[Wikimediaindia-l] Indian women in science edit-a-thon
Please note this upcoming event - http://www.indiabioscience.org/content/women-science-wiki-edit-thon You can also contact the organizers via en:User:Fluentflux or t...@indiabioscience.org best wishes Shyamal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal ___ 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 Chapter welcomes new grant requests and project proposals
Dear Ravi, Congratulations on your new role and kudos for opening up for ideas. I would like not to make a proposal but to throw an idea for further development. It is something that will be attractive to those with an interest in scholarly pursuit and I suspect, the kind of people who will be interested in contributing more to wiki[m|p]media projects. Build a network of volunteer community librarians. These vcl's will be paid for subscription/membership to libraries in their city and will work to highlight sources they have access to and handle community requests for information using a ticket based-information request system (more or less a bugzilla). The system can also run small contests on a theme where sources on a theme are offered and new people are encouraged to add referenced content to various wp projects. Initially this can be made open to all seekers of information. Wikipedians are encouraged to stalk requests and references found and incorporate them, highlighting their edits to newbies. If this works reasonably, or too well to be handled by once-a-week trips to local libraries, it could be scaled into something for a nominal payment that makes it worthwhile for everyone's time and perhaps make chapter membership meaningful with something that members can get as a privilege-research aid. The volunteers need to be interested in research themselves, willing to reach out to librarians, spreading the word and most importantly enjoy the work. I am happy to pitch in and help look up material for any information requests particularly in the biological sciences. I have access to a few physical libraries at the moment and can in any case help with JSTOR and BNA sources (courtesy Wikipedia Library Project). I also offer some introductions to information literacy, so far I have only done a session for some students of St Joseph's College and some students of entomology at the UAS, GKVK. I also keep an eye on WP:RX on the English wikipedia. I have met some helpful librarians who are interested but wikipedia is not something convenient enough for them. Reaching out to librarians is also something that we need to try. Best wishes Shyamal Http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Shyamal On Wednesday, September 24, 2014, Ravishankar Ayyakkannu ravidre...@wikimedia.in wrote: Hi, Wikimedia India Chapter welcomes community driven grant requests and project proposals that are * Innovative * Creative * Pan-Indian * Scalable * Reproducible * Impactful * *... (wait, that is already a long list of keywords :) ) OK, let us think of something more than the typical outreach work we do ! While the chapter gets ready updating a minimum set of requirements, policies and procedures for awarding grants, please start discussing in your community village pump about prospective projects. When we review grant requests, we will be looking for signs of community approval or interest. Stay tuned for more updates and let me assure you will get approval for grants in a Tatkal basis :) Ravi, Program Director, Wikimedia India Chapter. ___ 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] Photography and ethics symposium
This might be of interest and worth participation in by the Chapter. http://wantedseries.com/ethics-in-photography-symposium/ Symposium Objectives The main symposium objectives are to: ► Bring together thinkers, scholars and practitioners of photography as well as the media, museums, social and business institutions, to examine the state of ethics and values in photography and to formulate a voluntary code of ethical conduct for creators and consumers of photographs ► Promote a rich and open environment in which to discuss these critical and urgent issues ► Develop effective strategies to disseminate and implement across India the outcomes of the symposium. Symposium Topics: Relevant research work on all aspects of ethics in relation to photography including but not limited to: ► Freedom of Expression ► Censorship ► Freedom of Information ► Morals or Ethics? ► Copyright/Copyleft /Creative commons ► Ethics policies: funding agencies and policy makers ► Information Law Language, Culture and Ethics Code of conduct ► Principles and standards of ethical behavior ► Genres of photography and ethical differences (nature/anthropological / photojournalism) ► Conservation ethics August 11, 2014 Goethe-lnstitut/ Max Mueller Bhavan 3, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi best wishes Shyamal ___ 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] Indian librarians - any ways to inspire or motivate them?
