Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] On creating an Indian Wikisource

[Shiju Alex]

Can't we use the existing Wikisources (available in different languages
including English) for the same?

Or, Gautham, are you proposing something else?

Shiju



On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 12:22 PM, Gautam John wrote:

> So here's a question - given that there is much content that is out of
> copyright in India but not necessarily in other parts of the world, is
> there any sense in looking to create an Indian Wikisource for content
> that is out of copyright here?
>
> Thank you.
>
> Best,
>
> Gautam
> 
> http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] On creating an Indian Wikisource

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Sreejith's point is what I was wondering about. Is there value in
> this? Something that the Chapter might consider?
>

So what you propose is not a new project, but to have servers in India for
the projects with India related content? Infact most of the projects,
including commons and meta, have India related content.

I am not sure how much this will help. But do we have servers outside US
now?



On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Gautam John wrote:

> Shiju and Sreejith:
>
> > Currently Wikipedia projects are hosted in US and all media files
> uploaded
> > to these projects should be copyright free in the source country of
> origin
> > and also in US.
> > If we need to upload media files out of copyright in India but still
> > copyrighted in US, I am afraid, the servers need to be hosted in India.
>
> Sreejith's point is what I was wondering about. Is there value in
> this? Something that the Chapter might consider?
>
> Thank you.
>
> Best,
>
> Gautam
> 
> http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] On creating an Indian Wikisource

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Specifically a WikiSource server
> of sorts, hosted in India, exclusively for content that is out of
> copyright in India only.
>

As far as I know, "*the content that is that is out of copyright in India
now* "can be uploaded to the existing wikisources.

Can you cite some examples for which this is not possible?

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Gautam John wrote:

> On 26 August 2011 12:52, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>
> > So what you propose is not a new project, but to have servers in India
> for
> > the projects with India related content? Infact most of the projects,
> > including commons and meta, have India related content.
> > I am not sure how much this will help. But do we have servers outside US
> > now?
>
> Not for India related content, Shiju. Specifically a WikiSource server
> of sorts, hosted in India, exclusively for content that is out of
> copyright in India only.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Best,
>
> Gautam
> 
> http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] On creating an Indian Wikisource

[Shiju Alex]

>
> The best example is Gandhi
>
> Many of his works, and translations of them, are not public domain in
> the United States.
>
> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Mohandas_K._Gandhi
>
> http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi
>

In this case, much content that reside in many Indic language wikisources,
few images in Wikimedia Commons, and may be some works in English wikisource
are also against US copyright law. So how can we overcome this issue?

I think this issue is applicable to more countries, not only India.



On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 1:11 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 5:27 PM, Shiju Alex 
> wrote:
> >> Specifically a WikiSource server
> >> of sorts, hosted in India, exclusively for content that is out of
> >> copyright in India only.
> >
> > As far as I know, "the content that is that is out of copyright in India
> now
> > "can be uploaded to the existing wikisources.
> >
> > Can you cite some examples for which this is not possible?
>
> The best example is Gandhi
>
> Many of his works, and translations of them, are not public domain in
> the United States.
>
> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Mohandas_K._Gandhi
>
> http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] On creating an Indian Wikisource

[Shiju Alex]

>
> By hosting a WikiSource outside of the US and in the jurisdiction of
> the country.
>

This is not limited to Wikisource. Wikimedia Commons is definitely in the
list, and may be some other projects also.



On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Gautam John wrote:

> On 26 August 2011 14:21, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>
> > In this case, much content that reside in many Indic language
> wikisources,
> > few images in Wikimedia Commons, and may be some works in English
> wikisource
> > are also against US copyright law. So how can we overcome this issue?
> > I think this issue is applicable to more countries, not only India.
>
> By hosting a WikiSource outside of the US and in the jurisdiction of
> the country.
>
> - Gautam
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] WikiConference India 2011 - Call for Participation

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

We have only 4 more days for the Program submission. Last date is August 30.


Please submit your program proposals before the due date at *
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Call_for_Participation
*


Shiju Alex



On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 12:57 PM, Shiju Alex wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> The Call for Participation for WikiConference India 2011 is open now.
>
> Details are available here: *
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Call_for_Participation
> *
> Few guidelines that you need to keep in mind before submitting the proposal
> are available on this page. The guidelines are only meant as a pointer to
> help speakers and is not expected to be exhaustive. You can submit talks
> within all aspects of Wikimedia even if the topic is not specifically
> included on that page. ''' Be Bold.'''
>
> Few wikimedians had provided their wish list regarding WikiConference India
> 2011 here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WikiConference_India_2011/Programs You
> can use that also as reference while submitting the proposal.
>
>
> *Important: *Please forward this mail to all the relevant mailing lists,
> in case I missed any list.
>
>
> Regards
> Shiju Alex
> For WikiConference India 2011, Program Commitee
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] 3rd Bangalore Odia Wiki Meetup- Odia Wikipedia reaches 1500 articles

[Shiju Alex]

Good work Subhasish and other Odia wiki community members..

*Wikipedia for Odia Literature:* An event which is created to uplift the
> presence of Odia language and literature in Wikipedia, chronological
> documentations and media files collection.
>
Next step would be requesting for Odia wikisource.

Hope you will be  able to rope in more new users from the Odisha state
through various outreach programs.

