*Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias*
On 15 January, Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia celebrated its 15th
birthday, meeting this milestone with 36 million articles in more than 290
languages (the English-language Wikipedia alone has crossed the 5-million
article mark
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/11969459/Wikipedias-5-milli…>).
But here I want to address some major questions that we need to ask as
Indians. First, what is the state of Indian-language Wikipedia projects?
What does India have to take from and give to Wikipedia?
With the growth of free and open source software in India, people are
equipped with more freedom than ever.
<http://www.gndec.ac.in/%7Elibrarian/sveri/dbit2306009.pdf> Especially with
the recent federal policy-level changes
<https://opensource.com/government/15/6/indian-government-includes-open-sour…>,
the nation is enjoying better collaboration with people of different
cultures speaking different languages.
However, there is a huge gap in the access to knowledge on the internet
domain. Of a population of about 1.26 billion only about 15-18% people are
connected online, largely from mobile devices. A tiny fraction of this
population comprises the technical community. It would be useful to have a
metric on the percentage of this community's contribution to grow the
languages of this country and its cultural heritage.
*Wikipedia as a family*
Wikipedia is not just an encyclopaedia. It is also a "family" of several
other Open Knowledge members. Wikipedia itself is available in over 290
languages, but it also has other multilingual sister projects such as
Wikisource (an online library of many public domain and other important
texts), Wikimedia Commons (the world's largest repository of media files
and documents), Wikibooks (a free library of educational textbooks),
Wikivoyage (a free and open travel guide) and Wiktionary (a database of
various languages).
These projects don't just house millions of images, videos, documents and
texts, but allow anyone to contribute their knowledge to this ever
deepening pool of information. Four Indian languages made an early entry to
the Wiki-world back in 2002 -- Assamese <http://as.wikipedia.org/>,
Malayalam <http://ml.wikipedia.org/>, Odia <http://or.wikipedia.org/> and
Punjabi <http://pa.wikipedia.org/>.
*Language neutrality*
According to UNESCO, 197 of the total of 1652 Indian languages are dying
despite having a long literary and linguistic heritage. It's quite
shocking. In a blog post
<https://opensource.com/community/14/7/save-endangered-language-today> on
content localisation, social entrepreneur Rajesh Ranjan asks if free and
open source software can help save these dying languages. In the context of
Wikipedia, there are already 23 South Asian-language projects. Out of these
20 are languages listed in the 8th schedule of the Constitution of India.
Many might not have noticed that the "en" in the URL of Wikipedia that
denotes the language code of English could be altered with "or" for Odia
Wikipedia or "pa" for Punjabi Wikipedia.
Most Wikipedia projects in Indian language projects are relatively small
compared to their counterparts. But the Wikimedia communities are thriving
When only parts of government websites are available in Hindi, the Hindi
Wikipedia has crossed 10 million articles already. The Tamil and Malayalam
Wikipedia communities have played a central part in implementing Wikipedia
basics learning in the state-run school syllabus. Needless to say that
these communities have played a significant role in implementing several
free and open source software by pushing for policy-level change. Many
Indian languages are in the pipeline to become active Wikipedia projects
under the scope of the Wikimedia Incubator
<https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Incubator:Test_wikis/code/val…>.
Maithili Wikipedia
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/09/08/a-focused-approach-for-maithili-wikipe…>
and Goan Konkani Wikipedia
<http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/07/15/konkani-wikipedia-goes-live/> are the
two Indian-language Wikipedias that have gone live in recent years. The
world has seen how digital activism has brought a new life to the Hebrew
language. There are a fairly large number of native speakers waiting out
there to access knowledge in their own languages. Wikipedia could be a
great tool for digital activism with openness and sharing.
*Addressing gender bias in Wikipedia: Implications for India*
India tops South Asia in the gender inequality index
<http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/gender-inequality-index-in-south…>
in the entire South Asia. The female literacy rate is an alarmingly low
65.46% <http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2009/en/pdf/EN_SOWP09_ICPD.pdf> as
compared to 82.14% for men. This disparity is evident in many other sectors
as well as in politics.
But gender bias is not just a problem in India. The global free and open
source software (FOSS) community has always been worried about the low
presence of women
<https://books.google.co.in/books?id=AJpACwAAQBAJ&pg=PT49&lpg=PT49&dq=gender…>
contributors -- in the range of 2-5% range.
