Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] Telegraph : It’s a Wiki Wiki world!
Thanks for sharing this. Coverage of the article was good. regards Arun . On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 9:54 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.comwrote: Thank Srikanth, for sharing this. The article can be viewed on epaper : http://epaper.telegraphindia.com/PUBLICATIONS/TT/TT/2011/09/11/index.shtml ( Nice to see Vibhi's photo and huge heading Wiki Warriors:on the main page ) Don't forget to full article on page 13 too. The full text of the article : *Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopaedia, has a vibrant community of editors and contributors in India. And on its 10th anniversary it is looking to enlarge its base in the country, says T.V. Jayan * * * *Vaibhav Jain, 13, looks like any other child. The Delhi resident is crazy about animated characters Pokémon and Shin-chan, and cheers for the Delhi Daredevils whenever his home team is playing at the IPL. But looks, as they say, can be deceptive. Vaibhav assumes a completely different persona when he is on the Web — that of a vigilant cop waging a war against vandalism. * *Vaibhav is one of the 4,200-odd “rollbackers” of Wikipedia — the world’s largest free and open online encyclopaedia. When he is not studying or playing, he scours Wikipedia articles for recent editorial changes that are suspect and reverts them to the original. Vaibhav, who set up his Wikipedia account earlier this year because he “got bored with social networking sites and online games”, has a Wiki user page that says it all: “This user reverts vandalism faster than Rajinikanth…” * * * *Seventy-three-year old G. Balachandran from Paravur, Kerala, has a different story to tell. Paralysed for nearly two decades, this retired junior commissioned officer of the Indian Army got a new lease of life, thanks to Wikipedia. When his son presented him with a laptop, Balachandran started contributing to Wikipedia in Malayalam. “Wikipedia not only helped me rediscover myself, but also gave me the strength to fight my condition,” says Balachandran, who has contributed nearly 100 articles to the Malayalam Wikipedia since 2008 and has more than 2,000 edits to his credit. * *Vaibhav and Balachandran belong to a vibrant global community of Wikipedians who contribute to the resource in one way or another. And there is a growing number of Indians among them — those who have taken it upon themselves to add, edit and improve Wikipedia in their spare time. * * INDIAN MOVERS: (From top) Vaibhav Jain, K. Ravichandar and G. Balachandran are part of the global community of Wikipedians * * From a little known resource on the Web 10 years ago, Wikipedia has grown into a mammoth, ever-expanding encyclopaedia with more than 19 million articles in 282 languages at last count. The English Wikipedia alone has 3.73 million articles, followed by German (1.28 million) and French (1.14 million). According to Alexa.com, an Internet information company that tracks traffic to websites, wikipedia.org ranks fifth in terms of traffic. More than 14 per cent of global Internet users visit Wikipedia at least once a day. * *India too has been part of the phenomenon, so much so that Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit body which manages Wikipedia’s affairs, has decided to set up its first office outside the US in New Delhi later this year. “India is our new focus area,” says Bishakha Datta, one of the global trustees of Wikimedia Foundation. “The experience that we gain from India will provide us with a blueprint to expand Wiki activities in other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.” * *Right now, Wikipedia is available in 20 Indian languages and 20 other language versions are under incubation. * * * *What sets Wikipedia apart from other encyclopaedia, which are written by renowned subject experts, is not just that it is free and accessible to everyone, but also its dynamic nature. Anybody can contribute a Wikipedia article. “You don’t even need to register to be able to edit 99 per cent of the pages on Wikipedia,” says Tinu Cherian Abraham, a software engineer with a Bangalore-based firm, who has been associated with Wikimedia activities since 2006. Abraham has so far contributed more than 2,000 Wiki articles and done more than 53,000 edits on the English Wikipedia. * * * *However, because of its free and open character, Wikipedia is also liable to abuse and misinformation being fed into it. And that is where feisty rollbackers like Vaibhav come into play. Recently, a Wiki article on Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal was ambushed by a miscreant and his name was changed to Neelabh Kaushik. However, the watchful Vaibhav caught the fraud in no time and rolled it back. * * * *Developing events find their way to Wikipedia almost instantaneously, thanks to more than 1,40,000 registered editors around the world who contribute and edit Wiki articles free of charge. “Everyone can be an editor on Wikipedia,” quips Hisham Mundol, a
[Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
Hi Folks (Some) students in the Pune pilot have copy-pasted copyright material onto their articles. We are taking these copyvios extremely seriously and here's a summary of the action that we have taken. a) Conducted classroom sessions in all 3 colleges where the program is running and conveying the importance of not making this mistake - and the fact that they will be caught - and that too quickly. Between Nitika and I, we've conducted sessions in at least 10 separate classes last week (along with Campus Ambassadors.) b) Conducted meetings with the directors and faculty members to convey the gravity of the issue and asking them to pass on the message to their students in the strongest possible terms. c) Almost doubling the number of Campus Ambassadors to provide more on-ground support for students. We will be sending out an update on this soon. The issue of copyvios was taken up specifically during the training for these Campus Ambassadors. d) Started work on establishing an Online Ambassador program (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-September/004299.html) to provide additional support e) Disabled the leaderboard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Leaderboard) so that we make sure that recognition is given only to deserving students. Controlling the copyvio issue is the single biggest issue for the program and we will continue to do everything it takes to minimize it. Of course, some students who will still try and cut corners and the actions listed above should hopefully reduce the problem. Having said all this, we must not cloud the fantastic work of many students by the errors committed by (some) newbies who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia. Do continue to support and celebrate the work of the good guys! Thank you for you continued support on this. Best hisham ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
