Dear all,
We from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) thank you all for your support and collaboration and wish you a very Happy New Year. We bring you the details of our work for the month of December 2013:
CIS-A2K: Work Accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia
We are pleased to share with you the key accomplishments on Konkani Wikipedia from September to December 2013 in this report. It has been found that there has been an increased editing activity on Konkani Wikipedia, and an increase in the number of articles on Konkani Wikipedia. Konkani Vishwakosh was re-released under Creative Commons License, we initiated Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization project and signed a MoU with Goa University to build Konkani Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/1l6ttmp.
Article
Telugu Wikipedia completes 10 years (by Rahmanuddin Shaik, DNA, December 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/19OAvUV. The article was edited by Rohini Lakshané.
Blog Entries
First ever Train-the-Trainer Program in India (by Nitika Tandon, December 5, 2013): http://bit.ly/1euwSXt.
Priyadarshini Tadkodkar on Konkani language (by Subhashish Panigrahi, November 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1hldNM8. We are featuring this here as we didn’t carry this in the last newsletter.
Varsha Kavlekar on Konkani Wikipedia Incubator (by Nitika Tandon, December 12, 2013): http://bit.ly/KmxyFo.
Darshan Kandolkar on Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process (by Nitika Tandon, December 13, 2013): http://bit.ly/1cqKyQ2.
Darshana Mandrekar speaks on Konkani Wikipedia (by Nitika Tandon, December 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/1keWyya.
Pooja Tople on Wikimedia Projects (by Nitika Tandon, December 17, 2013): http://bit.ly/1hlbubU.
(2-6 are videos of participants from the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization project (jointly organised by CIS-A2K and Goa University) speaking on their experiences with Wikimedia projects.)
Events Organised
You Too Can Write on Wikipedia! — Training workshop (National Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management, Gachibowli, Hyderabad, December 5, 2013): http://bit.ly/1edmx1z.
Telugu Wikipedia Training Workshop (KBN College, Vijaywada, December 16, 2013): http://bit.ly/1i8ScnL.
Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Alvas Vishva Nudisiri Virasat (Moodabidre, December 19 – 22, 2013). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a presentation about Kannada Wikipedia and also conducted a workshop on Kannada Wikipedia as a parallel track. The event was covered by Prajavani (December 22), Hosadigantha (December 22), and Deccan Herald (December 22): http://bit.ly/1dGTBkw.
Events Co-organised
Wikipedia Orientation Workshop (organised by CIS-A2K and Christ University, Bangalore, December 2, 2013): http://bit.ly/1lrkwEy.
Wikipedia Training Session @ Tiruvur (organised by CIS-A2K and Telugu Wikipedia community, Srivahini College, Tiruvur, December 19, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik conducted the workshop: http://bit.ly/1e3oQX7. It was covered by Andhraprabha (http://bit.ly/1bU5VsQ).
Thanks
Nitika Tandon
Hoi,
I have the numbers of the labels in the languages of India for you. When
you add labels in *YOUR* language, it is possible to add a few hundred
labels in an hour. The trick is to right click on the missing labels and
open a new window and add a missing label.
hi 104,025 new 72,106 ta 68,303 mr 47,609 bn 46,612 ml 46,281 ur
45,275 te 39,648 bpy 29,460 gu 27,232 my 26,006 ne 22,188 kn 13,855
si 8,328 pa 7,607 sa 6,878 or 5,820 as 4,994 bh 2,479 pi 2,223 sd 470
ks 145
When you have look at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q668?uselang=kn you
will see India in the Kannada language. When you first add labels for the P
numbers, you add labels to properties. They are used most often. When you
continue by adding labels for the Q numbers, you will find that they are
often used on other countries.
Obviously by changing kn to the language code of *YOUR* language, you can
add the labels missing in *YOUR* language.
When you want to see the results of what you are doing, have a look at this
when you are done...
http://tools.wmflabs.org/reasonator/test/?lang=kn&q=Q668 What shows up in
English does not yet have a label in Kannada..
Thanks,
GerardM
There is a discussion going on.
Please have a look.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Fabrice Florin <fflorin(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 8:45 AM
Subject: [Commons-l] RfC: Should we support MP4 Video on our sites?
To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Greetings!
