Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Setting Up of the Advisory Council at Wikimedia India

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 7:20 PM, Abhinav Srivastava
 wrote:

> Please be assured, although your concerns are genuine but they do not hold
> any weight. The only people who are somewhat intimately associated with the
> Chapter are its founder members.

Continuing on my genuine weightless concerns, here's a set of excerpts
from the PDF in the original email containing this idea.

"The primary objective of setting up an advisory board at Wikimedia
India is to receive support, suggestions, guidance, advice and help in
achieving chapter’s objective from distinguished individuals having
excelled in their respective fields and mission. The advisory board
members would provide a non-binding advice to the Executive Committee
Members, Wikimedia India Staff and the community comprising of long
list of editors across different language groups."

"Advisory board members would provide the chapter with new knowledge,
development of strategic thinking and possible alternatives based on
their expertise from different fields. The advisory board would in
turn strengthen the executive committee and wikimedia staff to better
execute their work, but does not interfere with either the executive
committee or wikimedia india staff regarding the disclosure of
confidential documents or forceful execution of their advices."

"The selection of the advisory board members would be determined by
the nature of what is sought and expected by the chapter, as the per
the situation in that period"

And now there is detail about the composition of the board.

"The advisory board would not have any fixed size , but it is prefered
that it consist of 4-8 members.One member would be an individual
having an international experience in working with the Wikimedia
organisation. The next group of these members would be individuals who
were the founding members of the Chapter. The last group of members
would be individuals having experience across four different fields
such as legal, information technology, government regulation,
administrative experience, etc."


If the proposed advisory board is expected to bring in new knowledge,
development of strategic thinking etc then loading it up with
individuals who were the founding members of the chapter seems
orthogonal to the rationale. Also, there ought to be a cogent
explanation of "founding member of the chapter" is a selection
criteria in lieu of 'expertise from different fields'. Given that the
advisory board seems to be accountable to none, enforcing an arbitrary
group of people whose common denominator is being the founding member
of a chapter (which, to be fair, has been somewhat moribund) isn't
immediately encouraging.

___
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] Setting Up of the Advisory Council at Wikimedia India

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Mar 27, 2016 at 3:17 PM, Abhinav Srivastava
<abhinav.srivast...@wikimedia.in> wrote:

> Thanks for raising out the concern. Yes, the Wikimedia India's prime
> objective is to seek individuals with individual expertise. Wikimedia India
> is a growing organisation, hence, the individuals at the advisory council
> could provide the precise guidance on how to step under bigger institutional
> framework.
>

That was not the concern raised. The (proposed?) composition of the
advisory board seems to be skewed in favor of individuals who have
been somewhat intimately associated with the Chapter. This in turn is
orthogonal to the stated approach of having a diverse set of
specialized inputs.

[The snippet from the original post is kept intact below to highlight
the specific concern raised]

> On 23 March 2016 at 13:13, sankarshan <foss.mailingli...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 12:53 PM, Abhinav Srivastava
>> <abhinav.srivast...@wikimedia.in> wrote:
>> > Advisory council would be a panel of experts with different expertise
>> > and
>> > connections with whom WE the chapter could rely on to get specific
>> > advice.
>> > However, They are not a "committee" in the usual sense to discuss all
>> > issues
>> > together and provide consensus.
>>
>> From the document:
>>
>> "The advisory board would not have any fixed size , but it is prefered
>> that it consist of 4-8 members.One member
>> would be an individual having an international experience in working
>> with the Wikimedia organisation. The next
>> group of these members would be individuals who were the founding
>> members of the Chapter. The last group of
>> members would be individuals having experience across four different
>> fields such as legal, information
>> technology, government regulation, administrative experience, etc."
>>
>> The (proposed?) composition seems peculiarly skewed towards
>> individuals with institutional memory.
>>
>> --
>> sankarshan mukhopadhyay
>> <https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>
>>
>> ___
>> 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
>
>
>
>
> --
> Srivastava Abhinav
> Executive Committee Member|Wikimedia India
> Ph - +91-9711739003|Skype: abhinavsrivastava619
> Wiki Username - abhinav619
>
>
> ___
> 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
>



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>

___
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] Setting Up of the Advisory Council at Wikimedia India

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 12:53 PM, Abhinav Srivastava
<abhinav.srivast...@wikimedia.in> wrote:
> Advisory council would be a panel of experts with different expertise and
> connections with whom WE the chapter could rely on to get specific advice.
> However, They are not a "committee" in the usual sense to discuss all issues
> together and provide consensus.

From the document:

"The advisory board would not have any fixed size , but it is prefered
that it consist of 4-8 members.One member
would be an individual having an international experience in working
with the Wikimedia organisation. The next
group of these members would be individuals who were the founding
members of the Chapter. The last group of
members would be individuals having experience across four different
fields such as legal, information
technology, government regulation, administrative experience, etc."

The (proposed?) composition seems peculiarly skewed towards
individuals with institutional memory.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>

___
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] Asking for endorsement for “Wikipedia Treks Kalindi Khal”

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 6:00 PM, Ashwin Baindur
ashwin.bain...@gmail.com wrote:
 Request the views of more editors on this proposal. Guys, Santanu took
 the trouble to give us a detailed proposal, at least lets do him the
 courtesy of giving our views, whatever these may be.

I went through the proposal in small chunks primarily to think through
this. I am not an editor and so the views may or, may not be relevant.
In no particular order, here are a few comments.

[+] The proposal states The main purpose of Wikipedia Treks Kalindi
Khal is to increase the material related to Himalayan Range with a
free license in Wikimedia Commons and improve the quality and increase
the amount of articles about diversifying Garhwal Himalayan mountain
range and other respective variety in different languages in
Wikipedia. Also to raise awareness among various community chapters,
motivate them to contribute to the Wikimedia projects and organize
this kind of trekking expedition in future.

This is in fact 3 specific objectives - (a) collect material on the
region covered by this trek; (b) generate awareness within the
chapters; (c) establish the feasibility of a similar activity by
accruing more value than consumed

[+] The proposal states Currently this project is focused on Global
south region which will Improve editor diversity by recruiting new
editors from this particular target group.

But doesn't specifically mention the target group or, the methodology
of recruiting new editors

[+] Trekking or hiking is extremely well liked adventure sports
through the globe and it will be enormously easier to find like-minded
open source and free knowledge organizations and initiatives with whom
we can collaborator with

A few examples of such organizations would have been a good thing to
have at this point. Primarily to estimate the willingness of the said
organizations to contribute to knowledge under a free (or, liberal)
license. Anecdotal experience indicates that organizations have their
own rationale and quirks when engaging in collaborative ventures and
prior handshakes are required to ensure specific outcomes

[+] This Wikipedia Treks Kalindi Khal will be the first major public
activity of its kind and will be pivotal in the increased uptake of
Wikimedia projects by the populace of the extreme lands in India.

The simplest question for this line of reasoning is How?. Extreme
lands would indicate a set of constraints that are unique and perhaps
primary among those being the awareness of the utility value of
Wikipedia itself. The proposal does not go on to elaborate how it is
planned to be addressed

[+] This team of WTM comprises total nine members; among them three
wikipedians and a female wikipedian volunteer is involved. We expect
another three non wikipedian experienced trek member to be converted
into volunteers.
After the completion of trek, there will be three edit-a-thons, for
new editors, where they will be educated with proper guidance,
follow-up and mentorship.

It would be nice to have a draft idea of what can be documented. This
can be in the form of stub pages which can be filled out later during
the edit-a-thons or, an assessment of the gaps in the existing content
around the region to be covered by the trek thus creating a handy
guide to what needs to be added. This pre-expedition exercise could
also serve as a metric of success of such ventures

[+] Wikimedia Commons has an insignificant representation of
mountains and peaks along with the species, flora and fauna in the
complete Himalayan range. The available images are of moderate to
acceptable quality. Wikipedia Treks Kalindi Khal aims to improve the
coverage of the Himalayan range by encouraging people (including
professional photographers) to take and donate quality images under
free licenses to the Wikimedia Commons database.

The proposal does not mention whether the current team does comprise
of individuals who are proficient in skills of photography and would
contribute (not 'donate') images of higher resolution and greater
variety to Commons

[+] Increasing Wikimedia's participation in the remotest places (Mana
Village, the last village of India) is one of the salient points of
Wikipedia Treks Kalindi Khal. Garhwal Himalaya is crucial to this
objective, as a key hub for the whole range of Himalaya. Since the
Internet penetrations in these areas are low, the end results will be
less satisfactory. Henceforth, the initial impact will increase
awareness.