There are another way (who works fine in Brazilian program): Treat then as adults they are and the articles as projects. If I cheat in a project in any college in Brazil my professor would give me a zero. In some brazilians college I may be expelled for do that (without count the fact that is also a crime in Brazil). We (and they) need to realize how serious copyright violations are. But to make sure, i'm not saying you people to threat your students, but to make them realize how serious that is. _ *Béria Lima* *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a fazer http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos.* On 12 September 2011 08:46, Hisham Mundol hmun...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Folks (Some) students in the Pune pilot have copy-pasted copyright material onto their articles. We are taking these copyvios extremely seriously and here's a summary of the action that we have taken. a) Conducted classroom sessions in all 3 colleges where the program is running and conveying the importance of not making this mistake - and the fact that they will be caught - and that too quickly. Between Nitika and I, we've conducted sessions in at least 10 separate classes last week (along with Campus Ambassadors.) b) Conducted meetings with the directors and faculty members to convey the gravity of the issue and asking them to pass on the message to their students in the strongest possible terms. c) Almost doubling the number of Campus Ambassadors to provide more on-ground support for students. We will be sending out an update on this soon. The issue of copyvios was taken up specifically during the training for these Campus Ambassadors. d) Started work on establishing an Online Ambassador program ( http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-September/004299.html) to provide additional support e) Disabled the leaderboard ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Leaderboard) so that we make sure that recognition is given only to deserving students. Controlling the copyvio issue is the single biggest issue for the program and we will continue to do everything it takes to minimize it. Of course, some students who will still try and cut corners and the actions listed above should hopefully reduce the problem. Having said all this, we must not cloud the fantastic work of many students by the errors committed by (some) newbies who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia. Do continue to support and celebrate the work of the good guys! Thank you for you continued support on this. Best hisham ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
hisham On Sep 12, 2011, at 3:07 PM, Béria Lima wrote: There are another way (who works fine in Brazilian program): Treat then as adults they are and the articles as projects. If I cheat in a project in any college in Brazil my professor would give me a zero. In some brazilians college I may be expelled for do that (without count the fact that is also a crime in Brazil). We (and they) need to realize how serious copyright violations are. But to make sure, i'm not saying you people to threat your students, but to make them realize how serious that is. Hi Beria Agree with you - and my intention and actions are precisely to do what you said: to convey to students that this is a serious matter and they need to treat it with the seriousness that it deserves. (In terms of the specific academic approaches to be taken, that is a call that faculty and directors of the colleges will take; not us.) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 15:48, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: I said that the current actions were overblown. No second thoughts on the issue and actions being taken. But I guess Gautam has a point here. This set of copyvios were detected very early(majorly ~50 students' edits were monitored and reported), others are not yet on editing mode still. 50 / 1000 is not some, but I would say few. But its key we take this seriously before it explodes to a scale we cant handle since Indian editors / newbies are already infamous for copyvios and we dont want to add more such folks. Apart from copyvios which can be detected since they are from online sources, quite a few students write bookishly (which makes me wonder if they are copying from local texts). I kind of feel(personal opinion) that *deadlines* , *marks* are making quite a few of them to treat this as yet another homework and in turn have the done and dusted attitude. Of course there have been some good contributions, but it has been rare for the population. -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
hisham On Sep 12, 2011, at 3:11 PM, Gautam John wrote: On 12 September 2011 13:16, Hisham Mundol hmun...@wikimedia.org wrote: (Some) students in the Pune pilot have copy-pasted copyright material onto their articles. We are taking these copyvios extremely seriously and here's a summary of the action that we have taken. You know, Hisham, it's nice that the WMF takes this seriously but we might be over blowing it a tad too far. The WMFs policies work really well in a 1st world environment where there is great sensitivity to copyright and violations. In India, it's a different kettle of fish and we need to treat it as such. Yes, it is important to explain why copyvivos are important (and from an academic, plagiarism point of view too) but the bigger issue if intellectual honesty. I think they'll do just fine! I'm sure they'll do fine! I continue to remain optimistic and refuse to get cynical about it. …and I'll continue to celebrate some awesome awesome work. Maybe the tone of my message conveyed the wrong impression. The primary goal is to explain what a copyvio is, convey why copyvios are not to be done and how to write good quality articles - all in the context and spirit of better learning, more fun, intellectual honesty and the need to avoid academic plagiarism - so I'm with you on that. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
hisham On Sep 12, 2011, at 2:48 PM, Ashwin Baindur wrote: Hisham, Nice to hear the comprehensive way in which the copy violation issue is being addressed. Its better to nip this in the bud otherwise it could grow beyond control and also sully the good work being done by hundreds of students. :-) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
On 12 September 2011 16:00, Hisham Mundol hmun...@wikimedia.org wrote: and how to write good quality articles - all in the context and spirit of better learning, more fun, intellectual honesty and the need to avoid academic plagiarism - so I'm with you on that. You know, at the session we had on Copyrights in Bangalore, we had an excellent talk on the distinction between Copyright Violation and Plagiarism. I have video but sadly too big to fit on commons. Will try Youtube. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
Hisham Thank you for taking this seriously and for the prompt action . This had the potential to become a serious PR disaster for India in general and thankfully the actions taken seem to have stemmed the copyvio issues for now. On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Gautum On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.orgwrote: Hi Theo: I beg to differ Gautum. Since, it was made part of the curriculum this almost constitutes as cheating. I am not sure about lofty first world standards but You seem to have missed this: Yes, it is important to explain why copyvivos are important (and from an academic, plagiarism point of view too) but the bigger issue if intellectual honesty. Copyright violations aren't only important from an academic plagiarism point of view but also legal and ethical, you seem to be only focusing on text based violation in Academia maybe. Commons users and admins spend the better part of their time educating themselves and dealing with these violations from different countries not because of some honesty issues but real legal ones.Violations more often than not, can lead to court cases, damages and expose the project to liability. I never really distinguished what Media I was referring to in regards of Copyright violation, in case of Video and