Shiju


On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 2:41 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi  wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> Good morning from Odia Wiki Community.
>
> Yesterday we had a small meetup to celebrate the *"1500 articles
> Celebration" *attended by 6 old and 1 new Wikipedians.
>
> Agenda:
> *Current status:* The substantial growth and the initiatives taken to
> improve the status of Odia Wikipedia was discussed. Odia Wikipedia was
> dormant for almost 8 years which just started reviving itself in the
> beginning of this year and made a leap of almost 1000 well written articles
> in this short span with the bandwidth of a small community with less active
> members. Bangalore was the stepping stone for the revival of Odia
> Wikipediaand
>  in the 3rd
> Bangalore Wikipedia 
> Meetupwe
>  have celebrated 1500 articles.
> *
> Projects:*
> Discussion regarding 2 ongoing projects.
> *Odia loves 
> Wikipedia
> :* An event in Commons to bring out media files uploaded by Odia Wikians.
> This event has reached 351 media files.
>
> *Wikipedia for Odia Literature:* An event which is created to uplift the
> presence of Odia language and literature in Wikipedia, chronological
> documentations and media files collection. This is running in both in the
> Wikipedia as well as Commons. Under this event Odia Wikipedia has attained 131
> articles in Odia Wikipedia  and
> 37 images in 
> Commons.
>
> *Further plans:*
> The next target was set up with attaining 500 more articles to beat
> Gurumukhi Wikipedia which presently has 2003 articles as both of these
> Wikipedias took birth in the same time.
>
> We also have discussed to discourage creation of stubs without taking care
> of them for further expansion, creation and used of templates, categories,
> good citaions.
>
> Plans for more outreach programs by collaborating the Odia literature
> departments of several known colleges and universities was also talked of.
>
> Wikipedians debated how Wikipedia could be a fair and reliable source and
> at times how much beneficial it'd be when most of today's generation are
> moving out of books and internet has become a repository of unending
> knowledge and its regional context when an ancient language like Odia is
> considered, whether or not it is needed to work for Wikipedia, or find any
> better alternative.
>
> Thank you all for reading. Expecting your valuable feedback and comments
>
> *
> ସୁଭପାSubhashishPanigrahi
> ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] WikiConference India 2011 - Call for Participation

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

Today (*2011 August 30*) is the last day to submit program proposals for
WikiConference India 2011. Details regarding this is available at: *
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Call_for_Participation
*

Please make sure you submit your program proposals (in case you are not
submitted it already) if you wish to speak/present a topic in WikiConference
India 2011.


Thanks
Shiju Alex

(For Program Committee, WikiConference India 2011)

*NOTE:* Program submissions not related to Wikipedia or Wikimedia movement
will be rejected. Also we will not accept program proposals after end of day
today.











On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Shiju Alex wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> We have only 4 more days for the Program submission. Last date is August
> 30.
>
> Please submit your program proposals before the due date at *
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Call_for_Participation
> *
>
>
> Shiju Alex
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 12:57 PM, Shiju Alex wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> The Call for Participation for WikiConference India 2011 is open now.
>>
>> Details are available here: *
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011/Call_for_Participation
>> *
>> Few guidelines that you need to keep in mind before submitting the
>> proposal are available on this page. The guidelines are only meant as a
>> pointer to help speakers and is not expected to be exhaustive. You can
>> submit talks within all aspects of Wikimedia even if the topic is not
>> specifically included on that page. ''' Be Bold.'''
>>
>> Few wikimedians had provided their wish list regarding WikiConference
>> India 2011 here:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WikiConference_India_2011/ProgramsYou 
>> can use that also as reference while submitting the proposal.
>>
>>
>> *Important: *Please forward this mail to all the relevant mailing lists,
>> in case I missed any list.
>>
>>
>> Regards
>> Shiju Alex
>> For WikiConference India 2011, Program Commitee
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] WikiConference India 2011 - Call for Participation

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Can you temme how to edit... I dont find any links to edit my submissions.
>

We will be able to help you only if you provide details of the submission.
For example, *title of the submission*.

Shiju

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 5:07 PM, Adethya Sudarsanan
wrote:

> Thanks for your response,
>
> Can you temme how to edit... I dont find any links to edit my submissions.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Adethya
>
> On 30 August 2011 15:11, Srikanth Lakshmanan  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>  On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 15:08, Adethya Sudarsanan > > wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> can we edit our submission ? I made a submission and now I want to add
>>> some more points to it ?
>>>
>>> Is it possible?
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance,
>>> Adethya
>>>
>>
>> Sure, Anything before 23:59:59 tonight IST
>>
>> --
>> Regards
>> Srikanth.L
>>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Hindi Wiki crossed 1 lakh Article milestone

[Shiju Alex]

Good news and congrats.

So Hindi became the first Indic language wikipedia crossing the 1 lakh
article mile stone


Shiju



On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 10:53 PM, Surya Prakash wrote:

> Congratulations for the contributors & readers & Hindi community. :)
>
>
> *$U®¥∩*
> http://goo.gl/RoMyo.com 
> http://about.me/suryaceg
>
>
>
> 2011/8/30 mayur 
>
>> Dear all,
>>With about 50,000 registered user, 250 active users ,
>> 14 million edits and a depth of 
>> 34Hindi
>>  Wikipedia crossed 1
>> lakhs 
>> articlesmilestone
>>  today.
>>
>> Regards
>> (User:Mayur)
>>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WMIN-Members] Report on First Wiki Academy organised by Wikimedia Chapter

[Shiju Alex]

This is great. Hope more wiki workshops will follow.