The Wikimedia Foundation's multimedia team seeks your guidance on a
proposal to support the MP4 video format. As you know, this digital video
standard is used widely around the world to record, edit and watch videos
on mobile phones, desktop computers and home video devices. It is also
known as H.264/MPEG-4 or AVC. (1)
Supporting the MP4 format would make it much easier for our users to view
and contribute video on Wikimedia projects -- and video files could be
offered in dual formats on our sites, so we could continue to support
current open formats (WebM and Ogg Theora).
However, MP4 is a patent-encumbered format, and using a proprietary format
would be a departure from our current practice of only supporting open
formats on our sites -- even though the licenses appear to have acceptable
legal terms, with only a small fee required.
We would appreciate your guidance on whether or not we should support MP4
on our sites. The Request for Comments presents views both in favor and
against MP4 support, based on opinions we’ve heard in our discussions with
community and team members.
What do you think? We would be grateful for your comments here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video
All users are welcome to participate, whether you are active on Commons,
Wikipedia, other Wikimedia project -- or any site that uses content from
our free media repository.
We also invite you to join our Office Hours Chat on IRC this Thursday,
January 16, at 19:00 UTC, if you would like to discuss this project with
our team and other community members:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours
We look forward to a constructive discussion with you and other community
members, so we can make a more informed decision together about this
important question.
All the best,
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager, Multimedia
Wikimedia Foundation
Multimedia Team Hub:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia
(1) About MP4:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)
_______________________________________________
Commons-l mailing list
Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
--
Srikanth Ramakrishnan
Treasurer,
Wikimedia Chapter [India]
Donate to the Wikimedia India Chapter today<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Donations>
Hi Everyone
I would like to invite each one of you to the *Wikipedia Workshop Pune 2014*,
which is going to be held on the 18th January 2014 at 11:00 am ,Pune
Vidyarthi Griha's College of Engineering & Technology, Pune.
It will be a workshop which will concentrate on many topics like Intro to
Wikipedia,How to inspire new editors, Women Empowerment,Pune community &
many more.
All details of the Workshop are available in the below mentioned site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Workshop/Pune
All those who are interested in attending the Workshop can mail me or Sanket
Me : yohannvt at gmail.com.
Sanket : sankoswal at gmail.com
Thanking you
Yohann Thomas
hi,
Really excited about this one. After we did our first meetup in September 2010, we've now reached the milestone of the twenty fifth meetup of the Wikipedia community in Mumbai. We're doing a coffee and cake celebration at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Bandra where we did our first meetup.
Meetup page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Mumbai/Mumbai25
If you're attending please RSVP me or Rohini at:
me: prad2609 at yahoo.com
Rohini: rohini at wikimedia.in
Hope to see all of you there,
User:Prad2609
Pradeep Mohandas
How Pradeep uses email? - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Soujanyaa Boruah <soujanyaaboruah(a)gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Jan 11, 2014 at 8:46 PM
Subject: Wikimedia Hackathon 2013, Rakkar
Hello Wikimedians,
It was great to host the Wikimedia Hackathon at
Mindgrep<http://mindgrep.com/> in
Ghoomakad. On behalf of the entire team I'd like to convey many thanks to
Konarak and Santosh for making it a great success.
Here is a summary on the Wikimedia Hackathon 2013! I am sharing the
etherpad<https://mindgrep.etherpad.mozilla.org/14>note on the summary
here. Please feel free to make changes and add your
points to it.
DAY1//
It started on the 27th of December with Konarak introducing Mediawiki,
extensions and installation. He and Santosh gave a demo on mw.Api and
QuickRC.js. These sessions were attended by the Mindgrep tech team.
DAY2//
On the 28th, we had a session on localization / internationalization using
jquery.i18n and use of jquery.ime and jquery.uls, which was followed by a
hacking session. This session was attended by more than 20 local and
visiting techies.
During the second half there was a Wikimedia editing session at
Nishtha's<http://nishtha-hp.org/> community
center, which was attended by a bunch of school students from Rakkar
Government School.