Music, you might want to read different variation of DMCA, along with the take-down notices that WMF has already complied with located here[1]. For images, I can attest to spending several hundred hours talking on IRC and looking for copyright terms of different countries to comply with. It is something people I know take very seriously. I am not sure if Intellectual honesty means ethics in this context but I would disagree if that is what WMF and other Wikipedians would be concerned about, it's really the legal liability that they expose WMF and projects to. Maybe Hisham can clarify. Second, if we don't uphold the WMF policies (they are actually project policies, not the foundation's) in an officially sanctioned and financed program, then who will? Again, you are raising a straw-man here. I did not say do not respect copyrights. I said that the current actions were overblown. We might disagree on this but I do carry an activists perspective here and respect your position and what the WMF has to do to limit liability too. As I saw it, you stated that copyright violations are no big deal, especially in India and the more important thing is being honest (Intellectually) when someone plagiarizes or something to that effect. Correct me if I based my assumptions wrong or if this straw-man is alive. If you read my comment again, I never allege that you said not to respect copyrights. I was referring to your perception of this issue being overblown and not as important. I also did say, these issues are more important when it is the WMF at the helm conducting these programs. I am well aware of your position as a open-source book publisher and a Creative commons hero along with someone I respect, that was why I found your position very surprising on this issue. Also, Hi Hisham, Nice to see you avoided replying to my comment alone. ;) Theo [1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Category:DMCA ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
On 12 September 2011 16:47, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: Copyright violations aren't only important from an academic plagiarism point of view but also legal and ethical, you seem to be only focusing on text based violation in Academia maybe. Commons users and admins spend the better part of their time educating themselves and dealing with these violations from different countries not because of some honesty issues but real legal ones.Violations more often than not, can lead to court cases, damages and expose the project to liability. No doubt but the Commons/Source model is broken for cases like India where documents are in the public domain here but not in the USA. That said, I digress. I agree with you on the legal issues around copyvio and it is important from the WMF's point of view since they carry the can on this. What I was uncomfortable with was what I saw as perhaps an over-reaction to the issue. Sure, rather safe than sorry is a possible answer but it's not one I favour because we tend to err too much on the side of caution. already complied with located here[1]. For images, I can attest to spending several hundred hours talking on IRC and looking for copyright terms of different countries to comply with. No doubt, Theo and it's very important work too. seriously. I am not sure if Intellectual honesty means ethics in this context but I would disagree if that is what WMF and other Wikipedians would be concerned about, it's really the legal liability that they expose WMF and projects to. Maybe Hisham can clarify. Here's is what I was highlighting - yes, the issue of copyvio is important but given that this was in the context of an educational program, the larger issue ought to have been in the context of education - plagiarism and intellectual honesty and then about copyvio. If you're going to talk about copyvio as the most important element within an education program, it has a bearing on issues outside of just the Wikimedia movement and is a much larger discussion. Second, if we don't uphold the WMF policies (they are actually project policies, not the foundation's) in an officially sanctioned and financed program, then who will? Again - I'm not saying they don't matter. I'm saying the priorities are not in order. As I saw it, you stated that copyright violations are no big deal, especially in India and the more important thing is being honest (Intellectually) when someone plagiarizes or something to that effect. I think I have explained myself, above. Copyvio is important but in the current context, there are other elements that should have first been considered. I am well aware of your position as a open-source book publisher and a Creative commons hero along with someone I respect, that was why I found your position very surprising on this issue. Appreciate your kind words, Theo. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
Hi Hisham, Can you please inform the people who are regularly editing Indian Articles about the Online Ambassador program before closing the dates for the same ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_India/New_articles (only new article alert system I know) Thanks, Naveen Francis On 12 September 2011 16:52, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: Hisham Thank you for taking this seriously and for the prompt action . This had the potential to become a serious PR disaster for India in general and thankfully the actions taken seem to have stemmed the copyvio issues for now. On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Gautum On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.orgwrote: Hi Theo: I beg to differ Gautum. Since, it was made part of the curriculum this almost constitutes as cheating. I am not sure about lofty first world standards but You seem to have missed this: Yes, it is important to explain why copyvivos are important (and from an academic, plagiarism point of view too) but the bigger issue if intellectual honesty. Copyright violations aren't only important from an academic plagiarism point of view but also legal and ethical, you seem to be only focusing on text based violation in Academia maybe. Commons users and admins spend the better part of their time educating themselves and dealing with these violations from different countries not because of some honesty issues but real legal ones.Violations more often than not, can lead to court cases, damages and expose the project to liability. I never really distinguished what Media I was referring to in regards of Copyright violation, in case of Video and Music, you might want to read different variation of DMCA, along with the take-down notices that WMF has already complied with located here[1]. For images, I can attest to spending several hundred hours talking on IRC and looking for copyright terms of different countries to comply with. It is something people I know take very seriously. I am not sure if Intellectual honesty means ethics in this context but I would disagree if that is what WMF and other Wikipedians would be concerned about, it's really the legal liability that they expose WMF and projects to. Maybe Hisham can clarify. Second, if we don't uphold the WMF policies (they are actually project policies, not the foundation's) in an officially sanctioned and financed program, then who will? Again, you are raising a straw-man here. I did not say do not respect copyrights. I said that the current actions were overblown. We might disagree on this but I do carry an activists perspective here and respect your position and what the WMF has to do to limit liability too. As I saw it, you stated that copyright violations are no big deal, especially in India and the more important thing is being honest (Intellectually) when someone plagiarizes or something to that effect. Correct me if I based my assumptions wrong or if this straw-man is alive. If you read my comment again, I never allege that you said not to respect copyrights. I was referring to your perception of this issue being overblown and not as important. I also did say, these issues are more important when it is the WMF at the helm conducting these programs. I am well aware of your position as a open-source book publisher and a Creative commons hero along with someone I respect, that was why I found your position very surprising on this issue. Also, Hi Hisham, Nice to see you avoided replying to my comment alone. ;) Theo [1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Category:DMCA ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Notices on Tamil Wikipedia