Shiju

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 3:31 PM, Gautam John wrote:

> On 13 September 2011 15:28, Achal Prabhala  wrote:
>
> > This is amazing - congratulations to you and Gautam.
>
> I had almost nothing to do, really.
>
> All credit to Arjuna, Ansuman and OmShivaprakash.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Best,
>
> Gautam
> 
> http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Report on First Wiki Academy organised by Wikimedia Chapter

[Shiju Alex]

>
> All government employees here in Karnataka use Nudi in their offices and it
> was little difficult for them to get used to phonetic transliteration
> keyboard attached to Kannada wiki.
>
> Is there any provision to add multiple key layouts (itrans/KGP/inscript) to
> wikipedia for each language? If yes, how. Any pointers or hacks would be
> very much appreciated.
>

Yes it is possible. See the Narayam
extensionintegrated
to Tamil, Malayalam, Sanskrit Wikipedias. Also Bengali, Hindi,
and Marathi  wikipedias use a similar tool developed by Junaid.

But to integrate additional typing schemes to Kannada wikipedia, support
from few Kannada wikipedians is required. We need to test the typing schemes
before it is integrated to wikipedia.

Please let me know in case any support is required regarding this.



On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 11:39 PM, omshivaprak...@gmail.com <
omshivaprak...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Happy to be a part of First Wiki Academy. Thanks to Arjun for pulling me in
> and look forward for more such activities.
>
>  It was really interesting to see librarians looking at wikipedia. Many
> asked questions on relevance of data, accuracy, authenticity of data and
> more.
>
> Observation:-
>
> All government employees here in Karnataka use Nudi in their offices and it
> was little difficult for them to get used to phonetic transliteration
> keyboard attached to Kannada wiki.
>
> Is there any provision to add multiple key layouts (itrans/KGP/inscript) to
> wikipedia for each language? If yes, how. Any pointers or hacks would be
> very much appreciated.
>
>
> On Tuesday, September 13, 2011, Hisham Mundol wrote:
>
>>
>> *
>> *
>>
>> On Sep 13, 2011, at 3:13 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala wrote:
>>
>>
>> I am happy to share the report on the first Wiki Academy organised by
>> Wikimedia Chapter.
>>
>> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Wiki_Academy/Department_of_Public_Libraries,_Bangalore#Report
>>
>>
>> Please spread the word around and help in identifying other institutions
>> for co-hosting future events
>>
>> Chapter will be happy to send the brochures and provide any other
>> assistance.
>>
>>
>> Congratulations on this.  It's really good to see the level of interest
>> it's generated.  I especially loved reading the bit about them being shown
>> the basics of editing and being encourage to start editing and actually
>> starting 3 new articles.  Wonderful stuff.  I'm sure we'll see many more of
>> this.
>>
>>
>> hisham
>>
>>
>
> --
> --
> With Best Regards,
> Omshivaprakash.H.L | ಓಂ ಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ್ ಎಚ್. ಎಲ್ | ॐ शिवप्रकाश् एच्. एल्
>
> Blog : http://platonic.techfiz.info
> Phone: 91- 9902026518
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] or.wiktionary.org

[Shiju Alex]

Good work Odia Wiki community. Hope Odia Wikisource will also up very soon

Shiju

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 7:29 AM, Subhashish Panigrahi  wrote:

> Thanks a lot Gerard, Santhosh and team, my heartfelt thanks to all the
> language committee members for your kind support and I promise the Odia
> Community will keep up the effort to improve the two projects and finish the
> rest translations and get started with the other projects.
>
> Thanks again.
> rgds
> Subha
>
> On 28 September 2011 06:26, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> I am really pleased to inform you that the Oriya Wiktionary is the first
>> project ever to be officially re-enabled for editing. The Oriya community is
>> working really hard to make their projects a success. They are noticing that
>> the usability is improving as a consequence of the obligatory localisation
>> that they have to do. Once they are done, the language committee will assess
>> if a Wikiquote can be created as well.
>>
>> The exception that was made to open up the Oriya Wiktionary was given
>> because there is a Wikimeet in the near future and we do want to give their
>> community more of a reason to be happy with their hard work.
>> Thanks,
>>  GerardM
>>
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>
>
> --
> *
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> **
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic Languages: Shiju Alex

[Shiju Alex]

Dear Indic wikimedians,

Thank you very much for the welcome messages and for making me feel at home.


Over the past few years I have interacted with many of you for the various
Indic Wiki related activities and we have done many successful projects.
Thank you very much for all those wonderful projects. Now when we are moving
to a different phase of growth of Wikimedia in India, I request  more
support from your side.

To get started we shall together develop a plan for Indic language wikis and
design few pilot projects to gain learnings to drive growth. I propose to
develop this plan collaboratively and openly - in true wiki style.  This
will include focused Indic language meetups, virtual meetings, desk research
and constantly synthesizing the findings from all of these into learnings.
These learnings will then flow into pilots that we will implement and review
and learn from.


For this purpose, I will be using the following page
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages.
It is very preliminary right now - but will keep updating it.  The page will
give you a flavor of the kind of process and methodology I plan to use - and
also give you a hint of the end output.  However, I stress that is nothing
more than a stub right now. So please provide your suggestions.

I will be in touch soon and regularly on the next steps and I will keep you
constantly posted on progress - both positive and whenever we face setbacks.

The task is huge.  The potential is even more massive.  I will need a lot of
your help.  I invite and welcome and urge all of you to contribute to this
process - during physical meetups, in virtual meetings, one-on-one
conversations or meetings, on the talk page to the Indic Languages page and
in any and every manner that you can imagine.


As part of the India Programs of WMF, my official ID is sh...@wikimedia.org.
You can reach me anytime regarding any WMF's Indic wiki related topic.