<https://people.cs.umass.edu/%7Ewallach/talks/2011-04-05_JHU.pdf> Wikimedia
Foundation's former executive director admitted that Wikipedia, like many
other collaborative and open projects, does not have a conducive
environment for women. But the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia Foundation
are both working on improving this state of affairs. Indian-language
Wikipedia projects are directly impacted by this global drive, be it the
Women's History Month edit-a-thon where Wikipedia content largely related
to women are improved every year or the Lilavati's Daughters project
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lilavati%27s_Daughters_Edit-a-thon>where
biographies of Indian women scientists were created and enriched in
Wikipedia projects.
*Complementing Digital India*
With a population of over 354 million
<http://dazeinfo.com/2015/09/05/internet-users-in-india-number-mobile-iamai/>
netizens India still has a long way to go in increasing Indian language
content on the web
<http://tdil.mit.gov.in/wsi/papers/Issues_&_Challenges_for_Enabling_Mobile_w…>.
The Government of India's new campaign Digital India
<http://www.digitalindia.gov.in/content/vision-and-vision-areas> aims
at digital
literacy and availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages
<http://www.cmai.asia/digitalindia/>. This is closely aligned with the
Wikimedia movement's goal to provide free access to the sum of all human
knowledge. In addition to Wikipedia, many other open educational resources
and free knowledge projects that are not already a part of the Digital
India campaign signal the need for the federal-run campaign to be more
collaborative and open. Community-government collaborations like the NROER
project
<https://blog.creativecommons.org/2013/08/14/india-launches-national-reposit…>
to make NCERT books under Creative Commons licenses and IT@School project
<https://www.itschool.gov.in/glance.php> in the state of Kerala to provide
education using free and open tools have gained massive traction and helped
more Indian language content come online.
by Subhashish Panigrahi (original text under CC-BY-SA 4.0 by author and
editions copyrighted by the editor of the Huffington Post India, available
online at
http://www.huffingtonpost.in/subhashish-panigrahi-/when-wikipedia-is-turnin…
)
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
@subhapa / https://cis-india.org
ଓଡିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆର ଉନ୍ନତି ଏବଂ ଅନ୍ୟାନ୍ୟ ବିଷୟଗୁଡିକରେ ଆଲୋଚନା ପାଇଁ ଏକ ଆଇଆରସି
ଅଲୋଚନା(IRC Chat) କରାଯିବ ।<br />
ଆଜି ସଂଧ୍ୟା ୮.୩୦ ରେ କରାଯିବ । <br />
ଆଲୋଚନା ବିଷୟବସ୍ତୁ:
* ନୂଆ ଉଇକିଆଳିମାନଙ୍କ ସହ ଚିହ୍ନା ପରିଚୟ
* ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆ କିପରି ଅଧିକ ପ୍ରଚାର ପ୍ରସାର ହେଇପାରିବ ସେ ବିଷୟରେ ଆଲୋଚନା
* ନୂଆ ପୁରୁଣା ଉଇକିଆଳି ମାନେ ପ୍ରଚାର ପ୍ରସାର ପାଇଁ ନିଜର ପ୍ରସ୍ତାବ ଦେବେ
* ସଭ୍ୟମାନେ କିପରି ଉଇକିପିଡିଆରେ ଅଧିକ ସକ୍ରିୟ ରହିବେ(ଅସୁବିଧା ବିଷୟରେ ଆଲୋଚନା)
* ଉଇକିପଡିଆ ଓ ଆର୍ଥିକ ବ୍ୟବସ୍ଥା ବିଷୟରେ ନୂଆ ଉଇକିଆଳି ମାନଙ୍କୁ ଧାରଣା
* ମତ ଓ ମନ୍ତବ୍ୟ
* ଆଉ କିଛି ଥିଲେ ଏଠି ଲେଖନ୍ତୁ
ଭାଗ ନେବା ପାଇଁ ଏଇ [http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-or ଲିଙ୍କ]
ଯାଅନ୍ତୁ ।<br />
ସମୟରେ ପରିବର୍ତ୍ତନ ଚାହୁଁଥିଲେ ଏଠାରେ ଲେଖନ୍ତୁ (ଅଧିକ ସଭ୍ୟ ନ ରହିପାରିଲେ ବଦଳା
ଯାଇପାରେ)।
*IRC (Internet Web Chat)ରେ କିପରି ଭାଗନେବେ:*
- Open http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-or
- Give your full name in "*Nick: "*
- The Channel name should be #wikipedia-or (by default)
- Click the check box for CAPTCHA verification
- Press *connect*.