DAY3//
Five primary school students from Rakkar inaugurated Rakkar's wiki page
based on the information they had collected during past one month
interviewing local villagers and taking their videos as a part of The
Village School Project
<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/The_Village_School_Project> carried
out by us at Infinity <http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Ghoomakad>. This wiki
will be hosted on Mindgrep's servers and will have video citations from
local villagers on the information presented.
Followed by that was a session of hacking with the Digital Dhasa Community
at McLeodganj. By the end of this session they made a plugin to input
Tibetan script directly using keyboard. The Tibetans were absolutely
delighted to type in Tibetan directly on forms and emails.
DAY4//
We concluded the event with the final presentation where everyone shared
the hacks they made during the first three days of the Hackathon. Avneesh
from Mindgrep, contributed to jquery.ime by using the jquery’s virtual
screen keyboard library [http://mottie.github.io/Keyboard/] to write text
in various scripts. Konarak demoed the Tibetan keyboard that they built. He
also presented a program he developed, to fetch capitals of places using
Wikidata. Santosh presented a plugin he made, to directly upload public
images from Flickr to Wikimedia Commons.
Overall, it had been great mix of enthusiasm, enjoyment and bonding, which
saw immense support from the local tech community and an active
participation of the members of Tibetan Community, Srijan and Mindgrep. It
turned out to be quite promising in terms of bridging technology with the
local community. We hope to have more of such collaboration with the
Wikimedia foundation in the future.
We would also like to attribute the effort made by the Wikimedians by
publishing special mentions on our website [
http://mindgrep.com/works/wikimedia-hackathon-and-editathon/] and writing a
blog about it. Looking forward to your go aheads on this.
Here are some visual
highlights<http://www.flickr.com/photos/soujanyaaboruah/sets/72157639300249844/>
from
the event!
Cheers,
Soujanyaa Boruah
hi,
This came on the members list and I thought this might be of wider interest. Sowmyan has tried to engage with us on this list and it is really sad to see him go.
User:Prad2609
Pradeep Mohandas
How Pradeep uses email? - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sowmyan Tirumurti <tsowmyan(a)wikimedia.in>
Date: 12 January 2014 16:07
Subject: [WMIN-Members] Thank you
To: wmin-members(a)googlegroups.com
Dear Members,
I have decided to relinquish my role as the Executive Manager of the Chapter, and had communicated this to the EC some time back. I guess they did not quite like it and hence have in turn not let it out. Considering that I stand by the decision, and mails requesting grants and expectations of responses on these have been coming in from members of the community, I feel this must be made public.
The Foundation has offered a grant of about Rs 33 lakhs for 2014 under FDC. The Chapter had made a request for an amount about 4 times of this. The grant request apparently did not inspire FDC and they have held that the Chapter may not have the capability to administer any larger amount. At 80% growth over the previous year, they seem to feel the Chapter has already been given a massive growth path and should be happy with this. Given the low grant amounts we received in the past, this 'massive' 80% growth does not mean much. It does not pay for salary for 2 people (as planned), an office, and the mandatory quarterly face to face EC meetings and associated travel.
Regulatory norms put a cap at 40% of the grant value on these overhead expenses. At a grant value of 33 lakhs, the total over heads can only be 40% of 33 lakhs, amounting to about Rs 13 lakhs. This level means, we go back to one more year of passive funds administration without much Chapter driven events. An accountant / volunteer helping in disbursements of funds against requests generated organically would be the model we have to adopt. We will still need an office to comply with regulatory requirements. EC travel may be some what uncertain when new elections bring people in farther parts of the country. By standing down I would be helping the Chapter in a small way to manage the expenses within the available grant.
I feel guilty of having been a burden on the chapter for a year. We did not know our grant limited future will be so limited and my time was spent imagining grander possibilities for a brighter future and sharing them internally. The earlier EC dreamed big, and initiated my engagement though as a part timer. I was to become a full timer from April 2013. This was postponed by mutual consent with the current EC, as we expected the FDC grant to provide for it. The FDC provides for this in principle, but not yet by the value. So it is time to stop this wasteful engagement.
I also feel guilty of not having lived up to the expectations of the members. The practical rejection of the new grant request (what else can we call it when what is approved is nearly 25% of what was sought) is also a factor for which I must take the blame. If the proposals did not appear to be impressive, were considered to have wasteful elements, was considered to have been built on inflated costs given the Indian context, and the chapter is seen as incapable of handling any thing larger, and none of the arguments in our discussions were accepted, I have to accept defeat, because I influenced the EC towards this proposal. The Chapter deserves an employee who can be more imaginative, and confidence inspiring. I am sorry I failed the Chapter.
