Hi,
I am working with a journo on a news article related to Wikimedia
Fundraising and donations from India. Hope at least some of you already know
that India in the top 6 donor countries to the Wikimedia Foundation. (
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tdr42GK_QfdjmijxzyjNnZw&authkey=CKb…
[1]).
10,488 contributions and $193,657.88 . These are approximate figures based
on stats available. Still it is great news.
The reporter would like to talk to individuals to understand why
they donate to Wikimedia/ Wikipedia. So if you have donated to Wikimedia (
however small or big ) and if you filling to be contacted/quoted by the
press, please contact me *offlist* asap. Both regular editors and users are
equally welcome.
Remember to send your contact info ( Name, Mobile, Email , Place,
Editor/User) to me personally and not to this mailing list. Please note that
list mails are publicly archived for ever.
Thanks
Tinu Cherian
[1] This is a publicly available data,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tracking_Progress_for_2011_chapters_fundrais…
Hi Ashwin, Sudhanwa,
thanks for initiating the meetup. As far as the agenda/activity planning is
concerned, here some points from my side :
1. Public outreach for mr wiki : As of now, mr wiki does not have
strong editor base in Maharashtra/in general in India – for reasons common
across many of the Indic wikipedias (People still tend to imagine that all
the Internet/Computer stuff to be ‘natively’ English.) . Mr wikipedians have
been trying to reach out to Marathi netizens in last few months – as was the
case with 1st editathon on mr wiki organised recently on 26-27 February. We
witnessed sizeable content contributed by new editors and they are chipping
in after that in steady flow. But this needs to be replicated on larger
scale by publicising the efforts on mr wiki – through some workshops/ media
coverage.
Some visual brand building might help as well, e.g., if members of
WikiPuneri go around the town for photo-hunt, wearing those Wikipedia logo.
J
*2. *Getting more “Maratha” visual content for Commons : Commons lacks
images related to Maratha community and culture. WikiPuneri can make
considerable contribution in this repect; esp. To get images for
celebrities, public figures, places of interest. We can even weigh
possibilities to work with organisations such as ‘Maharashtra Sahitya
Parishad’, ‘Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal’ etc., who hold many interesting
images in their treasure trove.**
* *
Thanks,
Sankalp
> ---------- अग्रेषित केलेला संदेश ----------
> From: Sudhanwa Jogalekar <sudhanwa.com(a)gmail.com>
> To: mr-wiki(a)yahoogroups.com
> Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 18:41:36 +0530
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [mr-wiki] Next meetup of Pune Wikipedians -
> 12 March 2011
> Hi,
>
> If the veterans of the MR-WIKI can send us their thoughts about this, we
> can discuss on those points further.
>
> Mahitgar, Abhay, Sankalp and others, please give your inputs.
>
> -Sudhanwa
>
> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 4:26 PM, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> The next meetup of Pune wikipedians, WikiPuneri, is planned for Saturday
>> 12 Mar 2011, from 1830 to 1930 hrs at Symbiosis Institue of Computer Science
>> and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony (near Om Supermarket), 7th Floor,
>> Room Room No 704.
>>
>> The intended purpose of the meetup is:
>> to set up a long-term plan for a year's worth of activities, with detailed
>> planning for photo outreach activities for Wikimedia Commons.
>>
>> The detailed planning for each project will be done, one project at a
>> time. The next project for which planning will be done, Marathi Wikipedia,
>> will be discussed in detail in the April 2011 (Pune 12) meetup.
>>
>> Please sign up here :
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Pune/Pune11#Participants
>>
>> This is a very interesting and important meet so be sure to be present to
>> push your ideas about what you would like to do!
>>
>> Warm regards,
>>
>> Ashwin Baindur
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>>
>
>
>
Dear All
One of the first tasks that I've been working on as part of India
Programs is to prepare a preliminary plan for India. The first
(incomplete, and still work-in-progress) draft is up on meta
athttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_programs
As you'll notice, I've provided some context, outlined objectives and
purpose and wrote out the top 3 initiatives. I've also left
placeholders for some additional sections that I'm working on. I'm
hoping to have more stuff on it in another day or two.
I'm sharing this because it will be wonderful to get your opinions and
ideas, and also to give you a sense of how the plan's being evolving..