And again, How? The proposal misses an unique opportunity to provide
creative solutions while attempting to increase awareness of Wikipedia
(and related projects) in areas that are mostly off-the-internet.
Also, if the awareness campaign is successful, what are the planned
next steps which can be looked into?

[+] Encourage Innovation

This specific topic could do with a revisit. The current shape of the
content does not indicate any innovating practices or, approaches.

/s

-- 
sankarshan

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Report on WMIN activities and learnings at Wikimedia Conference 2015

[sankarshan]

On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Yohann Thomas yohan...@gmail.com wrote:

 Learnings from the conference


 Logic models for Program design and evaluation.

 Global metrics

 Wiki metrics

 Survey design

 Board governance

 Communications best practices

 Reporting  Storytelling

Do you plan to elaborate more on the above topics? In the current form
it reads more as an un-ordered list of items without much context.



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Announcing Phase 1 of Wiki Loves Food

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 9:37 PM, Yohann Thomas yohan...@gmail.com wrote:
 So you can interpret it as an incentive to increase contribution and
 participation or , as an enticement.

I am unable to comprehend why it should be based on my interpretation.
I visited the link provided in your original email, and quoted a line
which uses the specific word . The general usage of the word is in
context of offering something to gain advantage. In relation to the
broader intent of this outreach program, it felt out of place. My
question was largely limited to whether it was an improper usage of a
word, or, conscious choice to impart that specific meaning to this
program.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Announcing Phase 1 of Wiki Loves Food

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 2:49 AM, Yohann Thomas yohan...@gmail.com wrote:
 You can find all the details related to the event here

The link at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Food
states ...we will be handing out bigger prizes to entice people to
participate and donate their photos to Commons.  Are prizes being
handed out as an incentive to increase contribution and participation
or, as an enticement?


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 Train the Trainer Program

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 11:39 PM, Vishnu visdav...@gmail.com wrote:
 Documentation (especially in the form of blog posts) is not realistic and a
 huge ask.

I was seeking whether the participants from the previous iteration of
this training/event have put together their thoughts. My expectation
was that it would serve as a nice baseline for any future set of
participants in a similar exercise. Additionally, it would help
demonstrate a somewhat direct (if not linear) co-relation between the
investment in the program and the improvements brought about.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] WikiTrends - Most visited articles in Indian language Wikipedias

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Ravishankar Ayyakkannu
ravidre...@wikimedia.in wrote:
 Hi,

 Daily, weekly and monthly stats regarding most visited articles in Indian
 language Wikipedias are available here.

 Bengali -
 http://tools.wmflabs.org/wikitrends/bengali-most-visited-this-month.html

What would make the 2008 Summer Olympics page so widely viewed?





-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Digital Language Death

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 8:47 AM, A. Mani a.mani@gmail.com wrote:
 On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 6:44 AM, sankarshan foss.mailingli...@gmail.com 
 wrote:

 And, my take is that what is required is more focused and stronger
 investment over repeated cycles into automated translation systems,
 especially perhaps Statistical-MT.


 Automated translation systems can never be sufficiently accurate.
 Problems include those relating to handling of emotion words, tacit
 knowledge etc.

I didn't make the claim that automated translation systems would be
accurate or even, sufficiently accurate. But here's the bit - the
choice is either generating enough new contributors, holding workshops
to get them trained and, then iterating this over and over again. Or,
it could be about adding to this with generated content which can then
be reviewed, curated and, the systems improved by cycles of such
processes.

There is a significant volume of content that is being auto-translated
and reviewed. And, the world is none the worse for it.

 In a multi-user scenario, where people are not going to follow a
 strict mode of expression, it is bound to be worse.

 Integration with things like linked open data project is yet to
 happen, but would be useful.

Which open data project and, how would such integration help create content?


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Digital Language Death

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 3:49 PM, Gerard Meijssen
gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote:

 My point is very much that we can do things NOW. There is no need to point
 to things that you would like when there is so much that CAN be done.

 The WMF IS working on translation functionality. That may help under some
 circumstances but it is unlikely to help the languages that do not have a
 Wikipedia yet. It is not likely to help the majority of those 285 languages
 either.

Making a language enabled for computing/digital presence is merely the
first step. And, making a dictionary available is not going to
substantially help things along. Wikipedia is not the only content
system, even if it might well be the largest and, most dynamic.

The problem that I've often seen is that the conversations around
endangered languages, digital death etc often boils down to simple
'solutionism' eg. make dictionaries. Even making the entire set of
content available in Wikidata is not enough for a language to become
vibrant digitally. You do need to make a very concerted effort to
ensure that systems/workflows to create/review content are in place.
You need to work on ensuring that these workflows are simple enough
for anyone to sit and produce contributions without having to be
technology literate (ie. acquire enough skills in a technology
framework before attempting to be productive with it).

 Functionality that is probably available for many languages is
 transliteration This is where for instance a name is to be made available in
 another script. When such routines are available, we can transliterate the
 names of the humans in Wikidata and other types of data where we can safely
 assume that the transliteration is valid as a label for a languages...

I am not in disagreement with you. The point I wanted to make it is
that the world of content production is beyond Wiki*. Even if that is
sometimes a bit difficult to admit and appreciate.

 What we need to decide upon is what we can do now. India has so many people
 that there must be at least one person who can hear this message and
 understand that we can build relevant information in most if not all
 languages of India. When we advertise the existence of relevant information
 in a language, more people will have a look and some will take an interest..
 This is how you get to the tipping point where some people start using their
 language in a digital way. Using lexical data to add to Wikidata is one way,
 one step.. it starts with the realisation that we can make a difference now.

Adding lexical data to Wikidata is one way and, a very small step. The
larger steps are often ignored because the premises include it is too
hard, it is not accurate, no one is doing this. The time has come
to have a vision as spine-tingling as the 'man on the moon within a
decade'. Wikidata and other Wiki* content is one piece, but there are
plenty others and, it really needs to happen.

Quick example, where is the qualitative analysis of predictive
keyboards for Indian languages that can be used and, does ULS consider
this a necessity?

___
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] Digital Language Death

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 8:18 PM, Gerard Meijssen
gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote:
 I know there are several Indian dictionaries and encyclopaedias for several
 languages that are available under a free license or where the copyright
 holder is seeking more exposure for its data / the language it has data for.
 My point is that particularly translation dictionaries provide an excellent
 basis for establishing a link to Wikidata and consequently such efforts will
 bring the benefits I describe.

That is a bit of simplistic determination of the path to solution. The
lack of content is not due to lack of translation dictionaries. One
could probably present a premise wherein it would be easier to
demonstrate that the [1] legacy workstations/deployments lack a method
to input in Unicode ready forms and, [2] a significant part of the
content production (books, magazine etc) workflow is based on software
that is decades old and, has not seen an economic reason to upgrade
since then


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Digital Language Death

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2014 at 11:45 PM, Gerard Meijssen
gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote:
 I totally agree that there are translation dictionaries for many languages.
 However, putting such content to work IS a big issue.Typically such
 dictionaries are only available as a dead wood publication. People either
 have one or don't and the only thing they are good for is finding the
 corresponding word in the other language anyway.

That is a fair and an extremely pertinent point. However, dictionaries
(if we are using the same meaning for the word!) are by themselves
merely lists of words. A lack of a freely available dictionary or, a
list of translated terms is not a complete blocker to content. A lack
of a strong spell checker might be. But, I wouldn't put such emphasis
on an organized list like a dictionary.

 My point is that such content  be put to work.

And, my take is that what is required is more focused and stronger
investment over repeated cycles into automated translation systems,
especially perhaps Statistical-MT.

 Yes, I totally agree that there are issues to use many languages on the
 Internet. However, the WMF has in its tooling the ability to bring you
 webfonts and input methods for many/most languages. When we get to work with
 publishers / enthusiasts for specific languages we CAN add these to the
 existing languages. As the WMF toolkit can be used on Chrome and Firefox
 browsers, it means that this toolkit is very much avaiclaanble for more
 languages.

Webfonts and, Input methods are aids - they seed first round of
content generation and, continue to impact generation of content over
a period. For example, ULS has made it possible for content creators
of websites to stop worrying about having to limit themselves to a
couple of languages. But, what's beyond ULS? Surely there is something
that needs to be improved. Where's the plan for the WMF Toolkit?

An analogy would be chalk and, blackboard. However, writing materials
are not limited *only to* chalk and blackboard or, quills and
parchment. There is a need to push sustained and well thought out
efforts into creation of content that is relevant, available and,
especially well curated. Unfortunately, WMF has not done much
discussion in public about content translation pieces except for a
thread of ideas initiated by Erik. And, I have not read any plan of
action that talks about how to even think about doing this and, making
it available. Then again, the content of the world is not limited to
Wikipedia. Content is being created/written everywhere (even this
discussion is content perhaps worth having in multiple languages)

 So yes, there are more problems but for many if not most languages content
 is king if we want to bring more languages to the Internet. And, yes we can
 when we put our lexical content to it.