Many of you supported the Chapter's grant request during the appeal stage. Some of you were truly participative in making suggestions for the proposal. I think you for this. At the same time, I also wish there had been a much greater participation from members in formulating the proposals. There is a time and space for every comment. It was bit disappointing to see people who did not share any constructive suggestion in the chapter pages come and make negative remarks in the meta pages. FDC staff seemed to latch on to the later, without any further examination or clarification of the context. Things like this hurt. It is your Chapter. You have the opportunity to shape it through constructive debates for the formulation of policies. Negative sentiments cast a doubt that global community may not understand the same way as they are understood within India.
I leave with the hope that the current grant may keep the Chapter active and in the next year it will find a better support. I thank you all for the cooperation extended to me. I am yet to complete some standard protocols. Recent membership addition related documentation is one of them. The delay has been due to my preoccupation with the FDC application. I want to assure you that none of the members for whom the membership card and receipt have not yet been physically mailed have been handicapped in their rights. The approved members were added to the opt in mail list. I will complete the dispatch of these documents, and closure of the grant report to WMF before end January 2014, when I cease to operate.
I will be in touch with some of you as yet another social activity enthusiast.
With warm regards,
T Sowmyan
Executive Manager,
Wikimedia Chapter,
Bangalore.
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How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9
Dear Prateek,
As I conveyed to you earlier, we shall not be able to participate in Spring
Fest this year. I, on behalf of the Wikimedia India Chapter Kolkata
community, sincerely apologize for our inability.
The entire Kolkata community is busy with preparations for the stall at
Kolkata Book Fair, starting 29 January and continuing till 9 February.
Preparations for the same would start from 19 January and continue till the
inauguration on 28 January. In this situation it would be really difficult
for us to conduct Wiki Academy at IIT Kharagpur sometime between 24-26
January. So we have formally decided to call it off year at our internal
meeting held last week. We were waiting for your mail, so that we could
reply back to.
Even though we are not able to participate in Spring Fest this year, we
would definitely like to participate next year. Kindly let us know your
dates in advance, so that we can plan accordingly. We would also like to
convey to you that we are open to conducting workshops any time during the
year. It doesn't always have to be a Spring Fest or some big occasion to
have the workshop. It can be done in anytime during the year.
Thanks and regards,
Kalyan Sarkar
On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 10:01 AM, Prateek Singhania <
prateek.singhania.iitkgp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Sir,
>
> As discussed over phone with Mr. Kalyan. We would like to have the
> association with Wikipedia similar to last year.
>
> I firmly believe that the asociation between Spring Fest, IIT Kharagpur
> and Wiki Chapter India has a long way to go.
>
> We will be more than happy to conduct the session on any of the days from
> 24th to 26th of January. Mr. Kalyan please let me know which dates suit you
> best.
>
> Hoping for a prompt and positive reply.
>
> Regards.
>
> --
> *Prateek Singhania*
> Sponsorship & Marketing Head
> Spring Fest <http://www.springfest.in/>2014 <http://www.springfest.in/>, IIT
> Kharagpur <http://www.iitkgp.ac.in/>
> +91 9830333633 | prateek.singhania <http://goog_969593991>
> .iitkgp(a)gmail.com
>
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: *Biswarup Ganguly*
Date: Sunday, January 12, 2014
Subject: TOI Article
To: Jayanta Nath <jayantanth(a)gmail.com>, Kalyan Sarkar <
kalyan.sarkar(a)gmail.com>, Rangan Datta <rangan_datta(a)yahoo.com>, Vishnu <
vishnu(a)cis-india.org>, Subhashish Panigrahi <subhashish(a)cis-india.org>,
CherianTinu Abraham <tinucherian(a)gmail.com>, Wikimedia India Community list
<wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Dear Madam/Sir,
Here is the article published today in Kolkata edition of the Times of
India is attached for your perusal.
Regards,
--
Biswarup Ganguly
Phones:
+919830022449
+919433005886