[Wikimediaindia-l] Mashable: Where Do Wikipedia Donations Go? Outgoing Chief Warns of Corruption
Mashable: Where Do Wikipedia Donations Go? Outgoing Chief Warns of Corruption http://mashable.com/2013/10/17/wikipedia-donation-corruption/ When Wikipedia decided to roll out an aggressive fundraising effort a few years ago, the free encyclopedia came with a remarkably effective battle plan. For the entirety of the campaign, co-founder Jimmy Wales stared visitors down from the top of every page, making you feel guilty every time you viewed an article without paying a dime. It worked. From 2011 to 2012, Wikipedia's fundraising arm, the Wikimedia Foundation, pulled in $38.4 million. It was a major increase from the $5 million raised from 2007 to 2008, one that occurred even as editorial involvement with Wikipedia was on the decline. But where does all this money go? In an unusually candid statement last month, outgoing Wikimedia Foundation Chair Sue Gardner criticized the way her organization has doled out funds. Too much is being spent on groups that do too little to enhance the value of the encyclopedia itself, she argued. What's worse, many of those being awarded grants are the same people responsible for giving them out, which Gardner warned could lead to log-rolling, self-dealing and other corrupt practices. Though not in charge of Wikipedia's content, the Wikimedia Foundation, or WMF, is the most powerful promoter of the open-source encyclopedia. It manages the technical infrastructure and day-to-day business operations of Wikipedia --- one of the most-visited sites in the world. WMF is based in San Francisco, but more than 40 independent-chapter Wikimedia organizations exist around the world, ostensibly advancing the foundation's agenda in their native regions. These chapters are the biggest recipients of Wikimedia grant funding. But according to Gardner, it's not clear how filling the coffers of the chapter organizations benefits the site as a whole. Last year, the Funds Dissemination Committee gave out $5.65 million in grants, the lion's share of which --- 89% --- went to affiliate chapters. And 12 chapters in particular received 83% of the total grants. I believe that currently, too large a proportion of the movement's money is being spent by the chapters, Gardner, who has largely been responsible for the foundation's transition into a fundraising behemoth, wrote in response to the FDC's latest report. The value in the Wikimedia projects is primarily created by individual editors: individuals create the value for readers, which results in those readers donating money to the movement. In an email to the Daily Dot, Gardner noted that these opinions were not new, nor are they unique to her. Indeed, Gardner's statement echoed the criticism of a number of prominent Wikipedia editors and critics in recent years. The concern is that all this funding has done less to help the site than it has to create a professional bureaucratic class surrounding the Wikipedia project, as the Register's Andrew Orlowski put it. Orlowski points out that the foundation's staff grew from three full-timers in 2006 to 174 in 2012-13. Gardner herself notes that there are very few members on the FDC who aren't also chapter members. In fact, the majority of the committee's members are either former or current chapter board members. The coziness that exists between the FDC and chapter board members calls up memories of past chapter improprieties. In 2012, a former chapter board member was accused of using his position within the organization to promote Gibraltar on the site. At the same time, he served on the Gibraltar government payroll as a PR consultant. Though Gardner believes the FDC is uniquely transparent and that its members are capable of acting without self-interest, others aren't quite so convinced. One critic, Gregory Kohs, co-founder of the muckraking site Wikipediocracy, describes the foundation's appetite for expansion as empire building. He argues that the work of a nearly 200-member Wikimedia staff could easily be done by a workforce a fraction of the size. But it's not just the longtime critics. Many everyday Wikipedians are concerned about whether WMF still exists to serve Wikipedia, or vice versa. Conflicts of interest are a major area of concern throughout Wikipedia culture, and editors like Tango say they are unavoidable with so much money involved. 'Assume Good Faith' is a great policy when writing an collaborative encyclopaedia, Tango writes, referring to a fundamental principle on Wikipedia whereby editors are encouraged to assume all contributions to the encyclopedia are done with good intent. It's not so simple when you are dealing with [$11 million]. But others are less concerned about corruption and more worried about how chapters actually spend all that money. Andreas Kolbe, an active Wikipedian and Wikipediocracy moderator, says many of the chapters have a propensity for spending on projects intended to bring publicity rather than genuinely enhancing the site. I see little
[Wikimediaindia-l] OFF TOPIC The Hindu: One story, two sides
The Hindu: One story, two sides http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/one-story-two-sides/article5124147.ece School textbooks in India and Pakistan present divergent views on historical events. The History Project attempts a truce. Here are two versions of the same sequence of events. One: In 1947, when Hari Singh, the ruler of Kashmir, opted to stay independent, Pakistani armed intruders from Pakistan attacked Kashmir. Hari Singh then signed an agreement to join India, and the Indian army was sent in to defend Kashmir. Two: Hari Singh started a brutal campaign to drive out Muslims from Kashmir. Over 200,000 people in the princely State, supported by the tribesmen of the Northwest Frontier Province, were successful in liberating a large area of Kashmir from the Maharaja’s control. So Hari Singh was forced to turn to India for help and in return acceded to India. The first version is from a history textbook in India; the second from a history textbook in Pakistan. As a result, two groups of children are growing up with different ideas about a shared past. In school, we learn that History isn’t like Maths. It isn’t a ‘scoring subject’. A two plus two will yield the same result all over the world, but history is subjective. It’s written by people, after all. People are subjective too; people find it difficult to not pick sides, a fact borne out by those history textbooks of India and Pakistan. In a way, this conflict led to a book that illuminates the biases and subjectivity inherent in history. The History Project — launched on April 30 — was born at the Seeds of Peace, an annual camp for teenagers from countries in conflict, held at Maine, in the U.S. Feruzan Mehta, then director of Seeds of Peace-India, came up with the idea in 2005. Six years later, The History Project was founded by three young Pakistanis: Qasim Aslam, Ayyaz Ahmad and Zoya Siddiqui. They brought together a team of editors and volunteers from both countries to produce the Project’s first history textbook. The key to the project was the recurring arguments over history during the camps. “A Pakistani kid and an Indian kid would argue about the same event,” says Ahmad, “without realising that they had been taught different versions. So, we decided to put both sides together in one volume. The idea was dormant for a few years, until we decided to take it up again in 2011.” The target audience was 12-14 year olds and, to make it appealing to them, Zoya Siddiqui was brought on board to add a bit of colour to the text. Today, the final product takes the form of a book that puts “these different (often opposite) historical narratives side by side and augments them through illustrations (that have their own concept narrative flowing through them).” For example, the Indian and Pakistani textbooks are divided on the issue of Bengal’s partition in 1905. While Indian textbooks claim that the real reason for the division was to curb the rising tide of Indian nationalism, their Pakistani counterparts accept the administrative explanations cited by the British. Indian textbooks go on to describe the anti-Partition movement as one in which both Hindus and Muslims marched side by side, while Pakistani textbooks say that only Hindus participated in the movement. The History Project was compiled using nine Pakistani and three Indian history textbooks that are part of the high school curriculum in both countries. It encompasses 16 salient events beginning with the1857 War (when the divide between Hindus and Muslims first became prominent) and ending with the Partition in 1947. This is not a forced merging of texts; neither are the narratives undermined in any way. What it does is simply to put the accounts from Indian and Pakistani history books side by side, and let the reader spot the difference. The very act of juxtaposing divergent narratives of one event highlights the disparities and immediately suggests that there might be an alternative perspective. This opens up the possibility of dialogue that can both question and critique the existing narrative, so far regarded by both sides as the unquestionable and final truth. The natural question on this side of the border is: Why only three Indian textbooks? Doesn't that limit the perspective or narrow it down? Noorzadeh Raza, one of the editors, says that while they wanted to give both narratives equal importance, one of the major challenges the team faced was the difficulty in accessing Indian history textbooks. “Another was the fact that some events are present in textbooks on one side of the border but have been excluded in the other. The Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, for example, is not mentioned in most Pakistani textbooks.” It’s been a while since the book’s launch in April. In the last few months, the History Project has been presented to school students and teachers on both sides of the border. While the editorial team admits that it’s still hard to say how it’s doing as a
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Few concerns
Thank you, Moksh, for the email above. I would like to add that I have known Karthik for the past few years now and I trust him to act in a manner that is in the best interests of the chapter and the community. From what I already know, Karthik has been interning at Moksh's firm and received a nominal amount as compensation for the time spent training there. Members of the community who are more interested in understanding the issue closely, should probably consider contacting Karthik privately to understand the nature of his professional relationship with Moksh. Karthik is a long-term member of the community motivated by nothing more than the labour of love. Moksh has been very generous with his time and has spent considerable resources supporting the Wikimedia community in Mumbai. He has also graciously agreed to become a part of the Executive Committee at a time when there were not many experienced volunteers willing to commit more time in terms of supporting the chapter as a part of its board. Pranav has also been a long-standing member of the Wikimedia community in India and most of us are acquainted with the work that he has performed as a part of the organizing team of the WikiConference India 2011 event. My request to anyone interested in following up on this issue is to perhaps consider contacting the concerned persons directly and see if they are able to resolve the issue for you in a manner that is satisfactory. Kind Regards, Anirudh Bhati On 10/04/2013 02:37 PM, Moksh Juneja wrote: A question came up on this list about some employer-employee relationships within the chapter board. This is to clarify that the stated relationships between the said persons have ended/in the process of ending with notice being served prior to this issue being brought up (certainly not because of this email and prior to it). This is not to brag but to state background. I would like to further state in particular have been extremely generous in supporting Wikipedia activities in Mumbai for several years now, organising local events, offering my office for meetups and official purposes, bearing expenses in some cases, offering pro-bono services through my company and even offering jobs to several Wikipedians. Pranav and I were two people instrumental in ensuring the success of our first national conference 2 years ago. This is something that is yet to be replicated. Pranav was recently instrumental in our first victory with the government recently, a major win for the chapter in India to have them apply a Wikipedia complaint license to open knowledge resources for the first time ever. Karthik has been one of the lead organisers of the chapters biggest photo contest, our biggest success of the last financial year. All of us have been an integral part of several chapter activities during the last year. In the recent weeks, both Pranav and Karthik have been involved in preparing our FDC application, spending several hours a week, into the wee hours of the night on a regular basis apart from juggling their professional commitments during the day. All of us have been actively involved in the Wikimedia Conference bid. All of us were Wikipedians first before anything else, meeting each other through Wikipedia, having our own independent thinking which remains unaffected and one common goal as unpaid volunteers working out of love for the movement as a cause. We assure everyone that there is no COI that may affect any of our functioning in the EC and performing our duties at the chapter. One thing we have learnt from this is that there is a need for a formal public document that details what COI is and when disclosures need to be made. We will push for such a document to be created within the EC. At the same time, we humbly appeal that the community assume good faith towards our efforts and help/support the chapter and movement in India. We are working towards building greater synergies, understanding and team-building within the EC leadership, SIG Chairs and key members of the chapter and volunteers in India in an effort to strengthen our very foundations with a long term view and we cannot do this without your help and support. Moksh On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Hari Prasad Nadig hpna...@gmail.comwrote: Shyamal, You reminded me of the good old days of Wikipedia - the movement that wasn't centered around money, but driven by interest and volunteering. I hope that what you've written about Wikiculture shall be read by many here and if that is understood by more people in coming days, the Indian 'community' can get a wee bit healthier. Of late, whenever I switch over to read the conversations on this list, it is not just intrigue but profound disgust that emerges. On 25 September 2013 10:03, Shyamal L. lshya...@gmail.com wrote: Apologies for the rant that follows and can be conveniently skipped by the busy folks here. I am quite intrigued by the kinds of discussion
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Few concerns
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 12:12 PM, Bishakha Datta bishakhada...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Shyamal L. lshya...@gmail.com wrote: * Wikiculture - Deal with issues not the persons raising them - what matters more than who. I want to strongly endorse this in my personal capacity and urge that when questions are raised on this public list, they be addressed. This is what I see on most wikimedia lists, but not on this one. We need to play our part in upholding the culture on which wikipedia and the sister projects are built and continue to thrive. Where and when exactly have you seen questions not been answered? Thanks, ASB ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Wikipedia.in
Great news! Thank you for the update. Kind Regards, Anirudh On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 6:26 PM, Pranav Curumsey pra...@wikimedia.inwrote: As announced on the chapter members mailing list a few days ago, the domain Wikipedia.in has been procured by WMF for us after many attempts over the years. For now it redirects to http://wikimedia.in/wikipedia.html The EC would like to express its deep gratitude to Naveen, Anirudh, Kul, Barry, Geoff, Yana, Moksh and all the rest of the folk who helped us with this matter in the last few years. -- Kind Regards, Pranav Curumsey ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Servers in India for Wikipedia other Wiki projects
Hi, Srikanth Yes, if the Wikimedia Foundation sets up servers in India they will have to comply with local regulations, which is something they may not be too keen on. SEA-ME-WE 4 is a bottleneck for India and many other countries in the region, and we can expect that the private players collaborating with the maintenance of undersea infrastructure will also invest in building redundancies so that a single cable outage does not adversely impact the region. Cheers, Anirudh On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 9:44 AM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Pavanaja, If servers are hosted in India, they will have to comply with local regulations. This might cause problems. Can someone with legal knowledge like Anirudh clarify on this? On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 1:57 PM, ansuman ansum...@gmail.com wrote: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers Regards, Ansuman http://twitter.com/an5um *ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ http://or.wikipedia.org/* On 30 March 2013 12:08, Pavanaja U B pavan...@vishvakannada.com wrote: Hi all, ** ** Hope you are aware of the slowing of Internet in India due to the cut in undersea cable near Egypt. I am finding websites hosted outside India opening very very slowly, or some don’t open at all. Websites hosted in India open quickly. Google has servers in India. Wikipedia opens very very slowly. This brings up the idea that there must be servers in India for Wikipedia and other Wiki projects. ** ** Thanks and regards, Pavanaja ** ** ** ** ** ** ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Sign this petition to introduce Volvo buses in Coimbatore city: https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/the-transport-minister-tamil-nadu-introduction-of-volvo-city-buses-in-the-city-of-coimbatore ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Photography event on Indian food
Hello, all Given the large amount of traffic on this list, may I suggest that discussions relevant for one city/project be conducted no your respective city or project specific lists? I think Wikimedia Pune list would be suitable for such discussions. Please feel free to send in reports or any other major announcements to wikimediaindia-l post-event. Thanks, Anirudh Siddharth Goenka siddharth_goe...@live.com wrote: Hey, Amazing idea Yohann. Lets plan a meet to discuss more about the event, what say everyone ? Cheer's Sid Goenka -- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:32:45 +0530 From: yohan...@gmail.com To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Photography event on Indian food Thanks Everyone for so many suggestions responses on my idea. I will be starting a talk page on this Event Inviting Volunteers for this pilot project Will post soon on new developments. Thanks again Yohann Thomas Wikipedia Club Pune yohan...@gmail.com ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Photography event on Indian food
Addendum: I know that the original proposal is to have an 'online' event, however it was not a substantive proposal. In such cases, please feel free to ask interested participants to contact you off-list in order to follow up. Thanks, again Anirudh Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, all Given the large amount of traffic on this list, may I suggest that discussions relevant for one city/project be conducted no your respective city or project specific lists? I think Wikimedia Pune list would be suitable for such discussions. Please feel free to send in reports or any other major announcements to wikimediaindia-l post-event. Thanks, Anirudh Siddharth Goenka siddharth_goe...@live.com wrote: Hey, Amazing idea Yohann. Lets plan a meet to discuss more about the event, what say everyone ? Cheer's Sid Goenka -- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:32:45 +0530 From: yohan...@gmail.com To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Photography event on Indian food Thanks Everyone for so many suggestions responses on my idea. I will be starting a talk page on this Event Inviting Volunteers for this pilot project Will post soon on new developments. Thanks again Yohann Thomas Wikipedia Club Pune yohan...@gmail.com ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WMIN-Members] WMF Grant and FDC
Cheers, Pranav! This is great news and is the result of the hard-work of the EC team and our Executive Manager. Looking forward to WMIN's upcoming programs. Kind Regards, Anirudh On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Pranav Curumsey pra...@wikimedia.inwrote: Hiya, This is to inform you that the WMF has approved our program grant request for the first quarter of 2013: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WMIN/ProgramGrantQuarter1/2013 WMF has also accepted the Bootstrap Grant report, which means Wikimedia India is now eligible for FDC funding (Next round is scheduled for October 2013). -- Kind Regards, Pranav Curumsey -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups wmin-members group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to wmin-members+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Status of membership applcation to Wikimedia India Chapter
On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Niraj Suryawanshi niraj.suryawan...@gmail.com wrote: We would be glad if anyone can help us over this and not by someone who is callow enough to say The India mailing list isn't exactly a place to ask such questions as it'd be a privacy violation. Niraj, no personal attacks, please. Anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] women and technology
On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 7:04 AM, Arun Ramarathnam arunra...@gmail.comwrote: When at the workshop, the girls began to create articles on Wiki, *male editors were quick to pull them down*. “This can be intimidating for anyone, and more so for girls.” Instead of spending the time creating a template to delete, she wishes her male friends would just “be more supportive” and encourage those who step in to what is surely a male-dominated world of code. I don't understand how pages getting deleted quickly has anything to do with the gender of the editor. Yes, it's more likely that articles related to Kate Middleton's ward-robe are likely to get deleted faster than articles on esoteric distros of Linux (an example Jimmy gave earlier) but I don't see how the above assertions make any sense. It displays misunderstanding of the problem related to gender-gap (no, it's not Wikimedia-specific) and shows our projects in a bad light. Anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [A2K]: Introducing Dr. U.B Pavanaja, Consultant - Indian languages
Hello all, I haven't seen a job announcement related to the relevant position either on the Wikimedia India (WMI?) mailing list or on any of the local mailing lists. Thanks, Anirudh On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 1:17 PM, Vishnu t visdav...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Pradeep, Thank you for your wishes. We are indeed happy to have Pavanaja join the CIS-A2K team. I was just curious to know if there was an ad for recruitment for this post on the list for this position or not. I could not find the ad herein. If someone who has a link to that post, please share. Thanks for pointing this out, Pradeep. I have checked CIS Archives. This announcement was sent out in the CIS main Bulletin to various mailing lists in January 2013. Here is the link http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/january-2013-bulletin . Unfortunately, we have missed posting this on the WMI mailing list. Sincere apologies for this mistake. We will ensure that this does not get repeated in the future. As a step in this direction, will alert CIS's Publication Manager (who puts together all the newsletters and Bulletins) to post all such information on the WMI list without fail. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia and indiawikipedia.com wikipedia.in
Hi Sumana - please direct all communications concerning legal matters to the Wikimedia India chapter directly as these matters may not be suitable for discussion on a public mailing list. Thanks, ASB. On Tue, Mar 5, 2013, Sumana Harihareswara suma...@wikimedia.org wrote: Daniel Zahn of Wikimedia Foundation's Operations group asked me to please forward this to the Indian Wikimedia community. I hope this improvement helps people find Indian Wikipedias and helps them learn about the Wikimedia India chapter. Comments, concerns, and suggestions are welcome, as Daniel details below. Cheers, Sumana Harihareswara Original Message Subject: indiawikipedia.com Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2013 15:23:44 -0800 From: Daniel Zahn dz...@wikimedia.org To: Sumana Harihareswara suma...@wikimedia.org Hello Wikimedia India, fyi, ops/legal at WMF acquired the domain: http://indiawikipedia.com and redirects it (for now) to: http://wikimedia.in/wikipedia.html It was a really old ticket on our side to get that domain name and it went through legal, then we had it for a while but never redirected it anywhere, and now we just decided to use the target above because that seemed to make the most sense. (after all it is indiawikiPedia.com and not indiawikiMedia.com) A long term goal i suggested would be to get wikipedia.in as well and redirect it there. A little while ago, like end of February, that was still active but full of advertising, and now it's disappeared. If you have any comments/questions/ideas you can open a Bugzilla ticket or even look at the Apache config directly and suggest changes. Please mention RT-1395 for reference. The relevant changes are: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/52141/1/redirects.conf https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/52152/ Best regards, Daniel -- Daniel Zahn dz...@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Legolas2186
Hi all, I don't think this has been discussed yet. An editor from India with the handle Legolas2186 has been indef'd from the English Wikipedia due to years of fabrication of sources on articles related to Madonna, Lady Gaga and other artistes. Here are a few relevant links: http://www.dailydot.com/society/wikipedia-hoax-vandalism-legolas2186/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Legolas2186/Major_contributions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Legolas2186/Fixing_citation_problems This highlights the vulnerability of the encyclopedia to insidious editing even when published sources were called into question. In this case, a trusted member of the volunteer community displayed a pattern of consistent misrepresentations and even fabrication of sources in some cases. thanks, Anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: You have been unsubscribed from WikiMedia India
Hi Ashwin, Subscriptions to Wikimedia mailing lists exist independent of Nabble. The status of any user's subscription to Nabble is unconnected with their status of subscription of Wikimedia mailing lists. Thanks, Anirudh On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 7:08 PM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.bain...@gmail.com wrote: List admin, Is it something to do with trasition from mailman to Nabble server? Ashwin On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Niraj Suryawanshi niraj.suryawan...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Everyone, Two days ago I received a mail from nabble team stating removal of subscription to WikiMedia India. I recalled back all events happening over the mailing list to find out any reason or instance of clicking the unsubscribe link, checked and rechecked for the same but could not find any solid robust reason to do so. As in for now I'm able to receive reply the mails, but still very curious about this particular un-subscription mail landing into my inbox out of nowhere. Curious to know about the administrative/moderation rights regarding removal/un-subscribing of member from a list, or any similar instance happening. The related mail is being forwarded for reference. Hope this mail is not referred as an act of aggression or an offence pointing towards a person or an entity. Regards Thanks, Niraj Suryawanshi Pune Institute of Computer Technology | Wikipedia Club Pune 8149920120 | niraj.suryawan...@gmail.com -- Forwarded message -- From: Nabble no-re...@nabble.com Date: Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 6:00 PM Subject: You have been unsubscribed from WikiMedia India To: niraj.suryawan...@gmail.com Dear user, Your subscription to WikiMedia India has been removed. If this was a mistake, you can re-subscribe by following the link below: http://wikimedia.7.n6.nabble.com/template/NamlServlet.jtp?macro=subscribe_by_codenode=1399899code=bmlyYWouc3VyeWF3YW5zaGlAZ21haWwuY29tfDEzOTk4OTl8LTE3NDQ0MzE3NTk=subscription_to=DESCENDANTS Sincerely, The Nabble team Free Embeddable Forum powered by Nabble http://www.nabble.com/ ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur -- ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Posts to list by new subscribers
Hi all, from now on, all emails sent by new subscribers to this mailing list will be held for moderator approval. thanks, Anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Chapter Misleading Community!