Many here will be aware of the incredibly wonderful work being done by the volunteers at WP:RX. Unfortunately, there seem to be no Indian librarians (or even volunteers with access to the few good libraries around) involved in this venture. Here is a list of some of the India related requests that have failed to get responses - wonder if anyone can help? Here are some more recent requests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request Young India articles by M.K. Gandhi requested by User:Yann on 6 November 2013 Debbarman's article on Sterculia khasiana In: Assam Forest Records. Botany. Calcutta, India 1: 5, t. 3. 1934 [Jul 1934] (as Sterculia khasiana) requested by User:Melly42 on 4 February 2014 Much older requests page 193 of Donner, Henrike, ed. (2012). Being Middle-class in India: A Way of Life. Routledge. ISBN 9781136513398 / 978-0-415-67167-5 requested by User:Sitush on 28 March 2013 pages 1437-1438 of Singh, Kumar Suresh, ed. (1996). Communities, segments, synonyms, surnames and titles. People of India: National series 8. Cambridge University Press the Anthropological Survey of India. ISBN 9780195633542. requested by User:Sitush on 17 December 2012 Sunil Kumar Sen (1985). The working women and popular movements in Bengal: from the Gandhi era to the present day. K.P. Bagchi. pp. 104 to 106. Bharati Ray (29 August 2002). Early feminists of colonial India: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain. Oxford University Press. pp. 149 to 151. ISBN 978-0-19-565697-8. Satyavrata Ghosh; Marxist Study Forum (1994). Remembering our revolutionaries. Marxist Study Forum. pp. 77 to 82. requested by User:Titodutta on 8 December 2012 For a Free Press, Mean Time (India) July 20, 2005 requested by User:Crtew on 24 May 2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RX best wishes Shyamal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal ___ 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] GLAM project at National Museum New Delhi
It would be great if interested editors can examine the National Museum website (under the collection menu) and suggest articles that could be enhanced or created - please add entries to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/NMhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/NM#Organization The activities at the museum would include getting those interested acquainted with Open licensing, Wikipedia editing, finding references at their library and researching for articles. Wikipedians who are not on site can request media, collaborate on articles and seek references (volunteers at the site will try and look up references in the museum library and hopefully be able to send photos of relevant pages and reference details for remote editors wishing to join in to research and improve articles). Although the medium of instruction at this workshop will be in English, it would be particularly fruitful if those with an added Indian language competency to join the event. There would be a mix of presentations followed by hands-on sessions, possibly with groups working on chosen articles. best wishes Shyamal On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 4:56 AM, Asaf Bartov abar...@wikimedia.org wrote: Dear Sowmyan, Glad to hear this is coming along! Could you share a little more about the planned partnership? What activities would take place, on-site and on-wiki? Thanks, Asaf On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 10:33 PM, Sowmyan Tirumurti tsowm...@wikimedia.in wrote: Wikimedia India Chapter will be organizing a GLAM pilot at the National Museum, New Delhi. We are looking forward to a few experienced editors living in New Delhi to participate in this program. We have put together a team that has undertaken to provide the training and guidance. We will have some volunteers and students from the Museum itself. They bring the domain knowledge related to the artefacts, but require training in Editing. We now need experienced Wikimedians from New Delhi who can do contribute, and have enthusiasm from GLAM work to participate. The benefit may be gaining insight into GLAM projects in general and the National Museum in particular. The program may be over a week duration some time between last week of Dec 2013 and 1st week of Jan 2014 Kindly write to the chap...@wikimedia.in. Regards, Sowmyan ___ 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 -- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.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
[Wikimediaindia-l] Thesis defence ( on crowdsourcing - of some interest to the community)
