Each of the 30 participants used English wikipedia - only 1 knew of
Bengali wikipedia; none used it. All the participating teachers are not
necessarily intending to edit wikipedia themselves in Bengali, but are
'gatekeepers' to students. So they were more interested in a conceptual
understanding of wikipedia during this preliminary planning session,
than a hands-on editing demo.
Given the academic nature of participants, the first question was
about the authenticity of articles. How is this established? Along with
talking about the need for references and citations and the no original
research/verifiability principles, two examples [1} [2] were shown. The
talk page on Babri Masjid [1] was also used to demonstrate one aspect of
the editing process - how authenticity is constantly challenged and
renegotiated. The page on Begum Rokeya [2] attracted considerable
interest, since she was a pioneering figure in undivided Bengal to whom
this group could relate. The lack of citations about her was brought up,
and the oral citations project [3] was cited.
In a similar vein, the following pages were also discussed in
detail: Feminism portal [4], Gender Studies category [5] and Gender
Studies project page [6] - to see if something similar could be launched
in Bengali wikipedia with those present and others who had expressed
interest via email.
Since some of those present saw themselves as advocates, we
clarified that wikipedia is not an advocacy platform, it is a knowledge
platform - and discussed NPOV etc in this context.
There were
questions about how to take this knowledge to colleges in the state
without access to the internet or to computers. We discussed the
creation of offline CDs and PediaPress books, using online content.
All in all, there was great excitement around the prospect of
collaboratively creating gender-related content on Bengali wikipedia -
Arnab and Jayanta demonstrated this. Rimi spoke about how she uses
wikipedia with her students, while Biswarup did a quick demo of Commons.
All of us felt "a positive energy" (to quote Rimi), specially about
the "practical concrete questions about next steps" (Jayanta). One
disability rights activist from an NGO called Sruti had suggestions for
improving said page in Bengali wikipedia - and
Sanhita confirmed that several participants emailed back the next day with good feedback.
Hopefully,
with this optimistic start, this will now go places - and contribute
not just to Bengali wikipedia, but also to reducing the overall gender
gap. A special thanks to Jayanta, Arnab, Biswarup, Rimi, and Soma for
excellent coordination, planning, camaraderie and teamwork to make this
workshop a grand success.
Cheers
Bishakha
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babri_masjid[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begum_Rokeya
[3]
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/01/12/new-wikimedia-fellow/[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Feminism
[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Gender_studies[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Gender_Studies
_______________________________________________