You know, this is pretty awesome. It's an idea I hadn't even thought of till I read it here. Would love to see the data - particular sitenotices to spikes in contributions. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html On 12 September 2011 16:38, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, Untill July, Site notice in Tamil Wikpedia used to give only prominent links to Fonts / typing tutorial / Village pump. Occasionally when meet-ups/workshops happen, we would announce them. We thought to put this system into good use and we are already seeing positive results. Starting July we introduced Please correct errors, you too can edit. There was a significant jump in anonymous edits in the weeks that followed. After discussions, we planned to showcase faces of Tamil Wikipedia. The idea was to put a notice featuring a picture, brief profile on editing topics and suggesting one to start creating articles[1]. The short profile showcased the diversity of editors across region / age / interests.Putting faces of Tamil Wikipedians into sitenotice was not a big effort since we already had profiles of people featured on main page. We just needed to summarize them into a couple of lines. We have got atleast 10-15 new contributors ( 50 edits and continuing) through this exercise. One editor who came in after this drive is editing prolificly and already has 2000 edits now in ~ 2 months and is now being featured on the main page :) We had more new users signing up as registered users. We roll over 4-5 banners over a parser code during each campaign, so that people dont get the same banner all the time. Now we have separate notices for logged in / anonymous users. While anonymous users get Contribute campaign with faces of tamil wiki with Anonnotice[2], logged in users get messages about policies / help pages / talk pages / DYK etc with help of Sitenotice[3]. DYK nominations has seem a jump off late with 100+ entries coming in from contributors who didnt know about it after the notice. We plan to introduce policies of Wikipedia slowly through these notices, so editors who come in are aware of them. At present we lack extensive help pages, and plan to expand them as part of this exercise which will also improve help pages coverage in parallel. There was a posting related to same on the list way back in Nov / Dec 2010 regarding Contribute Indic campaign[4] central notices by Salmaan, We find these localized notices too work well and might be a good idea for other Indic wiki's to try it out. [1] http://defn.me/r/ta/2gav [2] http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediawiki:Sitenotice [3] http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediawiki:Anonnotice [4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Contribute_Indic -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Notices on Tamil Wikipedia
Would love to see the data - particular sitenotices to spikes in contributions. Gah! we haven't done a systematic recording as we werent prepared for it (we werent sure how this thing would turn out). If you would accept eyewitness/anecdotal impressions, the following happened: (Take with many pinches of salt and heavy skepticism) 1) The first if you see an error, correct it anon notice sort of doubled anon edits. It is a small base number, so i dont think we can infer anything statistically from this - every day about 10-15 anon edits used to happen in Ta wiki (out of a total 600 manual non-bot edits). It increased to around 30-40 a day when this notice was up. 2) The this guy edits X, you can edit too campaign has increased the number of editors who have made 1 edit in the past 30 days from 200-210 to 250-260 3) The nominate your article for DYK has gained five new DYK contributors with nearly 50 new dyk nominations in three weeks. (Earlier it was a ghost town, with only two-three of us involved in DYK maintenance). 4) Again by my impression we are suddenly seeing new persistent contributors - not driveby's - people who stick around beyond the first experiments and who actually ask questions and try more and more new things. If i were to hazard a guess, we have gained about 5 new contributors in the past month alone who have done more than 100 edits. On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 5:05 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.orgwrote: You know, this is pretty awesome. It's an idea I hadn't even thought of till I read it here. Would love to see the data - particular sitenotices to spikes in contributions. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html On 12 September 2011 16:38, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, Untill July, Site notice in Tamil Wikpedia used to give only prominent links to Fonts / typing tutorial / Village pump. Occasionally when meet-ups/workshops happen, we would announce them. We thought to put this system into good use and we are already seeing positive results. Starting July we introduced Please correct errors, you too can edit. There was a significant jump in anonymous edits in the weeks that followed. After discussions, we planned to showcase faces of Tamil Wikipedia. The idea was to put a notice featuring a picture, brief profile on editing topics and suggesting one to start creating articles[1]. The short profile showcased the diversity of editors across region / age / interests.Putting faces of Tamil Wikipedians into sitenotice was not a big effort since we already had profiles of people featured on main page. We just needed to summarize them into a couple of lines. We have got atleast 10-15 new contributors ( 50 edits and continuing) through this exercise. One editor who came in after this drive is editing prolificly and already has 2000 edits now in ~ 2 months and is now being featured on the main page :) We had more new users signing up as registered users. We roll over 4-5 banners over a parser code during each campaign, so that people dont get the same banner all the time. Now we have separate notices for logged in / anonymous users. While anonymous users get Contribute campaign with faces of tamil wiki with Anonnotice[2], logged in users get messages about policies / help pages / talk pages / DYK etc with help of Sitenotice[3]. DYK nominations has seem a jump off late with 100+ entries coming in from contributors who didnt know about it after the notice. We plan to introduce policies of Wikipedia slowly through these notices, so editors who come in are aware of them. At present we lack extensive help pages, and plan to expand them as part of this exercise which will also improve help pages coverage in parallel. There was a posting related to same on the list way back in Nov / Dec 2010 regarding Contribute Indic campaign[4] central notices by Salmaan, We find these localized notices too work well and might be a good idea for other Indic wiki's to try it out. [1] http://defn.me/r/ta/2gav [2] http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediawiki:Sitenotice [3] http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediawiki:Anonnotice [4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Contribute_Indic -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Notices on Tamil Wikipedia