- Now it will connect you to Internet Web Chat (IRC). Type in the bottom
box just like normal chat and press "*ENTER*" to post your comment.
If you still need any help the call me on +919437403427, +91753797770
Thanks & Regards,
*Jnanaranjan Sahu*
*Bhubaneswar*
Hello,
The planned Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon is going to start
on 25 January, and it will continue till 31 January. The goal of this
edit-a-thon is to create and improve Geographical Indications articles.
Thanks to everyone who have shown interest in this initiative.
If you have not signed up still, but want to join, *please sign up now*.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Geographical_Indications_in_…
Please feel free to share this message with any other Wikipedian who may be
interested in this activity.
Thanks
ଓଡିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆର ଉନ୍ନତି ଏବଂ ଅନ୍ୟାନ୍ୟ ବିଷୟଗୁଡିକରେ ଆଲୋଚନା ପାଇଁ ଏକ ଆଇଆରସି
ଅଲୋଚନା(IRC Chat) କରାଯିବ ।<br />
ଏହା ଶୁକ୍ରବାର ସନ୍ଧ୍ୟା ୮.୩୦ ରେ କରାଯିବ । <br />
ଆଲୋଚନା ବିଷୟବସ୍ତୁ:
* ନୂଆ ଉଇକିଆଳିମାନଙ୍କ ସହ ଚିହ୍ନା ପରିଚୟ
* ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆ କିପରି ଅଧିକ ପ୍ରଚାର ପ୍ରସାର ହେଇପାରିବ ସେ ବିଷୟରେ ଆଲୋଚନା
* ନୂଆ ପୁରୁଣା ଉଇକିଆଳି ମାନେ ପ୍ରଚାର ପ୍ରସାର ପାଇଁ ନିଜର ପ୍ରସ୍ତାବ ଦେବେ
* ସଭ୍ୟମାନେ କିପରି ଉଇକିପିଡିଆରେ ଅଧିକ ସକ୍ରିୟ ରହିବେ(ଅସୁବିଧା ବିଷୟରେ ଆଲୋଚନା)
* ଉଇକିପଡିଆ ଓ ଆର୍ଥିକ ବ୍ୟବସ୍ଥା ବିଷୟରେ ନୂଆ ଉଇକିଆଳି ମାନଙ୍କୁ ଧାରଣା
* ମତ ଓ ମନ୍ତବ୍ୟ
* ଆଉ କିଛି ଥିଲେ ଏଠି ଲେଖନ୍ତୁ
ଭାଗ ନେବା ପାଇଁ ଏଇ [http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-or ଲିଙ୍କ]
ଯାଅନ୍ତୁ ।<br />
ସମୟରେ ପରିବର୍ତ୍ତନ ଚାହୁଁଥିଲେ ଏଠାରେ ଲେଖନ୍ତୁ (ଅଧିକ ସଭ୍ୟ ନ ରହିପାରିଲେ ବଦଳା
ଯାଇପାରେ)।
*IRC (Internet Web Chat)ରେ କିପରି ଭାଗନେବେ:*
- Open http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikipedia-or
- Give your full name in "*Nick: "*
- The Channel name should be #wikipedia-or (by default)
- Click the check box for CAPTCHA verification
- Press *connect*.
- Now it will connect you to Internet Web Chat (IRC). Type in the bottom
box just like normal chat and press "*ENTER*" to post your comment.
If you still need any help the call me on +919437403427, +91753797770
--Thanks & Regards,
*Jnanaranjan Sahu*
*Bhubaneswar*
Hello,
Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) program
would like to share with you the newsletter below for the month of December
2015. We look forward to hear any feedback or input you might have.
As per the 2007 census of India, there are about 7.4 million speakers who
speak Konkani as a native language. Many might not know though the language
finally made a late entry on Wikipedia in 2014 with the release of the Goan
Konkani Wikipedia (https://gom.wikipedia.org). Since the beginning of the
project as an Incubator project, it has faced several issues; complications
because of the multiple scripts used to write Konkani, building a community
from scratch (
http://www.dnaindia.com/blogs/post-konkani-wikipedia-climbing-up-the-indian…
to contribute to the Wikipedia project, and finding encyclopedic resources
to grow content. The Konkani community that contributes on Wikipedia is
predominantly present in Goa with a few contributors living elsewhere. The
statistical analysis of the last six months shows several trends of the
project and community growth. There is an overall state of both the content
and community seem to be stable with a total of 124 editors and 2400
articles. However, the growth trends are little worrying as there is hardly
any new editors that has joined the community in last six months. The
active editors (with more than 5 edits a month) have also slowed down over
time with a few them becoming inactive as the average of the number of
active editors for the previous six months (January-June 2015) was 18 that
has come down alarming to 5. Same is the case of very active editors (with
more than 100 edits a month) and number of new articles being created every
month. These downtrends are more of a result of the on-wiki, online and
offline activities slowing down. There is a great need for more leadership
and community-led activities that could be catalyzed by organizational
support.
