Thanks for the update on the event, Bishakha: I think women and
communities around the world can learn from this example. I also think
we should seriously consider how we can keep this concentrated focus on
women's studies in universities while developing the campus ambassador
program in India [0].
One note on the offline access to information: for more explanation of
the strategic fit of offline work in the Wikimedia movement, I would
point anyone interest to both the strategy page for
background/statistics [1] as well as the meta page which explains more
the current work/tools [2]. The general overview as recorded here:
/The goal of the Wikimedia movement at large is to make knowledge freely
available to all of humanity; currently, however, the content knowledge
available via the Wikimedia projects is mostly confined to those who
have access to a broadband Internet connection -- or less than 5% of the
developing world. It is critical for the reach of the movement to
proactively consider ways to make the information available to the
offline majority of the global population. In order to achieve the
greatest scale of impact possible, Wikimedia must intentionally focus on
the largest demographic segment of the world in order to address the
steadily increasing "digital divide
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/digital_divide>." The offline work is
geared to expand the reach of the collective knowledge and broaden
participation in the project. /
Best -
Jessie
[0]
Dear Gokul,
As I understand it, we need to use a mix of online and offline methods
to realize our mission: "Imagine a world in which every single human
being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our
commitment."
Given this, I don't see why the spread of this knowledge through CDs
and PediaPress books would be against the wiki movement - am not
suggesting replacing the use of wikis or online methods, but adding to
or supplementing these through CDs/books/offline methods etc.
"Investing in offline products to broaden the movement's reach to
populations who will remain disconnected from the Internet" is one of
the planks of the strategic plan [2] currently being implemented. This
is already happening in some projects, including Wikipedia for Schools.
Cheers
Bishakha
[
1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
[
2]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/c/c0/WMF_StrategicPlan20…
On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 11:44 AM, gokul das <gokuldas.1950(a)gmail.com
<mailto:gokuldas.1950@gmail.com>> wrote:
Dear Bishakha,
Are you not defeating the fundamentals of
Wiki movement by your view point:Quote"There were questions about
how to take this knowledge to colleges in the state without access
to the internet or to computers."Defend.
Gokul
On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 10:27 AM, jayanta nath
<jayantanth(a)gmail.com <mailto:jayantanth@gmail.com>> wrote:
Dear all,
Apologies for this big delay in reporting - between work,
travel and the rest of my life, I've been in a spin.
As previously announced on this list, Sanhita, a gender
resource centre in Kolkata had offered to host a half-day
session on 'Gender, Information and Technology' to explore,
understand and plan how women's studies departments in
Kolkata's colleges might create content related to
'gender/women's studies/women' on Bengali wikipedia, for use
by colleges across West Bengal (and of course, by anyone else).
The workshop was held on 18 March at the Seagull Media
Resource Centre
<http://www.seagullindia.com/samrc/facilities.html> where the
Kolkata wiki10 celebrations had been held in January - Sanhita
took on the venue rental and snack costs. Sanhita currently
works with 18 women's colleges in Kolkata and West Bengal: it
creates and distributing information resources in Bengali on
women/gender. It would like to collaborate with a
technological platform such as Bengali wikipedia to further
its goal.
Biswarup Ganguly, Jayanta Nath, Arnab Dutta and Rimi
Chatterjee were the wikipedians from Kolkata who led this
workshop, along with Soma Sengupta of Sanhita. I was invited
along to bridge the gap between gender studies and wikipedia.
The entire workshop was conducted in Bengali; there were 30
participants - 28 women and 2 men, quite the gender reverse of
other workshops I've attended. Please see the photos
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Kolkata_Mar2011>
that Biswarup took to get a visual sense of this.
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
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