Hello friends,
Article selection for Wikipedia for Schools (Offline Ed) - Indian version has begun. I have started selecting articles. I chose Geography as a relatively uncontroversial topic to begin with. The first items added were the states & union territories - uncontroversial, just added them all. The next I have selected are Indian cities.
[[User:AshLin/Work_list]]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AshLin/Work_list
Any that you feel should be removed/added? Your thoughts on this issue?
Warm regards,
[[User:AshLin|AshLin]] ([[User talk:AshLin|talk]]) 18:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Hi AshLin,
Great work so far. Hat's off to one who's Wiki-ing the Talk!
I want to share some amazing piece of news.. forgive me if I'm not clear here... my head is wanting to explode!
1. OpenZIM (.ZIM) is now one of the output formats, available on Wikipedia Book Creator (the tool that lets us create custom collections of articles and export them). This feature was rolled out just yesterday or day before and Tomasz Finc shared the news on offline community list.
2. There are several such books already created and we can browse and engage in making and customizing them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_books_%28community_books%29
3. One example : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:States_and_territories_of_India . What if we took this list and merged in more articles on cities and towns and other content, to create an Indian Geography collection?
4. It is possible to mark parts of pages such that they won't be exported by the book creator. I don't know the exact templates right now, but this feature can come in handy in being selective about what parts of a page get exported.
5. So we can create a list of articles (like you already are), create a Book, then export it to ZIM format which can then be directly opened in Kiwix offline reader.
6. Where a lot of customization is necessary, simply another page can be created in wikipedia under a custom space or a user's space (just like you've created your list under your namespace)
7. We can even use this to indirectly delete the articles from present Wikipedia for Schools that we feel is to be excluded. Though of course you know my stand - I'd rather first add 1000 Indian-oriented articles before even considering deleting one British one if I wanted to Indianize or de-Anglicize any collection. Still, it is possible and now easily doable.
Note: By 'we' I am referring to the persons actively and voluntarily taking part in this project, not the naysayers. As of now only Ashlin seems to have done any effort at all - hence all the others who have raised some concern or the other while loosely but visibly alleging that wikipedia contains pornography and titillating material (and completely ignoring the fact that our mainstream media is 10 times more objectionable in content than the unfiltered wikipedia will ever be) and who predict the end of Indian civilization if underprivileged children (who are blasted with "Sheila ki Jawani" et al on a daily basis anyways if anybody actually cared to check ground reality) are allowed to see it while all this time not giving any real, actionable solutions to the problems they raise - I would rather give them a complete and total miss until I see the page histories actually showing up their contributions. But that's just my opinion.
8. There's plenty of room on current Wikipedia for Schools selection for another 5,000 or more articles (current count is 5500+ wrapped in 2.7GBs and it's got many large images to boot. Hence my stand on being additive instead of subtractive). And with the rolling out of free-to-all ZIM creation, we have unlimited capability to work on it organically and evolve Wikipedia For Schools Indian Edition as a living project instead of endlessly putting things off.
9. Some reasons why I, and why I think so many people in the wikimedia foundation, support ZIM format are : a. High degree of compression (= many more articles in the same size package) with real-time operation on the compressed data, b. natively supported (and v.fast) full text search including non-english languages, c. independence from browser vulnerabilities (a typical virus would have a field day with other versions that use flat HTML files or run on the default web browser), d. safety against arbitrary or planned hacking/editing of articles (If I were a school kid, I'd definitely insert some jokes or smart one-liners into some articles just for the fun if it and to show off, if it was all just loose HTML files like it is in so many formats apart from openZIM) e. portability (ever tried moving 45000+ html files and 1000s of images from one drive to another?)
ok, enough with the writing. All the best and I'll jump in as soon as I can!
Cheers, Nikhil Sheth +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India Teach For India http://www.teachforindia.org/ Fellow, 2011-13 www.nikhilsheth.tk Find me on: Twitter http://twitter.com/nikhiljs | Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/nikjs| LinkedIn http://in.linkedin.com/in/nikhiljs | Google http://www.google.com/profiles/nikhil.js| RangDehttp://www.rangde.org/investor/nikhilsheth Join me on: Pune Documentary Clubhttp://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=138497769525636| Let's Do it Pune http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-do-it-Pune/103857326346659 | Toastmasters in Punehttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Toastmasters-in-Pune/148767611833746| Wikipedia For Schools projecthttp://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_For_Schools_Offline_Edition
On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:15 AM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.comwrote:
Hello friends,
Article selection for Wikipedia for Schools (Offline Ed) - Indian version has begun. I have started selecting articles. I chose Geography as a relatively uncontroversial topic to begin with. The first items added were the states & union territories - uncontroversial, just added them all. The next I have selected are Indian cities.
[[User:AshLin/Work_list]]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AshLin/Work_list
Any that you feel should be removed/added? Your thoughts on this issue?