. . . Read more on the CIS website:
http://cis-india.org/openness/konkani-wikipedia-progress-from-july-to-decem…
== Resources created ==
• Indic Wikipedia policies and guidelines handbook:
Currently CIS-A2K is working with five Indian-language Wikimedia
communities (Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia and Telugu). While working
with the mentioned Indic Wikimedia communities, we observed a number of
issues affecting them and we also noticed that there are many similarities
between the issues and difficulties faced by these communities. So, we
decided to start working a help document "Indic Wikipedia Policies and
Guidelines Handbook".
At first, we created a short handbook discussing a number of topics, such
as how to create new policies, or modify the existing ones, using village
pump, enforcing policies etc. Then we talked to Indic Wikipedians to know
more about the policies and guidelines-related issues and problems they are
facing. We also asked to give their feedback on the first draft of this
handbook.
The handbook is now released now and may be seen here (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indic_Wikipedia_Policies_and_Guidel…).
== Event organized/participated ==
• Talk on bringing 1000 books about the culture of Maharashtra on Marathi
Wikipedia (
http://cis-india.org/openness/discussion-on-bringing-peshwa-culture-on-mara…):
Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha, a Pune based non-profit that was founded
in Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade and colleagues in 1894, has recently
announced to digitise their 1000 volumes of books centred around Peshwa
culture. A discussion about digitising these books and making them
available online on Marathi Wikisource was organised on 1 December at the
Energy Resources Institute (TERI), Bengaluru. Avinash Chaphekar, Joint
Secretary of MGS addressed this talk.
• Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Women's Studies
Centre, University of Pune (
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/events/sau-dhuni-teen-project-december-edi…):
A Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organized on 3 December at the Women's Studies
Centre, University of Pune, as a part of the Sau Dhuni Teen project (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K_/Projects/Sau_Dhuni_Teen) where
this group of Wiki-women contributed to conceptualize Wikipedia as a
knowledge resource. They not just edited Wikipedia articles but used
Wikipedia as a platform to generate Indian language annotations of academic
texts in women's studies and social sciences. More in this report (
http://cis-india.org/openness/sau-dhuni-teen-project-december-edit-a-thon).
• Indian language Wikipedias in the classroom: Wikipedia workshop at SVERI,
Pandharpur (
http://cis-india.org/openness/indian-language-wikipedias-in-the-classroom-w…):
On 15 and 16 December a Wikipedia workshop was conducted at SVERI,
Pandharpur, Maharashtra. The aim of this workshop was to nurture these
skills in faculty and students of the institution: a) Creating
encyclopaedic content in Indian languages, b) Encyclopaedic content writing
skills, c) Digital information literacy skills, d) Ability to critically
engage with a concept/theme etc.
• Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/2015/Global_Congress_on_Inte…):
The event was organized during 15-17 December in New Delhi. 11
Indic-language Wikipedians—including two representatives from the Wikimedia
India (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India); Sanket Oswal (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sankoswal) and Nikhil Kawale (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nikhil.kawale)—participated in this
event. Rahmanuddin Shaik and Subhashish Panigrahi from CIS-A2K team
attended this conference and coordinated several discussions on copyright
and intellectual property (IP) in the context of Wikipedia. The
participating Wikimedians, over the three days engaged with each other and
the coordinators and discussed about the kind of copyright and IP-related
problems they are facing in their home communities.
• English and Telugu Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Hyderabad: a collaborative
Telugu and English Wikipedia edit-a-thon is being organised in Hyderabad on
20 December (
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/english-and-telugu-wikipedia-edit-a-t…):
A collaborative Telugu and English Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised in
Hyderabad on 20 December. The event was aimed at translating many English
Wikipedia articles related to Telugu language and culture to Telugu and
vice versa.