Abhishek, I noticed that you have been repetitively raising the same issues over and over again. The members of the Executive Committee of Wikimedia India and Sunil@CIS have already responded to your questions. It is clear to us all that some members of the Executive committee will be travelling to Bangalore in order to train the new employees of CIS on matters pertaining to their new assignments. The Executive Committee has decided to utilize this time when all the members of the board are in the same city together to have a face to face meeting. There is nothing that has been said that goes to prove that CIS regularly funds chapter activities. I have to ask you to please refrain from sending further emails on this topic. If you ignore this warning, I will have to put your account on moderation. Thanks, Anirudh On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 1:16 AM, Abhishek Suryawanshi i.abhishek.suryawan...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Executive Committee, Wikimedia India Chapter. Could you be please be kind enough to clarify, Why EC was/is interested in misguiding mailing list and Indian community? When asked about CIS funding - Executive Committee member wrote : The Chapter has alwaya made things public and will xontinue to do so. If the CIS funds us, it will be madw public. Then why weren't they made public by you? CIS clearly stated - they are funding Chapter, and in past (also) they have supported in-kind. Why is the hesitation for acknowledging this? On the contrary - there is strong rejection of even having any kind of connection with CIS from Chapter representatives. (On the other hand CIS is graciously open/alright to acknowledge links with the Chapter) On A Query about CIS funding Chapter Flight Tickets : Response from Secretary was- .making unsubstantiated claims on a public mailing list, Which part was unsubstantiated? Its the reality that this time Chapter Board Member's Flight tickets ARE covered by CIS even if it includes training the A2K team. (CIS has already made it clear on this mailing list) Why there is hesitation/resistance to have transparency? Also, the Chapter President gave statement on same thread - Please be open and transparent to the community. The more you become transparent, it is better for all. Are Chapter EC Members exception to this? On same lines, Another EC Members says - The Chapter is financially accountable to it's MEMBERS, As correctly stated by , Chapter is having money from WMF, Which comes from individual donations. So ideally Chapter should be accountable to the overall community and not just its members, as rightly pointed out by someone Again, What is the need to find excuses for transparency? When there was statement that ''AGM travel expense is covered'' instead of correcting statement and saying, its wrong - and CIS is paying for Board Trip (which is coinciding with CIS training!) Even Chapter President preferred to give out half truth and kept everyone in dark. And there was Secretary and another EC Member to take whole mailing list on a ride! Why it is important? This could be start of new era - Where CIS supports Chapter financially whenever needed. (or in-kind as they did in past and hopefully will continue to do so). So more and more volunteer efforts can be devoted for outreach/activities. Please remember that chapter is representation of the community and works for the community Current scenario gives wrong interpretation and implies that community should not raise questions on transparency because after-all we are your representation! Either consult community before lying or speak (complete) truth. Here is response from Sunil,CIS - This month, we are reimbursing the Chapter EC travel and related expenses because the Chapter EC has kindly consented to support a training programme that CIS is organising for it's A2K team in Bangalore. It is only happy coincidence that they were also organising a meeting in Bangalore during those dates. I was not aware of this when I reached out to the EC and asked for their support us. From Sunil's mail it is clear that Sunil extended the offer in good-faith, unaware of Chapter-Board meeting falling at the same time. However Chapter also seems to have taken this opportunity and is now shy to accept. I don't understand why? And why CIS was also kept in dark? CIS will cover air travel and accommodation for all EC members. CIS will also provide per diem for meals that are not provided during the training. Unfortunately, we don't have a separate budget for fees. Along with 'air Travel', CIS is providing accommodation too. And Last sentence about fee budget is interesting. If Chapter is expecting public support for fundraising and other activities, then it should be more transparent and 'should avoid organized and dedicated efforts to misguide community/keep in dark.' And Hope so CIS takes care of all the remaining
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Chapter Misleading Community!
Abhishek, The chapter's response has been to ask you to stop making unsubstantiated allegations. Sunil has clarified that that the WMF sponsored A2K programme is funding travel and accommodation of some members of the Wikimedia India Executive Committee for the purpose of a training session in Bangalore organized for the benefit of the new employee(s) of CIS/A2K. This is the sole purpose of funding travel and accommodation from CIS/A2K perspective and nothing else. What the members of the WMIN board decide to do in their spare time while they are available in the same city is up to them. If they use this time to organize a face to face board meeting, all the more better, since this way they save some precious chapter funds. Your accusation that the chapter is misleading the community is a falsification. Since you have chosen to ignore my previous warning and continued to post on the same topic on this mailing list, I have put your account on moderation. If you wish to discuss this matter further, please feel free to send an email to the chapter directly. Thanks, Anirudh On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 2:16 AM, Abhishek Suryawanshi i.abhishek.suryawan...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Anirudh, Please direct me to the response/clarification from Wikimedia India Executive Committee. Only Sunil has made the whole thing clear and now its only You who is saying - It is clear to us all that some members of the Executive committee will be travelling to Bangalore in order to train the new employees of CIS on matters pertaining to their new assignments. The Executive Committee has decided to utilize this time when all the members of the board are in the same city together to have a face to face meeting. There is nothing that has been said that goes to prove that CIS regularly funds chapter activities. Regards, Abhishek Suryawanshi, On Behalf of Wikipedia Club Pune On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 12:20 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Abhishek, I noticed that you have been repetitively raising the same issues over and over again. The members of the Executive Committee of Wikimedia India and Sunil@CIS have already responded to your questions. It is clear to us all that some members of the Executive committee will be travelling to Bangalore in order to train the new employees of CIS on matters pertaining to their new assignments. The Executive Committee has decided to utilize this time when all the members of the board are in the same city together to have a face to face meeting. There is nothing that has been said that goes to prove that CIS regularly funds chapter activities. I have to ask you to please refrain from sending further emails on this topic. If you ignore this warning, I will have to put your account on moderation. Thanks, Anirudh On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 1:16 AM, Abhishek Suryawanshi i.abhishek.suryawan...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Executive Committee, Wikimedia India Chapter. Could you be please be kind enough to clarify, Why EC was/is interested in misguiding mailing list and Indian community? When asked about CIS funding - Executive Committee member wrote : The Chapter has alwaya made things public and will xontinue to do so. If the CIS funds us, it will be madw public. Then why weren't they made public by you? CIS clearly stated - they are funding Chapter, and in past (also) they have supported in-kind. Why is the hesitation for acknowledging this? On the contrary - there is strong rejection of even having any kind of connection with CIS from Chapter representatives. (On the other hand CIS is graciously open/alright to acknowledge links with the Chapter) On A Query about CIS funding Chapter Flight Tickets : Response from Secretary was- .making unsubstantiated claims on a public mailing list, Which part was unsubstantiated? Its the reality that this time Chapter Board Member's Flight tickets ARE covered by CIS even if it includes training the A2K team. (CIS has already made it clear on this mailing list) Why there is hesitation/resistance to have transparency? Also, the Chapter President gave statement on same thread - Please be open and transparent to the community. The more you become transparent, it is better for all. Are Chapter EC Members exception to this? On same lines, Another EC Members says - The Chapter is financially accountable to it's MEMBERS, As correctly stated by , Chapter is having money from WMF, Which comes from individual donations. So ideally Chapter should be accountable to the overall community and not just its members, as rightly pointed out by someone Again, What is the need to find excuses for transparency? When there was statement that ''AGM travel expense is covered'' instead of correcting statement and saying, its wrong - and CIS is paying for Board Trip (which is coinciding
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] How to set up a SIG?
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 1:26 AM, Siebrand Mazeland (WMF) smazel...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 6:45 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan srik.r...@wikimedia.in wrote: Becoming a member is pretty easy. It costs INR 100 to join and requires a single form to be filled and sent across. Actually, it isn't. As Bence is not an Indian citizen over 18 or an Indian institution, he cannot be a member. I don't see Srikanth suggesting that anywhere. He's merely referring to the conditions that one needs to qualify to be an SIG chair or an individual eligible to have a say in the decision. Cheers, Anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WMIN-Members] Wikimedia India Chapter Anniversary
Thank you for posting this, Sudhanwa. It was an absolute pleasure serving through my term with the WMIN EC. I wish the new board best of luck with their efforts towards promoting Wikimedia in India and supporting the communities of volunteers. Kind Regards, Anirudh On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 12:36 AM, Sudhanwa Jogalekar sudhanwa@gmail.com wrote: Dear Wikipedians, The Wikimedia India Chapter was registered with the Karnataka Registrar of societies on 3 January 2011. We celebrate our second anniversary today :) Initially, the Chapter Executive Committee consisted of seven founder members. Over time, six of these founder members departed from the board after each of them made significant and invaluable contributions. The Executive Committee now bids goodbye to the seventh founder member, Anirudh Singh Bhati. The Executive Committee expresses its deep gratitude towards Anirudh for his wonderful contributions that have helped build the chapter. He becomes the first person to complete an entire term on the Executive Committee of Wikimedia India. We wish him well in all his future ambitions and hope he remains connected to the movement in some form. The Executive Committee has unanimously resolved to fill the vacancy created by Anirudh’s departure by co-opting Bala Jeyaraman. Bala is a distinguished Wikipedian who has been active on English and Tamil Wikipedia’s, being an administrator on the latter and was one of the organisers of the recently held Tamil Wiki Photo Contest. He will hold office until the next general body meeting which would need to approve his appointment. Another important step being taken by the chapter is our first fundraising appeal, which will be announced shortly. A lot of people may ask why the chapter needs a fundraiser when it has access to WMF funding. The answer is, we are still ineligible for FDC (we hope to be eligible for the second round of funding in 2013) and would need to rely on grants, spending of which is restricted by the WMF. Since formation, the chapter has relied heavily on the Executive Committee to take on the burden of running the show. In an ideal world, the EC would like to take on the role of guiding the chapter rather than actually be responsible for operations after two years of incorporation, which should be best done by professionals rather than volunteers in their spare time. The chapter has hired an employee (Sowmyan Trimurti, our Executive Manager) as well as plans to lease its own office premises in Bangalore. For this, we will soon be sharing a plan and will request the community for suggestions on the plan. We will also need the help of those volunteers who are in a position to support us. It could be a small individual donation or in the form of a corporate donation from an institution. A small token of support from you could go a long way in helping us achieving our goals of furthering the movement in India. Apart from this, we encourage the community at large to engage with the chapter and request our support wherever necessary without hesitation for community activities. The chapter has been formed for the benefit of the community and we will always try our best to live up to the community’s expectations. Warm regards, -Sudhanwa Jogalekar President, WMIN !~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~! www.wikimedia.in -- ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Featured Wikimedian profile on Wikimedia India Chapter wiki
Thanks, Netha, for your help and support! Kind Regards, Anirudh On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 5:31 AM, Dhaval S. Vyas dsv...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Netha, Very good initiative. I would suggest we have profiles of all the Indian language wikimedians who were recognised as Noteworthy Wikimedian Contributors during WCI last year. I haven't seen any significant credits being given to them, nor have seen any central announcement regarding their selections (apologies if there was any such communication that I missed). It will be a true recognition of their contributions if their profiles are prepared. Regards, Dhaval On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 7:10 PM, Netha Hussain nethahuss...@gmail.com wrote: Dear all, On a casual request, I was prompted to support some of the tasks the India Chapter and the India community would benefit together, and I decided to take up the responsibility of creating profiles for the 'Featured Wikimedian' section in the Wikimedia India Chapter wiki. This section aims to showcase the achievements of active Wikimedians who have contributed significantly to the Wikimedia projects in English and/or Indian languages. The featured profile for January is that of Mr. Balachandran G from Malayalam Wikipedia. If you know an inspiring Wikimedian whose profile hasn't been featured yet, do let me know! Please also go through the profile of the featured Wikimedian of this month and send your suggestions and comments for improving this section. Happy new year! Regards User: Netha Hussain -- Netha Hussain Student of Medicine and Surgery Govt. Medical College, Kozhikode Blogs : nethahussain.blogspot.com swethaambari.wordpress.com ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-mum] Fw: [Wikimedia-l] Reappointment of Bishakha Datta as WMF Trustee
The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation has very little to do with how policies are formulated on the English Wikipedia project. ASB. On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 6:23 PM, Frederick FN Noronha * फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا fredericknoron...@gmail.com wrote: Bishkha, Congrats! And please do something to push for flexible rules that take care of non-Western situations while crafting a global online encyclopedia. I feel that societies which don't have such a long tradition with the printed word (or are mostly oral societies) have a distinct disadvantage while trying to match up to global Wikipedia requirements (for 'notability', referencing, etc). This gets doubly bad when someone needs to reference non-English texts, which might not be visible in cyberspace itself. Do make a case for the need of separate standards when writing about Asian-African-LatinAm societies in the Wikipedia. This will go a long way in creating a level playing field. FN -- FN Land +91-832-240-9490 Cell +91-982-212-2436 f...@goa-india.org Goa,1556's updated list of books available on and from Goa: http://www.scribd.com/doc/76671049/Goa1556-Catalogue-Books-from-Goa On 29 December 2012 12:11, Bishakha Datta bishakhada...@gmail.com wrote: Thank you, all. It's been a terrific experience, and I hope to continue to be of use to the Foundation and to the movement in my next term. Best Bishakha On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 11:42 PM, Outofindia outofin...@gmail.comwrote: Congratulations Bishakha This is indeed good news for Wiki Media's work in India and a well deserved reappointment! Best wishes Harriet On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Pradeep Mohandas prad2...@yahoo.comwrote: FYI. -- * From: * Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org; * To: * wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org; wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org; * Subject: * [Wikimedia-l] Reappointment of Bishakha Datta as WMF Trustee * Sent: * Fri, Dec 28, 2012 3:39:27 PM I am happy to report that Bishakha Datta has been reappointed as a Trustee on the WMF Board for another two-year term. The Board resolution may be found here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Bishakha_Datta_Reappointment_2012 The Board minutes may be found here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2012-12-27 Congratulations to Bishakha! -- Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-in-mum mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-mum ___ Wikimedia-in-mum mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-mum ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] TechCrunch: $50 Android Smartphones Are Disrupting Africa Much Faster Than You Think, Says Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales
FYI. -- Forwarded message -- From: Amit Kapoor akap...@wikimedia.org Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 5:09 AM Subject: [Wmfcc-l] TechCrunch: $50 Android Smartphones Are Disrupting Africa Much Faster Than You Think, Says Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales To: Communications Committee wmfc...@lists.wikimedia.org http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/10/50-android-smartphones-are-disrupting-africa-much-faster-than-you-think-says-wikipedias-jimmy-wales/ $50 Android Smartphones Are Disrupting Africa Much Faster Than You Think, Says Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales What phone does Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page founder Jimmy Wales have in his pocket? An unlocked Android-powered 3G smartphone, made by Chinese mobile maker Huawei – which was selling for $85 on the streets of Kenya last year and now goes for $50. While the majority of Africa’s mobile phones are more basic talk-plus-text feature phones — recent figures from analyst ABI Researchhttp://techcrunch.com/2012/11/28/abi-africas-mobile-market-to-pass-80-subscriber-penetration-in-q1-next-year-13-9-of-global-cellular-market-by-2017/ suggest 3G connectivity accounts for 11 percent of the continent’s overall mobile subscriptions vs. GSM’s 62.7 percent – 300,000 of these $50 Android smartphones have been sold in Kenya, according to Wales and African carrier Safaricom’s CEO Bob Collymore. The pair were speaking at Vodafone’s Mobile for Good summit taking place in London today. “What I always thought about mobile in Africa…is this [smartphone adoption] is coming in the future — in the future someday,” said Wales. “Well the someday’s happening faster than I ever realised.” Wales’ own budget Android was brought back from Kenya by a friend and is now his personal smartphone. “The screen is a little smaller than the iPhone, it’s not quite as good but the battery lasts two days,” he joked. The Wikipedia founder has been spending the past couple of years working on Wikipedia Zero http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero – a project that’s aiming to broaden access to the online encyclopedia to those who don’t own a computer or can’t get access to 3G mobile data – but he says the pace of smartphone adoption in Africa is changing the digital landscape of the continent much faster than people think. The pace caught Wikipedia by surprise. The not-for-profit organisation had been focusing its emerging markets’ efforts on India but is now paying a lot more attention to Africa, thanks to the growth in ownership of cheap, Android-powered handsets — like the one in Wales’ pocket. “This phone actually woke my mind up,” said Wales, pulling the handset out of his pocket and holding it up. “This is what really got me energised to say let’s go back and take another look at Africa, because we had focused most of our attention on India with the view that it was ready for us to do things.” “If you go and you take a look at the numbers [of smartphone adoption in Africa]… the upward trend — obviously it’s still a very small penetration – but that upward trend is there really strongly. If you look at the total bandwidth into Nigeria, for example, it’s skyrocketing. “Things that are very hard for us to all imagine are going to happen much faster than we realise,” he added. “People are going to be coming online for the first time. There’s this vibrant community of young app developers growing in Kenya and Nigeria. “It’s mind-boggling to think what the possibilities are — and I’m super excited about it.” -- Amit Kapoor Mobile Partnerships Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wmfcc-l mailing list wmfc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wmfcc-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] A Wikipedia Mini-hackathon in Delhi (CIS India)
FYI, folks. -- Forwarded message -- From: Sumana Harihareswara suma...@wikimedia.org Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 4:40 AM Subject: [Wmfcc-l] A Wikipedia Mini-hackathon in Delhi (CIS India) To: Communications Committee wmfc...@lists.wikimedia.org User:Yuvipanda led this event. http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/mini-hackathon-delhi A Wikipedia Mini-hackathon in Delhi Posted by Yuvraj Pandian at Nov 11, 2012 06:00 PM | Permalink Filed under: Access to Knowledge, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Workshop, Openness Wikipedian Yuvaraj Pandian visited the CIS office in Delhi and helped the Access to Knowledge team conduct a super-ad-hoc mini-hackathon with two other volunteers, Sheel from Delhi and Harsh from Ahmedabad. The aim was to get them a kickstart in developing userscripts/gadgets, and get them to a point where the prior existing documentation makes sense to them. The ad-hoc plan had three parts: The execution environment (Concept of userscripts vs gadgets, ResourceLoader) The API concepts (Special:ApiSandbox, concept of 'actions' in the API) Accessing the API from JS (mediawiki.api module, concept of AJAX) Here is the account of what they did, written by Yuvi: We covered all parts of them slowly, with both Harsh and Sheel working at things until they fully understood what they were doing and why whatever they were doing was working. I introduced them to the environment first by having them execute code in Chrome's JS Console, and then in their own common.js. Once they understood the context in which the code was getting executed, the 'ResourceLoader default modules'[1]documentation started making sense to them, and they could pick up other modules from there. We then explored the API via the API Sandbox[2], which is a relatively new (and not very well known) way of letting people play around with the API. It is a massive improvement over the older, non-interactive docs[3], and both Harsh and Sheel were very excited about being able to discover all the things they could do with the API. A fair amount of time was spent messing around with it on different wikipedias (en, hi and gu) and reading bits of the API Documentation[4] to understand the concepts behind the actions - and for filling in the gaps. Finally we had them use the API from a userscript to make calls. I went through the entire process line by line, explaining how AJAX works and how asynchronous programming works. We traced the flow of code together to understand how the seamingly nonlinear asynchronous programming model works. Then we dug into a bit of how to use the mw.loader module to make dependencies work, and why the same code that was working in the chrome js console was not working in their common.js. It ended with them trying to port HotCat to their native language wikipedias. Harsh started to explore more about getting started with MediaWiki dev itself (rather than just gadgets), but the clone took a long time and we had run out of time by then. I directed him to a WMF tech open chat happening today, and hopefully that could help! [1].https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/Default_modules [2].https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox [3].https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php [4].https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wmfcc-l mailing list wmfc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wmfcc-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic languages (was Re: Spoken Wikipedia for Indic Languages)
