New subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] A day in Wiki Women Workshop

24 Mar 2013

Hi All,

Here is my
blog<http://phjot.techfiz.info/2013/03/a-day-in-wiki-women-workshop/>post
on Wiki Women Workshop that we conducted on 9th March.

As we all know, Wikipedia is the world’s biggest encyclopedia and
recognized as the 5th most website accessed by people across the globe.
Being one of the biggest community driven project, Wikipedia has pooled in
millions of articles which have been added/edited/monitored/ by people like
you and me.

By nature, gender has not only been the distinguishing factor for human
being but also acts as a barrier to perform limited set of activities from
the ages. At various stages of evolution, men and women have been
continuously striving to overcome their boundaries which were set by
themselves or by the society. It’s the same story when it comes to
statistics of Wikipedians and the ratio of men and women participation is
9:1.  To bridge this gap Wikipdedia has been organizing many activities to
bring in more women participants around Wikipedia and other Wiki projects.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2013, many of the volunteer
Wikipedians conducted workshops with dedicated focus to women across the
India.

On this occasion, I got an opportunity to organize the workshop in
Bangalore as well for women with ideas floated by Nikita (EC member of
India Chapter) and Radhakrishna (SIG chair Bangalore). With guidance and
support by Sowmyan (EC member of India Chapter),
Arun<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/User:Arunram> (founder
member of India Wikipedia) and
Omshivapraksh<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/User:Omshivaprakash> (Kannada
SIG chair of Bangalore), we could conduct Wikipedia Women’s
Workshop<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wikipedia_Women%27s_Workshop_Bangalore_2013>
successfully
for the first time in Bangalore on 9th of March at Servelots Infotech Pvt.
Ltd <http://servelots.com/>. As mentioned in the event page, the workshop
was started with giving an overview of Wikipedia and introduction of
participants along with their interests. Continuing further participants
were able to found their answers for their initial set of questions like
what is Wikipedia all about? Why do we participate? Who all will edit? in
about an hour session by Omshivaprakash.

After a small tea break and a press byte organized by
Pavanaja<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/User:Pavanaja>,
the sessions were continued by introducing the next step to Wikipedia.
i.e., How do we edit? To make our hands on session more interactive, we
made one of our participant, Dr. A Sumitra to create an account live and
explained various steps to edit Wikipedia like start a new page, edit a
page, formatting, preview, adding references, history, etc.  In between we
played the recorded videos of Bishakha
Datta<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuIgDP4KDck>
 and Netha Hussain<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WWC-Netha-Hussain.ogv>
who
shared their experience with Wikipedia and their message on Women’s Day.

 With excited participants, we extended the session and took some more time
to explain what else we can do beyond editing by giving a brief overview on
other wiki projects like Commons, WikiBooks, Wikisource, Wikinews,
Wikiquote, Wikitionary, MediaWiki, etc.

**

New items on the cards:

1.    During the event, Dr. A Sumitra based out of Bangalore did add the
page on Nalini Nayak <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalini_Nayak> who is
famous as India’s Fisher Women.

2.    We have compiled a list of
topics<http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B2%B5%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%95%E0%B2%BF…
for
Kannada Wikipedia for which women can participate in adding/enhancing the
content on Wikipedia.

3.    Our participant, Lakshimi Chaitanya has come forward to introduce
many female achievers by adding content in Kannada Wikipedia.

4.    Sumana from Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikipedians have been
working on making audio files for Sanskrit Shlokas since few days and they
are very happy to welcome volunteers who would like to join them in adding
their content to Commons.

Couple of other women who could not make it to the event also got in touch
to be part of the celebrations by contributing to Kannada Wikipedia:

 5.    Recent Wikipedian, Shyamala Janardhan has been trying to add
contents of  HariKathamrutha Saara to WikiSource.

6.    Savitha S.R. from Bangalore celebrating this occasion by adding
contents of Vyasa Bharata -Kumara Vyasa to Wikipedia.

I have created a new Facebook group called WikiWomen
Bangalore<https://www.facebook.com/groups/145050568996982/>  to
gather all women participants of Wikipedia and other Wiki projects. The
space can be used to discuss and interact about topics around Wikipedia and
to bring in more women participants to share their knowledge. I request all
of you to join the group and share your thoughts.

Also refer to event page International Women’s Day,
India<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WHMIN13> which
lists all the events happening in India in March 2013 on the occasion of
Women’s day and participate in the area of your interest.

As a personal note, it gave immense pleasure and was a great learning
experience for me interacting with new excited Wikipedians. Thanks to
everyone who were part of the event and make it a big success.

Press Release:

   - Kannadaprabha Daily report on Event,ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದತ್ತ ಮಹಿಳೆಯರು
ಆಕರ್ಷಿತರಾಗಲಿ<http://archives.kannadaprabha.com/pdf/1032013/3.pdf> 10th
   March, 2013
   - ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಮಾಹಿತಿ: ಸ್ತ್ರೀಯರ ಪಾತ್ರ
ಇರಲಿ<http://www.prajavani.net/article/%E0%B2%B5%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%95%E0%B2%…
Prajavani,
   11th March, 2013

Photo credits goes to: Pavanaja <http://wiki.wikimedia.in/User:Pavanaja>

-- 
Thanks,
Pavithra