I am not disagreeing with your position. I am merely citing that there
needs to be augmentation to the basic plumbing of languages that is
already existing and, there needs to be some thought about what the
next step of efforts would be.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Kolkata Bookfair report

[sankarshan]

On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 11:44 PM, Jayanta Nath jayanta...@gmail.com wrote:

[excerpted]

 Wikipedia needs people from Kolkata to contribute voluntarily not only to
 the mother website but also to its Bengali link, Banglapedia.

If it is possible, please request that the digital edition has the
correct links in place for mother website and, its Bengali link


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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: IEEE 1908.1™ WG releases draft virtual keyboard layouts for Hindi

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 3:23 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala
arjunar...@gmail.com wrote:

 IEEE 1908.1 WG is pleased to release two draft virtual keyboard layouts for
 Hindi  and their Android apps for evaluation and feedback. The feedback is
 required by 11 Dec 2013.

 Please check the detailed press note
 (https://mentor.ieee.org/1908.1/bp/CommunicationAboutDraftHindiKeyboardsNov2013)
 for further information and share it in your circles and help  the
 initiative.

It would help the user/tester if you could provide/add more detail
about the keystroke combinations.
https://github.com/ankur-india/ankur-india/blob/master/resources/probhat-keycombos.txt
is an example.

___
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: IEEE 1908.1™ WG releases draft virtual keyboard layouts for Hindi

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala
arjunar...@gmail.com wrote:
 Thanks for your feedback. We have provided one example (writing the word
 Hindi in Devanagari Lipi) in the  details web page.  As the layout is
 visual, we think it may be sufficient. We will consider your input and other
 feedback that we receive in the next few days and add  additional examples
 or FAQ in due course.

Excellent. At its current stage the kind of feedback you are looking
for is discoverability/learning as well as ease of usage when compared
with existing layouts. Hindi is a fairly trivial word to use as an
example and, there are could be pangrams which your users can aim to
type.

An additional request - since it is good to spread the news about this
over social media, if you could, in future announcements, provide a
message you want shared, it would help keep things consistent. For
example, https://twitter.com/sankarshan/status/400201328313794560
may not actually be what you'd like shared.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 10:21 AM, Harriet outofin...@gmail.com wrote:
 My next goal is working in an offline wiki for school kids in Goa.

Making the content of wiki(pedia?) offline is something that I see a
lot of efforts focusing upon. http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Main_Page /
Kiwix is one simple tool that makes it possible. The Kiwix UI is
translated into around 80 odd languages (and, more are on their way).


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 10:49 AM, Vishnu T visdav...@gmail.com wrote:
 AFAIK Harriet is more thinking of the modalities of off line delivery of
 Konkani Wikipedia (once live) through XO Tablets which has Sugar learning
 environment. Would the current Kiwix easily interact with Sugar?

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/13/offline-reader-available-for-sugar/

 Any idea if the Kiwix UI is already available in Konkani?

I don't know if it already is available. And, if it is not, making the
necessary contributions should not be too difficult - Kiwix uses
TranslateWiki.net as the platform for translation contributions

___
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 to bid to host Wikimedia Conference 2014

[sankarshan]

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Karthik Nadar karthik...@wikimedia.in wrote:
 When we prepared the bid we looked at options in Bangalore, Chennai, Cochin,
 Dharamsala, Goa, Mumbai, Srinagar/Gulmarg and Varanasi. Of these Goa was
 found to be the best bet and we have prepared a bid available for viewing
 at:
 http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wikimedia_India_Chapter:Wikimedia_Conference_2014

You will probably require a section similar to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_IT/Wikimedia_Conference_2013#What_will_be_accomplished_if_the_project_is_successful.3F


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Nitika Tandon nit...@cis-india.org wrote:
 We understand there were a lot of questions about the agenda of train the
 trainer program. We have put together a rough draft which we wanted to share
 with you all. [1] Just want to mention that this the very first draft and is
 open to any kind of changes. We will also write to each of the participants
 to know what aspects they'd like to cover and incorporate those in our
 sessions.

Thank you for the link to the draft schedule. I have a somewhat
tangential query. I notice that you recommend ScanTailor
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scantailor/ for the participants. I
was wondering if it would be possible to share (later, if not now) an
estimate of accuracy of the software in post processing and handling
digitized content in Indian languages. Perhaps using random samples
from archive.org

And, as a suggestion, I would request that you put up
pre-participation reading material wherever possible. For example, the
sessions on Introduction to Unicode or, Fonts and Rendering would
require some prior knowledge of the subject matter and help the
resource person calibrate the proceedings accordingly.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Pavanaja U B
pavan...@vishvakannada.com wrote:
 ScanTailor is not a OCR. It has got nothing to do with Indian Languages.

Indeed. I realized that it clearly mentions that Scanning, optical
character recognition, and assembling multi-page documents are out of
scope of this project. And, in that context, what is the use case in
which ScanTailor would be handy? The website states further states
that It performs operations such as page splitting, deskewing,
adding/removing borders, and others. From which I understand that is
a necessary step in the flow of actual_document - photograph/scan -
re-alignment. But that generates a digitized text. You do have to
retrieve information/text from that to be able to use it. Is that
something to be tackled later?


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] A tool to visualise the edits in an article

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 8:27 AM, jeph jephp...@gmail.com wrote:
 The slider is to control the speed of the animation , really fast to super
 slow. You are the fifth person to ask me about it, I'll make it more
 intuitive :-)

Since you do have a demo instance up, could you consider organizing a
Hangouts on Air to run interested folks through the current feature
set and, also what your plans are? The resulting video can then be
used by others to catch-up and also understand more about the tool.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 print material digitization workshop query

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Tejaswini Niranjana t...@cscs.res.in wrote:
 Colleagues working in Bangla say that in their experience it is faster,
 cheaper, and less error-prone to create digital texts by typing them in.

The cheaper is an interesting word to use in this context. Are we
still arbitraging on the low-cost of human labor to input texts? It is
faster/less error-prone because you are comparing against systems that
are vaporware.

 Once there is a larger body of digitised texts, and OCR technology for
 Indian languages also improves, OCR could become the preferred option.

With the strong emphasis on cheaper, I wonder if there will be
enough demand for a machine driven system.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 print material digitization workshop query

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 12:22 PM, L. Shyamal lshya...@gmail.com wrote:
 Re-posting a now outdated query from meta
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/Bangalore/Digitization_workshop_18August2013

The phrase creating text based documents which forms the basis of
the question would require further explanation. OCR would include both
digitization and, information retrieval.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 print material digitization workshop query

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 10:12 PM, Sumana Harihareswara
suma...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 Is there a central list of the problems that OCR software (especially
 open source OCR software) has with text written in Indic languages?  If
 so, I could help encourage people to fix those problems, as volunteers,
 via a Google Summer of Code/Outreach Program for Women internship, via a
 grant-funded project (such as https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG
 ), or via some other method.

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/google/gsoc2013/ankur_india
would show that two of the projects that are being undertaken in this
iteration of GSoC pertain to OCR and IR (information retrieval).
Additionally, for those who want to keep themselves updated with the
progress in this space, please make sure that you are in touch with
the group organizing http://www.isical.ac.in/~fire/

Over the past decade I've heard many esteemed research organizations
in India talk about how they have OCR systems which are 80-88%
accurate. At a large scale, that accuracy is suitably worthless. Add
to this the fact that none of the code bases of those systems are in
public domain (even if the original research has been done with public
funds) which in turn negates any approach to validate the claims of
accuracy or, undertake iterative improvement.

http://www.amazon.com/Guide-OCR-Indic-Scripts-Recognition/dp/1848003293
: Guide to OCR for Indic Scripts: Document Recognition and Retrieval
(Advances in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition) is a volume
published in 2009 but it does a good job of summing up the problems in
the OCR space pertaining to Indic scripts and, also the (then)
state-of-the-art.

OCR and IR are very interesting to talk about (also, great ideas to
raise funds for!). I've rarely seen a serious attempt to take the
challenges head on (barring Debayan's attempt with Tesseract).

/s


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Konkani: The Script Controversy

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 11:54 AM, Vishnu t visdav...@gmail.com wrote:
 We are hoping to build a Konkani Wikipedia community first in the coming
 months, who could then arrive at a solution and work with the WMF Language
 Engineering Team. It will be a fascinating cultural-historical problem to
 look at how it gets addressed on an Open Knowledge platform like the
 Wikipedia.


