Dear all,
Pl. find below a report on the 10th anniversary celebrations of Wikipedia at
Indore.
Regards,
Srinivas.
Wikimedia projects handle: Gurubrahma
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The tenth anniversary celebrations of Wikipedia were held at Indore in
partnership with the Indian Institute of Management Indore, as a part of the 3rd
edition of the National Youth Conference. The celebrations were held on 12th
January and comprised three events: A presentation on Wikipedia followed by a
panel discussion; A workshop on editing Wikipedia; and a critical viewing of the
documentary, “Truth in Numbers?” (
http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indore#Agenda)
10 to 10.30 AM
The day’s proceedings were started by Professor Rahul Nilakantan, the
coordinator of the National Youth Conference, who introduced Professor Srinivas
Gunta, the first speaker for the day. Professor Srinivas kicked off the
proceedings for the day with a short message by Jimbo Wales, the founder of
Wikipedia. After the message, there was a talk by Professor Srinivas who started
off with the premise that anonymity on internet does not presage a phenomenon
like Wikipedia. Arguing that ensuring both competence (valid and reliable
information) and governance (appropriate behavioral norms) is important for a
project of this nature, he posited that Wikipedia manages these through its 3
P’s – Philosophy, Platform and Policies. Then, he dwelt a while on how diverse
Wikipedias can be, drawing from his experiences as a contributor to English and
Telugu Wikipedias. He concluded his talk by giving a brief preview of other
Wikimedia projects and exhorting the 250+ people in the audience to try editing
Wikipedia.
10.30 to 11.30 AM
A panel discussion titled “Role of Wikipedia in fostering Web 2.0 Revolution”
followed the talk immediately. The panel comprised Professor Abha Chatterjee
from the General Management area (Communication), Professor Sanjog Ray from the
Information Systems area and Shreyas Panse, a second year student of the
flagship PGP programme, all from IIM Indore. The panel discussion comprised a
5-minute talk by each of the panelists followed by an open house discussion.
Professor Srinivas moderated the proceedings.
Professor Abha Chatterjee spoke of how she first heard of Wikipedia more than
five years ago and how she had serious misgivings about the model given that
anyone could edit it. Today, however, she views Wikipedia in a more positive
light. She believes that this would be the best resource for pre-research,
especially on topics of recent provenance and current interest. For instance,
she raised the question as to which other encyclopedia can be expected to have
an article on “Vuvuzela.” Furthermore, the fact that Wikipedia is written by
multiple volunteers often implies that the breadth of coverage is broader than
in a conventional encyclopedia. Offering an example, she argued that a subject
like “Cattle” could be approached on Wikipedia through a variety of dimensions
such as species, domestication, cultural significance etc. Yet she opined that
the model of Wikipedia poses concerns in terms of maintaining consistency in
style and tone apart from the usual questions about its reliability.
Professor Sanjog Ray adopted the tack that the idea of Wikipedia is probably as,
if not more, important than the Wikipedia itself. He opined that the proof of
concept of Wikipedia has enabled corporations across the world to start using
internal Wikis even more rapidly. Agreeing with Ward Cunningham’s assessment
that Wiki is the simplest and the easiest database to edit, he felt that the
challenges for its adoption in the corporate world lie elsewhere, primarily
organizational. While the two predominant modes of organizing known to the
mankind are the market and the hierarchy, phenomena built on open philosophies
and collaborative models offer a new alternative. Yet, using Wikis in the
corporate world which is a hierarchical system would imply a hybrid model with
far-reaching consequences. He entered into a lively debate on these attendant
issues with the moderator and their implications for management education,
research and practice.
Apart from being a second year student of the MBA programme at the IIM Indore,
Shreyas Panse had been an active Wikipedian. He had garnered over 40K+ edits on
English Wikipedia with a competence in vandal fighting; On Wikimedia Commons, he
has been a trusted user. He dwelt primarily on his experiences in vandal
fighting on English Wikipedia and how volunteers and bots ensure the reliability
and validity of Wikipedia, thus allaying the concerns of a section of the
audience. He also spoke of how active editors form a strong virtual community.
Opining that active editors feel attached to their projects, he drew from his
experience to suggest that people either edit heavily or withdraw completely if
they cannot give adequate time. He also felt that Facebook and Twitter may be
acting as substitute competition for today’s youth, thus reducing the potential
time they would be spending in contributing to Wikipedia. The moderator also
pitched in with his own experiences.
The audience came up with interesting questions and suggestions, ranging from
the provision of recommendation and personalization systems to the implications
of providing monetary aids for contributions to Wikipedia.
11.45 AM to 1 PM
While a workshop for editing Wikipedia was arranged as a parallel session, it
was announced a priori that editing Wikipedia does not require a workshop as it
is easy to figure out. In fact, most of the instructors for the workshop had
started editing Wikipedia just 3 to 7 days before the tenth anniversary
celebrations at Indore. Abhishek Apurv, a second year PGP student walked the
audience through a basic acquaintance with Wikipedia. Shreyas Panse stepped in
to dwell on basics of editing Wikipedia, licensing issues in uploading media and
effective tools for fighting vandalism. Madhur Parihar, an academic associate in
the area of Information Systems at IIM Indore, spoke of the wealth of tools
available on Wikipedia, which help even a newcomer on Wikipedia to contribute
positively and with confidence. The workshop was concluded with a talk by Tulika
Chatrath, an independent professional translator where she evaluated the
efficacy of Wikibhasha, a tool by Microsoft Research to help translate articles
from English Wikipedia to Indic language Wikipedias.
2 to 3.30 PM
In the post-lunch session, a screening of the documentary “Truth in
Numbers” was organized on two screens in a large classroom. While the audience
numbering over 60 was keenly attentive, its responses to some key segments in
the document were clearly instructive in illustrating that its sympathies lay
with the Wikipedia movement. For instance, there was an enthusiastic response
during end credits when most of the ardent critics of Wikipedia confess that
their biography on Wikipedia suffers from negligible errors.
The icing on the cake of celebrations at Indore was when Professor
Srinivas received a call during the screening of the documentary from another
Executive Committee member of the Wikimedia India chapter informing that the
registration certificate has finally been issued and obtained, thus making it a
legal reality. Professor Srinivas announced this heartening news at the end of
the screening to yet another round of warm applause, concluding the celebration
events at Indore on a high.
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NOTE: Abhishek Gautam, an academic associate at IIM Indore in the area of
Strategic Management, helped in drafting the minutes of the event. Ankit Sharma,
a second year doctoral student helped in capturing the images from the event and
in uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. Bhupendra, Koteswara Rao and Sharad,
academic associates at IIM Indore, assisted in organizing the celebrations.
Some of the pictures of the event can be accessed on Wikimedia Commons via the
URL
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_10_Indore.