Thanks
Shiju




>
>
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Hisham  wrote:
>
>> cross-posting to reach pan-India; apologies if you have got it from other
>> mailing lists.
>>
>> Dear All
>>
>> As I had mentioned in a previous posting (and as was so touchingly
>> welcomed by so many of of you), Shiju Alex is joining us to lead our Indic
>> Languages initiatives.  In this mail (
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-July/003845.html),
>> I had indicated that he would join around September-October.
>>
>> I'm really pleased to inform you that he has now joined India Programs (on
>> September 24th.)
>>
>> Indic Languages is an important priority for us - and Shiju intends to
>> start work on this urgently.  He'll be in touch shortly on this matter.
>>
>> Welcome aboard, Shiju!
>>
>> Warmest Regards,
>>
>> hisham
>>
>>
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Using Wikimedia Mailing lists

[Shiju Alex]

Changed the Subject line.


Arjuna and I were discussing the below issue that Beria pointed out.

But as Arjuna said, some of the important features like searchability of
archives, stats, and so on  are missing in the mail man. As per my
understanding this is one of the reason given by Telugu and Marathi wiki
communities for not moving to Wikimedia list. I am just wondering whether it
is possible to include these features in mail man. At least the search
option which is very vital for groups is a must for wikimedia lists.

Shiju

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Béria Lima  wrote:

> *Sorry, I did not notice it. BTW, Telugu wikipedia  team  uses
>> teluguw...@googlegroups.com.*
>>
>
> Why isn't a "normal" mailing list? Create a bug for it (here are three
> examples: creation of 
> Wikiconference-india<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29487>,
> creation of 
> Wikimedia-blr<https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24454>and 
> creation
> of wikiml-l <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15012>)
> _
> *Béria Lima*
> <http://wikimedia.pt/>(351) 925 171 484
>
> *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que
> estamos a fazer <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos>.*
>
>
> On 2 October 2011 04:18, Arjuna Rao Chavala  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 7:31 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>>
>>> I will suggest forwarding to respective language wiki mailing list, in
>>>> addition to city mailing lists to reach the target audience.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Arjuna, This is already done. The mail is sent to various Indic language
>>> lists also.
>>>
>>> Sorry, I did not notice it. BTW, Telugu wikipedia  team  uses
>> teluguw...@googlegroups.com.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Arjun
>>
>>
>>> Shiju
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 7:18 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala >> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> Shiju,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 6:59 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Dear Indic wikimedians,
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you very much for the welcome messages and for making me feel at
>>>>> home.
>>>>>
>>>>> Over the past few years I have interacted with many of you for the
>>>>> various Indic Wiki related activities and we have done many successful
>>>>> projects. Thank you very much for all those wonderful projects. Now when 
>>>>> we
>>>>> are moving to a different phase of growth of Wikimedia in India, I request
>>>>> more support from your side.
>>>>>
>>>>> To get started we shall together develop a plan for Indic language
>>>>> wikis and design few pilot projects to gain learnings to drive growth. I
>>>>> propose to develop this plan collaboratively and openly - in true wiki
>>>>> style.  This will include focused Indic language meetups, virtual 
>>>>> meetings,
>>>>> desk research and constantly synthesizing the findings from all of these
>>>>> into learnings.  These learnings will then flow into pilots that we will
>>>>> implement and review and learn from.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> For this purpose, I will be using the following page
>>>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages.
>>>>> It is very preliminary right now - but will keep updating it.  The page 
>>>>> will
>>>>> give you a flavor of the kind of process and methodology I plan to use - 
>>>>> and
>>>>> also give you a hint of the end output.  However, I stress that is nothing
>>>>> more than a stub right now. So please provide your suggestions.
>>>>
>>>> --cut--
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Nice to see the detailed approach.
>>>> I will suggest forwarding to respective language wiki mailing list, in
>>>> addition to city mailing lists to reach the target audience.
>>>>
>>>> Best wishes
>>>>
>>>> Arjun
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Naveen Francis is elected as Secretary

[Shiju Alex]

Congrats Naveen



On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Vickram Crishna
wrote:

> Wonderful. Nice to have the community reaching out to you when you're far
> from home :-), more incentive to come back asap.
>
> On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 1:48 PM, CherianTinu Abraham <
> tinucher...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hearty Congratulations and Best wishes, Naveen.
>>
>> Regards
>> Tinu Cherian
>>
>> -- Forwarded message --
>> From: Arjuna Rao Chavala 
>> Date: Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 10:21 AM
>> Subject: [Wikimedia-IN-Exec] Naveen Francis is elected as Secretary
>> To: wmin-memb...@googlegroups.com
>> Cc: Wikimedia India EC 
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am glad to announce that Naveen Francis is elected as Secretary of the
>> Wikimedia Chapter. Please join me in congratulating Naveen.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Arjuna Rao Chavala
>> President, Wikmedia Chapter.
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Vickram
> Fool On The Hill 
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Transliteration tool for Sanskrit wiki

[Shiju Alex]

As Srikanth mentioned, Sanskrit wiki projects (http://sa.wikipedia.org) is
one of the first Indic language wiki (along with tamil and Malayalam) to
implement the integrated typing tool. So the feature Harish asked is already
there in Sanskrit wiki projects.

