*Times of India : " Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi
languages"*
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/internet/Wikipedia-boom-i…
*A vibrant vernacular Wikipedia seems to be taking root in India. In the
last eight months, the number of Wikipedia entries has grown substantially
in 20 Indian languages, says a study by the Bangalore-based Centre for
Internet and Society (CIS).
Wiki, the world's largest online encyclopaedia where anyone can write and
edit articles, didn't have much content in vernacular till a few years ago.
According to the study, Wikis in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi have
added thousands of new articles on various subjects from September 2012 to
April 2013. A few of these pages were viewed more during this period.
Marathi, which had 30 lakh page views per month previously, had another 10
lakh visitors, while Bengali Wikipedia had 14 lakh page views.
While Malayalam Wiki took the top position with an enviable team of 100
plus editors, the number Hindi, Marathi and Sanskrit editors came down.
"Marathi has 40,000 articles. But most editors in Mumbai prefer to work on
English. Pune has more Marathi editors,' says T Vishnu Vardhan, programme
director, Access to Knowledge project at CIS.
"In the last two years, the demand for knowledge in Indian languages has
grown as we have moved to the motto of 'roti, kapda and internet'," says
Vardhan.
One of the reasons for growth is that many browsers now support Indian
language scripts. But this was not the case in early 2000. Though many
wanted to read and type in their own language, there was no browser
support, says Shiju Alex, blogger and Malayalam Wiki editor. Moreover, many
didn't know how to type in their mother tongues.
But once Indian languages were encoded in Unicode, the fonts became
accessible. "There was no need to write Malayalam in English and people
started blogging in their mother tongues," says Alex. According to Vardhan,
communities with better literacy rates seem to have taken the lead online.
"Telugu Wiki is stronger as internet penetration in Andhra Pradesh is
higher than in places where Bhojpuri or Assamese is spoken."
As with most online language initiatives, the Wiki movement was also
fuelled by the diaspora. Tinu Cherian Abraham, a former board member of the
Wikimedia India chapter, talks about how an NRI's love for Malayalam
kick-started the project.
But now there are many Wiki foot soldiers in India, including a blind
editor of Hindi Wikipedia and an elderly contributor from Kerala whose
passion for free knowledge has helped him forget his ailments. *
Regards
Tinu Cherian
press(a)wikimedia.in
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news
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