (with masters or Ph.D.
level expertise in geology, paleontology, glaciology, botany etc.). Some
organizations like the Youth Hostels or the Himalayan Club could easily be
introduced to the idea of contributing images related to travel under a
free-license. [One of the proposers kindly sent me a mail in response to my
earlier mail explaining that the team members had interest and expertise in
photography, ornithology (actually said someone was an ornithologist!),
lepidoptera, botany and geology - I have not seen the publication record of
the said members but based on their wiki activity I am unable to see an
acceptable level of expertise] In terms of these subjects, there is a lot
more to see at mid-altitudes and there is no ethnology involved once you go
above the tree-line.
* There is a vast literature on the Himalayas (See for instance
http://pahar.in/ ) and none of the proposers appear to have substantially
contributed to articles related to the project. There are a few image
additions and minor edits. Adding images is probably the easiest activity.
It is possible to add a large number and it can appear impressive but using
these images in articles is a lot tougher. Even tougher is to make articles
of sufficient depth and value. If the list of proposed articles that will
be augmented by this project is offered, it will be easy to demonstrate
that relevant images can be sourced without the need for this project and
that images are *not* the stumbling block for most part.
* The proposal costing is also somewhat disturbing. I see the proposed
costs as something disturbingly akin to the ploy of a tele-sales
commercial, unintended though it probably is. The full cost of the
expedition is a large amount which we show here and the amount we ask is
only a fraction of it - ie it appears as if you are saving a great deal of
money and therefore that this is a very valuable mission to fund. Someone
with some interest in sailing could show how expensive a yacht is and what
special training it takes to be on it and write up a proposal asking for a
fraction of a supposed budget to be defrayed. Someone interested in
skydiving or gliding could put a cost of the sport and ask for a fraction
of it to get some aerial photographs. [And of course we can always point
out that there is a shortage of aerial images and mariners views from
around India] [The Telesales method for those who are not aware of it is to
show how much you save by buying a product and these figures are often
dramatically boosted and augmented by delivery and voice effects]
* The Wiki Loves Food is an excellent case to study for comparison - it
might be considered successful if the number of images is counted but if we
look at image usage in articles and the quality of articles containing them
- we will see that the impact is low. Of the 9129 images in the category
for 2015 - 247 have been used in articles - about 2% (using
https://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/glamorous.php ) Wiki Loves Food
however is a far more inclusive project - and the expenses are low and only
for prize money and it is quite different in the way of functioning (as
also things like Wiki Loves Earth, Wiki Takes * ) Compare this level of
image usage with some Indian users: User:AshLin 222 used out of 362 images
- 61% used in articles; User:Vinayraj: 2594 used out of 16086 16% ;
User:Jkadavoor 638 used out of 1342 47%; User:Shyamal 6710 used out of
11984 56% used in articles.
* Here are some alternate ideas I can think of for the 2 Lakh INR being
proposed - if you took a 7000 rupee compact camera (would be even cheaper
if we tried second-hand) and lent 25 of them to a well-established
organization we could do a variety of interesting experiments - views of
the mountains through the eyes of Sherpas or views of an Uttarakhand
village through the eyes of a resident over the course of year. I am fairly
certain that the organizations to support the idea can be found.
I pointed out the proposal to some people who live in the Himalayas and are
veteran mountaineers and they felt the prices indicated were on the higher
side. One of the jokingly asked why there were no budget items for
Wikipedia flags to be planted along the way. Satire aside, I am sure WMIN
can think of wonderful activities that are inclusive, have high impact,
cost little and build community goodwill and demonstrate good judgement. It
is about whether WMIN can open up the organization to ideas from outside,
to not behave as a club but be an ennabling organization with everyone
being as useful as a member. And that should give me and millions of
Indians an excellent reason why we can remain non-members and expect
organizations to be useful.
best wishes
Shyamal
On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 4:00 PM, Yohann Thomas <yohannvt(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Shyamal
>
> The Executive committee is given that much liberty to take decisions which
> are in the benefit of the community.
>
> In this case, for the above mentioned grant the applicants are well known
> Bengali community members. Also as seen in the grant application,
> endorsements are made from the bangla community members of both India &
> Bangladesh
>
> If the chapter members feel that the EC has taken a decision in haste ,
> the members are welcome to discuss this in our WMIN mailing list.
>
> Regards
> Yohann Thomas
> Executive Committee Member
> Wikimedia India
>
> PS Shyamal, I strongly suggest that you become a member of the chapter :)
> !!
>
> Yohann Thomas
> yohannvt(a)gmail.com
>
> On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 11:51 AM, Shyamal Lakshminarayanan <
> lshyamal(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I am not a member of the Wikimedia India Chapter although I am very much
>> interested in seeing it function as a mature organization. I suppose that
>> Wikimedia Chapters from around the world have evolved a set of best
>> practices and have ensured that these are shared somewhere. These ideas
>> will probably make the requirements of chapters a little more than just the
>> minimum legal requirements involved in maintaining the status of a legal
>> entity according to the laws of the lands in which the chapters operate.
>>
>> I raise this point as a rank outsider because there is a claim in a
>> recent project proposal that it has been "endorsed" by the Wikimedia India
>> Chapter. My expectation then is that this has been given due diligence,
>> discussed by all members and the summary/minutes/transcripts made public.
>> Even ideas on Wikipedia that do not involve any money go through a greater
>> amount of (not to mention transparent) discussion than what we see here and
>> it seems to me that some of these basic discussion procedures that we take
>> for granted as part of the spirit of Wikipedia should be compulsory for
>> organizations associated with the WMF.
>>
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:PEG/Sujay25/Wikipedia_Treks_Kal…
>>
>> Would be very happy to be proved wrong here.
>>
>> best wishes
>> Shyamal
>> en:User:Shyamal
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
Hello everyone,
We are going to conduct a Wikipedia workshop at the Govt. College of
Engineering & Leather Technology <http://www.gcelt.gov.in/> on 5 September
2015 as a part of their tech fest Enginerds 2K15 <http://enginerds.co.in/>.
The details are given below:
Venue: Government College of Engg & Leather Technology, Block LB, Sector
III, Salt Lake (near Chingrihata)
Date & Time: 5 Sep 2015 (Saturday) 11 AM - 1 PM
Attendees: 30 - 40, will be asked to bring laptops
Facilities: Projector, WiFi & LAN (100Mbps)
Contact Person: Koustuv Dutta
Workshop will be conducted by Rangan Datta & Indrajit Das.
Thanks and regards,
Kalyan Sarkar