Should we run site notices with these screenshots on these communities to
> increase awareness.
>

I assume it is a good idea to run site notices. But before that we need to
implement the tool (Narayam) in most Indic language wikis. As of now it is
implemented only in Tamil, Malayalam, and Sanskrit. And the Assamese wiki
community is in talk with developers to implement Narayam in Assamese wiki.
For all other Indic languages (Odia, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali,
Telugu, Gujarati, Pujnabi) the tool need to be implemented. Some of the
above communities are using the old tool developed by Junaid, but that need
to be replaced. And for that support from respective community is most
required. For languages like Punjabi the community need to help developers
to develop transliteration scheme itself. For the rest of the languages the
current tool need to be upgraded to Narayam.

We shall run site notices once we finish few more languages. Or we shall run
site notices in those wikis where tool is already implemented, may be after
the wiki conference  (we have so many site notices these days :) )


Please write to me off-list at sh...@wikimedia.org, if any language
communities need assitance regarding this.


Shiju







On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 20:27, Harish  wrote:
>
>> Sanskrit Wikipedia is not having transliteration tool as in most other
>> Indian languages. Since the script is Devanagari, the same code used in
>> Hindi wiki can be reused. Can anybody please enable it?
>
>
>  Infact Sanskrit was one of the early communities to adopt Narayam (before
> Tamil). Please see the below screenshots for Tamil, you similarly have
> "Input Method" dropdown at top of page near Username / Login link. Please
> hover over it, you would get a dropdown to choose the transliteration
> option. (Control-M) is the keyboard shortcut to turn it off / on.
>
> Gerard / Santhosh / Junaid / Shiju,
>
> Should we run site notices with these screenshots on these communities to
> increase awareness. Tamil wiki projects have a link to typing help on
> sitenotice and that page contains relevant help. I think it would be better
> if you ask bug filers to make sure they run sitenotices on wiki post
> enabling Narayam to spread awareness.
>
> http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tamiltyping1.JPG
> http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tamiltyping2.JPG
>
> --
> Regards
> Srikanth.L
>
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] On how Google irreparably wounded Kannada Wikipedia

[Shiju Alex]

Here is a blogpost from Hari Prasad Nadig about the after effect of Google's
Translation project in Kannada wikipedia.

http://hpnadig.net/blog/2011/10/22/how-google-irreparably-wounded-kannada-wikipedia/755



Shiju
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wiki Academies in Indic Languages.

[Shiju Alex]

Here is the link to the Wiki academy brochure.
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/File:WikiAcademy.svg

The text of this document need to be translated to various languages.

Naveen,

Create a page in chapter wiki and place there only the text (in English)
that needs to be translated . Then request community support for
translating that text to various languages. Once this is done create one of
us need to produce the brochure in various languages.

Another way of doing the translation is using the SVG translate. Since the
source file is in SVG, SVG translate is the best way.
http://toolserver.org/~jarry/svgtranslate/

Use that tool and translate the svg file,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/WikiAcademy.svg to
various languages.

Once translation done let one of us do the typesetting and release the
brochure in various languages.
Shiju



Shiju



On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Debanjan Bandyopadhyay
wrote:

> Naveen,
>
> Send me, I'll try to translate into Shudh Bengali. Need some time due to
> exams which will get over tomorrow. But will be travelling from Monday to
> Tuesday. So can't help before Wednesday.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Debanjan*
>
> - Lets make this world a better and more informative place*
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Naveen Francis  wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Can anyone help me to translate the Wiki Academy Brochure to Indic
>> languages ?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Naveen Francis
>>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WikiConference-India 2011] Noteworthy Wikimedian Recognition

[Shiju Alex]

Dear Wikimedians

Please note that the link for submitting the nominations is here:
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/NWR_2011

Shiju



On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 10:24 AM, Arun Ramarathnam wrote:

> Dear Wikimedians,
>
> Please submit your nominations at the following url:
> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/NWR_2011
>
> Please send in your nominations.
>
> Thank you.
>
> regards
> Arun
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 7:46 AM, Arjuna Rao Chavala 
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Wikimedians,
>>
>> The traction for Wikimedia projects and content in Indian languages (and
>> Indian content in English) has been growing over the last decade thanks to
>> the passion and tireless contributions of  several Wikimedians. We are
>> getting set for WikiConference India 2011 which is around the corner.  The
>> Wikimedia Chapter Executive Committee (EC) and the Conference organising
>> team thought it is appropriate to  recognize the most noteworthy
>> contributors to Indian language projects and Indian content in English
>> during the conference.
>>
>> Arun Ramarathnam and Naveen Francis from the EC are leading this
>> initiative. The  process for the recognition has been prepared and a well
>> diversified  Jury is identified. Details of the process and the Jury are
>> enclosed for your perusal.
>>
>> I would like to appeal to all of you to spare few minutes to think of
>> fellow wikimedians who made a significant difference over the first decade
>> of Wikimedia movement and nominate them for the recognition.
>>
>> Further communication on the wiki based nomination form would follow from
>> the Jury. Please spread this communication  across other relevant lists and
>>  participate enthusiastically and help make this initiative, the first
>> collective effort to appreciate stellar contributions from the community a
>> success.
>>
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Arjuna Rao Chavala
>>
>> President, Wikimedia India
>>
>> ***
>>
>>
>> Noteworthy Wikimedian Recognition
>>
>> The Recognition
>>
>> Wikimedia projects have been active in India for a few years and the
>> journey has been exciting (Wikimedia Chapter First Annual 
>> report<http://wiki.wikimedia.in/File:WMIN-AnnualReport2010-11.pdf>,
>> Gautam John's 
>> article<http://gkjohn.posterous.com/thoughts-on-wikipedia-in-india>and 
>> Wikimedia
>> Foundation 
>> article<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_India_Chronicles_%28150dpi%29.pdf>).
>> This has been made possible by the contributions of hundreds of Wikimedians
>> across various Wikimedia projects. WikiConference India 2011 is the first
>> conference and largest congregation of Wikimedians in India across
>> Wikimedia projects. The Wikimedia India chapter Executive committee
>> believes it would be befitting to use this opportunity to recognize
>> noteworthy contributions of some of the best contributors to our projects.
>>
>> The objective of this recognition is to appreciate Wikimedians
>> (contributing to India focused projects) from across Wikimedia projects and
>> languages for their contributions.
>>
>> The nomination process
>>
>>- Any Wikimedian can nominate any other wikimedian of their choice
>>for the recognition (preferred). Self nominations are also allowed.
>>
>>
>>- Nominees for the Recognition should have made significant
>>contributions to Wikimedia India projects or the movement. Contributions
>>include  content,  Outreach and contributions in any other form.
>>- Nominations should be  through  a filled Nomination form on the 
>> Wikimedia
>>India wiki <http://wiki.wikimedia.in/>.
>>- Incomplete nominations will not be considered.
>>- The jury's decision would be final.
>>
>>
>>
>> Eligibility Criterion
>>
>> Any wikimedian other than current Members of the Wikimedia India
>>  Executive committee, members of the Jury,  Wiki Conference India Office
>> bearers, staff/contractors of the Wikimedia foundation  or anyone paid
>> directly for their time/effort by Wikimedia organisations  are eligible for
>> these recognitions.
>>
>> The Jury
>>
>> Jury constitution
>> The chapter has constituted a Jury with members from the Chapter
>> Executive committee, Wikimedia Foundation India office, Conference
>> organisers and Community and other key stakeholders.
>>
>> Jury composition
>>
>>1. Achal Prabhala
>>2. Arun Ramarathnam
>>3. Ashwin Baindur
>>