The way forward on this would not only impact WMF but distributions
and platforms as well. And, a Wikipedia community would need to be
broad based in terms of skills and understanding of the problem space
at hand to be able to scope out a solution.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] IRC office hours with CIS-A2K Team

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Nitika Tandon nit...@cis-india.org wrote:
 Please see the attached document. This is what Abhinav had in mind. We'll try 
 and work on this and formalize it when we have the Porgramme Officer, for 
 Pilot Programmes onboard; who'll be responsible for executing pilots like 
 these.

Thank you, Nitika.

It will consist of a group of 3-4 UG and/or PG student who will
contribute to the Indian content on Wikipedia  Wikimedia sister
project. The steps include outreach programs on “How to contribute to
Wikipedia?”  will spread information about “Wikimedia and its
projects”. This program is going to be based on Group activity. The
plan is to create Wiki community within an Educational Institute.

I understand that in order to get buy-in from the institute around
this initiative there is a need to specifically mention the academic
levels which would be involved. But truly, what is required is a
degree of competence and consistent contributions from the
participants to be able to generate a positive outcome from this
effort.

Is there a way that topics like How to begin thinking about making
your first page on Wikipedia? or, How Wikipedia communities work?
be captured as a talk so as to achieve some form of consistency.
Language communities can help provide the closed captions if the talk
is intended to be made available in as many Indian languages as
possible. It would also mean that Record one video in their native
language on “How to edit on Wikipedia?” and share it on YouTube and
social networking sites. has a standard base-line to work from.

The outcome (or, results?) section states

Renewed Contribution to Wikipedia.
Increase in Wikipedia  related workshops all over India
Increase in Strength of overall Indian Community.

Perhaps these need to be articulated a bit more with specifics.
Additionally, the current form of the plan does not mitigate the risks
that were observed in the IEP/Pune_Effort. Most importantly, it
currently does not indicate how the existing Wikipedian community will
be participating in each of the initiatives/pilots and, be invested in
ensuring success.

I am assuming that this is perhaps the first draft from Abhinav. I'll
wait till there is a formal draft being put forth for feedback.

/sankarshan




--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] IRC office hours with CIS-A2K Team

[sankarshan]

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 1:22 PM, Nitika Tandon nit...@cis-india.org wrote:
 Yes, we have tried building communities in educational institutes before. But 
 I guess what Abhinav is suggesting is a little different from our what has 
 already been tried. Please give us sometime -  I'll work with him to build on 
 a design based on his ideas and more. We'll share with you a draft as soon as 
 we have something substantial.

Checking back on this, is there an update which can be shared?


--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] IRC office hours with CIS-A2K Team

[sankarshan]

Student Partners that you're refering to?
[2013-05-13 21:33:04] Vishnu_A2K @Abhinav: Do you mean students in
colleges and univs?
[2013-05-13 21:33:14] Abhinav Wiki Student Partners are students
from different colleges who will help students in solving their
queries and keeping follow ups of “How to edit on Wikipedia?”
[2013-05-13 21:33:17] Abhinav yup
[2013-05-13 21:34:40] Vishnu_A2K @Abhinav: If you see our plan, we
have listed various Higher education institutional partnerships
[2013-05-13 21:34:42] Nitika @Abhinav - I think it's a brillaint
idea. Student Partners can share the Wikipedia editing skills with
others, giving presentations and initiate projects.
[2013-05-13 21:34:59] Nitika We can definitely take this up as a pilot.
[2013-05-13 21:35:13] Abhinav @Nikita:- +1
[2013-05-13 21:35:16] Nitika But are you thinking to do this at the
school/UG/PG level?
[2013-05-13 21:35:25] arjunaraoc Vishnu_A2K: I found program cost
breakup.  Thx.
[2013-05-13 21:35:46] Abhinav UG and PG
[2013-05-13 21:35:47] Vishnu_A2K @Arjuna: Ok. Great!
[2013-05-13 21:36:15] Vishnu_A2K @Arjuna: Please feel free to share
the feedback later.
[2013-05-13 21:36:44] Vishnu_A2K @Abhinav: But there will be an
active local Wikimedia community that will be there to support.
[2013-05-13 21:36:46] Nitika @Abhinav: I think so too. We can check
the feasibility of running this with one our insti partners
[2013-05-13 21:37:15] Vishnu_A2K @Abhinav: How do you think Student
Partners are different from say any Wiki Community Member?
[2013-05-13 21:37:41] Abhinav I'll share detailed document within 2-3 days...
[2013-05-13 21:38:21] Vishnu_A2K Great! We will look forward.
[2013-05-13 21:38:38] Nitika @Vishnu - I think Abhinav is refering
to create a Wiki community within an educational institue similar to
to a wiki community in a city.
[2013-05-13 21:38:59] Nitika And ofcourse the two are not separate
from one another.
[2013-05-13 21:39:18] Vishnu_A2K @Nitika ok @Abhinav +1
[2013-05-13 21:39:51] Nitika @Abhinav - i look forward to reading
your plan around this. :)
[2013-05-13 21:40:06] Nitika maybe we could work together.
[2013-05-13 21:40:16] Vishnu_A2K @All: Thank you for your time and engagement.
[2013-05-13 21:40:38] Vishnu_A2K @All: We will definitely try and
incorporate your feedback.
[2013-05-13 21:40:40] Abhinav yeah...sure... :)
[2013-05-13 21:40:46] Nitika :)
[2013-05-13 21:41:04] Abhinav @All:- Thank you
[2013-05-13 21:41:45] |-- Abhinav has left freenode (Quit: Page closed)
[2013-05-13 21:41:50] Vishnu_A2K @All: Please feel free to share any
feedback and afterthoughts over e-mail and on Meta.
[2013-05-13 21:41:51] Nitika Thanks everyone! Enjoy the rest of your
evening/night.
[2013-05-13 21:41:59] subha1 Thanks everyone! Good night :)
[2013-05-13 21:42:18] arjunaraoc Thanks all. Good night
[2013-05-13 21:42:28] Vishnu_A2K @All: We will collect all the
feedback by May 20 and revise the plans.
[2013-05-13 21:42:32] Vishnu_A2K Good Night.
[2013-05-13 21:42:38] Vishnu_A2K Thank you :)
[2013-05-13 21:43:23] |-- sipun has left freenode (Quit: Page closed)
[2013-05-13 21:43:53] |-- arjunaraoc has left freenode (Quit: Page closed)
[2013-05-13 21:46:18] |-- Nitika has left freenode (Ping timeout: 245 seconds)
[2013-05-13 21:47:30] Vishnu_A2K @Theo10011: Please do share your
feedback on this session and suggest how we can organize this
differently. Thanks.

--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] IRC office hours with CIS-A2K Team

[sankarshan]

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 5:27 PM, sankarshan foss.mailingli...@gmail.com wrote:

[snipping out the awkwardly long email I had sent earlier]

There is a section in the chat which is as below:

 [2013-05-13 21:38:38] Nitika @Vishnu - I think Abhinav is refering
 to create a Wiki community within an educational institue similar to
 to a wiki community in a city.

Wasn't this approach tried earlier? To be able to build and sustain a
community within an educational institute the minimum requirements
would be the definition of why there will be contributions, who will
coach the first set of members of the community and, how much
oversight the process will have in terms of points that can be
measured.



--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Fwd: 10th Anniversary Marathi Wikipedia will be available in (free) DVD Format, Aimed to reach 10, 000 schools.

[sankarshan]

On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Arjuna Rao Chavala
arjunar...@gmail.com wrote:
 Excellent! Congratulations to everyone involved with this!  Can you share
 the background story of how this is accomplished preferably in English as it
 will be a good learning  for fellow native language wikipedians?

Especially since there is an Offline Wikipedia project listed in the
GSoC page, any learning and features from this can still be worked
into the proposal.


--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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: [WikimediaMobile] Android Commons app v1.0 beta 4 released

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 10:43 AM, Pavanaja U B
pavan...@vishvakannada.com wrote:
 I have used that. I found these very important features missing-

 · Options to crop, resize, etc

 · Options to add category

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Commons%20App


--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Need admin rights on a few Wikipedia(s)

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 5:04 PM, priyanka nag priy...@gmail.com wrote:

 I will also need someone to translate a few strings in Hindi and Marathi for 
 the Citation template as I am not strong enough in these languages as to 
 trust my own translations. There are not many strings, just a few ones in a 
 single file. I can pass on the JavaScript file with the strings if anyone can 
 help translating them.


Would using TranslateWiki.net be a better option ?


