[Wikimediaindia-l] [Press]: DNA : "Will young India take to editing Wikipedia?"

[CherianTinu Abraham]

*Will young India take to editing Wikipedia?"*
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_will-young-india-take-to-editing-wikipedia_1611239
http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epaperpdf/12112011/11main%20edition-pg7-0.pdf (
The print version is a must see)

*At the age of 10, Srikant Kedia began inserting his name into Wikipedia
articles as a prank, leading to several of his accounts being blocked.
However, a year ago, Kedia turned into a serious Wikipedian after finding
that he could make contributions to Wikipedia in Oriya — his first
language. “Now, I am part of the sum of all human knowledge,” gushed the
18-year-old college student from Cuttack.*
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*At the upcoming WikiConference in Mumbai, Wikipedians from across the
country will come together to chart out an action plan for the future of
the user-generated online encyclopaedia in India. And they hope that the
youth will play a major role.*
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*Computer savvy, with plenty of time on their hands and a direct
involvement in the sphere of knowledge and education, students are ideal
candidates for a project like Wikipedia, which is completely
volunteer-driven.*
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*Srikant Ramakrishnan, a 19-year-old computer science student in
Coimbatore, began editing on Wikipedia when he was 13. He now has 10,000
edits on English Wikipedia.*
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*With endless access to knowledge that is constantly evolving and the
thrill of contributing to something that will be of use to others, these
bright youngsters have discovered that Wikipedia can be just as addictive
as Facebook. Take the case of Surya Prakash, 18, the youngest administrator
on Tamil Wikipedia. He admits to spending most of his holidays and free
time at his campus browsing centre. Instead of status updates, he borrows
his friends’ laptops to make an urgent edit or to update pages. And in
Kozhikode, Kerala, Netha Hussain, a 20-year-old medical student, likes
chatting with her friends as they make improvements on the same Wikipedia
article and compare notes.*
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*But what would drive a young person to contribute to something that is
anonymous in nature and with no monetary gain? “Wikipedia has helped me
understand concepts in medicine. Whenever I notice an insufficiency in a
medicine-related article, I look up authentic websites/books and edit that
article. So I’m learning while editing,” said Hussain.*
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*Prakash, who did his schooling in Tamil, said, “Having conversations with
foreigners has helped me develop my English. I’ve learned how to write
professionally. I have also picked up skills on how to convince and bargain
with people,” he said, referring to the extensive dialogue that goes on in
the back-end of every Wikipedia page whenever an addition or edit is
brought to question.*


Regards
Tinu Cherian
press at wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news

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