[Wikimediaindia-l] Indian Language wikipedia Statistics – 2011 September

[Shiju Alex]

Dear Wikimedians,

I have compiled the statistical report of Indian language wikipedias for
the month of 2011 September. It is available here:
http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-2011-september/


Shiju
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indian Language wikipedia Statistics – 2011 September

[Shiju Alex]

>
> If you can put this on some wiki page on wikipedia english or else on
> wikimedia India,  that will give some official status and
> authenticity.
>

In fact I was working on the wiki version. It is placed in meta wiki now.
Here is the link.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Statistics/2011_September

Thanks for reminding me about the wiki version

Regards
Shiju

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 4:11 PM, Sudhanwa Jogalekar
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> If you can put this on some wiki page on wikipedia english or else on
> wikimedia India,  that will give some official status and
> authenticity.
>
> Please consider the same alongwith keeping the article on your own blog.
>
> Regards
>
> -Sudhanwa
>
> On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 2:41 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:
> > Dear Wikimedians,
> > I have compiled the statistical report of Indian language wikipedias for
> the
> > month of 2011 September. It is available
> > here:
> http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-2011-september/
> >
> > Shiju
> >
> >
> > ___
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> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
>
> ~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~!
> web: www.sudhanwa.com  blog: www.sudhanwa.in
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Death and Post-mortem of Indian Education Program pilot

[Shiju Alex]

Another strategy that we can adopt while doing this program in India is,
about the selection of articles for editing. We can ask students to
contribute to articles that they are interested in, rather than of all of
them editing the articles on the same topic.

The reason I am telling this is, In India (in general) it is not the
students who are deciding the course (and career) that they want to
study/pursue. Parents, relatives, and community around them decide that. So
even though the student's interest may lie in a specific area, he might be
studying a different course.

Allowing students to edit in a topic that they like will bring in more
original content. But the issue with this methodology is, the role of
Professors might be reduced, and the role of CA and OA might be increased.
And I am not sure how the

But this methodology is adopted very successfully in Kerala using School
wiki . But we may say, that is school children and
they are not mature enough for wikipedia editing. Again that is our
misconception. In general, personally I am more interested to target school
students (high school and Plus 2) than college students. School children
are fantastic. It is true that most of us under estimate them. But to see
the successful result from India, see the young and wonderful wikipedians
we have in Malayalam wikipedia and wikisource.

*Note: *Please note that I am replying to this thread as a Malayalam wiki
community memeber.

Shiju







On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 12:07 AM, Swaroop Rao wrote:

> That's true Arjun, there is a lot of interest in this program in many
> colleges, and this is going untapped. No, its not dead for sure. It was a
> pilot, and it didn't come out pretty; no issues, that's how we learn. I
> think that one thing we learnt is that the US model may not work out well
> for India, so we need to develop an India specific model for this (That's
> what we've been trying to do in these previous mails actually I guess).
>
> Swaroop Rao
> (MikeLynch )
>
>
> Steering Committee member, United States Education Program
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 23:36, Arjun mangol wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> I refuse to believe it dead as of yet. There's yet a lot of avenues that
>> haven't been explored. My personal suggestion was that let IEP establish a
>> Wikipedia Club in every college in Pune to begin with, that would inculcate
>> new, interested members who have a genuine passion for the project. Such
>> clubs could meet every second Sunday, hold guest lecs, set a quota for a
>> certain no. of articles to be created by the Pune chapter and so on by the
>> members, teach its members better editing skills, and spread the knowledge.
>> The CA training prog that I attended was a hell lotta fun and I wish many
>> of my friends get the feel of it too.
>>
>> These clubs would be managed by all the 'veteran' CAs and newer ones if
>> needed as and when. IEP would be the umbrella organisation to it all, and
>> we can focus a lot more on quality of articles rather than the sheer no. of
>> editors and rampant copyvio-ing done as a consequence by the newbies. Give
>> it thought. My friends in many colleges throughout India were literally
>> jealous that I was a part of it. Let's not let it go unnoticed that there
>> is genuine interest spread in pockets throughout the country.
>>
>> - Arjun
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 11:18 PM, Arnav Sonara wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> hi,

 It was a pilot and hence I guess was meant to die at some point.