--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] WMF Grant and FDC

[sankarshan]

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 7:38 PM, Pranav Curumsey pra...@wikimedia.inwrote:


 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).



http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WMIN/ProgramGrantQuarter1/2013#Measures_of_success
seems to currently limited to counting number of events per month. In line
with 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_evaluation_basics:_why_evaluate_in_the_first_place%3F
what other metrics were considered or, are being considered ?


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan
___
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] Getting a new language Wikipedia going...

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Pavanaja U B
pavan...@vishvakannada.com wrote:
 This is not a very big task. All Indic scripts are separated by decimal 128
 in Unicode charts. For ex., take Hindi “ka”. Add 128 to its Unicode value to
 get Bengali “ka”. I had written a simple such transliterator long ago, using
 VB.NET. I did not write any web interface to that.

Then I'd say all that remains is pointing an interested party to the
source code of your tool and, asking them to assess writing a web-app.



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Getting a new language Wikipedia going...

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 2:37 PM, Pavanaja U B
pavan...@vishvakannada.com wrote:
 But then there is one issue of missing characters in some scripts. For
 example Tamil has very few characters. When we transliterate from other
 language into Tamil, say Kannada, we will have to put one character instead
 of another. The original character will be lost. When we transliterate back
 to Kannada from Tamil 2 or more characters will become just one. One classic
 example is the case of kaanthi and gaandhi. In Tamil, both are written same.

Without attempting to belabor this point, if you have previously
attempted to address this, is it possible to point out the code-base
so that an interested contributor can pick up and run with it?



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Vishnu t visdav...@gmail.com wrote:
 As we understand, this would primarily include nurturing local talent that
 can help and support the Indian Language Wiki communities on orienting
 people towards Media Wiki, fix bugs, troubleshoot tech related issues, input
 methods, OCR etc. The intention is to build strong and effective local
 interfaces to the various Global developments. Please do suggest if you
 would like to focus on anything else.

Again, this is a sound idea. Having multiple groups of individuals who
can receive input, categorize them, document the problems and
solutions and, effectively amplify the highs and lows of the Indic
experience on WMF sites is a good step.

At some point I'd like to understand more about the plans to identify
these individuals, the training they will receive (which, as you
pointed out earlier, would be Pavanaja's goal) and, how would one
measure the effectiveness of the Ambassadors and, the effort as a
whole.

During GNUnify 2013 in February you mentioned that the A2K program was
having a lot of ideas which were at that point nebulous. Now that
there seems to be a structured roll-out, in terms of organization
staffing and, initiative plans, it would good to understand the
objectives for 2013/2014.



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 3:08 PM, noopur noo...@cis-india.org wrote:
 I take immense pleasure in (re)introducing Dr. U.B Pavanaja to the entire
 Wikimedia community! Dr. Pavanaja has joined the Access to Knowledge team at
 CIS as a consultant from March 4 onward.

This is good news. What would be the areas on which Dr Pavanaja is
expected to provide guidance?



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 5:36 PM, Vishnu t visdav...@gmail.com wrote:

 • Design  assist in the roll-out PR / digital outreach
 plan(s) to promote Indic language readers  readership

 • Design  roll-out PR/on-ground outreach plan(s) to
 promote Indic language editors and contribution

 • Assist WMF in rolling out and training the Online
 Ambassadors for Indic language Wikipedia.

 • Co-ordinate with WMF to provide technical solutions to
 resolve current ( potential) issues on Indic languages

 • Providing ad hoc support to the Community on all
 aspects of Indic languages as may be deemed necessary.

 • Any other services as required by your supervisor
 (Programme Director – A2K Programme) and the Executive Director of CIS in
 connection with the grant from Wikimedia Foundation.

These look fantastic. I'm assuming that these tie in with the plans
you had posted (under the pseudonym, during the election phase).

Can I impose on your graciousness and ask a bit more about the Online
Ambassadors for Indic Language Wikipedia?

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Getting a new language Wikipedia going...

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Tejaswini Niranjana t...@cscs.res.in wrote:
 That last utopian comment needs to be made a reality.

I wouldn't call it utopian, but it would be long-haul. One way of
ensuring that work on that gets done is to frame a project idea and
put it up as a project under Google Summer of Code, preferably with an
interested mentor.



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] decline in editors

[sankarshan]

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 12:12 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
 And besides, Wikipedia in ANY language other than English needs more
 articles, more writers, and more love. The people who speak that
 language will appreciate you immensely. Maybe they won't tell you
 directly that they appreciate it immensely, but I promise you that
 they will.

And, when more feedback is received about how the experience of
contributing in languages_other_than_English could be improved, the
better it will be for all the participants in the WMF.



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] additions - Indian Languages question

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 2:14 PM, Vishnu t visdav...@gmail.com wrote:
 However, it will be interesting to track the history of how we have ended up
 with the term 'Indic',

Why will this be an interesting activity ?


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 IRC meetup

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 9:29 PM, Karthik Nadar karthik...@wikimedia.in wrote:
 The new EC incharge, so far had no communication with the community, and
 hence this will be the first meet. Program plan for the year 2013-14 will be
 the primary agenda, and so, your plans and suggestions are welcome.

I am not sure whether the logs from the meeting will be posted (that
wasn't discussed in the meeting itself). However, for meetings that
are organized later on, would the team consider using something like
MeetBot (http://meetbot.debian.net/Manual.html) to keep logs and
post them ? IRC is very non-inclusive - either you are online and
participating or, you aren't. Posting the logs to a list/page provides
an opportunity to participate for those who couldn't make it.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 IRC meetup

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 9:16 AM, Subhashish Panigrahi
subhash...@cis-india.org wrote:
 It is here:
 http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Internet_Relay_Chats/February_11,_2013#Logs

Thank you. As you'll note, these are the raw logs (probably off an IRC
client). MeetBot uses a syntax that allows you to take notes, assign
actions and so forth.
http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2013-02-11/fedora_docs_https:fedoraproject.orgwikidocs_project_meetings.2013-02-11-14.22.html
is a random example of how it appears.

 Kathik has posted it last night ;)




-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Regarding my work in OPW (under Wikimedia)

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 5:02 PM, priyanka nag priy...@gmail.com wrote:
 I am sharing my user page here. Details of my work can be found in the user
 page here.

This is nice stuff.

I'd request that you update your blog with the work you are doing. it
is relatively easier to pass specific blog entries as
tweets/posts/RFCs



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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: Samskrit Wikiquote ( Wiki SuktayaH)

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Abhiram C abhivasish...@gmail.com wrote:

[a somewhat bad snip from the forwarded email]

 We had started our efforts towards this in August 2012, persuading Wikipedia
 Language Committee. Over 7000 system messages were translated to samskrit,
 some 800 articles of useful content related to this project were created and
 uploaded, which were some of the requirements to approve new projects.

Would it be possible for someone to explain the term system messages ?


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Creative Commons visit to India

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Ashwin Baindur
ashwin.bain...@gmail.com wrote:
 Wish we could have a audio or video feed of these events for those far and
 away! Even a writeup with interesting points would be a great boon!

If the network at SICSR permits, one could try options like ustream/G+
Hangout etc


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 Takes Kolkata 2

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 8:17 PM, Vishnu t visdav...@gmail.com wrote:
 'The Walls of Kolkata' are so rich and diverse, but are increasingly being
 painted on.

Hmm... this is an interesting perspective. Would you like to elaborate ?



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] How to set up a SIG?

[sankarshan]

On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 8:44 AM, Gautam John gau...@akshara.org.in wrote:
 Abhishek - could you please let us know which NGOs in Bangalore,
 registered as Societies in the last couple of years, have membership
 for those below 18 and for foreign nationals, please? It will be very
 useful for WMIN when they decide to make their case to the Registrar?
 Having been part of the team that registered the Society, I can
 clarify that these restrictions were not WMIN's but the Registrar of
 Society's.

It wasn't clear from this thread as to why these two issues are very
important to be solved *right now* ?


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 needs your support: Our First Fundraiser

[sankarshan]

On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 9:19 PM, Karthik Nadar karthik...@wikimedia.in wrote:
 Donations can be made by Online Bank Transfer (NEFT/RTGS) or by sending us a
 Cheque through snail mail. We are unable to accept card payments at this
 current time. Link to the donation page on our website:
 http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Donate

The page at http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Donate has a banner with the
text Click here to Donate Now! which links back to
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Donate

That's a bid odd.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Wikimedia India Chapter Anniversary

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 11:06 PM, Sudhanwa Jogalekar
sudhanwa@gmail.com wrote:
 The answer is, we are still ineligible for FDC (we hope to be
 eligible for the second round of funding in 2013)

I may have missed out on a previous explanation of this - what is the
reason for the ineligibility ?