On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: Hello all, Untill July, Site notice in Tamil Wikpedia used to give only prominent links to Fonts / typing tutorial / Village pump. Occasionally when meet-ups/workshops happen, we would announce them. We thought to put this system into good use and we are already seeing positive results. --cut-- Thanks for sharing. I am glad to see the effectiveness of Wikipedian Profile and other initiatives In Telugu we featured Wikipedians in the form of an e-interview in our newsletter/e-zine TeluguWIki, which helped only to a limited extent as the e-zine does not have regular periodicity as per design. Cheers Arjun ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Notices on Tamil Wikipedia
On 12 September 2011 17:19, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: Gah! we haven't done a systematic recording as we werent prepared for it (we werent sure how this thing would turn out). If you would accept eyewitness/anecdotal impressions, the following happened: (Take with many pinches of salt and heavy skepticism) This is really interesting stuff. Thanks, Bala. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
I agree with Gautam in that just copyvio is not the issue. It is the issue of copyright violation, plagiarism and intellectual dishonesty. It needs to be tackled by teaching the skills of citation, paraphrasing and the many acceptable and unacceptable ways to reflect copied text and ideas in Wikipedia articles. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur -- On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.orgwrote: On 12 September 2011 16:47, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: Copyright violations aren't only important from an academic plagiarism point of view but also legal and ethical, you seem to be only focusing on text based violation in Academia maybe. Commons users and admins spend the better part of their time educating themselves and dealing with these violations from different countries not because of some honesty issues but real legal ones.Violations more often than not, can lead to court cases, damages and expose the project to liability. No doubt but the Commons/Source model is broken for cases like India where documents are in the public domain here but not in the USA. That said, I digress. I agree with you on the legal issues around copyvio and it is important from the WMF's point of view since they carry the can on this. What I was uncomfortable with was what I saw as perhaps an over-reaction to the issue. Sure, rather safe than sorry is a possible answer but it's not one I favour because we tend to err too much on the side of caution. already complied with located here[1]. For images, I can attest to spending several hundred hours talking on IRC and looking for copyright terms of different countries to comply with. No doubt, Theo and it's very important work too. seriously. I am not sure if Intellectual honesty means ethics in this context but I would disagree if that is what WMF and other Wikipedians would be concerned about, it's really the legal liability that they expose WMF and projects to. Maybe Hisham can clarify. Here's is what I was highlighting - yes, the issue of copyvio is important but given that this was in the context of an educational program, the larger issue ought to have been in the context of education - plagiarism and intellectual honesty and then about copyvio. If you're going to talk about copyvio as the most important element within an education program, it has a bearing on issues outside of just the Wikimedia movement and is a much larger discussion. Second, if we don't uphold the WMF policies (they are actually project policies, not the foundation's) in an officially sanctioned and financed program, then who will? Again - I'm not saying they don't matter. I'm saying the priorities are not in order. As I saw it, you stated that copyright violations are no big deal, especially in India and the more important thing is being honest (Intellectually) when someone plagiarizes or something to that effect. I think I have explained myself, above. Copyvio is important but in the current context, there are other elements that should have first been considered. I am well aware of your position as a open-source book publisher and a Creative commons hero along with someone I respect, that was why I found your position very surprising on this issue. Appreciate your kind words, Theo. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
On Sep 12, 2011, at 4:47 PM, Theo10011 wrote: I am not sure if Intellectual honesty means ethics in this context but I would disagree if that is what WMF and other Wikipedians would be concerned about, it's really the legal liability that they expose WMF and projects to. Maybe Hisham can clarify. To be fair, the actions taken were in in the context that this is an education program - and it's important that the benefits that students can accrue - of stronger research, better writing and improved critical thinking skills - are actually realized by students. This is what we are trying to encourage. Copy-pasting will not add any value to students. I am well aware of your position as a open-source book publisher and a Creative commons hero along with someone I respect, that was why I found your position very surprising on this issue. Also, Hi Hisham, Nice to see you avoided replying to my comment alone. ;) Hello Theo! I shall shortly make amends for this remiss... Theo [1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Category:DMCA ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
On Sep 12, 2011, at 3:33 PM, Theo10011 wrote: I beg to differ Gautum. Since, it was made part of the curriculum this almost constitutes as cheating. I am not sure about lofty first world standards but I would be failed for cheating just about anywhere in the world. It's taking a while for some newbie student editors to figure out how to edit Wikipedia - and aspects like citation and paraphrasing. They're working at - and I have personally met a bunch of them who're working really hard at it. Some are struggling with English. Some are struggling with getting computer / Internet access. Some are struggling with markups. …but they're working at it! Second, if we don't uphold the WMF policies (they are actually project policies, not the foundation's) in an officially sanctioned and financed program, then who will? If we were to take this idea further, why respect any local copyright at all? or at least the one in Global South. We can just add copyrighted images and books right off from anywhere, forget about CC or any attempt at working on Open-source licenses. As always, I agree with Beria. If those student were to be graded for this project, they should be failed. This aspect is solely at the discretion of the faculty - as it should be. I do know that faculty members are taking it seriously. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Copyright Violations by (some) Students: Wikipedia India Education Program