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:50 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: So are the words India and Indian. If this logic is true, then the English name of the Republic of India, and the name of this mailing list would be derogatory as well. Evidently, to most people they aren't. The use of the word India as a singular polity was a choice made by our former colonial master. The name India found general agreement among the leaders of the new republic, who not so coincidentally, were also overwhelmingly from the northern parts of India. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India#Etymology The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics by PH Matthews distinguishes Indic scripts from the Dravidian scripts, clearly specifying that Indic refers to the languages belonging to the Indo-Aryan Family (see page 175 of 410) Text reproduced below: Indian scripts . Writing systems derived directly or indirectly from the * Brahmi script, attested in ancient India from the second half of the 1st millennium BC. Modern forms include *Devanagari, used in particular for Hindi, and the separate scripts, often with characters of very different shapes, that have developed for other major*Indo-Aryan and for the * Dravidian languages: in addition, those of *Tibetan, and of most languages in South-east Asia, including *Burmese, *Khmer, *Lao, and *Thai. Earlier forms were used still more widely, in Central Asia with the spread of Buddhism and e.g. for *Javanese before the Muslim conquest. The basic type is *alpha-syllabic, as *Devanagari. The precise historical links, both within and outside ,are still partly uncertain: but for those in South-east Asia, the Mon script, attested in Burma ( Myanmar) from the 11 th to the 12th century AD, and before it the Grantha script, used in the coastal area of Tamil Nadu from the 5th century AD, were major intermediaries. Indic = Indo-Aryan. (Source: http://www.questia.com/read/55186560/the-concise-oxford-dictionary-of-linguistics ) Kind Regards, Anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic languages (was Re: Spoken Wikipedia for Indic Languages)
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 4:12 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Again: Let's not make up controversy. No one is trying to rake up a controversy. This is a polite discussion, at least on my part, so I will appreciate if you do not allude otherwise. I have presented an authoritative academic source, and in contrast you have relied on a document that provides technical description of the Unicode standard. I am happy to simply disagree with you over a mailing list discussion, however, the English Wikipedia community demands proper academic citations and sources for our articles. Thanks, Anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic languages (was Re: Spoken Wikipedia for Indic Languages)
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 1:02 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: If he didn't explain it, then you can presume that it's wrong. There's nothing to discuss, and there's nothing wrong with saying Indic languages. The word Indic refers generally to the Indo-Aryan family of languages, which does not include Dravidian languages prevalent in Southern India. Hence, bunching the entire system of Dravidian languages together with the Indo-Aryan languages in India may seem derogatory to some, and reasonably so. Just my two cents, Anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic languages (was Re: Spoken Wikipedia for Indic Languages)
My email was not directed at anyone personally. It was simply a response to the observation Srikanth made and from what I glanced from Wikipedia articles.[1] In the context of linguistics, you will be hard-pressed to find reliable sources that refer to Indic languages as a generic term for all of Indian languages. The word 'Indic' itself is a derivative of the word Hindus or Indus referring to the Indus Valley Civilization, which did not stretch as far as Deccan India where the Dravidian family of languages have been prevalent. The distinction between the Indic languages and Dravidian languages is an important one, and they should not be confused to be one and the same. As a movement of individuals who are dedicated to the process of building the world's largest repositories of information, we should be mindful of lingual and cultural realities and sensitivities. This is not just about being politically correct, but also accuracy in the representation of _factual_ information. Again, this is simply my personal opinion and observation. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_languages Cheers, Anirudh On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:20 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore 2012/11/14 Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com: On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 1:02 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: If he didn't explain it, then you can presume that it's wrong. There's nothing to discuss, and there's nothing wrong with saying Indic languages. The word Indic refers generally to the Indo-Aryan family of languages, which does not include Dravidian languages prevalent in Southern India. Not necessarily. According to Meriam-Webster, the adjective Indic may refer to Indo-Aryan and to all of India. Moreover, Indic scripts refers to all Brahmic scripts, and that is the most common term today. The English Wikipedia redirected [[Indic languages]] to [[Indo-Aryan languages]], but that was a mistake, and I just fixed it. Hence, bunching the entire system of Dravidian languages together with the Indo-Aryan languages in India may seem derogatory to some, and reasonably so. No, not derogatory. At worst, it's ambiguous. Making up bad connotations for normal words is not so constructive. -- Amir ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic languages (was Re: Spoken Wikipedia for Indic Languages)
On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Anivar Aravind anivar.arav...@gmail.comwrote: factually incorrect . Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmic_scripts The article you refer to lacks proper citations. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Quark 2013 at BITS Goa
FYI. Those of you from Mumbai and Pune are interested in joining BITS Goa for a techno-management fest to organize a workshop/hackathon during their annual, please get back to me. The institute can sponsor bus travel and accommodation for up to 5 participants. -- Forwarded message -- From: Vishal Jain Date: Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 10:42 PM Subject: Workshop during Quark 2013 To: Anirudh Bhati anir...@wikimedia.in Dear Sir, Hope you are having a great day. Foremost we would like to express our gratitude for the interest that you have shown to our proposal. We are aware of the Hackathon that was organized by Wikimedia during Atmos at BITS Pilani- Hyderabad. We would like to have a workshop for 2 days which can be followed by a Hackathon on the third day. This will ensure that students learn and then get to test their skills. It would be an added incentive to the participants if Wikimedia could provide certificates on completion of course. The participants of the workshop will be highly enthusiastic undergraduate science, technology and engineering students with keen interest in programming and development. The course content and the format of the workshop can be something that you deem fit for the participants with the above mentioned qualifications. We are expecting around 150 to 200 participants for the workshop. Hence we feel 5 volunteers will be more than sufficient enough to conduct the workshop. If you feel otherwise please let us know. We are willing to provide for travel expenses of the volunteers from Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore along with their accommodation during their stay here for Quark 2013. We would be happy to help you with any further queries. Thanking you in anticipation for positive response at the earliest. -- Regards, VISHAL JAIN Core Member,Quark 2013 Birla Institute of Technology Science, Pilani K.K. Birla Goa Campus -- Dear Sir/Madam, On behalf of BITS Pilani - K. K. Birla Goa Campus, I, Vishal Jain, take this opportunity to inform you of our upcoming National Level Techno-Managerial Festival QUARK 2013 which is scheduled to take place from 1st to 3rd of February,2013. BITS, Pilani is one of the India's top ranked universities in the fields of Science, Engineering Technology and has a global reputation of creating leaders in fields as diverse as research technology and entrepreneurship management. Our technical festival Quark is a platform for the brightest and the best in India to innovate and compete in various dimensions of Pure Applied Sciences and Technology Management through Competitions, Workshops, Guest Lectures, Exhibitions, Symposiums ét al, whilst maintaining its usual levels of convivial festivities. With GOOGLE as one of the official sponsors for Quark 2013 and existing collaborations with Mahindra RISE and INK talks, we are one of the most anticipated technical festivals in the country We, at the Department of Controls- Quark 2013, invite WIKIMEDIA INDIA to conduct a workshop for the benefit of the Engineering and Science under-graduate students who will be attending the festival.Quark 2013 will be privileged enough to be associated with a company of such stature .Quark 2012 witnessed a phenomenal participation in the various Workshops it offered and for 2013 we wish to take the participation and quality of the workshops to a greater standards . I would hence request you to please mail your response. Please include any other detail or conditions you find appropriate. Thanking you in anticipation of a positive reply soon. -- Regards, VISHAL JAIN Core Member,Quark 2013 Birla Institute of Technology Science, Pilani K.K. Birla Goa Campus -- Sincerely yours, Anirudh Singh Bhati Treasurer, Wikimedia India Skype: anirudhsbh +91 9328712208 Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's our commitment. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-IN-PUN] Quark 2013 at BITS Goa
1-3 February 2013, according to the email sent above. :) On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 1:07 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan srik.r...@wikimedia.in wrote: When is the event supposed to happen? I can join in from Bangalore if I'm free. On Saturday, November 10, 2012, Anirudh Bhati wrote: FYI. Those of you from Mumbai and Pune are interested in joining BITS Goa for a techno-management fest to organize a workshop/hackathon during their annual, please get back to me. The institute can sponsor bus travel and accommodation for up to 5 participants. -- Forwarded message -- From: Vishal Jain Date: Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 10:42 PM Subject: Workshop during Quark 2013 To: Anirudh Bhati anir...@wikimedia.in Dear Sir, Hope you are having a great day. Foremost we would like to express our gratitude for the interest that you have shown to our proposal. We are aware of the Hackathon that was organized by Wikimedia during Atmos at BITS Pilani- Hyderabad. We would like to have a workshop for 2 days which can be followed by a Hackathon on the third day. This will ensure that students learn and then get to test their skills. It would be an added incentive to the participants if Wikimedia could provide certificates on completion of course. The participants of the workshop will be highly enthusiastic undergraduate science, technology and engineering students with keen interest in programming and development. The course content and the format of the workshop can be something that you deem fit for the participants with the above mentioned qualifications. We are expecting around 150 to 200 participants for the workshop. Hence we feel 5 volunteers will be more than sufficient enough to conduct the workshop. If you feel otherwise please let us know. We are willing to provide for travel expenses of the volunteers from Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore along with their accommodation during their stay here for Quark 2013. We would be happy to help you with any further queries. Thanking you in anticipation for positive response at the earliest. -- Regards, VISHAL JAIN Core Member,Quark 2013 Birla Institute of Technology Science, Pilani K.K. Birla Goa Campus -- Dear Sir/Madam, On behalf of BITS Pilani - K. K. Birla Goa Campus, I, Vishal Jain, take this opportunity to inform you of our upcoming National Level Techno-Managerial Festival QUARK 2013 which is scheduled to take place from 1st to 3rd of February,2013. BITS, Pilani is one of the India's top ranked universities in the fields of Science, Engineering Technology and has a global reputation of creating leaders in fields as diverse as research technology and entrepreneurship management. Our technical festival Quark is a platform for the brightest and the best in India to innovate and compete in various dimensions of Pure Applied Sciences and Technology Management through Competitions, Workshops, Guest Lectures, Exhibitions, Symposiums ét al, whilst maintaining its usual levels of convivial festivities. With GOOGLE as one of the official sponsors for Quark 2013 and existing collaborations with Mahindra RISE and INK talks, we are one of the most anticipated technical festivals in the country We, at the Department of Controls- Quark 2013, invite WIKIMEDIA INDIA to conduct a workshop for the benefit of the Engineering and Science under-graduate students who will be attending the festival.Quark 2013 will be privileged enough to be associated with a company of such stature .Quark 2012 witnessed a phenomenal participation in the various Workshops it offered and for 2013 we wish to take the participation and quality of the workshops to a greater standards . I would hence request you to please mail your response. Please include any other detail or conditions you find appropriate. Thanking you in anticipation of a positive reply soon. -- Regards, VISHAL JAIN Core Member,Quark 2013 Birla Institute of Technology Science, Pilani K.K. Birla Goa Campus -- Sincerely yours, Anirudh Singh Bhati Treasurer, Wikimedia India Skype: anirudhsbh +91 9328712208 Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's our commitment. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Srikanth Ramakrishnan Member of the Executive Committee Wikimedia Chapter [India] ___ Wikimedia-IN-PUN mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-pun ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] #GOIBlocks list contains Wikipedia too
Ineffective blocks, but it still works. http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Persecution_of_Muslims_in_Burma On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Karthik Nadar karthik...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 1:22 AM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: Hello, As feared a few months back[0], censorship has begun[1]. This list[2] released in article mentions 3 instances of Wikipedia, 2 mentions about Persecution_of_Muslims_in_Burma[3] which is blocked (but some of us know of many other URL formats to access the page) Use this re-direct link to access this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims_in_Myanmar and other being article on cartoon controversy[4] but like the numerous of errors in the list, this too is erroneous and hence available. This is clearly not a positive development. [0] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2012-April/007920.html [1] http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/government-blocks-twitter-handles-of-journalists-right-wing-groups--here-is-the-proof/articleshow/15617834.cms [2] http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/photo.cms?msid=15618032 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims_in_Burma [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Thanks and regards, (User:Karthikndr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Karthikndr) *Karthik Nadar.* ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] HT City, New Delhi : Wiki meet for Delhi tomorrow
On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 6:35 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: I'm confused here for a moment, so I have to ask- Who is Abhishek Suryawanshi? I have started and ran the first few Delhi meetups, and never met or heard of Abhishek. Is he on the list? or can anyone give me his username? I'm curious. He mentions Ahmadabad too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AbhiSuryawanshi The story is filled with a lot of errors Wikipedia's Delhi office, the generalized Wiki Ambassador. Nothing new about the confusion between Wikimedia and Wikipedia - looks like this is something we'll all have to live with. :) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] HT City, New Delhi : Wiki meet for Delhi tomorrow
Published in HT City, New Delhi June 8, 2012 Wiki meet for Delhi tomorrow If you think Wikipedia doesn’t have the real good stuff on Delhi or just doesn’t get the city right, tomorrow is your chance to change that. The open source knowledge website is holding a meet-up in Hauz Khas on Sunday, and everyone is welcome to pump up the information on the Capital in there. And not just the boring stuff. The representatives say they’re looking for bright, young people to join them in adding up more on the city’s cultural hubs, new landmarks, hangouts and historical hotspots. “People still have the wrong notion that Wikipedia has a set of permanent editors who put all the information there. Everything in there is written by users, and the more people we have from Delhi, the better a knowledge bank we’ll have on the city. Abroad, they have a page on each street and every good place,” says Abhishek Suryawanshi, Wiki ambassador. So, existing editors — ordinary users, that is, will guide the new editors who wish to debut at the meet. The informal session, which will be held at Wikipedia’s Delhi office — the only one in the world outside of the United States — will also see an open debate and discussion on what needs to be done to make Delhi look up on the website. “For example, we recently had a meet in Ahmedabad and discovered that there are not too many pictures of the city on the site. Within a week of the session, we had over a thousand photos up there!” says Suryawanshi. For all the questions on the credibility of the information on the encyclopedia, Suryawanshi has one answer. “Wikipedia is just a collection of quality references. We go ahead and put a fact in there irrespective of the contributor, as long as there’s a citable, reliable reference to go back to. Students and other users often say they’ve checked this or that on Wiki, but Wikipedia should not be quoted that way. It’s a start point to any research, not the end point,” he says. Catch it here What: Delhi Wikipedia Meetup When: June 10 Timings: 3pm - 6pm Entry: Free Where: Top floor, G-15, behind Hauz Khas G-Block Mkt (NOT the main Hauz Khas market) Nearest Metro Station: Hauz Khas on Yellow Line http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/867948.aspx ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] HT City, New Delhi : Wiki meet for Delhi tomorrow
On Sat, Jun 9, 2012 at 8:55 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: The statement, Abroad, they have a page on each street and every good place, makes it sound like a Tourist Guide of sorts. Am I the only one who feels this way? Pages about streets and local buildings don't have to sound like tourist guides. They can be encyclopedic too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Street http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masjid_Sultan The articles above need some work with citations, however you will find numerous examples from Europe and North America where streets and local buildings have articles on them and their history. An example would be a project undertaken by Wikimedia UK called Monmouthpedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/MonmouthpediA Replicating this kind of project in an Indian city is possible, but may be difficult given the lack of coverage of minor topics in books and on the web. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 1:04 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Noopur, thank you for posting the report. I have a few questions for the India Programs team which I have listed under, would appreciate if you could respond: 1. How do you plan on scaling the Social Media pilot beyond your own networks? 2. Do you believe you can effectively create a mechanism for recruitment of editors through this project in a manner that justifies the cost and time involved? I am asking this because I noticed that you make serious attempts at trying to convince users to edit Wikipedia pages. 3. How many hours per week do you spend on the Wikipedia support group? To Hisham and the rest of the India Program team: I am still waiting for answers to these questions. They were asked with seriousness, and they deserve your serious consideration. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Update on Social Media Pilot
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Barry Newstead (WMF) bnewst...@wikimedia.org wrote: Just a brief note on the 8% retention rate of a pilot that is not yet two months old and has the potential for significant further refinement and improvement. This is a high retention rate based on data I've seen on general outreach events, where the rates of conversion to editing are very low (generally well below 5% in the analysis we've been doing in India since January), as many people have discussed on this list and elsewhere. The Wikipedia Education Program, where students have a rather deep introduction to Wikipedia, has seen a retention rate of only 4% after the end of the course.[1] I don't think those editors have been retained. You will find that all of them have made 5-10 edits on a single day (likely with considerable application of persuasion) and then stopped completely. On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: On 30 May 2012 18:27, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: I won't do it actually. As memory serves, WMF has never used Social media, or hired one of those social media experts. Fair enough. That said, that is no reason not to try it in India or other specific locales, right? So long as it ties in to specific outcomes that WMF and WIP have lined up for the larger program - in this case, visibility for Wikipedia and driving new editors. This is something which has been discussed previously on Wikimedia related lists - Wikimedia projects and other social media networks are dissimilar services with a completely different purpose around communities. It goes without saying that they attract different sort of contributors looking to achieve different goals. I will not go on to further elaborate and reduce this to an academic discussion but will just conclude by saying that working on our projects is not akin to a social media experience and that it is highly unlikely that we will successfully leverage social media oriented programs to harvest contributors for our projects in a way that justifies the financial costs involved. Wikipedia has sufficient visibility on the Internet around the world and in India. I am opposed to spending the community's considerable monetary resources to run facebook groups for training newbies. As Salmaan expressed earlier, there are better qualified and trained individuals with substantial Wikimedia experience around the world suited to experiment with newer frontiers. On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: There always are and sitting on the outside, it's hard for me to justify one over the other. That said, have the metrics they reported and based on the numbers Anirudh posted point to an engagement level that is on par with, better or worse than for the casual drive by editor? If better, than, IMHO, the question is whether that acquisition cost and time worth it over the medium term. I think there are likely to be positive outcomes of extended intervention with local communities in most cases. Here, it is not so apparent since the period of engagement with the community was limited. We find that the fantastic news about the increased activity among the Assamese Wikipedians is mainly a result of bot-like editing and creation of numerous redirects. However, I am not so pessimistic about the whole idea of engaging smaller Indic language projects, This can work specially with a proper Wikipedian like Shiju taking the lead, however, the projection of instant results like the email sent by Hisham suggests is not believable. Therefore, the question around acquisition cost and time is an important factor which should be carefully examined. On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 7:54 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com wrote: These platforms can easily extend the social collaboration that goes on in wikipedia to an extended audience if done properly. What i think would be useful way of measuring these things is to release statistics monthly on the number of retweets or shares that could indicate the actual reach of these outreach efforts. Util then however, this is nothing to boast about. This is a fair suggestion, Arun. I'd think user experience is something which can be enhanced through engineering and software development rather than the current way of implementation. Noopur, thank you for posting the report. I have a few questions for the India Programs team which I have listed under, would appreciate if you could respond: 1. How do you plan on scaling the Social Media pilot beyond your own networks? 2. Do you believe you can effectively create a mechanism for recruitment of editors through this project in a manner that justifies the cost and time involved? I am asking this because I noticed that you make serious attempts at trying to convince users to edit Wikipedia pages. 3. How many hours per week do you spend on the Wikipedia support group?
