Published in HT City, New Delhi
June 8, 2012
Wiki meet for Delhi tomorrow
If you think Wikipedia doesn’t have the real good stuff on Delhi or
just doesn’t get the city right, tomorrow is your chance to change
that. The open source knowledge website is holding a meet-up in Hauz
Khas on Sunday, and everyone is welcome to pump up the information on
the Capital in there. And not just the boring stuff. The
representatives say they’re looking for bright, young people to join
them in adding up more on the city’s cultural hubs, new landmarks,
hangouts and historical hotspots.
“People still have the wrong notion that Wikipedia has a set of
permanent editors who put all the information there. Everything in
there is written by users, and the more people we have from Delhi, the
better a knowledge bank we’ll have on the city. Abroad, they have a
page on each street and every good place,” says Abhishek Suryawanshi,
Wiki ambassador. So, existing editors — ordinary users, that is, will
guide the new editors who wish to debut at the meet. The informal
session, which will be held at Wikipedia’s Delhi office — the only one
in the world outside of the United States — will also see an open
debate and discussion on what needs to be done to make Delhi look up
on the website. “For example, we recently had a meet in Ahmedabad and
discovered that there are not too many pictures of the city on the
site. Within a week of the session, we had over a thousand photos up
there!” says Suryawanshi.
For all the questions on the credibility of the information on the
encyclopedia, Suryawanshi has one answer. “Wikipedia is just a
collection of quality references. We go ahead and put a fact in there
irrespective of the contributor, as long as there’s a citable,
reliable reference to go back to. Students and other users often say
they’ve checked this or that on Wiki, but Wikipedia should not be
quoted that way. It’s a start point to any research, not the end
point,” he says.
Catch it here
What: Delhi Wikipedia Meetup
When: June 10
Timings: 3pm - 6pm
Entry: Free
Where: Top floor, G-15, behind Hauz Khas G-Block Mkt (NOT the main
Hauz Khas market)
Nearest Metro Station: Hauz Khas on Yellow Line
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