 First up, to the Campus Ambassadors, you guys showed a lot of courage
 in taking up and then following through on your commitment of being Campus
 Ambassadors through the length of this Pilot. I hope the team will also
 speak to the  Ambassadors whilst doing the post-mortem so future programs
 have the benefit of their "experience". The same also goes to the India
 Programs team that initiated this project.

>>>
>>> Thanks to all of you, yes this was a Pilot, but at no point I see it
>>> dying.  Its just that we have taken a pause right now to learn from the
>>> findings and ll come back all prepared and with the help of you all we ll
>>> try to gain new heights again.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Thanks
>>> Arnav (ricku).
>>> (User:Rangilo_Gujarati)
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> - Arjun
>>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] On the issue of the maps...

[Shiju Alex]

And there is an en wikipedia article also on this topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BJP_youth_wing_protest_against_Wikipedia%27s_map_of_India


Shiju


On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Gautam John wrote:

> ... there has been *much* coverage in the Indian media and many of the
> stories have comments too.
>
>
> http://news.google.co.in/news/story?q=wikipedia+india+maps&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dYiSYZZMUhLrt7MQ1nIuCccQPfsCM&hl=en&ei=vC7LTsvbDovtrQems_DbDA&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=6&ved=0CF8QqgIwBQ
>
> Even from Jimmy!
> http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-11-18/news/30415009_1_wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-maps
>
> And others: http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2640098.ece
>
>
> http://dailypioneer.com/nation/21404-bjym-men-protest-against-inaccurate-indian-map-on-wiki.html
>
> Thank you.
>
> Best,
>
> Gautam
> 
> http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Upload the presentations

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

All the presentations from the "*State of Wikimedia Communities of India*"
session are merged (including the below presentation by the English wiki
community of India) and the combined PDF is uploaded to Commons. It is
available here :
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_of_wikimedia_Communities_of_India_2011_November.pdf

As you all know this was the first get together of Wikimedia communities of
India. It is really nice to understand that we are able to bring together
more than 15 Indian wiki communities.

Following are the Indian Wiki communities communities participated in the
"State of Wikimedia Communities of India" session (Name of the presenter is
also given)

   1. Assamese - Swati Singh
   2. Bengali - Jayantha Nath
   3. English - Ashwin Baindur
   4. Gujarati - Dhaval Vyas
   5. Hindi - Shiju
   6. Kannada - Swaroop Rao
   7. Malayalam - Vishwaprabha
   8. Marathi - Mandar Kulkarni
   9. Nepali - Saroj Dhakal
   10. Odia - Subhashish
   11. Sanskrit - Swaroop Rao
   12. Tamil - Srikanth Lakshmanan
   13. Telugu - CB Rao
   14. Indian Language Wikipedias in Incubator - Kundan Amithab


Urdu, Punjabi, Nepal Bhasha, Pali, Sindhi, and  Bhojpuri language wiki
communities couldn't participate in the "State of Wikimedia Communities of
India" session either because community is not active, or a community
member didn't participated in WCI, or the community were unable to send a
presentation slides. But I am sure as we move forward situation will change.

Thank you all for contributing to this great show of Wikimedia Communities
of India.


Shiju



On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 12:04 AM, Ashwin Baindur
wrote:

> My presentation on the State of WikiProject India on English Wikipedia has
> been uploaded to Commons.
>
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:State_of_Indic_Wikipedia_presentations_2011
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Ashwin Baindur
> --
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 10:57 PM, Jayanta Nath wrote:
>
>> Done!
>>
>>
>> With Warm Regards,
>> *Jayanta Nath*
>> Calcutta,West Bengal
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Assamese

[Shiju Alex]

Dear Indic Wikimedia Community members,

As part of the Indic Languages initiative of India
Programs<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages>,
I have been having detailed discussions with a wide range of Indic language
wikipedians for the past few weeks.  These discussions have been to build
the understanding, provide insight, and explore opportunities to expand
Indic language projects.  The end result of these discussions is to help
identify language communities with whom we can collaboratively design
pilots to drive our projects.

These discussions have been conducted on IRC, one-on-one, group voice
conversations, as well as through email questionnaires.

Over the next few days, I am going to share a series of these with you.
 The intention is to give you a sense of the kind of perspectives that
exist within the overall Indic community, to share ideas and to generate
discussion on potential ideas. Please note that I have edited the
discussions to preserve confidentiality as well as to remove any
particularly personal comments that might have been shared.

Please do let me have your views on these discussions and do please join
the debate on the talk page or on this mailing list or offline to me.

