Dear friends,
We are happy to share the consolidated newsletter for September 2016.
Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and
What Has Been Done?
—Ting-Yi Chang (September 18, 2016)
Five years after Wikimedia Foundation's 2011 editor survey (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Editor_Survey_Report_-_April_2011.p…)
was conducted and revealed the gender gap issue, scholars, practitioners,
and communities around the globe have come a long way to address the gender
imbalance of the online encyclopedia. This blog post series (of three
parts) serve as a summary of movements and discoveries about Wikipedia
gender gap on both local (India) and global scales.
"Our editing community continues to suffer from a lack of women editors.
only 8.5% of editors are women."
Probably the most cited statement for Wikipedia gender gap studies, the
editor survey conducted by Wikimedia Foundation in April 2011 revealed the
alarming imbalance within the online encyclopedia community(s). In the same
survey, the percentage of female Wikipedians in India is reported as only
3%. When we have repeatedly emphasized on the development and changes the
internet can bring to our societies, how do we ensure that behind our
computer screen it is not just another mirror reflecting what has been
silenced and forgotten?
. . . Read more on Blogs (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiwomen2019s-meetup-at-st-agnes-college-ex…)
(Part 1 (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-t…)
, Part 2 (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-t…)
and Part 3 (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/another-5-years-what-have-we-learned-about-t…)
)
== Program reports =
Outreach, education programme and community engagement programme reports:
* Wikiwomen's Meetup at St. Agnes College Explores Potentials and Plans of
Women Editors in Mangalore, Karnataka (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiwomen2019s-meetup-at-st-agnes-college-ex…)
(Ting-Yi Chang; September 1, 2016)
Karnataka is known for its diverse linguistic cultures. Aside from Kannada,
many are native speakers of Konkani, Tulu, and other languages. A small
Wikiwomen's meetup was held on Saturday, August 27th at St. Agnes College,
Mangalore, to invite female Wikipedians from the region. Many of them were
new to the online encyclopedia but demonstrated strong interest in learning
and contributing more Indic language content online.
* A workshop to improve Telugu Wikipedia articles on Nobel laureates (
http://cis-india.org/openness/a-workshop-to-improve-telugu-wikipedia-articl…)
(Pavan Santhosh; September 12, 2016)
Many articles about Nobel laureates are missing in the Telugu Wikipedia.
Recently undergraduate students from four different disciplines of the
Andhra Loyola College (ALC), Vijayawada gathered to create and improve
articles related to Nobel laureates.
* Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons
licenses (
http://cis-india.org/openness/campaign-for-relicensing-copyrighted-books-un…)
(Pavan Santhosh S. & Subhashish Panigrahi; September 20, 2016).
A campaign has been started to relicense Telugu-language books of several
noted authors from "all rights reserved" to Creative Commons Share-Alike
(CC-BY-SA) license..
== Articles/blogs =
Articles, opinion pieces, analysis pieces:
* ସଫ୍ଟଓଏର ସ୍ୱାଧୀନତା ଦିବସ: ଆମ ହାତେ ଆମ କୋଡ଼ ଲେଖିବା¸ (
http://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-day) : (Subhashish
Panigrahi; September 18, 2016). The blog post was mirrored in Your Story (
https://odia.yourstory.com/read/b3b56fd08a/-?c=16) , Odisha Story (
http://www.odishastory.com/odia/2016/09/software-freedom/) and Aajira
Odisha (
http://aajiraodisha.org/software-freedom/) on September 17, 2016.
The originally published piece can be accessed here (
http://psubhashish.com/post/150524560200/sfd) .
Software Freedom Day (SFD), which celebrates the use of free and open
software, was celebrated in many cities today. The piece sheds light on the
philosophy of software freedom, and how free and open source software is
making a significant social change. I have also shared how anyone can
contribute to the FOSS movement in different ways and celebrate SFD. .
== Team updates =
Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tniranjana) ,
our Programme Advisor, and Abhinav Garule (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Abhinavgarule) , Programme Associate
for Marathi have left the team recently to continue with their other
personal/professional commitments. We thank both of them for their
association and support both to the team and to the community. We wish them
success in their forthcoming endeavors, and hope that they will keep
contributing to the Wikimedia movement in their volunteer capacity.
If you want to receive news from this program, please sign-up here (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/Subscribe) .
This newsletter is also available on Meta-wiki at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/September_2016
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K)
Centre for Internet and Society
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