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Building Pilot Update: Fantastic Story from Assam
For those interested, the statistics are available here: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaAS.htm The number of active users (ie. those with more than 5+ edits per month) was 31, and the number of very active editors (ie. those with more than 100+ edits per month) remained approximately the same during the period of intervention (briefly increasing from 3 to 6 in January 2012 and then going back to 3 in April 2012). There is a palpable jump in the number of redirects created (which adds to editing activity) by 273% in February 2012 and 609% in March 2012. The number of redirects have increased from 393 in January 2012 to ~10,000 in March 2012. Bisnu, Dipankar, Gitartha and other Assamese Wikipedians: I am curious to know if these are internal redirects or English to Assamese redirects? How would you judge the quality of contributions by the newly active users? Best regards On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 9:49 AM, Hisham his...@wikimedia.org wrote: Dear All I wanted to share with you an update on the work that Shijuhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Shiju[1] is doing on Indic languageshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages[2] as part of India Program http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program.[3] A guiding principle for the thinking and efforts of our team is that community building should be the most essential aspect of all the work that we do. In the context of small Indic communities, Shiju has been working to try and identify the various elements that need to come together to foster community building. This update is about the Community Building pilothttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Basic_Community_Building[4] that was run for the Assamese community. For context, community building means different things to different people and in fact there was a very interesting posthttp://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-December/005813.html[5] that Shiju put out that articulated his thinking on this and, hence, our priorities. The results of these efforts have been outstanding - number of editors on Assamese Wikipedia has increased to 31 in April 2012 (from 18 in December 2011 and just 10 in November 2011.) - number of Wikiprojects increased to 6 (from a situation where there were no reasonably active ones in December 2011- and including 5 Wikiprojects independently conceptualised and managed by the community) - average monthly edits on Assamese Wikipedia increased to about 5000 in April 2012 from around 3000 in November 2011 There are 5 key factors that are responsible for this remarkable growth 1. *Strong communication*. This started with Shiju building personal connections with Assamese editors and then encouraging them to communicate with each other on-wiki, online and in meet--ups and outreach sessions. 2. *Initial push*. Shiju visited Assam in January where he spent time in 2 towns with 7 of the most active community members, who also conducted 2 outreach sessions. This visit has proved to be really useful because it helped to energise the community and also helped to establish a personal relationship between Shiju and these editors (and also, amongst the editors themselves.) 3. *Encouraging collaboration*. Wikiprojects and outreach are really useful to galvanise a community and helped build personal equations. It's wonderful to see the increase in Wikiprojects and 4. *Building capacity confidence*. In all the work that has been done for the Assamese community, the endeavour has been to build capacity. For instance, support was given to get basic outreach material including FAQs prepared and outreach sessions were guided by Shiju. It's inspiring to see the Assamese community now take things to a whole new level and plan out an ambitious 10th anniversaryhttp://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/05/16/ten-glorious-years-of-assamese-wikipedia-celebrate-with-clicks-and-words/ .[6] 5. *Healthy environment*. This is the last - but probably the most essential point - and it is something I want to call out because it is what will help or severely hinder the abilities of individual communities realise their dreams and potential. The reason why the Assamese community is making such wonderful steps forward is because there is - a set of editors with the right level of initiative and motivation - a strong sense of co-operation and good spirit amongst the editors - an extremely welcoming approach to new editors None of this would have been possible without the efforts of every single Assamese community members. In the early days when Shiju started off, he was interacting with Bishnu, Dipankar, Gitartha, Jyoti Prabhakar - who helped organise the first meet-ups and outreach sessions. Thanks to their efforts, a list of thank-yous would now be 31 strong! Thank
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] WikiWomenCamp and WikiGenero-Buenos Aires, Participation
thank you for the report, netha! hopefully, we'll see more women participation focused workshops and meetups coming up in your hometown soon! ;-) best, anirudh On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 4:26 AM, Netha Hussain nethahuss...@gmail.comwrote: Hola! Greetings from Buenos Aires! I am User: Netha Hussain (1), writing from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was lucky to represent India in the WikiWomenCamp (2) and WikiGenero held here from 23-26 May 2012. My travel and accommodation were sponsored by Wikimedia Germany and Wikimedia Austria. The past four days had been fabulous, and I enjoyed being in the company of amazing women from different parts of the world. The conference was held in open space format with no agenda. Open space technology is called the 'wiki-way' of conducting conference as ideas are created by the way of discussing in groups and accepting contributions from all participants. I loved this, and I think we must try and use this methodology in Indian conferences too. We discussed about many issues which are primarily of concern to women, including mapping gender issues, edit-wars, GLAM, attracting women to Wikiprojects etc (3). We learned about the many projects launched in different countries for the increasing the participation of women in administration. I could present the Indian perspective of issues at the conference. Most participants were amazed to know about the diversity of Indian languages. I also spoke about the WikiConf-Mumbai 2011 and the results of the gendergap session organized in the conference. The working of the chapter was also explained, but it was disappointing to reveal that we did not have had any women member in the chapter ever since. We created a private mailing list for women to get support when dealing with harassment, took steps to create WikiChix, decided to print books on perspectives of women in various countries and discussed about conducting a WikiWomencamp with more participants the coming year. At WikiGenero which happened on 26th May, Sue Gardner delivered a keynote address which was very inspiring. The news about the camp was published in local newspapers. The notes are available on meta and photos on commons(4). At the conference, I could build contacts with many women from different parts of the world. I could learn many new things could also share my knowledge. It was a highly rewarding experience. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netha_Hussain (2) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp (3) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomenCamp/Agenda (4) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiWomenCamp_2012 Gracias! Sincerely Netha Hussain -- Netha Hussain Student of Medicine and Surgery Govt. Medical College, Kozhikode Blogs : *nethahussain.blogspot.com swethaambari.wordpress.com* ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimania 2012 scholarships
On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Karthik Nadar karthik...@gmail.comwrote: Was just been to Mahalakshmi (Mumbai)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalakshmi_Temple,_Mumbai yesterday, and hence found out another US visa consulate. That one is a VFS-US office. Consular operations for the US mission are located at one central location in the Bandra-Kurla Complex. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Ads Injected into Wikipedia?
On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 10:04 AM, wheredevelsd...@hotmail.com wrote: I believe Aditya sent one when this thing first cropped up on this list. Philippe is referring to the page source, not the screenshot. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Ads Injected into Wikipedia?
On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 12:56 PM, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay debast...@gmail.com wrote: Ok then can we not make the default version the https one like say google does. This will not be a permanent solution, I'm afraid. anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Ads Injected into Wikipedia?
On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay debast...@gmail.comwrote: Hmmm...that maybe true but what else can we do, I mean, Inkfruit has to be involved somewhere in this right? Think about it, if you were an ad injecting virus, why would you randomly inject ads that too of inkfruit? For people who face these ads, are the ads appearing only on wikipedia or other websites also? If I am not wrong, if this is the work of a malware, it would display the ad on each and every website you visit and not just specifically Wikipedia. If its only Wikipedia and the ad is only Inkfruit, I'd really say, if nothing can be done via code, legal needs to be involved. If its a non-specific malware, just clean your systems, I guess and inform others. Rather, I'd say, instead of not going public with this, if it gets too frequent, go public. Display a banner on top of Wiki stating that if you see ads on Wikipedia that is not at all related to Wiki, rather you should check your system for malware. The point is people should not assume, that Wikipedia has started ads. I don't think the enwp community will agree to acknowledge the malware by putting up a worldwide banner. Most of our users don't face this problem, and the only problem devices are those which have been compromised. The only effective resolution would be when Google and MS agree to patch this up. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] Malayalm Wikipedia could be emulated
Malayalam Wikipedia could be emulated Source: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/malayalam-wikipedia-could-be-emulated/253196-60-116.html KOLLAM: From the seven-year-olds Achu Kulangara, Aswin and Sai Ram to the 70-year-old A J Johnson, all delegates were busy attending sessions. The Malayalam wikipedia community’s meet, ‘Wikisangamotsavam’, saw the gettogether of wikipedia enthusiasts cutting across age, educational and professional barriers. The man most excited about the meet was perhaps Barry Newstead, Chief Global Development Officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, who flew down to attend the two-day programme which began at the District Panchayat Hall here on Saturday. Speaking to ‘Express’ on the sidelines of the meet, Barry Newstead was all praise for the Malayalam Wikipedia Community for sticking on to quality and education oriented content. “The good thing about Malayalam community members is that they don’t focus on politics or personal gains and instead are volunteers who engage productively. They build these projects with the prime motive to share knowledge with the next generation,” he said. Newstead said that the State Government support for wikipedia community’s activities and the active involvement of students and teachers would take the Malayalam wiki a long way. “The Malayalam Wikipedia is the most innovative and constructive among Indic languages and expectedly will grow as a model that can be emulated by other languages,” he said. Responding to questions on the errors made by editors and propaganda material in wikipedia, Newstead said that the increase in the number of contributors would make entries accurate and unbiased. “For example, if we have an article on Israel-Palestine issue, we would have two versions. Then a third group comes. We should not underestimate the third group. They will be the ones who can give us an accurate picture of the issue,” he said. According to Barry Newstead, the target of the Malayalam community should be to increase the editor base to around 500 in the next two to three years from the present figure of 100. Hisam Mundol, consultant of Wikimedia India Programme, too feels that an exponential growth is the need of the hour for Malayalam Wiki. “Think of just 100 editors contributing contents for the whole Global Malayali population. We need more editors who can actively contribute in Malayalam,” he said. About 23,429 articles (as on April 23) featured in the Malayalam Wikipedia and can be accessed at http://ml.wikipedia.org. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedians work for personal satisfaction, not politics or personal gain
On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 1:43 AM, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay debast...@gmail.com wrote: Seriously? I don't mean to be rude here but I'd really don't think that is the way it was meant to be interpreted. I mean, if I say Ashwin is kind-hearted, doesn't mean I'm calling every other community member heartless. My two paise. For a proper interpretation, you will have to look at the statement in context and some of the discussion threads from the past few weeks. There is a difference between saying Debastein, you are amazing! and Debastein, you are not a wife-beater. The later naturally raises the presumption that you have a wife and casts doubt as to whether you really beat her? :) In any case, I would like to hear from Barry on this. Thanks. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] [OT] We have resolution!
