Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [PRESS] Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias

[Kartik Mistry]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 8:51 PM, Kartik Mistry  wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 7:57 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi
>  wrote:
>> the Hindi Wikipedia has crossed 10 million articles already.
>
> 1 Million[1] :)
>
> [1] 
> https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B7:Statistics

I'm still wrong. It should be 0.1 Million[2]

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system

-- 
Kartik Mistry/કાર્તિક મિસ્ત્રી | IRC: kart_
{kartikm, 0x1f1f}.wordpress.com

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [PRESS] Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias

[Kartik Mistry]

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 7:57 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi
 wrote:
> the Hindi Wikipedia has crossed 10 million articles already.

1 Million[1] :)

[1] 
https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B7:Statistics

-- 
Kartik Mistry/કાર્તિક મિસ્ત્રી | IRC: kart_
{kartikm, 0x1f1f}.wordpress.com

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[Wikimediaindia-l] [PRESS] Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias

[Subhashish Panigrahi]

*Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias*

On 15 January, Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia celebrated its 15th
birthday, meeting this milestone with 36 million articles in more than 290
languages (the English-language Wikipedia alone has crossed the 5-million
article mark
).
But here I want to address some major questions that we need to ask as
Indians. First, what is the state of Indian-language Wikipedia projects?
What does India have to take from and give to Wikipedia?

With the growth of free and open source software in India, people are
equipped with more freedom than ever.
 Especially with
the recent federal policy-level changes
,
the nation is enjoying better collaboration with people of different
cultures speaking different languages.

However, there is a huge gap in the access to knowledge on the internet
domain. Of a population of about 1.26 billion only about 15-18% people are
connected online, largely from mobile devices. A tiny fraction of this
population comprises the technical community. It would be useful to have a
metric on the percentage of this community's contribution to grow the
languages of this country and its cultural heritage.

*Wikipedia as a family*

Wikipedia is not just an encyclopaedia. It is also a "family" of several
other Open Knowledge members. Wikipedia itself is available in over 290
languages, but it also has other multilingual sister projects such as
Wikisource (an online library of many public domain and other important
texts), Wikimedia Commons (the world's largest repository of media files
and documents), Wikibooks (a free library of educational textbooks),
Wikivoyage (a free and open travel guide) and Wiktionary (a database of
various languages).

These projects don't just house millions of images, videos, documents and
texts, but allow anyone to contribute their knowledge to this ever
deepening pool of information. Four Indian languages made an early entry to
the Wiki-world back in 2002 -- Assamese ,
Malayalam , Odia  and
Punjabi .

*Language neutrality*

According to UNESCO, 197 of the total of 1652 Indian languages are dying
despite having a long literary and linguistic heritage. It's quite
shocking. In a blog post
 on
content localisation, social entrepreneur Rajesh Ranjan asks if free and
open source software can help save these dying languages. In the context of
Wikipedia, there are already 23 South Asian-language projects. Out of these
20 are languages listed in the 8th schedule of the Constitution of India.
Many might not have noticed that the "en" in the URL of Wikipedia that
denotes the language code of English could be altered with "or" for Odia
Wikipedia or "pa" for Punjabi Wikipedia.

Most Wikipedia projects in Indian language projects are relatively small
compared to their counterparts. But the Wikimedia communities are thriving

When only parts of government websites are available in Hindi, the Hindi
Wikipedia has crossed 10 million articles already. The Tamil and Malayalam
Wikipedia communities have played a central part in implementing Wikipedia
basics learning in the state-run school syllabus. Needless to say that
these communities have played a significant role in implementing several
free and open source software by pushing for policy-level change. Many
Indian languages are in the pipeline to become active Wikipedia projects
under the scope of the Wikimedia Incubator
.


Maithili Wikipedia

and Goan Konkani Wikipedia
 are the
two Indian-language Wikipedias that have gone live in recent years. The
world has seen how digital activism has brought a new life to the Hebrew
language. There are a fairly large number of native speakers waiting out
there to access knowledge in their own languages. Wikipedia could be a
great tool for digital activism with openness and sharing.

*Addressing gender bias in Wikipedia: Implications for India*

India tops South Asia in the gender inequality index

in the entire South Asia. The female literacy rate is an alarmingly low
65.46%  as
compared to 82.14% for men. This disparity is evident in many other sectors
as well as in politics.

But 

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [PRESS] Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias

[Subhashish Panigrahi]

Thanks Kartik for pointing out the mistake. I have requested for the change.

Best,
Subha

On 1/25/2016 8:55 PM, Kartik Mistry wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 8:51 PM, Kartik Mistry  
> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 7:57 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi
>>  wrote:
>>> the Hindi Wikipedia has crossed 10 million articles already.
>> 1 Million[1] :)
>>
>> [1] 
>> https://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B7:Statistics
> I'm still wrong. It should be 0.1 Million[2]
>
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
>

-- 
Best!
Subhashish Panigrahi
Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge
Centre for Internet and Society
@subhapa / https://cis-india.org


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