On Sep 12, 2011, at 5:01 PM, Naveen Francis wrote: Hi Hisham, Can you please inform the people who are regularly editing Indian Articles about the Online Ambassador program before closing the dates for the same ? Sure, Navin. The application form is at https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEdtdG5ObU9mMm5oZno3MExDc3lEZHc6MA For context on this, pls see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-September/004299.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Notices on Tamil Wikipedia
Bow to beautiful mind behind this. Can you we do the same thing in Social media (facebook page) ? Will it be helpful for Indic Languages ? http://www.facebook.com/WikimediaIndia Thanks, Naveen Francis On 12 September 2011 18:07, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: On 12 September 2011 17:19, Bala Jeyaraman sodabot...@gmail.com wrote: Gah! we haven't done a systematic recording as we werent prepared for it (we werent sure how this thing would turn out). If you would accept eyewitness/anecdotal impressions, the following happened: (Take with many pinches of salt and heavy skepticism) This is really interesting stuff. Thanks, Bala. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Offline-l] Arrangements for Wikimedia Offline Session today
On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Subhashish Panigrahi psubhash...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks Jessie, Great tools. And I am happy to inform you that translation for Odia (Oriya) for Kiwix is over, Srikant from odia Wiki community is trying to revive Ubuntu again by spreading the message to bring out more active translating people. Fantastic news! -- *Jessie Wild Global Development, Manager Wikimedia Foundation * ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] 37th Bangalore Wiki Meetup Summary
Hi All, Here is a abridged summary of the 37th Bangalore Wiki Meetup Summary on 11thSeptember 2011 at CIS, Bangalore *Talk: Technology related issues in Wiki projects and their solutions (By Santhosh Thottingal)* * * This Skype session was presented by the foundation member Santhosh Thottingal. First of all he was formally greeted by the Wikipedians from Bangalore for the new position. Santhosh introduced the Narayam project and its advancements, participation of Malayalam Wikimedian Junaid.V for the development of typing tools for all the Indian Wikimedia projects and Myanmar Wikipedia, fixing several bugs and further improvements. Then answering a question raised by Naveen Francis about how foundation is going to take initiatives for solving display problems for Iphone/Android based handheld devices he explained how this technological gaps would be narrowed in the coming days though foundation doesn’t have any project soon specifically for this project. FYI the latest Iphone 4 and Android 2.0 supports Indic font rendering while Android 2.2 has rendering issues. As there are many users who are failing to use Indic Wikipedias because of font and rendering related issues Santhosh shared his experience, past issues and their solutions. He also has shared how the typographer of the Sourashtra language font has come up to release it in PD so that it could be used by all. The current project for web fonts especially for Indic fonts have successfully been tested in www.Translatewiki.nethttp://www.translatewiki.net/which will be soon launched for all the Indic Wikipedias. The web font project has even gone beyond the Indic WPs and is also successful for Hebrew, few European languages and Myanmar which has rendering issues even in Win 7. Santhosh also shared his experience related to Text-To-Speech application development for Indian languages which would be a boon for the visually impaired people. There would be a common high volume word and phonetic sound database which would be used to generate downloadable mp3/ogv files so the Wikipedia articles could be converted to audio files. Though the complexity of Indian languages doesn’t make this an easy task there had been lot of advancements in this project which is available for testing at www.silpa.in. Santhosh explained the thought of outreach programs such as Wiki Maratrhon to bring more developers into the community which would be one of his talks in the Mumbai WCI who will address issues in Indian language Wikipedias. Then he moved onto question based discussion about OCR (Optical character Reader) and machine translation or TDI, expllained the complexity of the developing tools to for Indic languages. Then there was a discussion about WikiProjectIndia by Naveen Francis. Naveen explained the hierarchy of the project, campus collaborations like Symbiosis, Pune for Economy subject under this major project. He also focussed how outreach programs driven in both regional as well as in English Wikipedia to bring more editors into the project which would be beneficial for all the Wikipedias. Wikimedians also discussed glimpses of using different tools in Wiki, Assessment, Analysis of web hits for regional Wiki. Then there was a small discussion for the regional Wikipedias, how more editing sessions would help developing Wikipedias. Subha explained the statistics of Odia Wikipedia followed by a discussion for promoting regional Wikipedia using social sites like Facebook, taking the Wikipedias to school children and the government for creating bigger Wiki projects. regards * ସୁଭପାSubhaPa ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ___ Wikipedia Odia (Oriya) mailing list wikipedia...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-or facebook.com/OdiaWiki Tweet @OdiaWiki .. Mailing list for Wikimedians / Wikipedians in from Bangalore, India wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org * ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Tamil Nadu laptops to have FOSS
hi, Just saw this update from Vivek Cherian, a former Mumbai community member who is now working in Chennai, on Facebook: Just back from a meeting with the IT Secretary Department of Information Technology, Government of Tamil Nadu. The happy news is that a FOSS OS will be used in the Laptops planned to be distributed by the Tamil Nadu Government to School students. This is followed with the official notification sent to the press barely half an hour later - http://www.thehindu.com/education/issues/article2423376.ece warm regards, Pradeep Mohandas -- Pradeep Mohandas How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Tamil Nadu laptops to have FOSS
Eeks! Vivek is still a Mumbai community member, :) we're not going to let him go so easily :) Pradeep On 12 September 2011 22:58, Pradeep Mohandas pradeep.mohan...@gmail.comwrote: hi, Just saw this update from Vivek Cherian, a former Mumbai community member who is now working in Chennai, on Facebook: Just back from a meeting with the IT Secretary Department of Information Technology, Government of Tamil Nadu. The happy news is that a FOSS OS will be used in the Laptops planned to be distributed by the Tamil Nadu Government to School students. This is followed with the official notification sent to the press barely half an hour later - http://www.thehindu.com/education/issues/article2423376.ece warm regards, Pradeep Mohandas -- Pradeep Mohandas How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9 -- Pradeep Mohandas How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] 37th Bangalore Wiki Meetup Summary