Department of Computer Science and Automation Ph.D. Thesis Defense Speaker : Mr. Swaprava Nath Title : Mechanism Design for Strategic Crowdsourcing Faculty Advisor : Prof. Y. Narahari Date: Tuesday, December 17, 2013 Time: 11:30 AM Venue : CSA Multimedia Class (Room No. 252, First Floor) Abstract This thesis looks into the economics of crowdsourcing using game theoretic modeling. The art of aggregating information and expertise from a diverse population has been in practice since a long time. The Internet and the revolution in communication and computational technologies has made this task easier and given birth to a new era of online resource aggregation, which is now popularly referred to as crowdsourcing. Two important features of crowdsourcing are: (a) crowdsourcing is always human driven, hence the participants are rational and intelligent and they experience a payoff in some form through their participation, and (b) the participants are connected over a social network. To understand the behavior and the outcome of such a strategic crowd, we need to understand the economics of a crowdsourcing network. In the thesis, we have considered the following three major facets of the crowdsourcing problem. (i) Elicitation of the true qualities of the crowd workers: as the crowd is often unstructured and unknown to the designer, it is important to determine if the crowdsourced job is indeed performed at the highest quality. (ii) Resource critical task execution: due to the diverse geographical, cultural, socio-economic reasons, crowdsourcing entails certain manipulations that are unusual in the classical theory. The design has to be robust enough to handle fake identities or information provided by the crowd. (iii) Improving the productivity of the crowdsourcing network: as the designer's goal is to maximize some measurable output of the crowdsourcing system, an interesting question is how one can design the network and/or the incentive scheme so that the system performs at the optimal level considering the strategic nature of the individuals. In the thesis, we provide novel solutions to all the questions above using game theoretic modeling and mechanism design innovations. Our investigation helps in understanding certain limits of achievability, and provides design protocols in order to make crowdsourcing more efficient. ALL ARE WELCOME ___ 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] Thesis defence ( on crowdsourcing - of some interest to the community)
The thesis (draft) is already available - http://lcm.csa.iisc.ernet.in/swaprava/thesis.pdf The publications of the advisor, Prof. Narahari, can be seen at http://lcm.csa.iisc.ernet.in/hari/ Theses (at least, recent) at IISc can be found at http://etd.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/ best wishes Shyamal On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 2:10 PM, Vishnu visdav...@gmail.com wrote: Interesting! Thanks for sharing this Shyamal. Could you also share the details of the institution? Once the Defense is done, any idea, if thesis be made accessible digitally? Vishnu ___ 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] Opportunity to embellish Lal Bagh Botanical Garden related WP article before the flower show on Jan 26.
Sowmyan, this is great news indeed! I know a number of people who are interested. It would be great if some of their archives can be accessed. Most of the trees that are out there are somewhat more readily accessible as indeed are the ornamentals. There are some really historic material including some amazing artwork (some of which I believe is by some unfortunately little-known botanical artists like K. Cheluvayya Raju who died more than 70 years ago). There is probably some interesting material related to G H Krumbiegel, Hugh Cleghorn and the Agri Horticultural Society. There are also some interesting publications made by the Horticulture Department that are largely inaccessible - over the years I have had enquiries from the Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh for looking up a book called Glass House – The Jewel of Lalbagh published in 1991 that has hardly been seen by people who are interested in it. I have likewise had requests for archive data relating to John Cameron (Krumbiegel's predecessor). There is also a great deal of as yet un-written history on plant introductions such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chayote (Seemay Badnekayi = foreign brinjal - one of the introductions to our diet thanks to the work at Lalbagh) as well as the numerous avenue trees (like the pink poui currently in bloom and chosen by Krumbiegel as part of his Ritu Samhara idea for Bangalore) For a glimpse of the excellent artwork of an unfortunately little-known botanical artist - K. Cheluvayya Raju - see http://www.benakaartconservation.com/Restoration/Portfolio_-_Art_Conservation__Restoration_files/Botanical%20paintings.pdf and we have several other botanical artists who as yet have no articles on even on the en.wiki (for example the somewhat famous pair of Govindoo and Rungiah). I have been postponing my own plans to research the archives there and would be very happy to join you in your meetings if possible. There are some active tree groups in India who will be interested too. best wishes Shyamal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 12:02 PM, Sowmyan Tirumurti tsowm...