Finally! This answers the long-standing question... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17769677 Best, anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Announcing Wikiacademy at LD College of Engineering, Ahmedabad
Greetings from Ahmedabad! I am here sitting with Konarak Ratnakar and Harsh Kothari, very enthusiastic contributors to English and Gujarati Wikimedia projects. They have organized a Wikiacademy at LD College of Engineering, scheduled on 24 April 2012. The main focus of these event is training potential users of our Gujarati and English Wikipedia projects. We have received confirmation from around 34 students of the college, and we expect the numbers to go up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Workshop/Ahmedabad_Workshop_1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Workshop/Ahmedabad_Workshop_1#Participants Please sign up if you are interested in joining the event. Computers are available at the venue, but they are most likely to be occupied by students from the college, so it's best if you can get your own computers! Hisham, you are specially invited to join us for the event. :-) Best, anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Ashwin Baindur and Shyamal interviewed by the Signpost
Congratulations Ashwin and Shyamal! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-04-16/WikiProject_report Best, anirdh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Question about outreach sessions
On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 1:53 AM, Arnav Sonara sonara.ar...@gmail.comwrote: *Where and how else can your voice be heard thousands of times round the world by different people?* Posing such a question in the context of image and file uploads may be fine. However, if we attempt at recruiting editors saying that Wikipedia is a means to have their voice heard then we risk compromising our NPOV ideal by attracting the attention of the POVpushing blogger complex. So I'd recommend not advertising Wikipedia as a platform for having your voice heard but as a place where the contributors' research work is appreciated and read not only by a community of dedicated users but also a part of the 400 million+ unique visitors each year. Though I know having your voice heard sounds far more sexier but partisan POVpushing is a serious issue on en.wp and tends to drive away far more contributors than anything else. One of the reasons why our project tends to have far more teenage editors is likely because this is a demographic segment which has still not formed strong opinions on different subjects, and therefore are more likely to represent sources accurately without misrepresentation, original research and original synthesis. Older people have far less patience for a project that adamantly gives more weight to third party reliable sources and scholarly research and rejects original research and synthesis. Some of the users who get banhammered by one of these administrators ultimately criticize the project saying that it is run by pimple-faced teenage school-boys with too much time on their hands. :-) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Question about outreach sessions
On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 1:24 AM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I have tried this method. Bala and I during the Coimbatore meetup in December, just said that the session would be more indepth compared to the previous one. This is a nice example of separating the wheat from the chaff. The situation gets more complicated when there are t-shirts involved though. When more people tend to hang around just because of the swag, the result is a distracted and impatient crowd which is not really interested in what you are talking about. Tip: Give away the t-shirts in the beginning itself. It is really not worth trying to keep uninterested people around through the t-shirts carrot. The interested participants will thank you for it, and you might conclude the session with a recruit or two. Ultimately, this is not about recruiting editors, it is not about writing grand reports, it is about identifying like-minded individuals who are genuinely interested in our projects - it is about making friends. :-) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Question about outreach sessions
On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 10:39 PM, Sumana Harihareswara suma...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 04/09/2012 08:00 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.orgwrote: Odia Wikipedia Outreach Programs in Odisha This was a very interesting and comprehensive report -- thank you, Mrutyunjaya Kar! I noticed this: Once we had shown everyone this, we invited those who were interested to stay for a more detailed and hands-on editing to stay, and told everyone else they were free to leave. A few of the audience left the lab, and the remaining 9 created their user accounts. I see that a few other outreach sessions have also done this. I am curious -- when you do this, what specific phrasing do you use? I want to know how to say if you're not interested, you can leave if you want in a friendly, hospitable way, so your examples might help. Thank you Mritunjaya, and nice observation Sumana! One of the most common questions which I have received from new meet up and workshop participants is: Do you get paid for doing this? or Will I get paid for working on Wikipedia? I'm interested in knowing how other members of the community handle these questions. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] (no subject)
Please don't click on the spam link. I have unsubscribed Swapnil from the mailing list and sent him a warning. On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 12:45 AM, Swapnil Narendra swapnilnaren...@yahoo.com wrote: http://evokephotography.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/liz-comment-counter-by-ozh/fjgvkd.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-en] Outreach at Itanagar
A very strong argument can be made for quitting presentations altogether and relying only on the internet. A number of students created their accounts. I like this part! I don't think we can do away with presentations completely, but the presentations should never overshadow the live training aspect. I personally find presentations to limit conversations rather than keeping them open ended. This is specially true for when you are training potential new users. The next day’s session was on things geographical. Arun Ganesh dazzled the audience with OpenStreetMap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStreetMap and Quantum GIS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_GIS. Though the stuff was a bit difficult to cotton on to, the students did really well. At least six sets of students got the Java OpenStreetMap editor going, (quite a feat) and added road after road, building after building. To see the effects visit NERIST at Nirjuli on OpenStreetMap, just 20 kilometers east of Itanagar. The kids pretty much mapped up their whole campus that day. It was amazing to see the student’s lap up the tech stuff. Reminds us how much their inquisitive minds are deprived of genuine stimulation. They were truly awesome. I liked this part too! The Victoria Memorial, Kolkata has been collaborating jointly with them to improve the Museum’s exhibits and the results are very evident. The entire museum was being revamped last time when I was there. I hope they have made some progress since then. I really think you should move full-time into training college students how to use Wikipedia, and I believe that would be an invaluable service not only to the Wikimedia community but the entire community of geeky people in the country. :) Question: I see that the event was fairly successful, but would you consider discussing those elements that could have been better? This may include factors within your control and within the control of the organizers. Best On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.bain...@gmail.comwrote: I was lucky enough to get to go to Arunachal Pradesh. One of my friends, could not go to the Northeast Regional Institute of Science and Technology (NERIST) so he recommended me instead. The NERIST wanted a speaker on Wikipedia and he recommended me for which I am deeply grateful. They sent me an air ticket and off I went Please read the complete writeup images at : http://thebutterflydiaries.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/outreach-in-itanagar/ -- Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur -- ___ Wikimedia-in-en mailing list wikimedia-in...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-en ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Pilot Designs
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Hisham his...@wikimedia.org wrote: Story-telling for Community Buildinghttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Pilot_Designs/Storytelling is the work that Noopur just announced (and as illustrated by the profile on Netha) - where we want to celebrate the diversity and magic in our community. The Wikimedia India Chapter already runs a section call Featured Wikipedian on the chapter wiki. Is this pilot designed to replicate the work that is being already done? http://wiki.wikimedia.in More importantly, why do you believe that the story-telling effort will ultimately motivate more editors to contribute? Sure, I see some potential there for interested Internet users who come across Wikimedia's blog sites, but apart from that? Have you done a *cost-benefit analysis* on whether the story telling initiative is worth spending the time and efforts of your team? From my own experience, some of the long-term editors are anonymous while most of the long-term and established editors are quite private to the extent that they would not wish to link their real life with what they do on Wikipedia. I think your efforts are better directed elsewhere identifying high-potential opportunities, design implement high-quality pilots. I am quoting one of the emails you sent as an explanation to the Foundation-l On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Hisham hmun...@wikimedia.org wrote: The advantage that Trust brings to the table is speed and intensity. I think the nature of the Trust's operations will be to identify high-potential opportunities, design implement high-quality pilots and transfer learnings to the Chapter, other community groups and the community at large. As and when the Chapter and/or other community bodies have built the capacity to take over projects from the Trust, the Trust will fully facilitate this. From what I can see, you are simply undertaking projects which can be organized by Wikimedia India Chapter once it receives funding and engages a part-time employee to help it with that. On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:28 PM, Pradeep Mohandas pradeep.mohan...@gmail.com wrote: I also think this idea of the community defining the framework must be extended to the Chapter as well. Let's have this discussion on a separate thread. Thanks. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Internal-l] Wiki Loves Monuments - will your country participate?
Noopur, This is a major development and should be of interest to those who are outside of the wlm-in mailing list. Thanks. anirudh On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 11:33 AM, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Anirudh, We have already forwarded this to our relevant Wiki loves monuments list just to avoid flooding this one. Here is the list address: wlm...@lists.wmnederland.nl. Just passing it for your information so that we can have more focused discussions there. Thanks! Noopur On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: FYI. -- Forwarded message -- From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org Date: Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 4:27 AM Subject: [Internal-l] Wiki Loves Monuments - will your country participate? To: Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed subscription) interna...@lists.wikimedia.org Hi all, we're well on our way getting started with Wiki Loves Monuments 2012! (feel free to forward) For those that don't know what Wiki Loves Monuments is all about, please read this blog post [http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/02/165000-photos-submitted-during-second-annual-wiki-love-monuments-photography-contest/] on the WMF blog and this page about how the concept works [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Documentation#Concept]; here's also a small introduction to the main idea of the contest and what's awaiting us this year. == Wiki Loves Monuments in a nutshell == The photo competition around physical cultural heritage (buildings, bridges, etc.) is running in September, organized in numerous countries around the world. The contest is being organized in each country separately, allowing to play to the local needs and wishes, but is joined by an umbrella contest for the whole world making it all a bit more exciting. Last year the contest was organized in 18 countries, and brought in 165.000 images by 5000 uploaders. More importantly, 4000 of these uploaders never uploaded anything before! == Is your country participating? Helping hands are needed! == For 2012 already 24 countries [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Participating_countries] indicated that they will definitely participate, and 16 more say they possibly will participate. Please take a look at the list, and see whether your country is already there. If you would like to help organize this contest in your country, please join the team that signed up for it (often through a chapter or a local group) or start your own organizing group if there is none yet! Interested countries for example include India, United States, Chile, Sweden and Italy. == So, why would you want to organize a WLM in your country? == Well, of course there are the images – it is great to have good images available of your country. But more importantly perhaps is the amount of individuals that might participate! Hundreds, maybe thousands of people who never contributed before can now help out with what they are best at: making photos. They often find it fun, and might hang around a bit longer if we receive them well. It also is a good opportunity to get in touch with local cultural heritage institutions. Finally, it is a good way to try and forge a local community to organize events together. It is an existing framework you can use, and although there are no guarantees, working in an international context like this (the largest collaboration between chapters and other Wikimedia organizations so far!) helps a lot to keep people motivated and close to each other. An international group will be helping interested groups with the basic infrastructure and other things, and on a national level, you can focus on the organizing of your own contest, lists and communications. == Join the team and get started! == If you want to know more, feel free to leave a message[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012] or send us an email. But make sure to get started now if you're interested - because some parts of the work just require quite some time since external parties are involved. We would be delighted to help you out in any way possible to pull off this event. Best, Lodewijk (on behalf of the international coordinating team) ___ Internal-l mailing list interna...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/internal-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Noopur Raval Student Arts and Aesthetics Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Ph: 9650567690 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Internal-l] Wiki Loves Monuments - will your country participate?
FYI. -- Forwarded message -- From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org Date: Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 4:27 AM Subject: [Internal-l] Wiki Loves Monuments - will your country participate? To: Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed subscription) interna...@lists.wikimedia.org Hi all, we're well on our way getting started with Wiki Loves Monuments 2012! (feel free to forward) For those that don't know what Wiki Loves Monuments is all about, please read this blog post [http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/02/165000-photos-submitted-during-second-annual-wiki-love-monuments-photography-contest/] on the WMF blog and this page about how the concept works [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Documentation#Concept]; here's also a small introduction to the main idea of the contest and what's awaiting us this year. == Wiki Loves Monuments in a nutshell == The photo competition around physical cultural heritage (buildings, bridges, etc.) is running in September, organized in numerous countries around the world. The contest is being organized in each country separately, allowing to play to the local needs and wishes, but is joined by an umbrella contest for the whole world making it all a bit more exciting. Last year the contest was organized in 18 countries, and brought in 165.000 images by 5000 uploaders. More importantly, 4000 of these uploaders never uploaded anything before! == Is your country participating? Helping hands are needed! == For 2012 already 24 countries [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Participating_countries] indicated that they will definitely participate, and 16 more say they possibly will participate. Please take a look at the list, and see whether your country is already there. If you would like to help organize this contest in your country, please join the team that signed up for it (often through a chapter or a local group) or start your own organizing group if there is none yet! Interested countries for example include India, United States, Chile, Sweden and Italy. == So, why would you want to organize a WLM in your country? == Well, of course there are the images – it is great to have good images available of your country. But more importantly perhaps is the amount of individuals that might participate! Hundreds, maybe thousands of people who never contributed before can now help out with what they are best at: making photos. They often find it fun, and might hang around a bit longer if we receive them well. It also is a good opportunity to get in touch with local cultural heritage institutions. Finally, it is a good way to try and forge a local community to organize events together. It is an existing framework you can use, and although there are no guarantees, working in an international context like this (the largest collaboration between chapters and other Wikimedia organizations so far!) helps a lot to keep people motivated and close to each other. An international group will be helping interested groups with the basic infrastructure and other things, and on a national level, you can focus on the organizing of your own contest, lists and communications. == Join the team and get started! == If you want to know more, feel free to leave a message[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012] or send us an email. But make sure to get started now if you're interested - because some parts of the work just require quite some time since external parties are involved. We would be delighted to help you out in any way possible to pull off this event. Best, Lodewijk (on behalf of the international coordinating team) ___ Internal-l mailing list interna...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/internal-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Report: Wiki workshop @ IIT Delhi
On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 2:55 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Agreed. We can't have articles for eachand every college fest. I said the same thing at NITT. Though I believe Pragyan scraped thru the Notability border because it was ISO certified. That simply depends on whether the event passes [[WP:GNG]] and [[WP:EVENT]] notability guidelines. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Lesson from the past: Photowalks and other events
On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 10:59 PM, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: Just to add to what Konarak and Ashwin said, I am guilty as charged. We kept the Category:Ahmedabad_1 to avoid flooding the popular category. It was decided to serve as the ''maintenance category'' but none of us really got around to transferring images to the Ahmedabad category or cleaning up. There are several reasons for this: It was clearly not your fault. You are a new user and I should have migrated these files to the regular categories. I am now removing [[Category:Ahmedabad 1]] and replacing with it [[Category:Ahmedabad]] and [[Category:Wikipedia takes Ahmedabad 1]]. All help is welcome, these two categories are a must, you can add further categories if they already exist or if there is a justifiable reason to create a new one you can create those and add the cat to these files. I'm no expert on Commons categorization, but there are a bunch of helpful power users available on #wikipedia-en and #wikimedia-commons who can help you out with that. We decided to go with [[Category:Ahmedabad 1]] instead of [[Category:Wikipedia takes Ahmedabad 1]] because we assumed that would make it easier for the users to add these categories easily. 1) People started using images from Ahmedabad_1 soon after the event to make Ahmedabad articles. So, the attention was diverted there. Indeed. A few good images made it to the articles, while a couple of images inspired creation of articles around important monuments. See [[Hutheesing Jain Temple]] (and thanks Srikeit for that). 2) Personally, I was unclear as to whether all these images had to be migrated because of course some are repetitive and redundant. But, I/We are no one to judge whose image stays or goes. Yes, indeed. Thanks, anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Lesson from the past: Photowalks and other events
Beria, you are GOD. She moved all the media to [[Category:Wikipedia takes Ahmedabad 1]] with Cat-a-lot. Also, I made an error again, [[Category:Wikipedia takes Ahmedabad 1]] should be a sub-cat of [[Category:Ahmedabad]], so there is no need to add both. On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 11:50 PM, Béria Lima berial...@gmail.com wrote: Who asked you that and why? You can add as much categories as you see fit, as long as they aren't redundant (Like add the categories Cakes and Bithday cakes to the same image). I would like the message when someone asked you that _ * * *[image: Inline images 1]* *Béria Lima* * * * Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano.* *Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho.* http://wikimedia.pt/Donativos** * ** http://wikimedia.pt/Donativos* On 13 March 2012 14:52, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: All help is welcome, these two categories are a must, you can add further categories if they already exist or if there is a justifiable reason to create a new one you can create those and add the cat to these files. Though, I would suggest we all refrain from adding too many categories. I was asked on Commons not to add more than 1-2 categories. On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 11:19 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 10:59 PM, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: Just to add to what Konarak and Ashwin said, I am guilty as charged. We kept the Category:Ahmedabad_1 to avoid flooding the popular category. It was decided to serve as the ''maintenance category'' but none of us really got around to transferring images to the Ahmedabad category or cleaning up. There are several reasons for this: It was clearly not your fault. You are a new user and I should have migrated these files to the regular categories. I am now removing [[Category:Ahmedabad 1]] and replacing with it [[Category:Ahmedabad]] and [[Category:Wikipedia takes Ahmedabad 1]]. All help is welcome, these two categories are a must, you can add further categories if they already exist or if there is a justifiable reason to create a new one you can create those and add the cat to these files. I'm no expert on Commons categorization, but there are a bunch of helpful power users available on #wikipedia-en and #wikimedia-commons who can help you out with that. We decided to go with [[Category:Ahmedabad 1]] instead of [[Category:Wikipedia takes Ahmedabad 1]] because we assumed that would make it easier for the users to add these categories easily. 1) People started using images from Ahmedabad_1 soon after the event to make Ahmedabad articles. So, the attention was diverted there. Indeed. A few good images made it to the articles, while a couple of images inspired creation of articles around important monuments. See [[Hutheesing Jain Temple]] (and thanks Srikeit for that). 2) Personally, I was unclear as to whether all these images had to be migrated because of course some are repetitive and redundant. But, I/We are no one to judge whose image stays or goes. Yes, indeed. Thanks, anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Noopur Raval Student Arts and Aesthetics Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Ph: 9650567690 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Bangla Wikipedia Unconference 2012 in Chittagong
Forwarding a report published by Wikimedia Bangladesh regarding an unconference organized in Chittagong. According to Tanvir, at least 300 participants attended. -- Forwarded message -- From: Tanvir Rahman wikitan...@gmail.com Date: Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 11:44 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Bangla Wikipedia Unconference 2012 in Chittagong To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org Hello everyone, I am so pleased to announce that Wikimedia Bangladesh, with the help of Independent University, Bangladesh, Chittagong, and Bangladesh Open Source Network, organized the first Bangla Wikipedia Unconference 2012 [1] in Chittagong [2] to promote Bangla Wikipedia [3] in Bangladesh. This outreach event was held in 2 and 3 of March and was attended by around 300 participants. It was first big-level program of Wikimedia Bangladesh and it was outside of the Dhaka (the capital) to focus on country-wide outreach. We called it an unconference to give it a less formal look and to make the appearance more welcoming. This two days event was inaugurated by the Chittagong City Mayor and and in the last it was attended by the Since and Technology minister of Bangladesh Government. It was also attended by some other popular public figures, writers, and university professors, and media personalties. During the unconference we had events like workshops, photo exhibition, cultural program, seminars, article writing contest, etc. We had several teams from the schools, colleges, and universities in Chittagong as team participants. The unconference was hosted by Chittagong campus of Independent University, Bangladesh. You can see the some of the images of the events in the Commons category [4]. Because of the presence of the popular public figures and government officials, the event got a significant amount of media coverage in national print and electronic media. We also even had billboards in the city's main crossings to let people know about Bangla Wikipedia which was the main purpose of this event and current strategic priority of Wikimedia Bangladesh. Wikimedia Bangladesh wants to thank everyone who supported us. We want to thank our sponsors and donors who helped us to arrange this big event. We want thank Wikimedia Foundation director Sue Gardner for her nice video speech that we screened in the inaugural ceremony. And of course to our participants, who eventually made this effort a success. And I apologize to let you guys know about this event in late. We are still working on putting everything on wiki. Regards, Tanvir Rahman Wikitanvir on Wikimedia Secretary, Wikimedia Bangladesh [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bangla_Wikipedia_Unconference_2012 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chittagong [3] http://bn.wikipedia.org [4] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bangla_Wikipedia_Unconference_2012 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Rahul Dravid