Hi Subhashish: As always, thank you so much for putting this together. Is it possible to also post these reports here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Bangalore/Bangalore37 please? (For this and previous ones that you have so wonderfully recorded, please?) Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html On 12 September 2011 22:22, Subhashish Panigrahi psubhash...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, Here is a abridged summary of the 37th Bangalore Wiki Meetup Summary on 11th September 2011 at CIS, Bangalore Talk: Technology related issues in Wiki projects and their solutions (By Santhosh Thottingal) This Skype session was presented by the foundation member Santhosh Thottingal. First of all he was formally greeted by the Wikipedians from Bangalore for the new position. Santhosh introduced the Narayam project and its advancements, participation of Malayalam Wikimedian Junaid.V for the development of typing tools for all the Indian Wikimedia projects and Myanmar Wikipedia, fixing several bugs and further improvements. Then answering a question raised by Naveen Francis about how foundation is going to take initiatives for solving display problems for Iphone/Android based handheld devices he explained how this technological gaps would be narrowed in the coming days though foundation doesn’t have any project soon specifically for this project. FYI the latest Iphone 4 and Android 2.0 supports Indic font rendering while Android 2.2 has rendering issues. As there are many users who are failing to use Indic Wikipedias because of font and rendering related issues Santhosh shared his experience, past issues and their solutions. He also has shared how the typographer of the Sourashtra language font has come up to release it in PD so that it could be used by all. The current project for web fonts especially for Indic fonts have successfully been tested in www.Translatewiki.net which will be soon launched for all the Indic Wikipedias. The web font project has even gone beyond the Indic WPs and is also successful for Hebrew, few European languages and Myanmar which has rendering issues even in Win 7. Santhosh also shared his experience related to Text-To-Speech application development for Indian languages which would be a boon for the visually impaired people. There would be a common high volume word and phonetic sound database which would be used to generate downloadable mp3/ogv files so the Wikipedia articles could be converted to audio files. Though the complexity of Indian languages doesn’t make this an easy task there had been lot of advancements in this project which is available for testing at www.silpa.in . Santhosh explained the thought of outreach programs such as Wiki Maratrhon to bring more developers into the community which would be one of his talks in the Mumbai WCI who will address issues in Indian language Wikipedias. Then he moved onto question based discussion about OCR (Optical character Reader) and machine translation or TDI, expllained the complexity of the developing tools to for Indic languages. Then there was a discussion about WikiProjectIndia by Naveen Francis. Naveen explained the hierarchy of the project, campus collaborations like Symbiosis, Pune for Economy subject under this major project. He also focussed how outreach programs driven in both regional as well as in English Wikipedia to bring more editors into the project which would be beneficial for all the Wikipedias. Wikimedians also discussed glimpses of using different tools in Wiki, Assessment, Analysis of web hits for regional Wiki. Then there was a small discussion for the regional Wikipedias, how more editing sessions would help developing Wikipedias. Subha explained the statistics of Odia Wikipedia followed by a discussion for promoting regional Wikipedia using social sites like Facebook, taking the Wikipedias to school children and the government for creating bigger Wiki projects. regards ସୁଭପାSubhaPa ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ___ Wikipedia Odia (Oriya) mailing list wikipedia...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-or facebook.com/OdiaWiki Tweet @OdiaWiki .. Mailing list for Wikimedians / Wikipedians in from Bangalore, India wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Press Coverage: Request for Voices Faces!
Hello Hisham, Everyone, Both these articles will go a long way in generating more awareness and interest in Wikipedia and its Programs. The Telegraph article is on an fully open-access website, while the Times Crest site requires sign-up. I do not know if Times Crest is widely known or is available in print. I learned of if from a previous post to this list giving the link and also the text of the article. Could the Times Group be requested to also carry the Times Crest article on an open site. Respecting copyrights and then given the title/headline of the article, I would not like to copy-paste the text from the said previous post. Yet, I'd like to share it with a few academics in one or two schools and colleges who, I think, would be interested, but may not have read the article. [Posting the text on this list though is Fair Use, imho.] A thought. I wonder how some popular columnists, known for their incisive styles and penchant for word-play, would treat [if they decided to] the subject/s of these articles. Meanwhile, though probably off-topic on this list, may I share with you in the celebration of the lives of two memorable Mumbaikars, recently passed; with this : http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/erratica/entry/conqueror-of-maladies . Thanks Regards, VivekM [iqp,ra] === On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:38:04 +0530 Hisham Mundol hmun...@wikimedia.org wrote: Hi Folks In the last couple of days, we've had a couple of really insightful, well-written articles on Wikipedia and you, the community. ... ===___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Narayam is live
Hoi, I am really happy that Narayam, the extension that provides you with input methods for your languages is live for some of them on some of the projects. Have a look and let us know how you like it. Thanks, GerardM 'wmgUseNarayam' = array( 'default' = false, 'testwiki' = true, 'mlwikiquote' = true, 'mlwikibooks' = true, 'mlwiktionary' = true, 'mlwikisource' = true, 'mlwiki' = true, 'tawikibooks' = true, 'tawikisource' = true, 'tawiktionary' = true, 'sawiki' = true, 'sawikibooks' = true, 'sawikisource' = true, 'sawiktionary' = true, ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-blr] 37th Bangalore Wiki Meetup Summary
Thanks for the excellent summary. Regards Arun On 12-Sep-2011, at 10:22 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi psubhash...