Hello,
Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) program
would like to share with you the newsletter below for the month of December
2015. We look forward to hear any feedback or input you might have.
As per the 2007 census of India, there are about 7.4 million speakers who
speak Konkani as a native language. Many might not know though the language
finally made a late entry on Wikipedia in 2014 with the release of the Goan
Konkani Wikipedia (
https://gom.wikipedia.org). Since the beginning of the
project as an Incubator project, it has faced several issues; complications
because of the multiple scripts used to write Konkani, building a community
from scratch (
http://www.dnaindia.com/blogs/post-konkani-wikipedia-climbing-up-the-indian…
to contribute to the Wikipedia project, and finding encyclopedic resources
to grow content. The Konkani community that contributes on Wikipedia is
predominantly present in Goa with a few contributors living elsewhere. The
statistical analysis of the last six months shows several trends of the
project and community growth. There is an overall state of both the content
and community seem to be stable with a total of 124 editors and 2400
articles. However, the growth trends are little worrying as there is hardly
any new editors that has joined the community in last six months. The
active editors (with more than 5 edits a month) have also slowed down over
time with a few them becoming inactive as the average of the number of
active editors for the previous six months (January-June 2015) was 18 that
has come down alarming to 5. Same is the case of very active editors (with
more than 100 edits a month) and number of new articles being created every
month. These downtrends are more of a result of the on-wiki, online and
offline activities slowing down. There is a great need for more leadership
and community-led activities that could be catalyzed by organizational
support.
. . . Read more on the CIS website:
http://cis-india.org/openness/konkani-wikipedia-progress-from-july-to-decem…
== Resources created ==
• Indic Wikipedia policies and guidelines handbook:
Currently CIS-A2K is working with five Indian-language Wikimedia
communities (Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia and Telugu). While working
with the mentioned Indic Wikimedia communities, we observed a number of
issues affecting them and we also noticed that there are many similarities
between the issues and difficulties faced by these communities. So, we
decided to start working a help document "Indic Wikipedia Policies and
Guidelines Handbook".
At first, we created a short handbook discussing a number of topics, such
as how to create new policies, or modify the existing ones, using village
pump, enforcing policies etc. Then we talked to Indic Wikipedians to know
more about the policies and guidelines-related issues and problems they are
facing. We also asked to give their feedback on the first draft of this
handbook.
The handbook is now released now and may be seen here (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indic_Wikipedia_Policies_and_Guidel…).
== Event organized/participated ==
• Talk on bringing 1000 books about the culture of Maharashtra on Marathi
Wikipedia (
http://cis-india.org/openness/discussion-on-bringing-peshwa-culture-on-mara…):
Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha, a Pune based non-profit that was founded
in Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade and colleagues in 1894, has recently
announced to digitise their 1000 volumes of books centred around Peshwa
culture. A discussion about digitising these books and making them
available online on Marathi Wikisource was organised on 1 December at the
Energy Resources Institute (TERI), Bengaluru. Avinash Chaphekar, Joint
Secretary of MGS addressed this talk.
• Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at Women's Studies
Centre, University of Pune (
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/events/sau-dhuni-teen-project-december-edi…):
A Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organized on 3 December at the Women's Studies
Centre, University of Pune, as a part of the Sau Dhuni Teen project (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K_/Projects/Sau_Dhuni_Teen) where
this group of Wiki-women contributed to conceptualize Wikipedia as a
knowledge resource. They not just edited Wikipedia articles but used
Wikipedia as a platform to generate Indian language annotations of academic
texts in women's studies and social sciences. More in this report (
http://cis-india.org/openness/sau-dhuni-teen-project-december-edit-a-thon).
• Indian language Wikipedias in the classroom: Wikipedia workshop at SVERI,
Pandharpur (
http://cis-india.org/openness/indian-language-wikipedias-in-the-classroom-w…):
On 15 and 16 December a Wikipedia workshop was conducted at SVERI,
Pandharpur, Maharashtra. The aim of this workshop was to nurture these
skills in faculty and students of the institution: a) Creating
encyclopaedic content in Indian languages, b) Encyclopaedic content writing
skills, c) Digital information literacy skills, d) Ability to critically
engage with a concept/theme etc.
• Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/2015/Global_Congress_on_Inte…):
The event was organized during 15-17 December in New Delhi. 11
Indic-language Wikipedians—including two representatives from the Wikimedia
India (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India); Sanket Oswal (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sankoswal) and Nikhil Kawale (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nikhil.kawale)—participated in this
event. Rahmanuddin Shaik and Subhashish Panigrahi from CIS-A2K team
attended this conference and coordinated several discussions on copyright
and intellectual property (IP) in the context of Wikipedia. The
participating Wikimedians, over the three days engaged with each other and
the coordinators and discussed about the kind of copyright and IP-related
problems they are facing in their home communities.
• English and Telugu Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Hyderabad: a collaborative
Telugu and English Wikipedia edit-a-thon is being organised in Hyderabad on
20 December (
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/english-and-telugu-wikipedia-edit-a-t…):
A collaborative Telugu and English Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised in
Hyderabad on 20 December. The event was aimed at translating many English
Wikipedia articles related to Telugu language and culture to Telugu and
vice versa.
• Odia Wikipedia Workshop in Puri:
(
http://cis-india.org/openness/odia-wikipedia-workshop-to-be-organised-in-pu…)
An Odia Wikipedia workshop was organised in Puri on 20 December. The
workshop aimed at helping the participants learn about creating and
improving the Odia Wikipedia articles about the local places, people, and
culture of the historical town Puri and the district.
=== Train-a-Wikipedian ===
Train-a-Wikipedian (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Train-a-Wikipedian, TAW) is new
program designed by CIS-A2K to train and empower Indic-language
Wikipedians. In this program we will cover everything related to Wikipedia
editing such as:
• Wikipedia editing (beginner's and advanced)
• Wikipedia policies and guidelines,
• Using tools, scripts, gadgets etc.
Any experienced Indic Wikipedian is welcome to join this training program.
It is recommended to discuss with a community before applying for this
program.
== Blog posts ==
• Hasan, Tanveer, Guru-G Learning Labs and CIS A2K Institutional
Partnership (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guru-g-learning-labs-and-cis-a2k-institution…),
3 December 2015
• Panigrahi, Subhashish, Open access in the Marathi language expands by a
thousand books (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december…),
3 December 2015
• Hasan, Tanveer, Community Prioritisation of Content Donation: Kannada
Wikisource (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/community-prioritisation-content-donation-ka…),
5 December 2015
• Hasan, Tanveer, Analysis of Institutional Partnerships: University of
Mysore and Guru G Learning Labs (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/analysis-of-institutional-partnerships-unive…),
5 December 2015
• Hasan, Tanveer, Touch Point Report: Department of Tourism Studies, Christ
University and St. Aloysius College, Managalore (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/department-of-tourism-studies-christ-univers…),
5 December 2015
• Hasan, Tanveer, TTT 2015 (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/ttt-2015), 5
December 2015
• Pavanaja, U. B., Kannada Wikipedia Editathon at Mangaluru (
http://cis-india.org/openness/kannada-wikipedia-edit-a-thon-in-st-agnes-col…),
15 December 2015
• Patnaik, Sailesh, Odia Wikipedia workshop in Puri, Odisha sparks creation
of informal Wikipedia group WikiTungi (
http://cis-india.org/openness/odia-wikipedia-takes-puri), 30 December 2015
== Media coverage ==
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Udayavani Coverage (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-udayavani-coverage),
Udayavani, 7 December 2011;
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon Coverage in Prajavani (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-prajavani-mangal),
Prajavani, 10 December 2015
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Prajavani (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-prajavani-mangal),
Prajavani, 11 December 2015
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Vijayavani Coverage (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-vijayavani),
Vijayavani, 11 December 2015
Kannada Wikipedia Editathon: Vijaya Karnataka (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-vijaya-karnataka),
Vijaya Karnataka, 11 December 2015
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon in Mangalore: Udayavani (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-in-mangalore-uday…),
Udayavani, 11 December 2015
• Post More Articles on Kannada Wikipedia (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/post-more-articles-on-kannada-wikipedia),
Indian Express (Mangalore edition), 12 December 2015
• Kannada Wikipedia Editathon in Prajavani (
http://cis-india.org/a2k/news/kannada-wikipedia-editathon-in-prajavani),
Prajavani, 13 December 2015
This newsletter is also available on Meta at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/December_2015