Please feel free to comment on what's in the plan, but also elements
that you think should be in the plan but are not..
Kind Regards,
--
/hisham/
*India Programs - Wikimedia Foundation*
skype : hisham.wikimedia
google talk: hmundol(a)wikimedia.org
Hi GN,
Thanks for elaborating. I'd wanted to convey that sense of potential.
One clarification that it seems is not getting through to our
concerned friends : There is no "ANY" material being distributed.
Neither are the full Indian language versions being shown or given to
anyone under 18 years of age. At least not on my end and if you do
find anyone doing that then please pass their contact and I'll explain
them why they should not. As I've explained earlier, Shiju made an
error (like, whoa!) in misreading an innocent email and assuming
completely wrong things, and so inadvertently caused anxiety among the
community when there was no ground reality in the concerns raised. I
hope it's fair to ask for sensibility, and honestly I'd apologize if I
was the one who made the error seeing the damage that loose words can
cause.
It is a proper package called "wikipedia for schools" created by a
reputed non-profit (SOS Childrens' Villages) that spent 2 years in
collaboration with wikimedia foundation making a collection of
articles that may be useful for school children. I have so far not
found any genuine reason to not trust these organizations, nor have
come across anything remotely qualifying as objectionable. If
anything, it is lacking due to obvious resource problems of the time.
It's a great effort and should be appreciated.
Anybody who wants to know what the Wikipedia for Schools collection
contains in present form, can kindly go to
http://schools-wikipedia.org/ . Please let us all know, with full
details, if you found anything wrong in it. I will pass that
information on to any teachers I've given the package to and hope
others do the same (has anybody else done anything yet? I didn't
inform this group just for kicks). Still, I do have a litte faith in
their own intelligence and discerning powers also, I would not be a
wikipedian if I didn't. For the things that are missing in it, Ashlin
has started work on and I urge you to show your enthusiasm and
positivity by joining that effort.
Anyways, for something that is essentially FREE, if there is something
really bad about it, a FREE thing can easily be THROWN away. That's a
no-brainer. But irrational fear of a threat that emerged from a gross
misunderstanding is something I for one cannot live with. I'd
appreciate it if this community does not commit the mistake of
negative speculation without proper data to back any serious statement
up. After all, if we are wikipedians we ought to have some standards
in our discussion group as well. My apologies if I was rude earlier,
but you have to admit - there was such a chasm between fact and
assumption, it's but natural to feel exasperated.
PS: It is not a CD. 2.8 gigabytes cannot fit on a 700megabyte CD. All
who are reading this, please stop calling it "CD" forthwith or you
might make people waste their money buying blank CDs and then they'll
blame you for it. It can come on DVD or USB devices or others of
larger sizes. Kindly refrain from using inaccurate terms, it indicates
that the writer in question really doesn't know what he/she is
expressing concerns about and takes away the credibility.
Cheers
Nikhil
On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 11:05 PM, Nagarjuna G <nagarjun(a)gnowgi.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:07 PM, Ravishankar <ravidreams(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Nikhil,
> > I register my strong objection for this. There are various concerns even if
> > the content is children friendly:
> > 1. The content should be free of typos, factual errors. If a school teacher
> > browses through random content and finds that the content is full of errors,
> > not much useful then he may not circulate the CD to students. Once people
> > get a bad opinion of Wiki, it will take lot of effort to get rid of that. If
> > the teachers do not take note of these and circulate it is still worse as
> > students get wrong info. Since there is a tendency for uninformed readers to
> > believe whatever they see in print, we have a responsibility here. I
> > understand you are not distributing / preparing DVDs for sake of school
> > children. Nevertheless, why can't we make sure to distribute high quality
> > verified content to whoever it is?
>
> My approach is different. we are teaching the teachers how to type in
> their language, and telling them how they can create wikipages. We
> have told them that the wikipedia is not a completed project and needs
> their help. The teachers and students are not mere consumers of the
> knowledge wikimedians and experts create. They can detect edit, and
> correct mistakes on their own. During the the process they will learn
> as well as become fellow wikimedians. We are teaching them how to
> correct as well.
>
> If we are only distributing the content without making them aware of
> the background of the content, I agree with you, we need to be
> careful.