Just a suggestion in general: For discussions around topics of Indian interest and the English Wikipedia please subscribe to Wikipedia India-English mailing list. http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-en anirudh On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Srikeit srik...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Now that Dravid has retired, we will be seeing a spike in editing of the articles. A lot of this may be highly emotional and the article may take a severe POV battering. I suppose POV monitoring and intervention would be more required on the Indic language Wikis where there may be fewer editing eyeballs. Request everyone to watchlist Rahul Dravid's article on all Indic language wikis. Regards -- Srikeit ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Pradeep Mohandas pradeep.mohan...@gmail.com wrote: hi, I don't think it's a good idea to separate the chapter and the community. The chapter is a membership-based organization and by definition an umbrella organization which represents the community. There is no reason for differentiation as long as it is volunteer work done by a chapter member. I think that although the chapter and community are volunteer based, the chapter has more legal sanctity and is answerable as an organisation against as a person being held responsible. Hence, it is important that even the chapter and the community be seperated. As an action taken by a member stating that he's taking on behalf of a chapter, makes the Chapter answerable. I think it is necessary to seperate the chapter and community as well. Sure, I agree with the sentiment. The chapter is a legal entity and hence accountable to its members and the state and national authorities. However, what I was trying to convey is that if a member of a chapter (who also happens to be a volunteer) executes a project, in that scenario, I don't see a reason to differentiate whether the work was done by a community member or a chapter, unless the volunteer member wishes to do so. In retrospect, I also understand the need for seperating the Foundation activities as well. I think it is best to either go for total seperation of community, chapter and Office or have general statements. This also makes it necessary for people who hold multiple positions within Chapter and Office to define their actions even more concretely since we're now speaking in terms of transparency and accountability. We will discuss overlapping roles and notify the community about our decision. Thanks for the comments! ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.comwrote: Shiju, you and Subhashish have been volunteers but now you are paid contractors hired by the Foundation. Any work you do within the purview of your contractual relationship with the Foundation will be work as a paid contractor and cannot be deemed to be the same as a volunteer. You can continue being volunteers once your contractual assignment is complete. Is that so difficult to understand? You are totally wrong. That is the difference between your involvement with wikimedia movement and mine. My involvement with wikimedia movement will be there *even if this job is not there*. So just DO NOT compare your wikimedia contribution with mine. As a volunteer I will decide which all projects I need to work. Which means I still continue to contribute to various wiki projects as a volunteer. I do not want your permission for that. Who had given you the authority to expel or exclude me from Wikimedia community? Let me ask you a basic question. Are you with wikimedia movement for helping it or for screwing it up. I was going through the replies and your wiki contributions over the past few months. What is your intention in being with Wikimedia movement in India. If you cannot comprehend simple English, then you should re-consider whether you can add value to the discussions here. I will not reiterate myself, the difference is quite clear. Please remember that the list is moderated. Thanks. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
Thanks, Tinu. I generally agree with you. Except that I never tried to tell anyone about what they ought to be doing as a volunteer and what not. There is a simple distinction between staff/consultants and volunteers as is evident from conventional usage across the Wikimedia universe. The only reference I made was to paid work done under the purview of contractual assignment with the Foundation, anything outside done in individual capacity and outside of working hours is still that of a volunteer. Also, as long as I am not signing off with my official credentials at the end of the email, I am only expressing personal opinion. For instance, I wouldn't claim that Shiju's indisposition towards me is the official stance of his employer. On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:37 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.comwrote: Dear Anirudh Shiju, I would strongly dispose this as NOT the official position of the chapter. I have a different opinion but again I won't attribute to the chapter. What I say below is my personal opinion. Just because someone decides to work full time ( and paid too) doesn't mean it ceases to do anything as a volunteer. If someone is not able to spend the same extent of time to the movement as a volunteer, there is their own problem. Nobody is going to ask anyone why you are not doing your job as a volunteer. I have a high pressured day job to keep and family friends to take care, and I do my volunteer work with the limited time , it is my choice. If I decide to work as full time as a paid staff ( for the same movement), I don't need advise from someone else to tell me what I should be doing as a volunteer and what I should not ! On a very hypothetical case, if you were working on a legal position for WMF India, would you like someone to define that what your volunteer work should be ? As I clearly explained earlier, many a times, due to nature of our involvement with the movement, it is practically separate whether we does something as a volunteer, chapter member or chapter board member or even foundation staff. Pranav and Pradeep were working on a Foundation paid Fellowship for an event like WikiConference that was supported by Community and conducted on the banner of the Wikimedia India Chapter. Both are chapter members and leaders ( as well as community members). Where does the work for the Conference end as a Foundation full time Fellow end and where does it start as community or chapter member? Everyone is encouraged to volunteer for the chapter , regardless of what his or her day job is. There is nothing that prevents even a foundation staff or contractor even being the board member of the chapter , less alone any volunteer or member. There are several Wikimedia chapters in the world who has paid and full time staff working for them. The Secretary ( volunteer) of the Dutch chapter is also a Foundation Full time Contractor. Hope that clarifies -TC On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.comwrote: I am replying to this mail as a *Malayalam wikimedia community member*. Fact: Subhashish, *former volunteer*, and now paid consultant with India Programs. What do you mean by this? I Shiju Alex is a Indic language wikipedian now close to 6 years. According to Mr. Anirudh (an EC member of India chapter) I am a former volunteer. is this is the official position of wikimedia India chapter? As a community member I require an explanation for this. Shiju, you and Subhashish have been volunteers but now you are paid contractors hired by the Foundation. Any work you do within the purview of your contractual relationship with the Foundation will be work as a paid contractor and cannot be deemed to be the same as a volunteer. You can continue being volunteers once your contractual assignment is complete. Is that so difficult to understand? The difference is this: I am an unpaid volunteer who cannot expend the same amount of time and energy towards our projects as you are currently able to. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
Tinu, On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 4:14 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.comwrote: If it matters, if you have read the MoA or the Chapters agreement of the Wikimedia India Chapter or most of the chapters, the Foundation and Chapters are independent organizations. Wikimedia Foundation is NOT a parent organization of the Wikimedia India Chapter. The Wikimedia Foundation licenses the use of its trademark to independent and autonomous chapters around the world. This may constitute a principle-agent relationship EVEN in the absence of a formal quid pro quo. In an ideal world, I would support structures that are as efficient as possible. But in the real world, we have to consider many variables (many of which may be unsuitable for public discourse) that may have affect organizations working in a less-than-ideal legal environment. The associated legal risks have a direct bearing on the office-bearers of the institutions. I would urge that the discussion around legalities be discontinued from now on, but focus rather on the propriety of holding multiple positions of functionaries within two organizations using the same trademark. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 4:32 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Tinu, On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 4:14 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: If it matters, if you have read the MoA or the Chapters agreement of the Wikimedia India Chapter or most of the chapters, the Foundation and Chapters are independent organizations. Wikimedia Foundation is NOT a parent organization of the Wikimedia India Chapter. The Wikimedia Foundation licenses the use of its trademark to independent and autonomous chapters around the world. This may constitute a principle-agent relationship EVEN in the absence of a formal quid pro quo. In an ideal world, I would support structures that are as efficient as possible. But in the real world, we have to consider many variables (many of which may be unsuitable for public discourse) that may have affect organizations working in a less-than-ideal legal environment. The associated legal risks have a direct bearing on the office-bearers of the institutions. I would urge that the discussion around legalities be discontinued from now on, but focus rather on the propriety of holding multiple positions of functionaries within two organizations using the same trademark. To clarify: The issue is transient for now, and my personal opinion is that the two organizations/teams should not have the same functionaries. Not suggesting anything improper on the part of our contributors, this was not a settled issue, but hopefully they will approve of this message. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Hisham his...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Mar 7, 2012, at 1:11 PM, Anirudh Bhati wrote: On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Hisham his...@wikimedia.org wrote: Nothing is conducted solely by India Program - and hence I said supported. Everything is conducted by the community - sometimes under the aegis of the Chapter and sometimes independently. The support that we have provided varies - from getting the actual event fixed up to providing presentation material to interested community members to participating in these events. Can this be clearly specified in the report? That is more helpful than simply supported. For instance, when you say Supported the community to get a venue in Guwahati University, it would help us understand more if you could tell us how. Please refer this mailhttp://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2012-January/006599.html Thanks for the link, Hisham. Can you please have you staff include a summary along with the appropriate links? Thanks. On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:45 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Pranav, In India, it is extremely difficult to hairline separate who has done which event. - Chapter, Community and WMF India Programs. I agree it's not possible to do that, but it is entirely possible to list out the work done in specific. This enhances our accountability and transparency towards the community. Let us take the case of the Trichy event, the request came to a community member Rsrikanth to the chapter. Nitika was actively involved along with me and Naveen. The chapter signed the MoU and supplied some goodies. Nitika was actively involved in coaching Sohan, a chapter member and Rsrikanth. One must not also forget that both Hisham Nitika are also chapter members. Fact: Nitika is a paid employee of the WMF India Programs and is not a chapter/community volunteer. Anyone who contributes - in whatever manner - is a community member. All of us in the India Program team have the freedom to do whatever we want to in our free time. fyi: all of us contribute in our personal, voluntary capacity as well as work for the movement in our official capacity. fyi: it's not part of the job description. Yes, no one has disputed community membership. But when an employee/paid contractor edits during work hours or within the purview of their contractual agreement with the Foundation, that is paid and not volunteer work. This is not something I enjoy pointing out over and over again, but perhaps you should try and see where I am coming from. Another event in Chennai (Jaya eng college) , where Subha led, his travel expenses was reimbursed by the Chapter, Subha is a Chapter SIG Chair .. The event is supported by Hisham Nitika too. Subha is also an India Programs executive. Fact: Subhashish, former volunteer, and now paid consultant with India Programs. Much water has flown beneath this bridge, but I am disappointed with the suggestion that someone becomes a former volunteer just because they join the India Program team. See earlier point. I think you will find that I have clarified myself above, if you care to read. Even then, a paid consultant spending their free time doing volunteer work can still not be equated with a regular volunteer contributor. This is not a condemnation, but a statement of fact. I actively organize Bangalore Meetups and support several others .. Should I be worrying whether I am doing as a chapter member, board member or a community member? By a matter of principle, chapter and community volunteers are just... volunteers. Paid consultants are hired to executive specific programs, and hence the results of their work and reports should be presented with clarity. Simply supporting something does not clarify the extent of their involvement. The work that we are doing is actually supporting communities. The healthiest way of us doing our jobs is to work closely (and in most cases, individually with community members) and help them in various ways - and make sure that the individual community members are front and centre of the initiative - as is right. As in the mail I shared earlier on Guwahati, or indeed in the Nature of Support column on this pagehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs/Outreach_Sessions/Feb, we document them and share them through wider channels. In other cases, they are discussed on village pumps or individual talk pages or on chats or whatever manner that the respective community member feels most comfortable - and we leave it at that. A lot of our community members do not have the experience and confidence to engage publicly or take initiatives. We will continue to work quietly with them. The purpose behind my monthly newsletter is to try and document a varied list of the things we do - not from the point of view of documenting every
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 5:24 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.comwrote: Theo, * Err... I have no idea who or what implied that. * I am referring to your previous full time and paid work for the Wikimedia Foundation 2010-2011 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_contractors#Individuals * I don't think anyone said anything to that effect so far. * Look at the similar comments from Anirudh on this thread related to people like Shiju and Subhashish. does that mean all the volunteer work you would have done before/after or during being a full time and paid staff of Foundation cease to have any value ? When did I say their work is not valued? The employees of the WMF do valuable work, they are not volunteers. Is saying this a devaluation of their work? Please be careful when attributing claims such as these. Thanks. On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 5:29 PM, Tinu Cherian tinucher...@wikimedia.in wrote: Dear Anirudh, Can you elaborate as to what you meant by we ? My statement: We will discuss overlapping roles and notify the community about our decision. I referred to we as in the Executive Committee of the WMIN. Please note that I did not express an opinion on the behalf of the EC, I simply said that this will be discussed. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 6:18 PM, Tinu Cherian tinucher...@wikimedia.inwrote: * *Dear Anirudh,* **Also, as long as I am not signing off with my official credentials at the end of the email, I am only expressing personal opinion. * *We will discuss overlapping roles and notify the community about our decision.* *I referred to we as in the Executive Committee of the WMIN. Please note that I did not express an opinion on the behalf of the EC, I simply said that this will be discussed. * If you are expressing your view as a Chapter Board Member, please state so. ( The rest cannot differentiate when you are replying from your personal id). I wish you had stated instead I will discuss this with the rest of the EC or Chapter members. Having said that, the chapter doesn't impose our decision on the community or the India Programs, Although I personally see Chapter as a subset of the larger community. I did not express an opinion or a view. Please look up the dictionary definition. I think we have had enough distractions from the main issue, so let's burn the straw-man. anirudh On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 5:34 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 5:24 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: Theo, * Err... I have no idea who or what implied that. * I am referring to your previous full time and paid work for the Wikimedia Foundation 2010-2011 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_contractors#Individuals * I don't think anyone said anything to that effect so far. * Look at the similar comments from Anirudh on this thread related to people like Shiju and Subhashish. does that mean all the volunteer work you would have done before/after or during being a full time and paid staff of Foundation cease to have any value ? When did I say their work is not valued? The employees of the WMF do valuable work, they are not volunteers. Is saying this a devaluation of their work? Please be careful when attributing claims such as these. Thanks. On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 5:29 PM, Tinu Cherian tinucher...@wikimedia.in wrote: Dear Anirudh, Can you elaborate as to what you meant by we ? My statement: We will discuss overlapping roles and notify the community about our decision. I referred to we as in the Executive Committee of the WMIN. Please note that I did not express an opinion on the behalf of the EC, I simply said that this will be discussed. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Hisham his...@wikimedia.org wrote: Nothing is conducted solely by India Program - and hence I said supported. Everything is conducted by the community - sometimes under the aegis of the Chapter and sometimes independently. The support that we have provided varies - from getting the actual event fixed up to providing presentation material to interested community members to participating in these events. Can this be clearly specified in the report? That is more helpful than simply supported. For instance, when you say Supported the community to get a venue in Guwahati University, it would help us understand more if you could tell us how. On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:45 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Pranav, In India, it is extremely difficult to hairline separate who has done which event. - Chapter, Community and WMF India Programs. I agree it's not possible to do that, but it is entirely possible to list out the work done in specific. This enhances our accountability and transparency towards the community. Let us take the case of the Trichy event, the request came to a community member Rsrikanth to the chapter. Nitika was actively involved along with me and Naveen. The chapter signed the MoU and supplied some goodies. Nitika was actively involved in coaching Sohan, a chapter member and Rsrikanth. One must not also forget that both Hisham Nitika are also chapter members. Fact: Nitika is a paid employee of the WMF India Programs and is not a chapter/community volunteer. Another event in Chennai (Jaya eng college) , where Subha led, his travel expenses was reimbursed by the Chapter, Subha is a Chapter SIG Chair .. The event is supported by Hisham Nitika too. Subha is also an India Programs executive. Fact: Subhashish, former volunteer, and now paid consultant with India Programs. I actively organize Bangalore Meetups and support several others .. Should I be worrying whether I am doing as a chapter member, board member or a community member? By a matter of principle, chapter and community volunteers are just... volunteers. Paid consultants are hired to executive specific programs, and hence the results of their work and reports should be presented with clarity. Simply supporting something does not clarify the extent of their involvement. As with Assam meetup recently, coordinated by Shiju, some of the expenses were met from a personal grant from the Foundation to me Shiju. There was a recent Malayalam Wiki Academy in Bangalore organised by Malayalam Community. Some of them are also Chapter members. People like me and Naveen actively helped the event ..Are we doing as chapter board member or community member? We don't really know.. But we are just genuinely helping the movement, with worrying about what capacity we are doing it. I don't think it's a good idea to separate the chapter and the community. The chapter is a membership-based organization and by definition an umbrella organization which represents the community. There is no reason for differentiation as long as it is volunteer work done by a chapter member. The various academies that we do, some of the requests comes directly to the chapter, community or India programs, but each supporting each other in different capacities. Now Noopur is a GLAM Champion, Chapter member and Delhi SIG Chair and also part of Chapter Communications Team. She now also heads the Communication PR for the India Programs. As I explained, it is difficult to separate the contributions of different entities or individuals for the Wikimedia movement in India. IMHO, we should be only concerned about the outcomes of the event and not who gets the credit. Even though the possibility of interfacing each other is high for different entities and groups of volunteers working in India, there is a need for differentiation and it is a question which cannot be avoided. The volunteers who work on their pet-projects while not being associated with any of the entities are not expected to be as accountable as (i) the chapter which receives or may receive grants from the Wikimedia Foundation and donations from individuals and organizations in the country AND (ii) the WMF India Programs which is run by multiple paid consultants. So I don't see why we shouldn't care about differentiation, or why it may be an undesirable thing to want to differentiate. Ultimately we all want results, yes, but we also need to understand causality because there are significant amount of funds involved. We need to differentiate because there are different degrees of accountability involved both with the chapter, the WMF India Programs and the volunteer who works with a grant. Hope this helps. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] The Great NITT fiasco ...
On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 8:32 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: On 29 February 2012 17:55, Sushant R sushi2coo...@hotmail.com wrote: so u agre? gud. cos u scrwd up n did it big tym. u don hav a lptop, no isssus. get 1. can't afford one? get lost. v aint got no place 4 ppl lyk u. Whoa there! Be nice. Don't bite. And please, certainly no ad hominem attacks. NOT COOL. It's a troll. We usually [[Wikipedia:Deny recognition|ignore]]. :-) anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] The Great NITT fiasco ...
Noopur, Our websites are top 10 in terms of use and access in this country. A large proportion of Internet users in India are aware of Wikipedia, if not more of our projects. So, to characterize the movement as nascent would be inaccurate. :-) Most of us, when invited to speak at institutions and organizations are treated quite well, all over the country. This is primarily because of the popularity of our projects among Internet users. As you gain more experience with Wikipedia, you will also find that it is not very difficult to identify potential long-term contributors for our project - they are usually very smart and inquisitive people who will seek you out themselves; and they are everywhere. This is not to say that all smart people will be interested in contributing, Wikipedia only attracts a particular kind. What they need is simply a nudge in the right direction, not hand-holding or persistent efforts at community-building. People who contribute to our projects - both online and offline - generally do it for the joy of it, and not for any other lofty moral ideals. When a contributor undergoes what Srikanth R and Sohan experienced at one place, it is generally a cause of concern since incidents like these will deter our volunteers to expend their precious time and energies in the future. On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 7:44 PM, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: Regarding the chapter signing an MoU, I wasn't even aware of this and am frankly quite surprised they managed to sign one so quickly. I will refrain from commenting on that. I hope you will appreciate that the agreement with NIT was an informal one that simply stated that Wikimedia India will conduct a workshop during the course of their event. anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] The Great NITT fiasco ...
