Dear All,
I am writing to share with you a very inspiring initiative regarding health
and medicine articles on Wikipedia. Crores of Wikipedia readers read up
about health related issues either when they or their loved ones fall ill
or before or after they have consulted doctors or when they are curious
about a particular disease or drug. In fact, quite a few doctors and
nurses also read up these articles to improve their knowledge.
Wikipedia's medical articles have 15-20 crore page views every month. The
top 300 articles are viewed more than 1 lakh times every month. The
challenge is that the majority of these articles are only available in
English.
This initiative (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_tas…)
has been conceptualised by WikiProject Medicine, Wikimedia Canada and very
interesting organisation called Translators Without Borders. It seeks to
translate a set of 80 of the most important health care articles into as
many languages as possible.
Given the state of our health care system as well as the increasing
readership of Indic language projects, there is huge positive impact that
we can have if we participate in this initiative and have these articles in
all Indic languages. The project page (referenced above) includes an
outline of the project, FAQs, useful links and a sign up for interested
volunteers.
The ways that we can participate are as follows
- English Editors to improve articles on en-wp
- English Editors to convert articles into simple English Wikipedia (so
that non-English editors who don't have a medical background can also help
out)
- Indic editors to help translating either by themselves or by helping
the translators at Translators Without Borders
Remember, you don't have to be a health care professional to help out. All
you have to do is simply care.
I am really happy to note that 5 editors from 5 Indic languages have
already signed up<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_tas…>for
this wonderful project. Of these 2 languages - Assamese and Malayalam
- have already started wiki project and started working on articles (really
big comprehensive articles) related to Medicine.
Assamese wikipedia medicine project page: ৱিকিপিডিয়া:ৱিকিপ্ৰকল্প
চিকিৎসাবিজ্ঞান<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%AA%…>
Some of the articles created:
- কৰ্কট ৰোগ<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%95%E0%A7%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%95%E0%A6%9F_…>
(Cancer)
- সৰ্পদংশন<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AA%E0%A6%A6%…>
(Snakebite)
Malayalam wikipedia biology project page:
വിക്കിപീഡിയ:വിക്കിപദ്ധതി/ജീവശാസ്ത്രം<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B4%B5%E0%B4%BF%E0%B4%95%E0%B5%8D%E0%B4%95%…>
Some of the articles created:
- ആസ്മ (Asthma) <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asthma>
- ന്യുമോണിയ (Pneumonia) <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonia>
- മസ്തിഷ്കാഘാതം (Stroke) <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke>
Please note that this project do not involve machine translation or bots.
It is really happy to note that both in Assamese and Malayalam wiki these
projects are run by doctor (or medicine students) wikipedians :) Yes, Indic
wikipedias has editors from all wakes of life.
There is so much potential on the articles related to medicine both in
Indic and English. I encourage interested wikipedians to join this project
by adding your name
here<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Translation_tas…>
.
I welcome and invite everyone to join in.
Healthy Editing
Shiju Alex
Deal all,
As a part of helping the community to reach out to more people apart from
the presentations, handouts, FAQs and mailing list support we also have
need for more visuals. Audio/Video clips containing Indian Wikipedians
sharing their message "I EDIT WIKIPEDIA" or "I EDIT WIKIPEDIA IN BENGALI
LANGUAGE" to create some more impact to inspire people to contribute to
Bengali Wikipedia. Community folks conducting outreach events could use
such a video while presenting.
We are requesting you to shoot the video saying:
- "I *[Edit]* Wikipedia" in *Bengali language*.
And then answer any of the following few questions;
- "Why do you edit in Bengali language?"
- "What do you gain from editing Wikipedia?"
- How has Wikipedia changed your life?/
- How does Wikipedia help readers?
OR
- What imact does Wikipedia have on readers?
- What do you gain by being part of the community?
- How do you invite to join the community?
We will love if you answer some fun questions like;
- If wikipedia was an animal, what would it be?
- What would happen to you if you lost you internet connection for 1
month and could not edit Wikipedia?
This will be a motivational video to reach out to more Indian editors and
make them aware about editing Wikipedia of their languages. All the Indic
language communities are invited to take part in this event. We request all
the language communities to shoot the video of some of the active editors
of their respective communities and send them back to us. The few criteria
you need to keep in mind before shooting would be:
- Put this message on your next meetup agenda. Shoot the video in the
meet up itself so that you would be having more people. We would love to
more no of videos from you.
- It could be one single person saying "*I [edit] wikipedia*" or a group
of Wikipedians saying "*We [edit] wikipedia*" in Bengali language.
- For editing purposes, it is better if you record video in room with
LESS noise and MORE light.
- It is better to keep the camera still, preferably on a tripod or an
elevated place to avoid shaking of the video.
- Try and keep video in .MPEG, .AVI or .MP4, so that while editing we
don't have to convert and lose quality.
- You can use any normal digital camera, even your (iPhone) camera or
preferably a good quality handycam/video camera.
After shooting the video please let us know and we will help you to send it
to us. Please feel fee write in my talk
page<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%B8%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF_…>
or
drop me a mail at subha(a)wikimedia.org mail to ask any question .