@wikimedia.inwrote: Bangalore is called the Garden city. Lal Bagh and Cubbon Park played a significant role in this city getting this name. The annual flower show on Jan 26th is approaching. A huge crowd is expected. I was curious to see what is in the Lal Bagh article in Wikipedia. I felt it was lean on 'Botanical' content. As a botanical garden there should be talk of the species of trees available, the rare ones that are not easy to find elsewhere etc. Yesterday I met the the Dy Director of the Horticulture department to identify any help they can provide. (Karnataka is perhaps unique in having a horticulture department as part of its governance structure). He has shown enthusiasm. Next week I will be meeting the Director (who is currently on tour) to seek his approval. Once this is done, we can have a Sunday meet of Bangalore wikimedians at the Garden, get a overview of the Lal Bagh and a guided tour by Botanical experts, who can provide the domain knowledge related to the unique species we have here etc. That should enable people to write about these dimensions in the existing articles. We may also explore possibilities of introducing a QR code for the unique specimen and articles related to them. In all probability some articles will exist. But if these species are rare, the articles can mention the availability of the specimen at Lal bagh in the article pages of Lal Bagh as well as the species. Hope fully this can be in the next week end. ie 15th Dec. That may give us ample time to embellish the article before Jan 26 flower show. I am also considering inviting PG students in Horticulture from the University of agriculturaal sciences, Gandhi Krishi Vignan Kendra Campus, Bangalore. Those interested in participating please write to me. Non Bangaloreans can perhaps look at Botanical Gardens with unique species of trees, plants etc nearer their town. I understand the Botanical Garden at Kolkata is also famous. Regards, Sowmyan Wikimedia Chapter, Bangalore ___ 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] Researching and library support
One of the major policies of Wikipedia is the idea that content should cite reliable sources. With libraries having good content in short supply in the country it is not surprising that many editors cite blogs, non specialist websites or stray news reports and these are often reverted, particularly on the English Wikipedia. A suggestion that we need to complement such systems as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RX (which is doing a great job as far as scholarly journals in English go) has gathered some interest from both the A2K project and the India Chapter. Perhaps either of these bodies could apply for the needed funds and appoint specific individual editors who would have members to the specific libraries and act as clearing agents - gathering requests from bonafide editors, obtaining digital versions of the sources needed and providing them in a time bound way. This post is just to open out this suggestion for discussion. Suggestions on quality libraries, research services, costs and ways in which this ought to operate are welcome. A model to examine is the German https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Literaturstipendium (use Google translate to get some sense of what it is) A few libraries that might be worth examining for India specific content http://www.hathitrust.org/ http://www.goethals.in/ http://www.delnet.nic.in/ Non-copyrighted content that is obtained could be contributed to the Internet Archive http://www.archive.org while the rest could be privately archived for the sake of keeping record. Of course all this would require that checks to see if content is already available on free and open-access digital libraries, dspace repositories and so on. In addition editors seeking research material may need to demonstrate some interest in improving specific Wikipedia articles that they indicate. In addition, perhaps there should be an effort to work with librarians themselves to see if the can consider pro bono support for Wikipedia researchers esp. working with Indian language content. Let us not forget the L and the A in GLAM. best wishes Shyamal en:User:Shyamal ___ 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] Few concerns
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 on this list and indeed intrigued by most of the characters that seem to be involved in the Wikimedia movement in India and how it stands out in contrast to the spirit of Wikipedia and its sister projects. Whereas the project is more a culture of giving, most of what we see here seems to be more about merely getting things for oneself and getting ahead of each other which I suppose is inspiration drawn from street traffic. Having observed the movement from the outside, it is my hope that the best values of Wikipedia culture are imbibed rather than the worst of Indian culture. * Wikiculture - Deal with issues not the persons raising them - what matters more than who. Those who actually interact with the *community* (an earlier thread gave the suggestion that people would get an opportunity to interact with the *community* only by attending Wikimania) on Wikipedia will know this aspect. This is a symptom of the fact that hardly anyone out here is really editing substantially. * Wikiculture - Think independently and question everything - Wikipedia achieved a lot and is interesting because it questions(or questioned) paradigms that are (or were) taken for granted. It uses direct interaction, direct democracy, rather than representatives. So voting people into committees / positions that work in private is not the way things are done here, it is by discussing ideas. Independence requires that you question any sense of group identity. * Wikiculture - Forsake cliques, identity traps and recognize in-out-group dynamics. In particular I think much of the poverty of editing from India comes from poor research driven by the idea that an