@gmail.com wrote: Hi All, Here is a abridged summary of the 37th Bangalore Wiki Meetup Summary on 11th September 2011 at CIS, Bangalore Talk: Technology related issues in Wiki projects and their solutions (By Santhosh Thottingal) This Skype session was presented by the foundation member Santhosh Thottingal. First of all he was formally greeted by the Wikipedians from Bangalore for the new position. Santhosh introduced the Narayam project and its advancements, participation of Malayalam Wikimedian Junaid.V for the development of typing tools for all the Indian Wikimedia projects and Myanmar Wikipedia, fixing several bugs and further improvements. Then answering a question raised by Naveen Francis about how foundation is going to take initiatives for solving display problems for Iphone/Android based handheld devices he explained how this technological gaps would be narrowed in the coming days though foundation doesn’t have any project soon specifically for this project. FYI the latest Iphone 4 and Android 2.0 supports Indic font rendering while Android 2.2 has rendering issues. As there are many users who are failing to use Indic Wikipedias because of font and rendering related issues Santhosh shared his experience, past issues and their solutions. He also has shared how the typographer of the Sourashtra language font has come up to release it in PD so that it could be used by all. The current project for web fonts especially for Indic fonts have successfully been tested in www.Translatewiki.net which will be soon launched for all the Indic Wikipedias. The web font project has even gone beyond the Indic WPs and is also successful for Hebrew, few European languages and Myanmar which has rendering issues even in Win 7. Santhosh also shared his experience related to Text-To-Speech application development for Indian languages which would be a boon for the visually impaired people. There would be a common high volume word and phonetic sound database which would be used to generate downloadable mp3/ogv files so the Wikipedia articles could be converted to audio files. Though the complexity of Indian languages doesn’t make this an easy task there had been lot of advancements in this project which is available for testing at www.silpa.in . Santhosh explained the thought of outreach programs such as Wiki Maratrhon to bring more developers into the community which would be one of his talks in the Mumbai WCI who will address issues in Indian language Wikipedias. Then he moved onto question based discussion about OCR (Optical character Reader) and machine translation or TDI, expllained the complexity of the developing tools to for Indic languages. Then there was a discussion about WikiProjectIndia by Naveen Francis. Naveen explained the hierarchy of the project, campus collaborations like Symbiosis, Pune for Economy subject under this major project. He also focussed how outreach programs driven in both regional as well as in English Wikipedia to bring more editors into the project which would be beneficial for all the Wikipedias. Wikimedians also discussed glimpses of using different tools in Wiki, Assessment, Analysis of web hits for regional Wiki. Then there was a small discussion for the regional Wikipedias, how more editing sessions would help developing Wikipedias. Subha explained the statistics of Odia Wikipedia followed by a discussion for promoting regional Wikipedia using social sites like Facebook, taking the Wikipedias to school children and the government for creating bigger Wiki projects. regards ସୁଭପାSubhaPa ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ___ Wikipedia Odia (Oriya) mailing list wikipedia...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-or facebook.com/OdiaWiki Tweet @OdiaWiki .. Mailing list for Wikimedians / Wikipedians in from Bangalore, India wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-in-blr mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-blr ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Narayam is live
On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 23:46, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote: Hoi, I am really happy that Narayam, the extension that provides you with input methods for your languages is live for some of them on some of the projects. Have a look and let us know how you like it. Thanks much Gerard for pushing this awesome effort of Santhosh / team into live on projects. More UX improvements, the typing tool just got better, Kudos. 'wmgUseNarayam' = array( 'default' = false, 'testwiki' = true, 'mlwikiquote' = true, 'mlwikibooks' = true, 'mlwiktionary' = true, 'mlwikisource' = true, 'mlwiki' = true, 'tawikibooks' = true, 'tawikisource' = true, Yes, 'tawiktionary' = true, No, probably you got some other version,Tamil Wiktionary is not yet live. Its next big thing after Wikipedia, so we would enable after testing on Wikibooks / Wikisource. First impressions on testing, no issues found, however we would do a thorough testing this time, since we would like to have Narayam on all Tamil wiki projects. -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Narayam input methods updated
Dear all, The Wikimedia Localisation team and volunteer Junaidp have taken an important hurdle towards better support for Indic languages. After a rocky start with the Narayam[1] extension on the Tamil language Wikipedia, today a new version of Narayam was deployed on several wikis in Indic languages and added to ta.wikisource and ta.wikibooks[2]. It also features a new interface. Please give it a try and provide feedback[3] in feature requests, bug reports. Praise is allowed to go to this list ;). We expect to be adding many more keyboard mappings in the near future. If you are particularly looking forward to one, please do not hesitate to make a request for it or submit a patch you get it even quicker[3]. -- Siebrand Mazeland Product Manager Localisation Wikimedia Foundation M: +31 6 50 69 1239 Skype: siebrand [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Narayam [2] mlwikiquote, mlwikibooks, mlwiktionary, mlwikisource, mlwiki, tawikibooks, tawikisource, sawiki, sawikibooks, sawikisource, sawiktionary [3] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions(choose component Narayam) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Narayam is live
Great news, I hope this will be implemented in other Wikipedia as well. On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 12:25 AM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 23:46, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.comwrote: Hoi, I am really happy that Narayam, the extension that provides you with input methods for your languages is live for some of them on some of the projects. Have a look and let us know how you like it. Thanks much Gerard for pushing this awesome effort of Santhosh / team into live on projects. More UX improvements, the typing tool just got better, Kudos. 'wmgUseNarayam' = array( 'default' = false, 'testwiki' = true, 'mlwikiquote' = true, 'mlwikibooks' = true, 'mlwiktionary' = true, 'mlwikisource' = true, 'mlwiki' = true, 'tawikibooks' = true, 'tawikisource' = true, Yes, 'tawiktionary' = true, No, probably you got some other version,Tamil Wiktionary is not yet live. Its next big thing after Wikipedia, so we would enable after testing on Wikibooks / Wikisource. First impressions on testing, no issues found, however we would do a thorough testing this time, since we would like to have Narayam on all Tamil wiki projects. -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Rajesh Pandey User:RajeshPandey ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Press Coverage: Request for Voices Faces!
On Sep 12, 2011, at 11:29 PM, Vivek Murarka wrote: Hello Hisham, Everyone, Could the Times Group be requested to also carry the Times Crest article on an open site. Respecting copyrights and then given the title/headline of the article, I would not like to copy-paste the text from the said previous post. Yet, I'd like to share it with a few academics in one or two schools and colleges who, I think, would be interested, but may not have read the article. [Posting the text on this list though is Fair Use, imho.] Meanwhile, though probably off-topic on this list, may I share with you in the celebration of the lives of two memorable Mumbaikars, recently passed; with this : http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/erratica/entry/conqueror-of-maladies . Not sure about asking the Times Group. If you notice the small print when you logged in, it said Crest is free for now - but they'll charge later. Thanks for sharing the blog link.___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