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] What will I achieve as Programme Director A2K

[sankarshan]

Thank you for writing this up. I've two specific bits of discussion
around your email and so have snipped it in a form that keeps it as
relevant as possible.

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 9:50 PM, Nee Davis davis...@gmail.com wrote:
 So I felt it is more productive to not delve too much into the ‘what’
 question, but focus more on how can we achieve this? Thus the below plan is
 more of an Operational Plan than a vision statement. Further, it is not a
 work-plan as it lacks micro details. What I set out to do below is to
 present an outline of the key tasks and strategies that we could adopt to
 achieve our collective vision in year 1. It should be noted that I have
 deliberately not touched upon some of the activities that are currenly being
 deployed.

I would request a clarification and, extend a suggestion. The first is
- how did the time-line of 60 days come about ? The rationale behind
this question is - does 60 days provide adequate time to dial-back,
correct and move forward ?

The second is around the need to have some form of measurement of
success. For each of the areas, it is probably useful to have
transparent and public measure of success. A trivial question - would
the ability to on-board 5x5 WCLs be a success or, the preparation of a
sustainable training program material be a success and so forth.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 Summit India 2013 for Spoken Indian Language Wikipedia!

[sankarshan]

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 10:05 PM, Abhishek Suryawanshi
i.abhishek.suryawan...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Pradeep,

 We have updated FAQ page,

 P.S : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_India/FAQs

 Do let us know if you have any suggestions :-)

The Facebook page for the club is a closed group and, the wikipedia
page has sparse information. You may want to elucidate a bit more in
the FAQ itself.


--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 Summit India 2013 for Spoken Indian Language Wikipedia!

[sankarshan]

On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 11:09 PM, Abhishek Suryawanshi
i.abhishek.suryawan...@gmail.com wrote:
 Facebook Page for Summit : https://www.facebook.com/WikipediaSummitIndia

 Facebook Group for Summit :
 https://www.facebook.com/groups/WikipediaSummitIndia/

 Page as well Group is open to all from beginning.

The page for the Club at Pune. Your FAQ entry on what the club is
about provides two links - one is a closed group and the other has
sparse population.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Spoken Wikipedia for Indic Languages

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:21 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote:

 Heh, I didn't know you became a cultural authority on what words were wrong,
 from the last few visit(s) to India. :P Anyway, It would be any linguist's
 folly to presume the cultural context of words, without knowing the culture
 and what precedes the word. I suppose this should give Anirudh the same
 authority to instruct what words are wrong in context of your homeland,
 incognizant of any political undertones and cultural issues?

Ignoring the somewhat ad hominem nature of the argument, you do
realize that Indic is something that is used at the Unicode
Consortium to denote the group of Indo-European languages comprising
Sanskrit and the modern Indian languages that are its descendants.



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Spoken Wikipedia for Indic Languages

[sankarshan]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 9:03 AM, ஆமாச்சு ama...@amachu.net wrote:
 On Friday 16 November 2012 08:54 AM, sankarshan wrote:

 Indo-European languages comprising
 Sanskrit and the modern Indian languages that are its descendants.


 barring Tamil :-)

The Wikipedia seems to use Indic and Brahmic scripts as synonyms of
each other. Does your contention hold in that case ?

Admittedly, we are a bit off the original topic.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Download as ODT in Indic Wikipedia's

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote:

 Most of know the Download as PDF feature is not usable on Indic wikis with
 Collection Extension due to issues in PDF generation with complex scripts.

Can you point out the issues as well please ?


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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] Download as ODT in Indic Wikipedia's

[sankarshan]

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote:

 Oh man. This, apart from solving a current problem with Indic
 languages and PDFs, is such an awesome way to drive adoption of
 OpenDocument Formats and Open/Libre Office in India.

A question that would be relevant is whether any device accessing the
Indic Wikipedia (desktop [own/shared], laptop, mobile) will have the
adequate means to handle, display and render ODT formats.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan

___
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 Programs-Fortnightly IRC: Thursday March 15th @ 9pm IST (Indic Languages) Thursday March 29th @9pm IST (Outreach Communication) (#wikimedia-office)

[sankarshan]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 5:51 PM, Pradeep Mohandas
pradeep.mohan...@gmail.com wrote:
 To clarify: I have nothing against IRC. Just the way it was conducted on
 IRC. Please share best practices on how to do an IRC chat well!

Some of the projects use http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot to help
stick to the agenda as well as ensure notes being taken for the
meeting. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_communicate_using_IRC
is a simple set of guidelines that the Fedora project uses (I'm sure
that other projects have their specific 'good things to do' list as
well) and, http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/Schedule/MeetingGuidelines
is for a specific group within the Fedora project.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikitech-l] GSoC'12 Proposal : List of Ideas

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 3:44 AM, Shivansh Srivastava
shivansh.b...@gmail.com wrote:

 I have created my User page, envisaging the ideas I shared through my last
 mail - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shivansh13

 Please let me know the prospective of the ideas suggested.

I would suggest that you give
http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCMentoring/making-your-ideas-page/ a
quick read and work towards providing further details about your
ideas.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic Languages on Wikipedia Android application

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:

 If your phone's locale is English, you can still read the content of
 Bengali Wikipedia in the app by tapping the Read in button in the
 menu (পড়া হচ্ছে).

On a side note, Read in doesn't really translate to পড়া হচ্ছে .

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic Languages on Wikipedia Android application

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 4:49 PM, Amir E. Aharoni
amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:

 That's what the current translation says. It doesn't have to be
 perfectly literal, it just has to be useful in context. If you think
 that it's wrong in this context, can you please correct the
 translation at the same link? -
 http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translategroup=out-wikipedia-mobilelanguage=bntask=viewoffset=0limit=500

The difference arises in the context of how you would
translate/interpret the following sentences in your local language:

- the content is being read in insert language and,
- you can read the content in insert language

 And complete the remaining translations, while you're at it :)

I'm not a fan of fly-by-night translation contributions even if it is
from a natural speaker of the language. There are various nuances and
contexts which translators put into their words and even though
community oriented translation camps are the flavor of the month,
I've more often seen and experienced the need to do clean-ups and
reviews at the end of the day. The initial mail was merely a feedback.
I'm certain that those who have the privileges to work on the project
will figure out what to do.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : The Hindu : The struggles of keeping Kannada Wikipedia afloat

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Tinu Cherian (Wikimedia India)
tinucher...@wikimedia.in wrote:
 The Hindu : The struggles of keeping Kannada Wikipedia afloat
 http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article2909005.ece

 In the world of online Kannada content, blogs may be thriving but Wikipedia
 is struggling. The reasons vary from technology barriers to lack of
 contributors, say Wikipedians.

Would it be a good idea to list down all the blockers in the form of
bugs and thereafter track them via a short URL ? The feedback is
valuable enough for the language technologies team at Wikipedia to be
able to discuss and assign priorities in terms of approaching
solutions.

I guess what I am asking is whether all the issues that the various
language communities in India face have been recorded on the bugzilla
and, there is a page somewhere which allows anyone interested to track
them.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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] Is there a sign-up to be a member of the India Chapter drive being organized around GNUnify 2012 ?

[sankarshan]

In the backdrop of the hackathon, would this be a good thing to have ?
If not already planned.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Analysis of IEP: Quantitative Analysis Tory Read's Report

[sankarshan]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Hisham his...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 Two reports have just been released as the analysis of IEP Pune Pilot.

 An quantitative analysis has been prepared and is available
 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Quantitative_Analysis

 Tory Read's report is available
 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Independent_Report_from_Tory_Read

Is the planned schedule/calendar for the IEP available ? One that puts
dates to specific phases of the exercise.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Android ICS support for Tamil and Indic languages

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 11:28 AM, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote:

 Only few years before even PCs supported all of these and it will take more
 years to get this in all gadgets. So, the only expectation now is to at
 least display the characters well. Input is the next priority which can be
 solved by 3rd party apps for time being once the display issue is solved.

Linux distributions have had the underlying codebase infrastructure to
support Indian languages for close to 8 years now. Admittedly, the
frameworks have changed/improved and, the resultant APIs have evolved.
But the definition and scope of support put forth in my original mail
has existed for that period of time. So it is certainly not a few
years.

Displaying the characters well is a very broad based statement and,
I'll provide an example from the 4.0.3 build - I see Bengali rendered
with some degree of accuracy when using the Gmail app, the same cannot
be said when using the Twitter app for Android. Which brings out the
notion that the ability to build up and use the existing underlying
frameworks is not very well baked in. The other bit that will be
useful to create a set of publicly available standard test pages for
Indic text. Paragraphs which have sufficient complexity being handled
via nearly all conjunct combinations and so forth would actually help
testing the mobile app to the fullest.