• Odia Wikipedia Workshop in Puri:
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/odia-wikipedia-workshop-to-be-organised-in-pu…)
An Odia Wikipedia workshop was organised in Puri on 20 December. The
workshop aimed at helping the participants learn about creating and
improving the Odia Wikipedia articles about the local places, people, and
culture of the historical town Puri and the district.
=== Train-a-Wikipedian ===
Train-a-Wikipedian (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Train-a-Wikipedian, TAW) is new
program designed by CIS-A2K to train and empower Indic-language
Wikipedians. In this program we will cover everything related to Wikipedia
editing such as:
• Wikipedia editing (beginner's and advanced)
• Wikipedia policies and guidelines,
• Using tools, scripts, gadgets etc.
Any experienced Indic Wikipedian is welcome to join this training program.
It is recommended to discuss with a community before applying for this
program.
== Blog posts ==
• Hasan, Tanveer, Guru-G Learning Labs and CIS A2K Institutional
Partnership (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guru-g-learning-labs-and-cis-a2k-institution…),
3 December 2015
• Panigrahi, Subhashish, Open access in the Marathi language expands by a
thousand books (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december…),
3 December 2015
• Hasan, Tanveer, Community Prioritisation of Content Donation: Kannada
Wikisource (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/community-prioritisation-content-donation-ka…),
5 December 2015
• Hasan, Tanveer, Analysis of Institutional Partnerships: University of
Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/analysis-of-institutional-partnerships-unive…),
5 December 2015
• Hasan, Tanveer, Touch Point Report: Department of Tourism Studies, Christ
University and St. Aloysius College, Managalore (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/department-of-tourism-studies-christ-univers…),
5 December 2015
• Hasan, Tanveer, TTT 2015 (http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ttt-2015), 5
December 2015
• Pavanaja, U. B., Kannada Wikipedia Editathon at Mangaluru (
http://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-st-agnes-col…),
15 December 2015
• Patnaik, Sailesh, Odia Wikipedia workshop in Puri, Odisha sparks creation
of informal Wikipedia group WikiTungi (
http://cis-india.org/openness/odia-wikipedia-takes-puri), 30 December 2015
== Media coverage ==
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Udayavani Coverage (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-udayavani-coverage),
Udayavani, 7 December 2011;
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon Coverage in Prajavani (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-prajavani-mangal),
Prajavani, 10 December 2015
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Prajavani (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-prajavani-mangal),
Prajavani, 11 December 2015
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Vijayavani Coverage (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-vijayavani),
Vijayavani, 11 December 2015
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Vijaya Karnataka (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-vijaya-karnataka),
Vijaya Karnataka, 11 December 2015
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon in Mangalore: Udayavani (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-in-mangalore-uday…),
Udayavani, 11 December 2015
• Post More Articles on Kannada Wikipedia (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/post-more-articles-on-kannada-wikipedia),
Indian Express (Mangalore edition), 12 December 2015
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon in Prajavani (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-in-prajavani),
Prajavani, 13 December 2015
This newsletter is also available on Meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/December_2015
ଏହା ଆଜି ଟାଇମ୍ସ ଅଫ ଇଣ୍ଡିଆ ବେଙ୍ଗାଳୁରୁ ସଂସ୍କରଣରେ ପ୍ରକାଶିତ ହୋଇଥିଲା ।:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Read-Bengali-Malayalam-cl…
(Copyrighted material that has been shared here for only reading purpose.)
ଏଥିରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ଓ ଉଇକିପାଠାଗାର ବାବଦରେ କିଛି ତଥ୍ୟ ପ୍ରକାଶ ପାଇଛି ।
BENGALURU: It was a hunt that took Shiju Alex to many places. Finally, his
quest ended at Dharmaram College library in Bengaluru as Alex got hold of a
copy of the first-ever printed book in Malayalam. He scanned it promptly
and volunteers uploaded the text on to Malayalam Wikisource, one of the
free online libraries run by Wikipedia. Nasim Ali returned to Wikipedia
editing only because fellow Odias were reaching out on social media to help
upload the 13-volume Bhagavata Mahapuranam. Now, the entire work is
available for free at Odia Wikisource.
Actions speak louder than words when it comes to preserving books in
regional languages. Indian versions of Wikisource have more than 1 lakh
pages of classic epics, philosophical tracts, and novels and poems in 10
languages. And the numbers are growing. "These are the books that we grow
up with and connect emotionally. Most of us would like to see them online,"
said Subhashish Panigrahi, Wikipedian and programme officer at the Centre
for Internet and Society.
