ଓଡ଼ିଶାରୁ ପ୍ରକାଶିତ ଇଂରାଜୀ ଖବରକାଗଜ ଓଡ଼ିଶାପୋଷ୍ଟ (
http://www.orissapost.com)
ରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ (
http://or.wikipedia.org) ବାବଦରେ ପ୍ରକାଶିତ ଏକ ଖବର:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=13lbkcKU55a2PW8QUtzQBdhDKrP02LYgKl_0zkFvXdh…
*KNOWLEDGE PORTAL*
Report by Payal Bhut
Wikipedia, the biggest online encyclopaedia, still draws a million hits
every day. In order to popularise it in India the Wikimedia Foundation, a
voluntary organisation based in San Francisco, had initiated a broad-based
project in India some years back. Today, Wikipedia comes in more than 270
lan- guages across the world. In India, the online dictionary is available
in 20 regional languages, of which 11 are active while nine have taken a
backseat.
Orissa is rich in culture and heritage and there is no dearth of talented
people in the state. Purportedly to give the Oriya language a new
dimension, Oriya Wikipedia was created by a group of like-minded volunteers
in 2002. It was the largest available online encyclopaedia in the Oriya
language. It contained articles written by the public as well as experts.
The encyclopaedia encouraged voluntary contributions – the contributors
were not offered remu- nerations of any kind.
By end-2004, the Oriya Wikipedia was a well-stuffed collection of pages
with nu- merous entries trickling in every day. It was managed by a handful
of volunteers. However, contributions started drying up soon after. Till
2011, a mere 560 articles were available in the site. “Due to shortage of
volunteers and lack of awareness, only a handful of articles were
available. Even these articles were not up to the mark,” says Subhasis
Panigrahi, Communication and Programme Support, India Programme, Wikimedia
Foundation.
It so happened that at a function in Bangalore, an enthusiast Ashutosh Kar
who knew about the encyclopaedia took the initiative to revive it and make
it more accessible. Today, the Oriya Wikipedia has 15-odd volunteers and
the number of articles has risen to 2,030 dealing with topics like the
physical and life sciences, art, humanities, culture as well as Orissa-
related articles. “Though many people refer to Wikipedia for academic
purposes they seldom care to reflect on how the articles are written. Being
a non-profit or- ganisation, Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation which
hosts Wikipedia, relies on voluntary contributions. Wikipedia ed- itors,
also called Wikipedians, who write the content are all unpaid volunteers,”
adds Panigrahi.
The organisation banks on collaborative writing and the content is not
bound by copyright laws. The texts, pictures, or other contents can be
shared, dis- tributed and modified, provided attribution is specified,
without paying Wikimedia Foundation.
Now and then, these young volunteers of Oriya Wikipedia Ashutosh Kar,
Jnanaranjana Sahu, Jyotiprakash, Satyakam Das, Kamalakanta Nayak,
Krupasindhu Muduli, Mrutyunjaya Kar and Srikant Kedia organise workshops
and seminars in Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Balasore in order to
raise awareness about the free Oriya encyclopaedia and solicit
contributions. “In the workshops, the main focus is to train people on how
to create and expand articles,” says Krupasindhu Muduli.
Besides workshops, the other tools Wikimedia uses to create awareness are
various online and offline programmes. It sends out messages through
emails, Facebook, Orkut and other social net- working sites.
The group aims to make Oriya Wikipedia a household name in the state. Oriya
Wikipedia is celebrating its eighth birthday 29 January in Cuttack. The
website can be accessed at
http://or.wikipedia.org
Important Note : The publisher ( OrissaPost ) of the above news article
owns the copyrights of the article / content. Request to kindly not
reproduce or circulate the content further. The information is only shared
only with an internal community who have been featured on this article.
All copyrights are duly acknowledged.
ସୁଭ
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Subha
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