[Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikipedia-OR] Odia wiki Caught in a time warp, (The New Indian Express)

[jayanta nath]

*The repot

Odia Wiki caught in a lime warp
*
Express News Service Bhubaneswar, April 3

Wikimedia Foundation's Indian chap¬ter started Odia Wiki in 2002 but it has
just 10 contributors. Odia Wiki, one of the first in regional languages in
In¬dia, started with a repository of just 200 articles but the number has
not changed much in the last nine
years.

All the dated articles have been deleted by Wikipedia administrators.
Besides the contributors to Wiki have so far been technology professionals
and tech-savvy youngsters, most of whom live outside the State.In order to
take the Wikipedia project forward, Odia Wiki activists are now looking for
support and explore initiatives in the State. To get more contributors to
Odia Wiki, they are holding workshops and meetings in many districts and one
such workshop was organised today at Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan here.Wikipedia,
the volunteer driven, web-based multilingual encyclopaedia project, has
emerged as an important reference source on the Internet for all kinds of
information.

"Though Odia Wiki was one of the first regional languages Wiki to be
launched by the Indian chapter of Wikipedia along with four other Indian
languages, it is lagging behind the rest three. There is no awareness
Contributors to Wiki have so far been technology professionals and
tech-savvy youngsters, most of whom live outside the State

at all," said Subhashish Panigrahi, an engineer and an active member of the
Odia Wiki community. Malayalam Wikimedians are leading the movement in India
with a repository of more than 20,000 articles. Even the take-off of Odia Wi
ki was slow - it took two years to reach the 100-article mark.However, the
silver lining is the formulation of a Unicode standard for Oriya that will
help interested contributors to type easily in Oriya while entering data in
Wikipedia. It was a luxury till recently. The workshop is aimed at roping in
more active Wiki contributors. Divided into two sessions, the participants
were first familiarised with Wikipe¬dia, Odia Wiki and the various Wiki
projects.The second session was meant to prepare them technically to be
con¬tributors. A booklet comprising fre¬quently asked questions was also
is¬sued to the participants.
Similar workshops have been planned in Cuttack, Balasore and Ganjam this
month. People from various walks of life, including students, tech¬nology
professionals, academics and retired officials attended today's sessions.


With Warm Regards,
*Jayanta Nath*
Calcutta,West Bengal
Facebook :http://www.facebook.com/jayantanth
Wikipedia :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jayantanth
আসুন পাইরেসি মুক্ত ভারত  গড়ি,সবাই মুক্ত সফ্‌টওয়ার ব্যবহার করি [image:
O:-)],অন্যকে ব্যবহারে উৎসাহিত করি।
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