As Wikipedians come together in Bengaluru on Sunday to celebrate 15 years
of editing and curating the encyclopedia in India, more such stories will
be told. The growth has been tremendous in Indian language content
creation, especially when it comes to setting up Wikisources, said A
Ravishankar, programme director at the Wikimedia India chapter. Malayalam
has 26,332 pages, including around 200 of the seminal books in the
language. While Telugu has 29,039 pages, Bengali has around 11,000.
Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya, Marathi, Gujarati and Assamese libraries
also getting bigger. The content ranges from religious texts such as
Ramayan and Bible to first-ever printed literary works.
"Most of these are books in the public domain or the ones relicensed with
Creative Commons licences. This allows anyone to edit or make a copy of the
work, making it reusable," said Panigrahi. Some of the relicensed works
include the Kannada Vishwakosha brought out by University of Mysore.
It isn't easy to get works online. Alex finds it difficult to procure the
original texts to create their PDF versions. "Every time I go to Kerala, I
look for old books," said Alex, who uploads the PDFs on a public domain for
others to upload them. Editors are also not easy to come by. Panigrahi took
to social media to find a new set of editors when he was trying to upload
the Bhagavatha volumes. "Wiki's volunteer-editors have their hands full. So
we appealed on social media and many people signed up," he said.
But the effort is worth it, said Alex. Every time he unearths an old book
and posts the link on his Facebook page, the reactions are full of
surprise. "Many from the younger generation don't know that Samkshepa
Vedartham (the first printed work in Malayalam) was printed in Rome. Also,
researchers write to me saying they are happy to see the old books online,"
he said.
STUDENTS PITCH IN
The Wikimedia Foundation has tied up with various colleges to help with
typing and proof-reading. Around 120 students of Kalinga Institute of
Social Sciences in Bhubaneswar typed stanzas from the Bhagavata while
Christ University students from Bengaluru uploaded chunks of the Kannada
Vishwakosha as part of their curriculum.
TECH HURDLE
Though the project started in 2006 with Malayalam Wikisource, it spread to
other Indian languages around five years ago. The biggest hurdle remains
technology as the open source optical character recognition (OCR) software
isn't compatible with many Indian languages. "Google's OCR that was
launched last year is much better as it works with most Indian languages,"
said Ravishankar. The new software "extracts text from images of any
printed text — and sometimes even handwriting, which opens the door to old
texts, manuscripts, and more," reads Panigrahi's blog post.
Subhashish Panigrahi
@subhapa
http://psubhashish.com
*Read my recent piece **about protests against Free Basics on Global Voices
<https://globalvoices.org/2015/12/29/millions-of-indians-slam-facebooks-free…>,
op-ed in Odia newspaper the Samaja
<http://psubhashish.com/post/136609149720/free-basics>,YourStory
<http://odia.yourstory.com/read/3b6116b8ee/->, Odisha.com
<http://www.odisha.com/archives/23402>, and Best of Opensource.com:
Interviews
<https://opensource.com/life/15/12/best-opensourcecom-2015-interviews-open-s…>.*
BOOKS AT A CLICK (http://goo.gl/njZeph)
*• By Diana Sahu on The New Indian Express (Bhubaneswar City Express)*
The OdiaWikimedia community and Bhubaneswar-based Srujanika have come
together to make rare science books available online for readers, students
& science educators.
Readers can now access rare science books in Odia language at Odia
Wikisource, an online library of popular books in the language. The Odia
Wikimedia community and Bhubaneswar-based Srujanika have come together to
make these books available online for readers, students and science
educators. This apart, books of Sahitya Akademi award winning writer
Jagannath Prasad Das have been added to the library. Srujanika's co-founder
Puspashree Pattnaik recently provided 700 popular science books that were
published by the organisation to the Wikimedia community for digitisation.
“These books were appreciated by many and even in demand after going out of
print. Hence, we thought if these can be shared under free licence then
they can reach a wider population. Wikipedia contributors can use these as
resources and enhance science content in Odia Wikipedia as well", says
Puspashree, a former teacher. She along with her husband Nikhil Pattnaik, a
former scientist with the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB),
Hyderabad, had published several science books as part of their project to
popularise the subject among children. With support from Vigyan Prasar in
New Delhi, the couple had also documented rare works of science published
in books, magazines, periodicals and newspapers from 1850 to 1950 in
electronic format, a few years back. Around science 765 articles written
over a century have been put on CDs and DVDs according to the names of
authors and year of publication. The science books have been digitised by
volunteers of the Odia Wikimedia community and the Centre for Internet and
Society, a non-profit working for supporting Indian language Wikipedia
projects and the communities.