>
> Neither free software nor wikipedia succeeded without frequent
> releases. Both the children and teachers can understand their roles
> and help themselves. We can convince the administrators about this
> process as well.
>
> However, if we know that the current school zim files contain some
> pages with vandalism then we can remove them. But, we can also let
> the teachers and students detect the vandalism as well since our job
> will never end.
>
> > 2. Articles need to be vandalism free. Any random zim backup you distribute
> > may have vandal edits in at least few instances. Imagine what will be the
> > reaction of media, academia and Government departments if a state leader's
> > page is distributed with vandal edits.
>
> When the teachers detect the mistake, they could edit the main
> wikipedia themselves. It is time we tell them that education is not
> mere consumption of correct or perfect knowledge, but to participate
> in eternal perfection. Correction opportunity gives a fantastic
> opportunity for the teachers as well as students to understand how
> society works.
>
> When they are connected they access the pages from full dumps. When
> we give them offline version we need to tell them that the information
> is not guaranteed to be accurate.
>
> --
> GN
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
The next meetup of Pune wikipedians, WikiPuneri, is planned for Saturday 12
Mar 2011, from 1830 to 1930 hrs at Symbiosis Institue of Computer Science
and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony (near Om Supermarket), 7th Floor,
Room Room No 704.
The intended purpose of the meetup is:
to set up a long-term plan for a year's worth of activities, with detailed
planning for photo outreach activities for Wikimedia Commons.
The detailed planning for each project will be done, one project at a time.
The next project for which planning will be done, Marathi Wikipedia, will be
discussed in detail in the April 2011 (Pune 12) meetup.
Please sign up here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Pune/Pune11#Participants
This is a very interesting and important meet so be sure to be present to
push your ideas about what you would like to do!
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:07 PM, Ravishankar <ravidreams(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Nikhil,
> I register my strong objection for this. There are various concerns even if
> the content is children friendly:
> 1. The content should be free of typos, factual errors. If a school teacher
> browses through random content and finds that the content is full of errors,
> not much useful then he may not circulate the CD to students. Once people
> get a bad opinion of Wiki, it will take lot of effort to get rid of that. If
> the teachers do not take note of these and circulate it is still worse as
> students get wrong info. Since there is a tendency for uninformed readers to
> believe whatever they see in print, we have a responsibility here. I
> understand you are not distributing / preparing DVDs for sake of school
> children. Nevertheless, why can't we make sure to distribute high quality
> verified content to whoever it is?
My approach is different. we are teaching the teachers how to type in
their language, and telling them how they can create wikipages. We
have told them that the wikipedia is not a completed project and needs
their help. The teachers and students are not mere consumers of the
knowledge wikimedians and experts create. They can detect edit, and
correct mistakes on their own. During the the process they will learn
as well as become fellow wikimedians. We are teaching them how to
correct as well.
If we are only distributing the content without making them aware of
the background of the content, I agree with you, we need to be
careful.
Neither free software nor wikipedia succeeded without frequent
releases. Both the children and teachers can understand their roles
and help themselves. We can convince the administrators about this
process as well.
However, if we know that the current school zim files contain some
pages with vandalism then we can remove them. But, we can also let
the teachers and students detect the vandalism as well since our job
will never end.
> 2. Articles need to be vandalism free. Any random zim backup you distribute
> may have vandal edits in at least few instances. Imagine what will be the
> reaction of media, academia and Government departments if a state leader's
> page is distributed with vandal edits.
When the teachers detect the mistake, they could edit the main
wikipedia themselves. It is time we tell them that education is not
mere consumption of correct or perfect knowledge, but to participate
in eternal perfection. Correction opportunity gives a fantastic
opportunity for the teachers as well as students to understand how
society works.
When they are connected they access the pages from full dumps. When
we give them offline version we need to tell them that the information
is not guaranteed to be accurate.
--
GN
Hi !
I am pleased to inform you that the translation of all the message texts of
Wikimedia Mobile Interface in Angika language has been Completed.
--
Best Regards.
Kundan Amitabh
Managing Director,
Ang India Technologies,
www.angindia.org
CH-2/52, Kendriya Vihar, Sector-11,
Kharghar, Navi Mumbai,
Mumbai-410210,
INDIA
======================
9768884444 / 9869478444
======================
"Let's Keep Our World Green for Our Children's Future!