Warm regards,
[[User:AshLin|AshLin]] ([[User talk:AshLin|talk]]) 18:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Note: By 'we' I am referring to the persons actively and voluntarily taking part in this project, not the naysayers. As of now only Ashlin seems to have done any effort at all - hence all the others who have raised some concern or the other while loosely but visibly alleging that wikipedia contains pornography and titillating material (and completely ignoring the fact that our mainstream media is 10 times more objectionable in content than the unfiltered wikipedia will ever be) and who predict the end of Indian civilization if underprivileged children (who are blasted with "Sheila ki Jawani" et al on a daily basis anyways if anybody actually cared to check ground reality) are allowed to see it while all this time not giving any real, actionable solutions to the problems they raise - I would rather give them a complete and total miss until I see the page histories actually showing up their contributions. But that's just my opinion.
Hi Nikhil,
I register my strong objection for this. There are various concerns even if the content is children friendly:
1. The content should be free of typos, factual errors. If a school teacher browses through random content and finds that the content is full of errors, not much useful then he may not circulate the CD to students. Once people get a bad opinion of Wiki, it will take lot of effort to get rid of that. If the teachers do not take note of these and circulate it is still worse as students get wrong info. Since there is a tendency for uninformed readers to believe whatever they see in print, we have a responsibility here. I understand you are not distributing / preparing DVDs for sake of school children. Nevertheless, why can't we make sure to distribute high quality verified content to whoever it is?
2. Articles need to be vandalism free. Any random zim backup you distribute may have vandal edits in at least few instances. Imagine what will be the reaction of media, academia and Government departments if a state leader's page is distributed with vandal edits.
3. Content with copyright concerns. No explanation needed.
4. Sensitive content: This matters if you intend to distribute to school children. This need not be just porn but even an article on prohibited rebel groups can bring the wrath of local government and ban Wikipedia completely in schools. This is not an impossible case. For example: Articles relating to civil war in Srilanka can be scanned by the Local government. I am not saying that we should censor content to please the government but giving whole dump can be really risky. Whatever content we distribute we need to be aware of the side effects and be prepared for it. Suppose, some one unrelated to Tamil Wikipedia provides such a dump and gets Tamil Wikipedia banned who is responsible then?
The people who raise objection do a lot of groundwork in some Wikis and that is the primary reason why they object as they don't want their efforts to go waste. I understand your good intention to distribute DVDs but ultimately it should not hurt the local Wikipedia community's efforts.
Please do not continue to see this as a personal / porn issue and do try your best to work together with respective Wiki communities before you proceed with such efforts.
Thanks,
Ravi
Greetings All,
Does anybody know how to extract the permalink of the latest revision of a wikipedia article - FAST and in bulk?
Request for a tool to any developers out there: Please create a tool such that if I input a list of titles (all of which are wikipedia articles) - separated by comma or line whatever you wish, it returns a list of permalinks of all the articles!
Example: If input is: Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam
Then the output should be:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andhra_Pradesh&oldid=421762178, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arunachal_Pradesh&oldid=421047..., http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assam&oldid=421372952
Or maybe just:
Andhra Pradesh 421762178, Arunachal Pradesh 421047209, Assam 421372952
Or something of the sort!
We need this for article selection for offline wikipedia for schools project! Thanks in advance! Nikhilshethhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nikhilsheth( talk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nikhilsheth#top)
Cheers, Nikhil Sheth +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India Teach For India http://www.teachforindia.org/ Fellow, 2011-13 www.nikhilsheth.tk Find me on: Twitter http://twitter.com/nikhiljs | Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/nikjs| LinkedIn http://in.linkedin.com/in/nikhiljs | Google http://www.google.com/profiles/nikhil.js| RangDehttp://www.rangde.org/investor/nikhilsheth| Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/nikjs Join me on: Pune Documentary Clubhttp://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=138497769525636| Let's Do it Pune http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-do-it-Pune/103857326346659 | Toastmasters in Punehttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Toastmasters-in-Pune/148767611833746| Wikipedia For Schools projecthttp://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_For_Schools_Offline_Edition
On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:15 AM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.comwrote:
Hello friends,
Article selection for Wikipedia for Schools (Offline Ed) - Indian version has begun. I have started selecting articles. I chose Geography as a relatively uncontroversial topic to begin with. The first items added were the states & union territories - uncontroversial, just added them all. The next I have selected are Indian cities.
[[User:AshLin/Work_list]]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AshLin/Work_list
Any that you feel should be removed/added? Your thoughts on this issue?