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 8:34 PM, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: And regarding an 'informal agreement', I am not trying to pinch here but an 'informal MoU' kind of sounds self-contradictory, no? Also it would be great if we could have a copy of it publicly, just for future reference on informal/formal extents of agreements. MOUs are informal when they don't have the binding power of contractual agreements. This depends on the wording and context of such agreements. I will let Arun Ram comment on the purpose and implication of such documents. On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 8:37 PM, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: So, why didn't they understand? What went wrong? You admitted that you didn't prepare in advance. Also, do you want help with making easier-understandable presentations? I want that analysis in this mail and not a report on how they managed it badly. Let's talk of things we can control. Let us take a step back here and remember that Srikanth R is also a volunteer. He volunteered his time and efforts for the event, and the result didn't turn out well. Let us applaud him for his courage to admit what went wrong (yes, he admits that he made some mistakes) and opening up the thread for further discussion. Given his ample experience with both on-wiki and off-wiki work, we can trust him to do his homework and represent the community at educational institutions such as the one mentioned above. To question him sharply will not help us in any manner. Thanks. anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WMIN-Members] Wikimedia India Chapter receives FCRA Prior Permission
On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Good news. I guess this means the Chapter can receive funding from the Foundation and other foreign bodies? No, just the Foundation and a specific amount for now. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Please sign up for WikiProject India if you are an English language Wikipedian (yes, English is an Indic language)
On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 10:44 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Th life cycle theory is very much applicable here. I've come across several retired editors who retired because they were students who now had work commitments or working people who wanted to free up some time. Then we also have politics. According to your theory, shouldn't the ranks be replenished by new editors who are still in colleges and Universities? ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Please sign up for WikiProject India if you are an English language Wikipedian (yes, English is an Indic language)
On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 1:59 AM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Should be. Yes. However do remember, new users editing was on a steady decline thru 2010. To add to it, remember the IEP and the negative publicity it generated. Enough to scare new users away. I don't think IEP criticism went mainstream in India. It has probably got more to do with the fact that pages on the encyclopedia (even about general Indian topics) look complete and thorough. We will have to work on marketing and design a campaign that makes it easy for prospective long-term contributors to grasp what Wikipedia's all about. We should think about working on highly targeted campaigns augmented by real life events - something like Wikimedia Bollywood Project using geo-targeted banner campaigns which may elicit interest from potential contributors by making them more aware about how we function. Design and proper marketing can take us a long way. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India Chapter receives FCRA Prior Permission
Hi all, We are very happy to announce that the Ministry of Home Affairs has granted us prior permission under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 (FCRA) to receive funds from the Wikimedia Foundation, USA for Chapter programs. Through this development, we pass the first hurdle of acquiring limited funds from the foundation for running programs and enabling volunteers across the country. The application was made to the Government on 4 September 2011 and was granted on 13 February 2012. This would not have been possible without the persistent efforts of Arjuna Rao Chavala, the President of Wikimedia India. He worked tirelessly over months properly following up with the government and did not leave any stone unturned to ensure that we received the permissions in time. On this occasion, we would also like to thank our consultant M Narsimha Rao, Gautam John, Asaf Bartov and Barry Newstead, for their help and guidance throughout. We are working out the modalities of actual implementation of getting funds into Chapter Bank account and will keep you updated. On behalf of the Wikimedia India, Anirudh Bhati Treasurer, Wikimedia India ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-en] WikiProject India Report for January 2012
Great report, AshLin! Loved the commentary. I think the English Wikipedia community needs a renewed focus! We should attempt to organize meetups dedicated to the English Wikipedia around the major cities of the country. This is so that we can help young editors who may or may not decide to become long-term contributors - and we shouldn't let that decision be solely based on their online interaction with enwp editors. Konarak Ratnakar has scheduled a Wikimeetup in Ahmedabad on February 19, 2012. He is a new editor who began fairly recently and is currently working on cleaning up the article on [[Gujarat]]. Thank you, once again, for helping jumpstart the English community. :-) anirudh 2012/2/15 Ashwin Baindur ash...@wikimedia.in The month of January passed quietly for WikiProject India on English Wikipedia. However elsewhere, the SOPA/PIPA discussion in the United States was the hot topic of the month andEnglish Wikipedia went dark on 18 January for 24 hours in protest against these proposed laws. At this point of time, getting the few small initiatives to keep going have been our concern. We have had [[Premchand]] as [[WP:INCOTM]] and [[Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi]] as GA of the month. Premchand has had substantial improvement. The GA Master Class ( a hoity-toity name I picked up as an excuse for periodically giving a few hints on the Wikimedia-in-en list) for Gandhi has begun and some posts made. GA of the month is a misnomer because despites lots of edits, there is tremendous amount of work yet to be done on Gandhi. It seems that we will be doing a GA/FA a quarter instead. :( The new INCOTM of the month is [[Dance in India]]. The Offline Wikipedia for Schools project has been dawdling along and we need people to recommit themselves to this Project. Recently, I realised that the most important parts of Wikipedia which need doing are not pop corn and fast food. They require commitment and seem too much like work. They are not as much fun as editing on our favourite topics. That fact perhaps is the reason people begn working on this project and finding it is not much fun, gradually stop editing. However, lakhs of Indian children await our output so I'm requesting particiants to return and recommit. On the talk page, we have had a discussion since December and through January into February about whether caste should be mentioned in biographies. The protagonists quoting [[WP:BLP]] and [[WP:V]] took the stand that caste should not be mentioned unless it has been self-identified by the person concerned in a reliable source. Some Indian editors contested it vehemently arguing that caste pervades Indian society and binding strictures on its mention should not be placed. But when it boiled down to a poll, the majority of editors stood up for the conservative position i.e. noinclusion unless self-identified in a reliable source. An earlier discussion about which should be the languages that a title of an article should be translated into in the lead. After lots of discussion, the discussion was closed as no consensus emerged except that IPA should definitely be present for pronunciation. In this regard, I think common sense and not misplaced parochialism should help us decide which all laguanges the title should be transcribed into in the lead. In this month, we saw Swaroop Rao, aka MikeLynch or Lynch7 as he masquerades nowadays become an admin. That is great. However, I am seeing more activity overall on English Wikipedia from the habitual editors - which is a very good sign. Young former CAs are playing up too but the spectre of exams had made its presence known by end January. All in all, a fairly okay month for WikiProject India. AshLin ___ Wikimedia-in-en mailing list wikimedia-in...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-en ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Museums access for photographers
Just put it up on [[Hindu wedding]] http://enwp.org/Hindu_wedding On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:29 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Chapter could write a letter of request? As for the picture, it looks great! On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:59 AM, Yann Forget yan...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I would like to document the Calico Museum of Textiles in Ahmedabad [1][2], one of the greatest textile museum in the world, but photography is currently forbidden there. There is currently nothing on Wikimedia Commons about it. Maybe a formal request from Wikimedia India may help getting a permission. Several days will be necessary, as the museum is pretty big. Permission to use a tripod is also necessary. In addition, I am proud to announce a new featured picture from India on Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hindu_Bride,_Ahmedabad,_Gujarat.jpg Translations into Indian languages would be great. ;) Best regards, Yann [1] http://www.calicomuseum.com/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_Museum_of_Textiles ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on February 12th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore Aliens invaded Tamil Nadu, left their Spacship and now it is a Toll Plaza. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IVRCL-Vijayamangalam-Toll-Plaza.JPG ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department Promotion of Philippe Beaudette
There is an on-going discussion on the Foundation mailing list. Feel free to review the clarifications that PB has posted. On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:26 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: Just one question. What does this new Department mean to the Ordinary Wikipedian? -- On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:37 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.comwrote: This is for your information. Sincerely, Anirudh Bhati -- Forwarded message -- From: Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org Date: Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 5:19 AM Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department Promotion of Philippe Beaudette To: wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org Today, we are excited to announce the start of our building of a new department called the “Legal and Community Advocacy Department.” This new alignment recognizes that we can combine the best of legal and community advocacy to foster new ways to advance the interests of the community consistent with the goals and strategies of the Foundation. For details, please go to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/LCA_Announcement. As part of this reorganization, I’m pleased to announce that Philippe Beaudette has been promoted to Director of Community Advocacy. We will start engaging our community shortly and enter into a consultation period with it to brainstorm how to build the department. We anticipate that it will take us about 6-12 months to get the right team and drive the new department at full speed. The community is invited to join us on Friday for office hours to discuss the new Legal and Community Advocacy Department. Details for the IRC chat can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours. Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on February 12th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore Aliens invaded Tamil Nadu, left their Spacship and now it is a Toll Plaza. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IVRCL-Vijayamangalam-Toll-Plaza.JPG ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Museums access for photographers
Great idea, Noopur! I would suggest directly getting in touch with Kartikeya Sarabhai, as he is a Wikipedia enthusiast and would be happy to extend support. You can call his office at the Center for Environment Education (ceeindia.org) and set up an appointment. On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 8:58 PM, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Yann, I tried getting in touch with people there a long time ago. Then I realized my best bet would be to get in touch with Mallika Sarabhai, the activist/entrepreneur whose family owns the museum and runs it. She is a progressive person and might be excited by this idea of putting Calico museum on the Wikipedia map. I'll try look for her contact details but your best bet would be to write to her on Facebook and tell her about this. I hope this helps. Cheers Noopur On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:42 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Just put it up on [[Hindu wedding]] http://enwp.org/Hindu_wedding On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 4:29 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: I think the Chapter could write a letter of request? As for the picture, it looks great! On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:59 AM, Yann Forget yan...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I would like to document the Calico Museum of Textiles in Ahmedabad [1][2], one of the greatest textile museum in the world, but photography is currently forbidden there. There is currently nothing on Wikimedia Commons about it. Maybe a formal request from Wikimedia India may help getting a permission. Several days will be necessary, as the museum is pretty big. Permission to use a tripod is also necessary. In addition, I am proud to announce a new featured picture from India on Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hindu_Bride,_Ahmedabad,_Gujarat.jpg Translations into Indian languages would be great. ;) Best regards, Yann [1] http://www.calicomuseum.com/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_Museum_of_Textiles ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on February 12th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore Aliens invaded Tamil Nadu, left their Spacship and now it is a Toll Plaza. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IVRCL-Vijayamangalam-Toll-Plaza.JPG ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Noopur Raval Student Arts and Aesthetics Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Ph: 9650567690 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-IN-PUN] [Wikimedia-in-en] GLAM-India: Wikipedia and NHHM collaboration
FYI. -- Forwarded message -- From: Ashwin Baindur ashwin.bain...@gmail.com Date: Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 7:45 AM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-IN-PUN] [Wikimedia-in-en] GLAM-India: Wikipedia and NHHM collaboration To: Mailing list for Wikimedians in Pune, India wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org This is such a major development and wonderful news indeed, Noopur. I am also happy that the GLAM event comes from a soft field of arts and culture which has not quite got the attention it deserves. In the 25 articles, I would off the cuff recommend that about : * at least 5 should be high level topics, such as textiles of India, pottery of India etc * two articles on the Ministry of Culture and the museum itself * half the remainder on regional themes or techniques such as Bidriwork, or carpet-making in Kashmir. * rest about specific objects in their collection In addition, I would recommend outcomes not just in Wikipedia but also in the field of Wikimedia Commons Wikisource. If some language wikipedias come forth to cooperate, you may like to offer the key article about the museum in more than one language. On behalf of English Wikipedians of WikiProject India, I pledge you our support to your venture. Feel free to ask for help on Wikimedia-in-en list WikiProject India noticeboard. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur -- On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 1:39 AM, Subhashish Panigrahi spanigr...@wikimedia.org wrote: I whole heatedly congratulate you for this real success, oral citation seem to be a good way of collecting sources as most of the stuff they'd be having will have a documented format in the minds of people which we would be documented only via oral citation. Subha On 11-Feb-2012, at 1:11 AM, Noopur noopur.ra...@gmail.com wrote: Dear all, I am extremely delighted to announce India's first (?) GLAM collaboration with a State institution in New Delhi, the capital of India. The National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum (NHHM), New Delhi has approved our draft and we will soon begin a 6 month pilot project with them. I have been corresponding with their director for over 2 months now, since the GLAMcamp in Amsterdam. After a series of conversations with the Director, Dr Ruchira Ghose, I sent in an approval and after two meetings, she sent in a revised proposal to the Ministry of Culture in India. Just two days ago, the Ministry approved this project and has also provided her a small grant to support our incidental expenses. NHHM has over 30,000 objects including pottery, textiles, metal work, paintings and more. Goals: 6 month pilot project to churn out 25 'Good Articles'. Training staff and capacity building Recruiting 10 new editors from art colleges to work on site for digitization/documentation Make the museum a regular avenue for GLAM meets Note: Good Articles here doesn't mean GA by en-WP standards. We intend to create at least 25 articles with substantial information. Would like your inputs on this. Challenges: Delhi has a small community, so we really need help from EVERYONE possible, local and global The staff members are only comfortable with Hindi, so we'd appreciate ALL help possible from hi-WP editors Biggest challenge: India is a vast country with craft traditions in millions of villages. So, at the time of acquiring, many art objects do not come with published information, documentation and references. Much of this stuff is 'word of mouth', oral traditions and stories of artisans etc. We have asked the Museum to start documenting and publishing these stories under their Publication cell BUT that will take time. Do you think using oral citations in this case would be helpful? Since this is my/our first time, we will appreciate guidance on scanning, making an MoU and help creating/maintaining the project page. Can someone please help? *makes puppy face* I apologize for this really long mail but, my next meeting with the Director is on the 14th of February when we will start our 'lead-up' program to the project. To all the WiRs: Did you make some sort of a program schedule or a timeline that I could use? I would love all your suggestions on this project and am *very* excited to make my own share of GLAM contributions and mistakes :) Of course, now we will also start contributing to TGIM. Cheers, Noopur -- Noopur Raval Student Arts and Aesthetics Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Ph: 9650567690 ___ Wikimedia-in-en mailing list wikimedia-in...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-en ___ Wikimedia-IN-PUN mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-pun ___ Wikimedia-IN-PUN mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Backup for Wikipedians
Tangential: I don't think there is any reliable online source which documents advice on dealing with law enforcement officials in India. What are the protections that a citizen have against unreasonable searches and seizures by public officials? The Fourth Amendment to the US Bill of Rights guarantees American citizens protection against misuse of executive powers, and public servants like police officers have to follow proper procedures. On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: It isn't easy to stand ground when you are outnumbered. It also isn't god when the cop reels out a law which you've never heard of. I said, I'd look up the law over the Internet on my phone. Saying so, perhaps, we could all create a page with all local laws on such matters and put it up on either Meta or Wikimedia.in ??? For instant reference? --Re, On Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 7:30 PM, Vickram Crishna vvcris...@radiophony.comwrote: +1 On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 1:09 AM, Aditya Sengupta apsengu...@gmail.comwrote: Ignore any or all of the above advice if you are being physically harmed. Focus on personal safety first. -- Vickram Fool On The Hill http://communicall.wordpress.com ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on February 12th. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore Aliens invaded Tamil Nadu, left their Spacship and now it is a Toll Plaza. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IVRCL-Vijayamangalam-Toll-Plaza.JPG ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Backup for Wikipedians
On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 5:32 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Tangential: I don't think there is any reliable online source which documents advice on dealing with law enforcement officials in India. What are the protections that a citizen have against unreasonable searches and seizures by public officials? The Fourth Amendment to the US Bill of Rights guarantees American citizens protection against misuse of executive powers, and public servants like police officers have to follow proper procedures. Addendum: And there are many sources and videos of experts speaking on the subject. We ought to have something like that for India. Gautam, are you listening? :-) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department Promotion of Philippe Beaudette
This is for your information. Sincerely, Anirudh Bhati -- Forwarded message -- From: Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org Date: Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 5:19 AM Subject: [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department Promotion of Philippe Beaudette To: wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org Today, we are excited to announce the start of our building of a new department called the “Legal and Community Advocacy Department.” This new alignment recognizes that we can combine the best of legal and community advocacy to foster new ways to advance the interests of the community consistent with the goals and strategies of the Foundation. For details, please go to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/LCA_Announcement. As part of this reorganization, I’m pleased to announce that Philippe Beaudette has been promoted to Director of Community Advocacy. We will start engaging our community shortly and enter into a consultation period with it to brainstorm how to build the department. We anticipate that it will take us about 6-12 months to get the right team and drive the new department at full speed. The community is invited to join us on Friday for office hours to discuss the new Legal and Community Advocacy Department. Details for the IRC chat can be found at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours. Geoff Brigham General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation ___ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Letters of authority or press cards (was: Backup for Wikipedians)
On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 18:24, wheredevelsd...@hotmail.com wrote: Will the chapter or India Programs provide assistance? IIRC both of them lie outside the content boundary and wouldn't be helping. I dont recollect reading anything like protecting interests of wikipedians on the chapter's mission / vision. Form a political party (since asking the current ones might not help!) and fight for it, else sit at home and edit non controversial stuff like Brinjal :P Supporting Wikimedia volunteers in their mission to expand the scope and variety of content on Wikimedia projects is an important part of our stated goals. I think this is a very good idea, and a little help to the volunteers from the chapter would go a long way in giving their work some credibility in the eyes of authorities, private and public both. anirudh (personal opnion) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Letters of authority or press cards (was: Backup for Wikipedians)
The question whether the Chapter will help someone if they get into some sort of trouble with the authorities is an important one and should be addressed. Once a letter of authority is issued to a volunteer, the chapter's reputation and credibility is on the line. Therefore, the chapter must endeavor to only approve those members who have a substantial amount of history with our projects and their mission. In such a scenario, I would expect the chapter to extend help to those it endorses. anirudh (personal opinion) On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 6:52 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 18:24, wheredevelsd...@hotmail.com wrote: Will the chapter or India Programs provide assistance? IIRC both of them lie outside the content boundary and wouldn't be helping. I dont recollect reading anything like protecting interests of wikipedians on the chapter's mission / vision. Form a political party (since asking the current ones might not help!) and fight for it, else sit at home and edit non controversial stuff like Brinjal :P Supporting Wikimedia volunteers in their mission to expand the scope and variety of content on Wikimedia projects is an important part of our stated goals. I think this is a very good idea, and a little help to the volunteers from the chapter would go a long way in giving their work some credibility in the eyes of authorities, private and public both. anirudh (personal opnion) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violation by aahwaan.com
On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 8:18 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi psubhash...@gmail.com wrote: +1 Swaroop, even the UI is somewhat similar but doesn't cause any harm, but the name Wikipedia and the usage of the logo is not permitted. I think the UI is just mediawiki. Srikant, can you send them a polite mail explaining why they cannot use Wikipedia and other Wikimedia related trademarks? That works most of the time. anirudh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikipedia-gu] Report on small meetup in Ahmedabad
Thanks for posting the report, Arnav. Looks like you guys had a good time. Great going! anirudh On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 1:13 PM, Arnav Sonara sonara.ar...@gmail.comwrote: Hello everyone, On 24th January 2012, a small meetup was organized in L.D. College of Engineering Ahmedabad, I thank Kothari Harsh and Shah Smit from the college to organize this on such short notice (less than 24 hours). After the successful photo walk and a small Wiki 11 celebration, I thought this would help out in sustaining a community there too. The meetup was attended by 7 people in total, I gave them a small presentation of Wikipedia and idea of how exactly the community works and what does a community do. I also shared my experiences as a CA in IEP and as an editor on EN and GU WP too for past 1 year. After the presentation we had a good discussion on how they can help building a strong community from Gujarat, Kartik Mistry shared his experiences of working collaboratively in FOSS and Debian Community. He blogged http://kartikm.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/meeting-with-arnav/about this meetup too. I also showed them Gujarat Transliterationhttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Narayam/Guajrati/Transliterationand Gujarati Inscripthttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Narayam/Gujarati/InScriptof Extension:Narayam which needs help, Kartik has agreed to help us in this. Thanks. I also showed them the list of places of interest in Ahmedabad which could be developed as articles User:AhsLin/Ahmedabad, which Ashwin created and asked them to start helping out in this too. I request everyone from the community and WMF to help them as and when required, and lets have one strong community from Gujarat too. Thanks. -- Thanks Arnav (ricku). (User:Rangilo_Gujarati)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rangilo_Gujarati ___ Wikipedia-gu mailing list wikipedia...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-gu ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Analysis of IEP: Quantitative Analysis Tory Read's Report
FYI: Discussions on talk pages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Independent_Report_from_Tory_Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Quantitative_Analysis Yours sincerely, Anirudh Bhati +855 975 529 803 Skype: anirudhsbh On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 9:54 AM, Hisham his...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Jan 23, 2012, at 8:10 AM, sankarshan wrote: Is the planned schedule/calendar for the IEP available ? One that puts dates to specific phases of the exercise. Not currently, Sankarshan. Once we start the work of designing a new pilot - taking into account the learnings from the Pune Pilot. This will have detailed schedule calendar. hisham ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press]: The Indian Express : Would Gandhi have been a Wikipedian?
