*Dainika : "2nd Odia Wikipedia Academy organized"*
http://www.dainika.com/regional/2nd-odia-wikipedia-academy-organized
*Bhubaneswar: The 2nd Odia Wikipedia Academy has been organized on 3 April
2011 at Bharatuya Vidya Bhavan, Bhubaneswar. This was the fist official
outreach academy of Odia Wikipedia to bring an awareness and motivate common
mass from different educational and social background.*
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*Odia Wikipedia was started way back in 2002 and was one of the four Indian
languages, Asamese, Odia, Pujabi, Malayalam.*
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*But because of the lack of proper awareness and activism there was a snail
movement for almost 8 years.*
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*Then after the 10th Anniversary of Wikipedia Ashutosh Kar and few Odia
fellows got interested to take initiative to reform the movement and take it
ahead which gave birth to the first Odia Wikipedia Academy, conducted in
Bengaluru on.*
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*Odia Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia in Odia language to make knowledge
available freely for masses.*
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*Dhanada Mishra of Human Resource Development Management Studies has
officially inaugurated this event. A FAQ Booket was released by and
distributed among the first time participants of the Wikipedia Workshop.
Malayalam Wikipedians Shiju Alex and Tinu Cherian were also took active part
in facilitating the event.*
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*The workshop was conducted by Odia Wikiali (Odia version of an
Wikipedian/User) Subha Pa.*
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*The whole Academy/Workshop was conducted in 2 main sections, Subha
introduced Odia Wikipedia to the audience, said about the history and the
development and current status. The second session was focused on how to
type in Odia using the transliteration/Inscript tool which was newly
incorporated, solving typing issues, searching existing articles, creating
articles and editing for enhancement of old article.*
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*In this session he has demonstrated how to add content using the commonly
used syntaxes, adding pictures and other media files.*
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*This was an interactive session where the audience interacted with the
demonstrator and each other and several discussions went on based on the
major issues.*
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*Several participants from from the nearby management colleges, engineering
students, entrepreneurs, college students have also participated.*
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*At the end of the session a lotion based core group of active users was
formed which will be promoting the Wikipedia movement and bringing more and
more contributors to enhance it, make it more user friendly and make it
reach to masses.*
*
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*Contributors came with several suggestions such as motivating more and more
students and freelancers to contribute and also monitor the ongoing
activities and discussing them through the mailing list of Odia Wikipedia. [
http://bit.ly/ormail ].*
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*More and more such activism are expected in the coming future with the
involvement of people who are eager for the development of Odia language on
web.*
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*Odia Wikipedia can be accessed at
or.wikipedia.org and the Facebook page
for Odia Wikipedia is
facebook.com/OdiaWiki .*
*Some other local online reports :*
http://www.odishaeye.com/Odia-Wikipedia-Workshop-held-in-Bhubaneswar-2428.h…
http://orissadiary.com/ShowEvents.asp?id=25754
Regards
Tinu Cherian
http://wikimedia.in/wiki/In_the_news#April_2011