Warm regards,
[[User:AshLin|AshLin]] ([[User talk:AshLin|talk]]) 18:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Hi again,
Thanks to Anirudh for giving me the help-needed template. One wikipedian has reached out and helped:
Hi Nikhilsheth - I've created this tool for you at [1]http://toolserver.org/%7Edcoetzee/permalinks/. Leave a message on my talk pagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dcoetzeeif you want any changes. Dcoetzee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dcoetzee 05:53, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
Link to tool: http://toolserver.org/~dcoetzee/permalinks/
It does the basic job, but now I'm getting greedy for more ;) AshLin, amazing work over the last week on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AshLin/Work_list ! Now, do we need a specific format in which to have the revision numbers? You've created tables on the worklist, so is that the way forward? Then we can ask Dcoetzee to parse the output in a way we need to.
And I feel that there should be a full-fledged project (worldwide, not just pertaining to indian articles) going on for Wikipedia for Schools, with a well-structured list of ALL articles that are going in. Not being able to find anything. Can anyone help in how to go about getting one set up?
Cheers, Nikhil Sheth +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India Teach For India http://www.teachforindia.org/ Fellow, 2011-13 www.nikhilsheth.tk Find me on: Twitter http://twitter.com/nikhiljs | Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/nikjs| LinkedIn http://in.linkedin.com/in/nikhiljs | Google http://www.google.com/profiles/nikhil.js| RangDehttp://www.rangde.org/investor/nikhilsheth| Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/nikjs Join me on: Pune Documentary Clubhttp://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=138497769525636| Let's Do it Pune http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-do-it-Pune/103857326346659 | Toastmasters in Punehttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Toastmasters-in-Pune/148767611833746| Wikipedia For Schools projecthttp://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_For_Schools_Offline_Edition
On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Nikhil Sheth nikhil.js@gmail.com wrote:
Greetings All,
Does anybody know how to extract the permalink of the latest revision of a wikipedia article - FAST and in bulk?
Request for a tool to any developers out there: Please create a tool such that if I input a list of titles (all of which are wikipedia articles) - separated by comma or line whatever you wish, it returns a list of permalinks of all the articles!
Example: If input is: Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam
Then the output should be:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andhra_Pradesh&oldid=421762178, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arunachal_Pradesh&oldid=421047..., http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Assam&oldid=421372952
Or maybe just:
Andhra Pradesh 421762178, Arunachal Pradesh 421047209, Assam 421372952
Or something of the sort!
We need this for article selection for offline wikipedia for schools project! Thanks in advance! Nikhilshethhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nikhilsheth( talk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nikhilsheth#top)
Cheers, Nikhil Sheth +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India Teach For India http://www.teachforindia.org/ Fellow, 2011-13 www.nikhilsheth.tk Find me on: Twitter http://twitter.com/nikhiljs | Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/nikjs| LinkedIn http://in.linkedin.com/in/nikhiljs | Google http://www.google.com/profiles/nikhil.js| RangDehttp://www.rangde.org/investor/nikhilsheth| Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/nikjs Join me on: Pune Documentary Clubhttp://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=138497769525636| Let's Do it Pune http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lets-do-it-Pune/103857326346659| Toastmasters in Punehttp://www.facebook.com/pages/Toastmasters-in-Pune/148767611833746 | Wikipedia For Schools projecthttp://education.wikia.com/wiki/Wikipedia_For_Schools_Offline_Edition
On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:15 AM, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur@gmail.com
wrote:
Hello friends,
Article selection for Wikipedia for Schools (Offline Ed) - Indian version has begun. I have started selecting articles. I chose Geography as a relatively uncontroversial topic to begin with. The first items added were the states & union territories - uncontroversial, just added them all. The next I have selected are Indian cities.
[[User:AshLin/Work_list]]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AshLin/Work_list
Any that you feel should be removed/added? Your thoughts on this issue?
Warm regards,
[[User:AshLin|AshLin]] ([[User talk:AshLin|talk]]) 18:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
On 4/7/2011 8:30 AM, Nikhil Sheth wrote:
And I feel that there should be a full-fledged project (worldwide, not just pertaining to indian articles) going on for Wikipedia for Schools, with a well-structured list of ALL articles that are going in. Not being able to find anything. Can anyone help in how to go about getting one set up?
I'm working on this with Andrew Cates (User:BozMo) - the driver behind the original Wikipedia for Schools. He gave a list of all the the articles in Excel so it's a little messy and doesn't have links. I tried to clean it up a bit, but it still needs some more work and definitely isn't as useful as it should be: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects/Content_Development/Schools
As I think you all know, they are working on a 2011 edition of WPFS to be released soon. Andrew said we can send him a list of additional articles (up to 250) with permalinks that you (India) would like to have included in the next release. He says his team could then make a separate version specifically for India.
My suggestion: once you have the list of articles you want included, put them in a table on this page as well.
Note: obviously, it would be ideal if the tools were available for anyone to do this, without needing to go through an intermediary, but unfortunately such tools do not exist yet. HOWEVER - just so you know, the Foundation is setting aside resources to address this concern, and hopefully tools making it easy to extend and/or modify offline collections will be in place soon!
Jessie
wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org