Subha
[[User:Subha WMF]]
Cross-posting to other mailing lists. Kindly ignore if you have read
this on another mailing list.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks
Tinu Cherian
Wikimedia India.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [WMIN-Members] New Wikimedia India Portals
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 08:18:34 +0530
From: Naveen Francis <naveenpf(a)wikimedia.in>
Reply-To: wmin-members(a)googlegroups.com
To: Wikimedia India Community list
<wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>, wmin-members
<wmin-members(a)googlegroups.com>
Hi all,
We are pleased to formally announce the launch of the following new
Wikimedia India Portals:
http://wikimedia.in/- The new landing page will be the gateway to the
various Project pages and Wikis.
http://wiki.wikimedia.in <http://wiki.wikimedia.in/>The public wiki is
now revamped with an all-new look and lots of information. Feel free to
add more information to the wikis.
http://members.wikimedia.in <http://members.wikimedia.in/>Wiki for India
Chapter Members
http://blog.wikimedia.in/Wikimedia India Blog - to post a blog, contact
Arjuna Rao Chavala or Tinu Cherian
We are pleased to introduce the following new Wikimedia Project gateways
for the various Indic languages:
http://wikisource.in<http://wikisource.in/>
http://wikiquote.in<http://wikiquote.in/>
http://wikibooks.in<http://wikibooks.in/>
http://wikinews.in<http://wikinews.in/>
http://wikibooks.org.in<http://wikibooks.org.in/>
http://wikisource.org.in<http://wikisource.org.in/>
http://wiktionary.org.in<http://wiktionary.org.in/>
The planned landing page for http://wikipedia.in is available here
<http://wikimedia.in/wikipedia.html>.
Efforts are currently underway to obtain control of a few more important
domains and announcements will be made as and when we get them. We
sincerely believe this initiative will help drive more traffic to Indic
language Wikimedia Projects.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the Wikimedia CH /
Switzerland Chapter and Manuel Schneider (Wikimedia CH / Switzerland)
for hosting our websites and portals at no cost.
A number of people need to be thanked, who helped in the this initiative.
Rajesh K Oayanchal who designed the portals and Jyothis E who gave his
webspace for the testing purposes. Anirudh, Noopur Raval, ,Surya,
Radhakrishna, Omshivaprakash, Debanjan, Saroj, Swaroop, Abhishek
Suryawanshi and others have helped in translations .
Tanvir Rahman , Tinu Cherian and Arun Ram helped in revamping the public
wiki.
We hope that you will find these portals useful and informative.
Please do get back to us with your feedback and suggestions.
Regards,
Naveen Francis
Wikimedia India Chapter
Dear All,
I have compiled the, statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias
for the year 2011. In this report, my aim is to provide an *analysis* as
well as *my perspectives* on the health of various Indic language
communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias for
the year 2011. (The period of analysis is editor contributions between 2011
January 1 and 2011 December 31). As always, a lot of the data for this
report and analysis are based on the statistical data published at
http://stats.wikimedia.org. Thanks to Erik Zachte for compiling all this
information.
I must also point out that this annual update contains a number of insights
*that are derived not only from this data but directly from community
members* who have shared a very real-world picture.
Read the annual update here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages/Statistics/201…
I welcome your comments on this annual update. Please discuss it on the
talk page. You can also reach me at shiju(a)wikimedia.org
Thanks
Shiju Alex
*Education Times/ Times of India : "Knowledge Unbounded"*
http://educationtimes.com/educationTimes/CMSD/Newsroom/1/201202092012020913…
/
Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata along with Wikimedia
Foundation hosted the first WikiAcademy Conference in Eastern India
recently in the college premises.
Wikimedia Foundation operates Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and other
sister sites. It was a half-day workshop to sensitise participants about
Wikipedia and to help them add to the already vast source of knowledge.
The WikiAcademy workshop was part of the Kolkata Chapter of Wikimedia
Foundation with the objective of educating students and enthusiasts
about the availability and use of free and open educational content and
also to build the capacity to contribute such resources in various
Indian languages.
The conference began with a brief history and overview of Wikipedia
conducted by Hisham Mundol, consultant, Wikimedia Foundation, followed
by an interactive session which brought up interesting insights.
"Wikipedia is the first one-stop address for a wide range of topics and
the information available is provided by our passionate editors who
regularly contribute articles and even crosscheck others. WikiAcademy is
an attempt to encourage others to share their knowledge and also get to
know the fifth website in terms of highest page views," Mundol explained.
A live workshop on editing was conducted by Jayanta Nath, coordinator of
Bengali Wikipedia where the participants tried their hands at editing
various articles.
For those interested in Indian languages, a session was arranged to
enable the setting up of Wikipedia in their preferred languages.
A student and who tried his hands at editing, Shoubhik Bose shared,
"Wikipedia contributors like us can actually free education from cost
and language barriers. The fact that my edit will be visible to a
million users all over the world motivates me to edit Wikipedia
articles. I would love to be a part of more WikiAcademy workshops with
the Wikipedia readers and editors."
/
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news
Important Note : Non-commercial reproduction for informative purposes
only. The publisher ( Education Times/ Times of India ) of the above
news article owns the copyrights of the article / content. All
copyrights are duly acknowledged.