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