-
Pushpashree Pattnaik
Similarly, the Wikimedia community has re-licensed 30 books of Das under a
free license CC-by-SA 4.0. His books can now be accessed at
https://orwikisource.org and anyone can use them for academic or research
work. “My tryst with internet started very late. I was introduced to
digital books through Srujanika's online version of Purnachandra Odia
Bhashakosha - comprising 9,500 pages in seven volumes- which was impossible
to handle on the writing table. That made me think how convenient it would
be to have Odia books avail. able on the internet. As a beginning. I
decided to put my own writings on the internet", said Das. Prior to Das,
eminent writers and litterateurs Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Manoj Panda,
Subrat Prusty, Bharat Majhi and organisations like 'Manik Biswanath
Smrutinyasa' and Aama Odisha' had come forward to make their books
available online for free using Odia Wikisource as a platform. At present,
Odia Wikisource has 280 Odia books and all are either under Public Domain
or Creative Commons Share Alike licences. A team of 10 active contributors,
known as "Uikiali' in Odia, are digitising books of various genres ranging
from science writing, fiction to 0dia classics. “Apart from the science
writ. ings, we are also working on digitising the biography of Nandini
Satpathy which has been published by Ashisa Ranjan Mohapatra of Srimati
Nandini Satpathy Memorial Trust,” says Mrutyunjaya Kar, administrator of
Odia Wikisource and Odia Wikipedia who has been contributing to the
Wikimedia projects in Odia, Hindi, Sanskrit and English for the last four
years. Odia Wikisource is a sister project of Odia Wikipedia.
These books were appreciated by many and going out of print. If these can
be shared under free licence then they can reach a wider population.
– Puspashree Pattnaik
The copyright of the news article is reserved by the publisher and it is
shared here for reading purpose only.
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
@subhapa / https://cis-india.org
As i stated before there's nothing wrong with the creation n updation on odia wikipedia.
The problem lies with the user interface.
First of all, I want answers to some of my questions...
1.>Why people go for this...!
2.>what are the benefits...!
3.>why this is limited, where as Wikipedia's not..!
I am asking all this only because I want to learn.
@.AB.SAHOO
________________________________
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Sent: 07-01-2016 05:34 PM
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Subject: Wikipedia-OR Digest, Vol 56, Issue 2
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Today's Topics:
1. Want some answers (ARABINDA SAHOO)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 22:04:36 +0530
From: ARABINDA SAHOO <ab.sahoo(a)live.com>
To: <wikipedia-or(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikipedia-OR] Want some answers
Message-ID: <SNT404-EAS28843AEB942C44A443100A7F4F40(a)phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Sir,can we please have a talk..!
________________________________
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Sent: 06-01-2016 05:31 PM
To: wikipedia-or(a)lists.wikimedia.org<mailto:wikipedia-or@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Wikipedia-OR Digest, Vol 56, Issue 1
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Today's Topics:
1. Requesting meetup at Bhubaneswar and Puri (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2016 16:12:39 +0530
From: "Dr. U.B. Pavanaja" <pavanaja(a)vishvakannada.com>
To: <wikipedia-or(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Wikipedia-OR] Requesting meetup at Bhubaneswar and Puri
Message-ID: <006c01d147a5$ceaa0580$6bfe1080$(a)vishvakannada.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Namaste,
I will be in Bhubaneswar from Jan 5 to 7, 2016. I would like to meet Odia Wikipedians during this trip. I would like to discuss the creation of resources needed for Odia taking into consideration of available resources, their status, identifying the resources that have to be created and/or improved. Let us meet and discuss these things. Please send me an email at pavanaja AT cis-india DOT org and let us meet.. Sorry for the last minute notice.
Thanks and regards,
Pavanaja
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Hello,
CIS-A2K is going to organize an edit-a-thon between 23 and 30 January this
year. The aim of this edit-a-thon is creating an improving Geographical
Indications in India related articles.
We welcome all of you to join this edit-a-thon.
Please see the event and add your name as a participant:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Geographical_Indications_in_…
Feel free to ask if you have question(s).
Regards.