Input and, primarily input methods are desired to be some form of
standardization or, at least a reference implementation. In the early
days of Linux (and, very recently during the stage with the 'Rupee'
symbol), a lot of 3rd party application developers and ISVs came up
with their own implementation of input methods and layout. The
resultant effect was a large corpus of document which needed some form
of 'translation' into Unicode-compliant form. Punting on ISVs to fix
the input issue is a bad bet fraught with dangers. I am not suggesting
that the ISVs will go out and deliberately muddy up waters. But the
nature of the business and, the precedent leaves no doubt of such a
situation repeating itself.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Android ICS support for Tamil and Indic languages

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote:

 I did some testing on how the recently released Android ICS supports Indic
 languages.

 Tamil, Bengali, Marathi and Hindi are the only Indian languages supported
 for now. Oh ya, it can also show English well without a problem ;)

 You can view the findings in details at

 http://microblog.ravidreams.net/2011/12/android-ics-support-for-tamil-indic-languages/

I wouldn't say supported. Language support generally includes:

- display/rendering
- input
- keyboard layouts
- fonts
- spellcheckers
- dictionaries

Not all those checkboxes can be completely ticked when it comes to
Bengali for the 4.0.3 release. I still see rendering issues with
regards to spaces between conjuncts and so forth.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Call for participation in IEEE P1908.1 Virtual Keyboard Standard development for Indic languages

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:59 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan
parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote:
 Arjuna, while I don't really understand what is the ultimate aim, I
 sincerely hope that this will result in Indic support across mobile
 devices.

Traditionally, on the desktop devices, Indic support has generally
meant the ability to do the following:

- display/render
- print
- input

The underlying software architecture, which is fashionably called the
plumbing, has been present and keeps lock-step with the currently
available and published standards and specifications.

Input forms an interesting aspect because of the diverse nature of
possibilities provided and requested - an example could be the variety
of the keyboard layouts available. While a myriad variety in the
keyboard layouts is possible on a standard physical keyboard
(hardware), such variety is a bit difficult to attain on the mobile
device hardware having an actual physical keyboard. Even in the case
of mobile devices with an on-screen keyboard, the ability to
standardize on a specific set of layouts, based on various factors
(eg. computation of the highest used key combinations) would be of
immense use.

At this stage, the only aspect I'd request to be made clear is how
does one participate in the effort. For example, reading through the
current list of participants I don't see Google (as an example). It
would be nicer to have distributions participate because they allow
the quickest path to reference implementation of standards.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Programs Consultants on WMF Staff page

[sankarshan]

On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 7:17 AM, Anivar Aravind
anivar.arav...@gmail.com wrote:
 AFAIK, They are Contractors, and not staff as such , due to the
 absense of legal structure for WMF in India
 And I believe they will become  the staff of India Programme Trust ,
 once it is on wheels (And since India Trust is not an official WMF
 body, they will not be WMF Staff)

which is a nice segue to a question I've had - what is the/are the
various Wikimedia presence working out of India ? For example, there's
the India Chapter, there's the Trust etc. How do all of them fit
together ? I apologize if this is a somewhat quirky question.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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] [OT] Government will now prefer ‘hinglish’ words over Hindi translation

[sankarshan]

I realize this is a bit off-topic for the list. The intent is to put
forth the always present tussle between classical usage and colloquial
one. I haven't managed to dig out the circular though.
/sankarshan
http://www.firstpost.com/india/government-will-now-prefer-hinglish-words-over-hindi-translation-148557.html
In a bid to overcome problems posed by difficult Hindi words,
Governmenthas asked section officers to use their ” hinglish”
replacements foreasy understanding and better promotion of the
language.
The order issued by the Rajbhasha unit of Ministry of Home Affairs
wasrecently re-circulated in various offices after it was
officiallymentioned that such puritan use of Hindi generates
disinterest among masses.
The circular recommended that difficult Hindi words can be replaced
withEnglish alternatives in Devanagari script for official work.
Citing examples, Department of Official Language at Home Ministry
said‘misil’ can be replaced with file, ‘pratyabhuti’ with
guarantee,‘kunjipatal’ with keyboard and ‘sanganak’ with omnipresent
‘computer’.
It also advocated use of popular Hindi words and English alternatives
tomake the language more attractive and popular in offices and masses.
“Whenever, during the official work, Hindi is used as
translatinglanguage, it becomes difficult and complex. There is an
urgent need tomake changes in the process of English to Hindi
translations.Translations should carry expression of the original text
rather thanword-by-word Hindi substitute,” the circular said.
It said use of popular words of Urdu, English, and other
regionallanguages should be promoted in official correspondence. Pure
Hindishould be for literary purposes while practical ‘mixed’ version
for workpurposes.
It said it is better to use English terms in Devnagri script than
totranslate them in pure Hindi.
-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] An Offline Wikipedia for the Aakaash Tablet?

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 8:17 PM, Pradeep Mohandas
pradeep.mohan...@hotmail.com wrote:

 I also think we should take the benefit of the lessons learnt by other NGOs
 in the country who've done stuff like this. Someone suggested OLPC folks. We
 might be interested in approaching such folks as well.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Wikislices

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] An Offline Wikipedia for the Aakaash Tablet?

[sankarshan]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 5:34 AM, Jessie Wild jw...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 For this work, I think it's _imperative_ to get a high-quality, Indic
 version available for mass-distribution. But while the full,
 all-encompassing offline version might take 6-7 months to develop, there are
 bite-sized pieces we can concretely work on so we can start at least pushing
 some information out. For example, if we focus on Geography first, we
 could perhaps get a really good Geography package set-up and ready to go
 by the next pilot, in order to at least get a package out there - something
 to have a presence within the distributions. The storage space on the Aakash
 tablet and other low-cost devices is minimal, so a limited content package
 is actually fine, in many ways.

The version of Android available on the tablet could be a hindrance to
display/render/input of Indic.



-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] An Offline Wikipedia for the Aakaash Tablet?

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 10:22 AM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote:
 Worth checking out for the Chapter? And the Trust? Maybe both together?

Wouldn't existing work for the WikiReader or, the OLPC project fit in
terms of enabling an offline wikipedia ?

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] IEP Pilot - Preliminary Analysis

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 4:51 PM, Nitika ntan...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 We want to collate data points to be able to analyze and draw out trends.
 Here is an example of data that we're trying to dig out (and this is just a
 sub-set of a preliminary list)

Sharing the entire list of data points would be a nice thing to have.
If it is possible.

 What's the amount of data that students have added to Wikipedia? What's the
 amount of data that got reverted? What's the net amount of information that
 the students have added on Wikipedia?

The above should lend themselves to instrumentation and should be
somewhat trivially available.

 How many students edited articles outside of their in-class assignments?

This is an interesting and non-trivial question. Which prompts me to
ask - why would you want to track this ?

 How many student's got warnings on their talk pages? How many students
 corrected their errors after these warnings?
 How many students got blocked? / How many students got blocked more than
 once?

Again, the above should be easily instrumented. At least, the initial
nature of the questions look that way.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/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] [OT] Request to the list administrators

[sankarshan]

and, perhaps this also goes out to the listadmins of the -pune and
-westbengal lists. Will you consider a request to ensure that these
lists are available via gmane.org as well ? It allows one to use a
conventional newreader to go through the lists.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Please change it - Indian Maps on Wikipedia

[sankarshan]

2011/7/25 CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com:
 Interesting Warning given to me by mail ! Did somebody told him that I own
 Wikipedia ? ;)

Is there a catch all address where the group/organization/chapter
members can handle these kind of emails rather than forwarding them to
the list ? I don't specifically have anything against the usage of the
list archive to track these but having a single alias/address to
forward them to might be a helpful thing.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Delhi Chapter (User:AroundTheGlobe)

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 11:52 AM, mayur mayur...@gmail.com wrote:
 Its not a politics Game, its all about to give opportunities to all Indian
 Communities, North Indian Community has not grown so far and reason behind
 this is lack of Awareness of Wikimedia Foundation.Not Only Chapter But also
 Foundation Activities are Totally Focused towards South India.WE are not
 Blaming the chapter for this but A New Chapter in New Delhi will make more
 Opportunity to grow Wikimedia movement in the Biggest Educational City of
 India which has been completely Ignored by the Foundation and the India
 Chapter as well.

There are a couple of disturbing bits in this thread. And, in fact
this whole theme of discussion. The first thing that jumps out is,
this statement Foundation Activities are Totally Focussed Towards
South India. This does not have citations or, supporting arguments.
And, it does appear to be more of a personal (or, perhaps a small
group) opinion.