Indian needs to represent India-related Wikipedia entries in a (POV) way that apparently instills pride among fellow-Indians! * Wikiculture - Wiki is not paper, editors do not need an office, the best community support is provided on-wiki. So again, why would having funds for an office, 3 employees visiting that office each day (and adding to Bangalore's traffic) help the Wikimedia movement? If something needs to be organized, let leadership be elected on Wiki and let there be an grant such as IEG on Wiki to support it. I have been quite intrigued by the idea of Special Interest Groups being defined by many here by the language in which they edit - one would expect SIGs to be subject dependent - so you could have astronomers, law experts, literature experts, and so on with members who work in multiple language mediums. There could be language specific technical SIGs that work on IME, Unicode etc but what we see here instead appears more like language chauvinism. Those professing to be subject matter experts (and really ought to members of specific SIGs) out here seem to contribute almost nothing to Wikipedia in their claimed area of expertise - for instance there are quite a number of law experts in the group and despite that, one finds that the law related articles, even on the English Wikipedia quite atrocious. With the amount of money being thrown here one would expect that at least something like the article on the Indian Copyright Act to be a GA if not an FA (on the English WP). I know that many of the people in the Wikimedia movement in India know each other from before, have worked in the same NGOs or are good friends. That is not to say that corporates and organizations across the world are devoid of old-school connections but full disclosure would certainly be appropriate here while not being disqualifying. I agree with the anonymous commentator and would rather like to see issues being addressed just the way Wikipedia works and not by Indian style ad hominem or argument from authority. In a somewhat Groucho-Marxian way I think an ideal club like the Wikimedia India chapter should abhor club-mentality and should probably not want to have me (or anyone) as an exclusive member. It should instead perhaps consider everyone as a member. And for full disclosure - my political leaning is obviously towards the anarchist-left-liberal end of the spectrum unlike most of the Indian Wikipedian movement. best wishes Shyamal en:User:Shyamal ___ 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] FDC grant
If I can make a suggestion as non-member of the chapter it might be useful to consider a plan to encourage India librarians and archivists to be active on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RX and respond to requests for literature - if librarians in India are motivated only by monetary inducement, the Chapter could also consider becoming a paid member of a library services network within India (such as http://delnet.nic.in/)and handle requests for literature aimed to improve content quality. If the latter service can be handled well, I might even consider becoming a India chapter member! best wishes Shyamal ___ 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 queries
Hi Dhaval, Copyright protection is intended to protect creative works and many of the things that government produce are not supposed to involve creativity, they are supposed to be factual. The Indian Copyright Act says that certain works of government are not copyrighted (ie in the public domain): http://copyright.gov.in/Documents/CopyrightRules1957.pdf quote (q) the reproduction or publication of- (i) any matter which has been published in any Official Gazette except an Act of a Legislature; (ii) any Act of a Legislature subject to the condition that such Act is reproduced or published together with any commentary thereon or any other original matter; (iii) the report of any committee, commission, council, board or other like body appointed by the Government if such report has been laid on the Table of the Legislature, unless the reproduction or publication of such report is prohibited by the Government; (iv) any judgement or order of a court, tribunal or other judicial authority, unless the reproduction or publication of such judgment or order is prohibited by the court, the tribunal or other judicial authority,as the case may be; (r) the production or publication of a translation in any Indian language of an Act of a Legislature and of any rules or orders made thereunder- (i) if no translation of such Act or rules or orders in that language has previously been produced or published by the Government; or (ii) where a translation of such Act or rules or orders in that language has been produced or published by the Government, if the translation is not available for sale to the public: Provided that such translation contains a statement at a prominent place to the effect that the translation has not been authorised or accepted as authentic by the Government; /quote My suggestion is that tickets issued in buses or trains, government forms etc. would most likely be outside the scope of work as defined by the Copyright Act. Legal tender such as currency would be obviously not come under such protection as that would amount to or support counterfeiting but I would argue