Please don't print this email unless it's really necessary"
Hoi,
When you want to read Wikipedia off line, you can when having a user
interface in English is not a problem. You are also in luck when you use the
software that is developed for Malayalam. The Wikimedia Foundation is
supporting new functionality that uses the openZIM format and, this will
allow you to make selections that can be used off-line.
Okawix will likely be the first application that supports openZIM and can be
localised at translatewiki.net. They told me that once they are ready with
supporting the Android and iPhone smart phones, they will work on supporting
openZIM. In the mean time, their software can be localised at
translatewiki.net and you can download the data in your language as well.
I am really interested to learn if Okawix works well for your language.
There are two parts to it:
- does the content look good on your smart phone
- is the software working properly for you in your language
If there is something amiss with the language support of the software, then
you can help us by improving the localisation of Okawix.
Thanks,
GerardM
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/03/test-offline-wikipedia-on-your-…
Hi Liam,
2011/3/10 Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com>:
> Hi Yann,
>
> There is no shortage of museums that have huge collections of great stuff to
> photograph! :-) But yes, it would be good to get more Indian cultural
> heritage onto Wikimedia.
> According to the museum's website http://www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in/ you
> can enter for 300rupees and are allowed to take photos for a further
> 300rupee fee. Presumably therefore, if you do buy this ticket, that means
> their policies allow people to take photos inside. I can't confirm this and
> it would be good if you would check for yourself so as to avoid any
> confrontations. I do not personally have any contacts at that museum and
> directly coordinating GLAM outreach relationships is not something that the
> Wikimedia Foundation can achieve. It is up to the local communities (and
> especially the chapters) to work out their best plans. I can help when
> necessary but we don't have any "official" capacity to contact anyone -
> we're just Wikimedians after all :-) Relatedly, I am working on the concept
> of the "GLAM Ambassador" who would have some kind of formal backing so they
> could get access to institutions, but this is a very young idea still.
>
> In the mean time I would suggest that, if you can confirm if they DO allow
> photography, that you go ahead and do it - but make sure that you also add
> their record/accession/item record number to the metadata when you upload it
> so that it can be tracked back to their catalogue. If they do NOT allow
> photography then it will be a longer process to form a relationship with
> them to either have them donate their own images or allow Wikimedians in for
> a specific photography event.
Well, there are several problems with that.
1. In order to make good photographs, a tripod will be necessary. I
doubt they will allow that for the usual fees.
2. Seeing the size of the museum, many days will be needed to take
good photographs (not snapshots) of a sizeable portion of the museum.
At 300 Rs. each, it would be expensive for me. Actually I might not
need to pay that much, as I am a resident in India, and I am entitled
to the Indian fees.
3. For some items, there might copyright issues to publish the
resulting images under a free license.
> Sincerely,
> -Liam
Regards,
Yann
> wittylama.com/blog
> Peace, love & metadata
>
> On 9 March 2011 16:44, Yann Forget <yannfo(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I visited the National Museum in Delhi today and I have discovered
>> that it contains a huge collection of arts which would be very
>> interesting to have in Wikimedia Commons. I have a decent camera and a
>> tripod, and I could spend some time taking photographs there, if the
>> museum would allow.
>> Would it be possible to contact them officially, either Hisham or
>> someone from Wikimedia India?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Yann
Hi Folks
I'm writing regarding the Fellowships Program, and specifically to
invite proposals for Fellowships in India. For those who might not be
aware of the program, these links are useful:-
1). http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships
2).
http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/15/wikimedia-foundation-fellowship-p…
As part of India Programs, Fellowships will play an important role in
designing, initiating and accelerating initiatives to support the
community and the various projects. If you look at the existing
Fellowships, you will get a sense of the kind of proposals approved in
the past. However, please do not limit yourself to these areas alone.
If there are areas outside these that you might be interested in, go
right ahead and send a proposal.
Also, please see if you can submit them as early as is convenient - so
they can be commenced as soon as possible.
As always, please do not hesitate to reach out to me if you need any
help clarification on anything.
Kind Regards
--
/hisham/
*India Programs - Wikimedia Foundation*
skype : hisham.wikimedia
google talk: hmundol(a)wikimedia.org