Till date, I have not read anything from the India chapter that makes
it extremely difficult to build up participant numbers in any region
of the country. Being a nascent organization and, generally finding
its feet, it would be pulled in different directions and, the members
will have different things on their plate. However, if there are
indeed proven circumstances where the organization/chapter in India
has been a hindrance towards regional activities, this isn't the best
way to go about discussing this.

Starting off or, re-activating a chapter/activity doesn't necessarily
require a regional body. I'd request to put priority to the former
task than consider the latter the bottleneck to it. There are means
and there are ends. A regional chapter/organization, at this point, is
neither the means, nor the end.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press} : The Outlook : Help: This Is A Stub

[sankarshan]

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 8:54 AM, CherianTinu Abraham
tinucher...@gmail.com wrote:
 The Outlook : Help: This Is A Stub
 http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?272101 ( web version)

[snip]

 It was inevitable, really. Wikimedia had little choice but to come to India
 as growth in the West, or the ‘Global North’, tapers off.

[snip]

 with its “strong culture of free speech” and its numerous languages. “There
 is a huge growth potential here...just look at the number of languages,”
 says Datta.

I had a small conversation with Gautam on Twitter (not the best medium
for a discussion really !) -
https://twitter.com/#!/gkjohn/status/77251118433968128 and so forth.

What interests me is the scope of the word 'growth' - what does growth
mean, when applied to Wikimedia ?
-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Delhi Chapter

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 9:55 AM, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote:

 I dont get how Delhi wikimedians got this impression.

Perhaps using the phrases Wikimedians in Delhi, as opposed to Delhi
Wikimedians would be a good start.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] The Hindu : Malayalam Wiki all set to expand database

[sankarshan]

On Fri, Apr 8, 2011 at 12:20 PM, CherianTinu Abraham
tinucher...@gmail.com wrote:
 Once the print version is out, publications rarely change online content.

I have, in the past seen Deepa Kurup change bits in the online one and
hence thought it was perhaps possible. Never mind though, it doesn't
take anything away from the wonderful-ness of the initiative.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Releasing Wikipedia CD – few concerns

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 5:31 PM, CherianTinu Abraham
tinucher...@gmail.com wrote:

 1) Releasing Wikipedia CD for School and school children needs larger review
 of content. Not all content on Wikipedia may be suitable for children. If
 any such controversy occurs on content on Wikipedia to children, we may risk
 a very bad reputation and possibly permanent ban of them from schools.

Somewhat tangential, the OLPC folks had also worked on providing a
dump of Wikipedia. Is there a way to access the criteria used to
curate the content suitable for children ?

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] (OT) On the importance of Unicode

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 9:15 AM, Nikhil Sheth nikhil...@gmail.com wrote:
 Great discussion, but I wonder why I didn't see any real, easy, doable,
 inexpensive, quickfix solution put forth that every Indian on the internet
 can begin using immediately to get around the Unicode Vs custom Fonts issue.

 So here's some from me:

 1. Quick copy-paste, working with a net connection:
 http://www.google.com/transliterate/

 2. Put a bookmarklet/favorite in your browser to type in Indian language in
 any site. इधर भी : http://t13n.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/blet/docs/help.html

 3. Get these languages installed in 5 mins on your machine so you can use it
 in any application from notepad to chat :
 http://www.google.com/ime/transliteration/ or sneak out the files for
 offline installation in your hometown using this neat hack:
 http://visibleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/google-transliteration-ime-offline.html

 (I know our greatest angels won't care about this one because it only works
 on Evil Windows!)

 4. Indian made alternative both editor and input language:
 http://www.baraha.com/

Getting things fixed at the 'plumbing' level is a hard climb but it is
worth it since it would also ensure that offline devices can utilize
what is technically correct (note, that this does not necessarily
imply that the above choices are 'incorrect'). Doing it using web
technologies is one thing, doing it for the desktop, especially the
offline-desktop is another part of the same coin.

We have come a long way since the days when one needed a recompiled
Pango (the renderer) to even decently render Indic or, when input
methods were flaky. Using standards and developing code pieces that
comply with those standards make it easier for platforms across the
spectrum to do Indic (and, other complex scripts) well.

And, looking at all this discussion I now wish that I submitted a
'state of Indic' paper at some conference happening currently ;)

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] (OT) On the importance of Unicode

[sankarshan]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Anivar Aravind
anivar.arav...@gmail.com wrote:

 The Discussion here was not only about Input methods. It is about
 Encoding , Rendering  Fonts, which is the underlying technology which
 enable input methods to work

 Also just a friendly request to understand thread first before
 knee-jerking with what you know

The discussion started off with Unicode (Gautam was the OP if I recall
correctly). And, then of course it has progressed into a discussion
about the various pieces that are complex or, are work-in-progress
towards a solution. Sometimes it isn't easy for everyone to see where
it is going. Doesn't necessarily mean that we cannot be excellent to
each other.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] PDF rendering of Indian language wiki pages

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:36 PM, Santhosh Thottingal
santhosh.thottin...@gmail.com wrote:

 Just wanted to give an early preview of this software library through
 an online interface : http://silpa.smc.org.in/Render
 You can try with a Wikipedia page in your language and verify the generated 
 PDF.
 You can also access this using this URL
 http://silpa.smc.org.in/Render?wiki=http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/இலங்கை
 (replace that wiki URL with other page addresses too - any Ianguage -
 not limited to Indian languages)

Nice work Santhosh ! Can I request that you provide a way for users to
email their feedback to the developers using some template ? This
would allow you to obtain some test-cases/test-pages which can be used
in further releases to check for regressions.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary

[sankarshan]

2011/2/14 shirish शिरीष shirisha...@gmail.com:

 In Pune, around this time lot of colleges have their technical weeks
 where they show projects, last year and couple of years before I had
 seen students who had made nice OCR's which could work with indic
 languages but obviously required lot of polish and getting into the
 whole 'code maintainance' thing. The students motivation for that had
 been to do as a project and not getting things 'maintained' which is
 unglamorous grunt work. Also documentation is something that would
 need to be looked at and fine-tuned.

Indic OCR, at least the bits that are available under an appropriate
FOSS license, have an accuracy of around 80%. Considering the volume
and fragility of what you will OCR, that's remarkably low.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-in-mum] Liam Wyatt's visit to Mumbai and GLAM meetup - a summary

[sankarshan]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:24 AM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote:

 What ever became of the Digital Library of India project?
 http://www.dli.ernet.in/

Whatever happens to projects like that ... (there's a tweet from
@abhaga in this regard)

 Wasn't OCR high on their to-do list, as such?

The point I was making is that most of the code that enables Indic OCR
to reach higher percentages of accuracy isn't available under FOSS
licenses. Debayan had been working on this for a while. There is a
reference to the technology (as requested by Nagarjuna in a later
mail) at 
http://sankarshan.posterous.com/the-plan-to-create-a-digital-library-of-100-c

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikibasha and code signature

[sankarshan]

On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 3:20 PM, Siebrand Mazeland s.mazel...@xs4all.nl wrote:

 Please create a change request in bugzilla.wikimedia.org to change the
 inline text comment to some identification in the edit summary. The
 Wikibhasha team at Microsoft research India will take all input very
 seriously.

Is there a way to file a request/enhancement against tool in question
and then cross link the two trackers ? From what little I read of the
thread it would include comments on both parties rather than limiting
it to Wikipedia/Wikimedia.

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimeetup 3 Pune photos

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 6:21 PM, Ashwin Baindur
ashwin.bain...@gmail.com wrote:

 For those who attended, could we have a small brief (or even better a
 blog post) about what transpired for those who missed the meet?

The blog post, more of personal jottings really, was posted along with
the photos 
http://sankarshan.posterous.com/notes-from-the-pune-wikipedia-meetup
cf. http://identi.ca/notice/60354579


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Media : Mid-day: Loads of potential in India: Wikipedia

[sankarshan]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 11:20 AM, CherianTinu Abraham
tinucher...@gmail.com wrote:
 No worries Erik, Indian media is known for misquoting :)

Please let's not generalize the problem of mis quoting and then
specifically use it as a pejorative within the context of the Indian
media. Anyone who reads through various news sources realizes that
perspectives and points of view differs within media houses and,
putting a spin on things is global.

 Last time a journo asked me on what are the chances of foundation office in
 Bangalore. I said Bangalore has ( probably) a fair chance , considering the
 presence of a vibrant Wiki-community  chapter office here.  The next day's
 headline was Bangalore set to have Wikimedia office  :)

That headline might have actually ended up getting readers to read the
news article and help in publicizing in some way.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog

___
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l