that tickets and licenses that are no longer valid are not legal tender. Similarly an image of a passport with certain key elements erased would form the blank format and since these are publicly available there might be an argument to consider them not under copyright. A secondary point I am making here is that practical value can be added only if the Wikimedia Chapter in India has a legal voice that can be heard alongside that of the Wikimedia Foundation. I failed to understand it, as the object/work is same thing in nearly all copyright acts. Not at all. There is considerable difference across countries particularly with reference to Freedom of Panorama and government work, and also on how the First-sale doctrine applies. http://www.usa.gov/copyright.shtml best wishes Shyamal On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 12:03 PM, Dhaval S. Vyas dsv...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Shyamal, Can you please expand I believe that the definition of work in the Indian Copyright Act would leave many items ineligible for copyright and perhaps would make sense if experts could specify them. a bit more? I failed to understand it, as the object/work is same thing in nearly all copyright acts. Regards, Dhaval ___ 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] Copyright queries
I have just noticed a nicely written document http://copyright.gov.in/Documents/handbook.html that makes some enlightened statement but I am not sure how well this stands for enforcers of policy on Wikimedia Commons. I have just got a deletion nomination for a few files I thought would be public domain simply because they are not legal tender and are not creative expressions. The files in question are https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_radio_license_full.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_radio_tv_license.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_radio_license.jpg but I see a lot more potential impact, for instance on most of the files in https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Documents_of_India for example https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BEST-tickets.jpg I believe that the Wikimedia Chapter in India has a role in ensuring that good legal advise is used to clarify along with the WMF legal counsel, the summary posted on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-India I believe that the definition of work in the Indian Copyright Act would leave many items ineligible for copyright and perhaps would make sense if experts could specify them. Any comments? Also welcome on the deletion nominations for the files listed above. best wishes Shyamal ** ___ 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] Copyright queries
Could you help me understand why you need an interpretation of Indian law in this case? I understood that US Copyright laws would be applicable on Wikimedia Commons as the servers are in the US. My understanding is that it needs both home (place where the work is first published) and US laws to apply. Had the document been a work of US government (federal), there would be no trouble. PD-India along with evidence of it being PD in the US would be needed for hosting on Wikimedia Commons. best wishes Shyamal ___ 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: CIS-A2K's Train The Trainer Program
I see that core editing related matters are included only in point 5 and 6. I was recently examining some statistics related to BSNL dynamic IP addresses since I quite frequently see a new message for me when I log in in the morning on the en.wiki and the message turns out to be in almost all cases warnings against poor editing, vandalism and so on. On some IP ranges, about 1-6% of all IP talk pages have warnings and an analysis shows that the most common problem is poor sourcing, self-promotion and other forms of advertising. In my (limited) experience working with advanced students (MS + levels) on Wikipedia editing, I have found it very useful to cover Information Literacy and research techniques. Information Literacy skills are taught in very few higher learning centres in India (I may be wrong though since such courses were available to me both at undergrad and postgrad levels) I would suggest that it is vital that people know about what research is and how sources are evaluated. I also think there needs to be coverage of technical writing (which includes reviewing literature, structuring, brevity, balance, avoiding closed paraphrasing and plagiarism, inline citation with templates, citation styles - Harvard, MLA, APA, use of bibliographic tools like Zotero ) best wishes Shyamal PS: will check if i can find the slides that i use, only able to find my internet research slides at the moment http://www.slideshare.net/muscicapa/information-literacy-and-internet-use-for-entomologists 1) Public Speaking and Engaging the audience 2) Presentation Skill and Body language 3) Basic Video editing skills 4) Leveraging mainstream and social media 5) Basics of Copyright and Creative Commons for Content Donation and Digitization 6) Technical session on complexities of Indian Languages on Computers (or based on majority participants need) 7) Wikimedia India Chapter - History and Present ___ 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