You don't have the blue Indian passport yet. :p On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 7:58 PM, Béria Lima berial...@gmail.com wrote: /me is proud of being indian too Oh, I forgot I'm not indian! ;) _ *Béria Lima* http://wikimedia.pt/(351) 925 171 484 *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho. http://wikimedia.pt/Donativos* On 17 January 2012 12:23, Mandar Kulkarni mvkulkarn...@yahoo.co.ukwrote: Srikanth, There is copyright law in India for last many decades and most people were/are following the same before wikipedia had not taken a birth. There is no need to make generic comments on Indians for no reason. We are Indians and we should be proud of that. With Regards, Mandar V. Kulkarni http://mr.wikipedia.org -- *From:* Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com *To:* Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org *Sent:* Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 18:16 *Subject:* Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press]: The Indian Express : Would Gandhi have been a Wikipedian? On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 18:07, Béria Lima berial...@gmail.com wrote: Actually I do because there is a note: I*mportant Note : The publisher ( The Indian Express ) of the above news article owns the copyrights of the article / content. Request to kindly not reproduce or circulate the content further. The information is only shared only with an internal community who have been featured on this article. All copyrights are duly acknowledged.* (bold is mine) You are free to forward just the links. Reproducing verbatim elsewhere might not go well with fair use. Also heard elsewhere on another list on the same topic that news is meant to be shared, so no harm. Frankly all this obsession on copyright only after editing Wikipedia, otherwise since when people in India thought of copyright seriously. -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Report on Ahmedabad meetup-2
Thank you, Abhishek, for the post. Abhishek and Konarak are potential long-term and high-quality contributors to Gujarati and English Wikipedia projects. Please join me in welcoming them. anirudh On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 10:27 PM, Abhishek Joshi abhishek2...@gmail.comwrote: Dear all, Let me give you a brief update on things we did in Ahmedabad Meet Up to celebrate Wikipedia's 11th birthday. *Our Main Agenda:* 1. Celebrating Wikipedia 11th Birthday 2. Spreading awareness of Wikipedia in Gujarat/Ahmedabad 3. Introducing Wikipedia project Gujarat to the Ahmedabad community On *11th Birthday of Wikipedia* Ahmedabad Wikimedia Community organize the Ahmedabad Second Meetup at Gandhi Ashram (Sabarmati Ashram). The meet up was organized by Anirudh Bhati Abhishek Joshi. Due to the Sankrant festival a very few wikipedian’s turned out in the meet up so we met with few community members (Parag Patel, Konark Ratnakar and Nakul Chugan). As we were *5 members* we had gone to nearest restaurant for the celebration. Anirudh started with giving a presentation on Wikipedia Project India and Wikipedia Project Gujarat. He further mentioned the role they would play to bridge the gap between people who have the freedom to edit Wikipedia and those who actually do so. He encouraged them to join one of the finest groups of people in the world - Wikipedians. He outlined the sequence of events, the training they would receive. He said that due to the need to start off the program right away, the program would begin with those aspirants who already had the skills being looked for especially the knowledge of the Wikipedia world. Our main focus is on Wikipedia Project Gujarat and on improving the articles and spreading awareness of Wikipedia over Gujarat region. The aspirants responded with interest and a lot of questions. After some discussion we have celebrated the Wikipedia’s 11th Birthday by cutting the beautiful chocolate flavoured cake. This meetup was quite productive and the Ahmedabad community took the contact details of all participants, promising to get back to them soon with different meet ups. Below are the links of Ahmedabad Meet up Details and Photographs of the same. *Ahmedabad Meetup-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Ahmedabad/Ahmedabad2 * *Ahmedabad Meetup-2 Photographshttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ahmedabad_Meetup_Jan2012 * -- * Regards, Abhi * ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WMIN-Members] [Press]: The Indian Express : Would Gandhi have been a Wikipedian?
This article reminded me of one of the images on FayssalF's userpage on the English Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FayssalF http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:FayssalFoldid=429702014 Look at the image on the left and read the caption too. anirudh On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 11:38 AM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: *The Indian Express : Would Gandhi have been a Wikipedian?* ( Article by Achal Prabhala) http://www.indianexpress.com/news/would-gandhi-have-been-a-wikipedian/900506/1 http://www.indianexpress.com/news/would-gandhi-have-been-a-wikipedian/900506/0 ( Single Page Version) * In 1941, a young Argentinian librarian who would soon go completely blind published a story about the futility of the “total” library. His inspiration was Kurd Lasswitz, a 19th century German philosopher and science-fiction pioneer, whose own idea of a “universal” library was a mathematical nightmare of frighteningly large but finite proportions. The writer was Jorge Luis Borges, and his story, The Library of Babel, (taking off from the mythical Tower of Babel, a place of linguistic dysfunction) spawned a minor publishing industry of its own. Borges’ library was not a happy place: its chronically overworked librarians were suicidal, thuggish cults periodically vandalised the books, people spent lifetimes searching for a catalogue without success, and — wondrous as it all was — no one expected to find anything useful there ever. Eighty years after it was written, Borges’ feverish fantasy is a cautionary tale for those who are tempted to take Internet-era fantasies at their word. When a Google executive was asked to describe the perfect search engine, he is reported to have said, “It would be like the mind of God.” Preposterous, yes; but also exciting. And anyone excited enough to adopt this as a mission statement would do well to have a cold shower, and heed Borges’ conclusion on the topic — “The library is unlimited and cyclical”. Happily, there are more human, and altogether more humble manifestations of the desire to learn and share and prosper. In ancient history, the pre-biblical city of Babylon was a working counterpoint to the biblical Tower of Babel; a bustling site where diverse crowds made good together. In the present day, we are no closer to knowing everything, but we have Wikipedia: a bustling website where diverse people from everywhere in the world create miracles. Wikipedia’s humility is the flip-side to its success, and it comes from wanting to be precisely the opposite of the total library: call it a perpetually partial library, if you will. No one who has spent even a minute contributing anything to it would dare assume that the job is done, the perspective complete, or the game won. Eleven years ago to this day, Jimmy Wales typed out “Hello world!” and Wikipedia was born. In 1989, Richard Stallman pioneered a form of copyright licensing for software that allowed programmers and users to do virtually anything they liked with it. This formed the basis for free and open source software, or FOSS. In 1995, Ward Cunningham used FOSS to build the underlying software for a novel form of collaboration — the “wiki”. By this time, the benefits of a generous copyright licence to software were apparent, and it was extended to mainstream culture — to words, sounds and images. Wikipedia was among the early exponents of this free culture experiment, quickly followed by sister projects of the Wikimedia Foundation: Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks and more. Wikipedia’s collaborative system of knowledge has exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations. Today, it is the world’s fifth most visited website — and the sole non-profit upstart in the oligarchical fiefdom that is our online landscape. There are thriving communities of volunteers in countries like India and South Africa, among several other places, who are helping us discover that learning does not have to be a passive act, and that the value of generosity can be productive and revolutionary at once. Interestingly enough, it was about a hundred years ago that a young, idealistic lawyer set off on a similar journey. Affected by colonialism in his home, India, and faced with debilitating segregation laws in his adopted home, South Africa, he saw the productive and revolutionary potential in generous knowledge. Over a long sea journey from London to Cape Town, he wrote down his ideas on self-determination and independence. The young lawyer was, of course, Gandhi, and his book, Hind Swaraj, would go on to become the intellectual blueprint for the Indian freedom movement. The original was written in Gujarati in 1909. One year later, it was translated into English and published as Indian Home Rule. On the cover of the first edition of this English translation is a prominent, if unusual, copyright legend. It reads, “No Rights Reserved”.
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikipedia-gu] GLAM Lakhota Museum Jamnagar (Gujarat) on Commons
This is really cool work, Arnav! anirudh On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 1:44 PM, Arnav Sonara sonara.ar...@gmail.com wrote: Hello everyone, As said earlier couple of weeks ago in my mail, I covered the Lakhota Museum Jamnagar through my camera as a part of small GLAM activity, I am happy to announce that my work is almost over. I urge everyone to have a look at Lakhota Museum Jamnagar Gallery. Two of the images from it Lakhota (building) and Shri Ranjit Singh got rated as Quality Image too. Also some of the images in exhibit section at the bottom have some problems like reflection of light from the room, its simply because I was in a bit hurry to cover the entire museum, and it was my debut to cover any museum. I would love to hear from you guys about it. Please do reply. -- Thanks Arnav (ricku). (User:Rangilo_Gujarati) ___ Wikipedia-gu mailing list wikipedia...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-gu ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikipedia-gu] Wikipedia Gujarati is quite active and not at all Dead
Dhaval, Before writing such a scathing email criticizing an administrator (which is me) who allegedly made this statement, perhaps you should have verified it with me first? I was making a reference to Wikiproject Gujarat on the English Wikipedia, which has run out of contributors. You can independently confirm it with the others who were present at the meet up. I encouraged the rest of the participants to contribute to guwp. It's shameful that you are drawn to make personal attacks on a public platform without checking your facts in the first place. And I'll really appreciate if you drop the polemics. Thanks, Anirudh Sent from my iPhone On 17-Jan-2012, at 4:30 AM, Dhaval S. Vyas dsv...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, I have come to know a surprising fact that in the Wiki meetup recently held in Ahmedabad, while discussing about Gujarati Wikipedia, one of the administrators conveyed that Gujarati project is almost inactive or dead (in gujarati વિકિપીડિયા ગુજરાતી પ્રોજેક્ટ લગભગ બંધ છે.). This is very shameful for anybody to convey wrong message. If one is not aware of the project activity, despite of presentation made by one of the Gujarati Wikipedian in WikiConference India and from the site statistics/traffic report shared with all Indian WIki Language wikipedia by Wikimedia Foundation's India chapter (Shiju Alex recently shared this), they should have accepted their lack of knowledge and conveyed that they are not aware of what's happening with Gujarati Wikipedia or they are ignorant of its state. It is damaging for the growing community that in such vital events people convey wrong message to the masses. I hope some of the attendess of the meetup would read this and correct their mistake by spreading the word of Gujarati WIkipedia and its current state in successive meetups as their moral duty to pay back the debt. This email is not at all intended to hurt anyone, but just to make everyone aware that there has never been a single day, including Gujarati New Year day or Uttarayan, when gu.wiki would have fewer than 50 edits. What else could be an indication of how active this project is? We have almost 22,000 pages on gu.wiki. If anyone need full statistics, please contact me and I will be more than happy to share the same. Regards, Dhaval ___ Wikipedia-gu mailing list wikipedia...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-gu ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Design for Wikipdia India sites
Just saw this. I like the design a lot. It's cleaner and attractive. The free images can be rotated periodically. Thank you, Planemad and Yuvi! anirudh On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 12:23 AM, Yuvi Panda yuvipa...@gmail.com wrote: Hello! Many of you would know PlaneMad (Arun Ganesh), and I had asked him to see if he can design anything for Wikipedia.in, etc. He's sent me a mockup that I absolutely love, and am willing to spend time htmlizing. Thoughts? /me hopes attachment goes through -- Forwarded message -- From: Arun Ganesh arungra...@gmail.com Date: Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 11:40 PM Subject: Re: Wiki India Designs To: Yuvi Panda m...@yuvi.in questions that a user has: 1) where am i? 2) what do i get here? 3) how do i find it? the current landing pages are actually quite cryptic to someone new. something like this would help someone explore and learn. click any language tab and all the text changes to that language. The project boxes stay visible, the search flyout loads on hover. will it work? On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 9:31 PM, Yuvi Panda m...@yuvi.in wrote: Anything? On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Arun Ganesh arungra...@gmail.com wrote: indeed, figured if i dont get things done this month, i probably never will :) On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 12:05 AM, Yuvi Panda m...@yuvi.in wrote: Wah wah wah. Earmarking and organizing and all. On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 11:59 PM, Arun Ganesh arungra...@gmail.com wrote: i have earmarked certain hours tomorrow for work. i'll let you know if i get somehing On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 9:57 PM, Yuvi Panda m...@yuvi.in wrote: http://www.malayalabhasha.org/indportal/india/wikipedia.html http://www.malayalabhasha.org/indportal/india/index.html http://www.malayalabhasha.org/indportal/india/wikisource.html is what they have. Planning on launch in a few weeks. Have a better Idea I could code up? -- Yuvi T http://yuvi.in/ -- j.mp/ArunGanesh -- Yuvi T http://yuvi.in/ -- j.mp/ArunGanesh -- Yuvi T http://yuvi.in/ -- j.mp/ArunGanesh -- Yuvi T http://yuvi.in/ -- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Times of India: 310 Indian languages face extinction
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-toi/all-that-matters/310-INDIAN-LANGUAGES-ARE-NEAR-EXTINCTION/articleshow/11494576.cms More than 80 years after the first Linguistic Survey of India was conducted by British officer George Grierson, six volumes of the People's Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) were released at the Bhasha Vasudha global languages conference in Vadodara on January 7. Ganesh Devy, who chaired PLSI, tells Robin David that about 20% of Indian languages are now missing How many languages has India lost so far? Have we gained any in the last few years? The 1961 Census had listed 1,652 'mother tongues'. The 1971 Census listed only 109 'mother tongues'. It is important to note that every mother tongue claimed by a person reporting it may not be what linguists consider a 'language'. In 1971, the linguistic data offered in the Census was distributed in two categories - the officially-listed languages of the eighth Schedule of the Constitution, and the other languages with a minimum of 10,000 speakers each. All other languages spoken by less than 10,000 speakers were lumped together in a single entry 'Others'. That practice continued in subsequent enumerations. Considering how complicated census operations are in countries with large migratory populations, and particularly how much the accuracy in census operations is dependent on literacy levels, it is not surprising that the data collected remains insufficiently definitive. What is surprising, however, is that as many as 310 languages, including all those 263 claimed by less than 5 speakers, and 47 claimed by less than a 1,000 speakers, are nearing extinction. These 310 'endangered' languages were included in the 1,652 mother tongues of 1961. Only ten of these appear to be around at present. In other words, a fifth part of India's linguistic heritage has reached the stage of extinction over the last half-century. What is the rate at which we are losing languages? There is no scientific measure to decide the rate of language loss. But in recent years, the 'language gap' between the older generation (60 to 80 years) and the younger generation (10 to 30 years) has increased as never before. Today's 20-year-olds can't string together a single sentence in the same language. They will mix Gujarati with English, Marathi with Hindi and so on. This is alarming. What are the main findings of PLSI? The PLSI is not fully complete. We have so far completed the work in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Jammu Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. However,the trend we have noticed in the states where the first LSI was carried out indicates that about 20% of the languages assumed to be around are missing. One aim of the PLSI is to examine the sociological composition of multilingual spaces. From that perspective, large cities in the country no longer match the character of the linguistic states. Thus Maharashtra is Marathi-speaking, but Bombay needs to be seen as a multi-lingual city, and therefore linguistically a 'national city' rather than a state capital. Have the languages that we have lost totally disappeared or do traces remain? Often, when gaining livelihood becomes impossible within a given language, large-scale 'language migrations' happen and whole communities take to speaking some other language. These communities carry traces from their earlier language to the new language zone. For instance, Indian migrants to English have brought to it 'ki' and 'hai na' (example: I told her ki I am glad; This is not correct, hai na?). Words from ancient times and languages that are no longer in use keep circulating in new languages. Which state has the maximum languages? The northern and the eastern states in India have generally greater language diversity. Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are perhaps the states that come at the tail end of the language diversity graph. Can you briefly explain the methodology? This is a survey of languages by persons belonging to the language community. We have used a 'minimum format' for the non-scheduled languages. It includes features like name, location and local history of the languages; some samples of songs and stories, kinship terms and nominal grammar. For the scheduled languages the entries are very elaborate - almost a book length for every language. The 12 volumes that are ready run into about 6,000 pages. The completed work in 42 volumes will have about 20,000 printed pages. The work is done with the help of a large team of nearly 1,800 persons and a large multi-disciplinary National Editorial Collective of scholars. You have planned a global survey of languages too. How many countries will be covered? All countries eventually, but to begin with Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil, Congo and Australia -- the countries with the largest number of languages. Scholars, cultural activists and
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India: Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad, January 2012
Gerard Meijssen blogged about Wikipedia takes Ahmedabad: http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2012/01/wikipedia-takes-ahmedabad.html anirudh On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 6:06 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Whoops! Link to category: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ahmedabad_1 On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 6:06 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.comwrote: Greetings! This is a short update on the January edition of Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad. From where I stand, the event has been a resounding success! Over seventy-five people turned up, both old and young, this morning, which is no mean feat since it was very cold as well as a working day. Special thanks to Noopur Raval, our benevolent dictator and project mastermind, Srikeit Tadepalli, who spent time with me following the project participants prepping them and helping them figure out Wikimedia projects. Our heartfelt gratitude to Aviral Mediratta, Khayal Dave, Yash Vadiwala, Konarak Ratnakar, Smit Shah, Karthik Mistry and Chirag Solanki; our team leads and coordinators for helping everyone take beautiful pictures. Please keep an eye on our maintenance [[Category:Ahmedabad 1]], specially created for the event. 238 pictures have been uploaded so far... and we expect a lot more being uploaded by tomorrow. I will be posting a project report soon. Thank you! Sincerely, Anirudh Bhati Wikimedia India ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India: Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad, January 2012
Greetings! This is a short update on the January edition of Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad. From where I stand, the event has been a resounding success! Over seventy-five people turned up, both old and young, this morning, which is no mean feat since it was very cold as well as a working day. Special thanks to Noopur Raval, our benevolent dictator and project mastermind, Srikeit Tadepalli, who spent time with me following the project participants prepping them and helping them figure out Wikimedia projects. Our heartfelt gratitude to Aviral Mediratta, Khayal Dave, Yash Vadiwala, Konarak Ratnakar, Smit Shah, Karthik Mistry and Chirag Solanki; our team leads and coordinators for helping everyone take beautiful pictures. Please keep an eye on our maintenance [[Category:Ahmedabad 1]], specially created for the event. 238 pictures have been uploaded so far... and we expect a lot more being uploaded by tomorrow. I will be posting a project report soon. Thank you! Sincerely, Anirudh Bhati Wikimedia India ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India: Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad, January 2012
Whoops! Link to category: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ahmedabad_1 On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 6:06 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Greetings! This is a short update on the January edition of Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad. From where I stand, the event has been a resounding success! Over seventy-five people turned up, both old and young, this morning, which is no mean feat since it was very cold as well as a working day. Special thanks to Noopur Raval, our benevolent dictator and project mastermind, Srikeit Tadepalli, who spent time with me following the project participants prepping them and helping them figure out Wikimedia projects. Our heartfelt gratitude to Aviral Mediratta, Khayal Dave, Yash Vadiwala, Konarak Ratnakar, Smit Shah, Karthik Mistry and Chirag Solanki; our team leads and coordinators for helping everyone take beautiful pictures. Please keep an eye on our maintenance [[Category:Ahmedabad 1]], specially created for the event. 238 pictures have been uploaded so far... and we expect a lot more being uploaded by tomorrow. I will be posting a project report soon. Thank you! Sincerely, Anirudh Bhati Wikimedia India ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