For today, I am sharing the discussions with the *Assamese
community<http://as.wikipedia.org>
*.  The summary of this discussion is placed at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Assamese/Discussions/2011

Assamese wikipedia community is a tiny but vibrant community - that is
slowly building itself.  There is huge opportunity given that Assamese is
spoken by more than 1.3 crore people. As we all know, there was not much
progress in Assamese wiki community till recently. But now the situation is
slowly changing after the arrival of few dedicated users.  And in this
early stage, Assamese community show very promising potential. I remember
discussing the importance of preparing a small FAQ in AS Wiki to help the
new users. In no time few community members prepared a good FAQ
page<http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%A4%E0%A6%A4%E0%A7%87_%E0%A6%89%E0%A6%A6%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%A4_%E0%A6%B9%E0%A7%8B%E0%A7%B1%E0%A6%BE_%E0%A6%AA%E0%A7%8D%E0%A7%B0%E0%A6%B6%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%A8%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%AE%E0%A7%82%E0%A6%B9>for
the Assamese wiki. I am sure with the arrival of such dedicated users
Assamese wiki is going to make good progress.

Inviting your  active participation in these discussions (either on talk
page or in this mailing list).

Warm Regards,

Shiju Alex
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Assamese

[Shiju Alex]

>
>  I am personal eager to work with this community because our are using
> same script (Bengali).



yes, please help Assamese wikipedians. They need support in various forms
(technical, community development, and other stuff)  since a small
community started forming there. I feel the immediate support that Begali
community can extend to Assamese community is in the form of supporting
them to prepare an FAQ booklet for Assamese wiki projects, which they can
use in their outreach activities. Also we need to introduce them with the
larger Indian wiki community (india mailing list, other Indic
wikipedians,...).

We are waiting for help each other between Bengali/Assamese/Manipuri
> community and Foundation/Chapter to future expansion our native language in
> Wikipedia.


Yes, languages that use same or similar script can collaborate and adapt
many things especially in the technical front.



Shiju




On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 6:10 PM, Jayanta Nath  wrote:

> Hi Shiju,
>
> Thank you for this initiative about Assamese Wikipedia. I
> am personal eager to work with this community because our are using
> same script (Bengali).  As you know that my future plan is not only in
> Kolkata, I want to expand Wikimedia movement to rural Bengal (India), where
> most of the native speakers live.
>
> We are waiting for help each other between Bengali/Assamese/Manipuri
> community and Foundation/Chapter to future expansion our native language in
> Wikipedia.
>
> --
> With Warm Regards,
> *Jayanta Nath*
> Calcutta,West Bengal
>
> Wikipedia :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jayantanth
> _
>
> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
> wikimedia-in...@lists.wikimedia.org 
> wikipedia...@lists.wikimedia.org
>  
>
>
>
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Hindi

[Shiju Alex]

Dear Indic Language Wikimedia Community members,

As part of the Indic Languages initiative of India
Programs<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages>,
I have been having detailed discussions with a wide range of Indic language
wikipedians for the past few weeks.  Yesterday I shared the summary of
discussions with few Assamese Wikipedians which helped us to understand the
current situation of  Assamese wikipedia.  Thank you for the discussions
and ideas that emerged on the mailing list and the talk page.

Today I'm particularly excited to share a summary of the discussions I've
been been having with *Hindi wikipedians*. It is available here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011

I will be honest and confess that I was not sure about the level of
engagement I would have with Hindi wikipedians because the community is
relatively quiet in public forums.  I'm really pleased to report that I was
very pleasantly surprised by the broad-based, insightful, and constructive
communications.  Hindi community might be silent but they are active and
full of powerful ideas. We have seen wonderful Hindi wikipedians like
Anirudh in WCI. Even though the current community strength of Hindi
wikipedia might not be good cosidering the huge speaker base of Hindi, I am
sure the situation will change soon.


Even if you are not involved in Hindi projects, I invite you to read this
report because the points raised are applicable to all Indic languages.
 Personally, as someone who has been passionate about Indic languages for
many years now, I found the discussions very educative and informative and
thought-provoking.  I have learnt a lot from these discussions and I hope
you find them as useful as I have.  I want to thank Hindi community for
their time and their fantastic inputs.

Remember most of the issues the Hindi editors raised are applicable not
only to Hindi but for all the Indic languages. So it is important that
other Indic language communities take lessons from it while building the
community.

As mentioned before, I've edited the discussions to protect confidentiality
as well as to remove any specific personal comments.

Inviting your  active participation in these discussions (either on talk
page or in the mailing lists).

Warm Regards,

Shiju Alex
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Sanskrit

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

As mentioned in the last two mails, as part of the Indic Languages
initiatives of India
Programs<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages>,
I have been having detailed discussions with a wide range of Indic language
wikipedians for the past few weeks.  I already shared the summary of the
discussions I had with with the
Assamese<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Assamese/Discussions/2011>and
Hindi<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011>wikimedians.

Today I'm sharing a summary of the discussions I had with the Sanskrit
wikipedians. It is available here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Sanskrit/Discussions/2011

I must say the progress made by Sanskrit wiki projects in the past 2 years
is marvelous, especially considering the fact that its speaker base is too
low (compared to the rest of the 20 indic languages having wikipedia). The
amount of activism is  Sanskrit wikisource is also very high. I am sure
Sanskrit wiki community is the one wiki community that is going
to utilize all the sister projects at its fullest.

Sanskrit wiki workshops are happening all over the country. Today I
attended a Sanskrit wiki workshop in a Sanskrit institution at New Dellhi.
In Delhi itself Sanskrit wikipedians are planning many other Sanskrit wiki
activities. With so many volunteers involved in the projects I am sure
Sanskrit is going to make good progress.

Inviting your comments on the talk page.

Regards,
Shiju Alex
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikisa-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Sanskrit

[Shiju Alex]

This is another notable thing that needs to mention about Sanskrit Wiki
community. During the past 2 months lot of
progress<http://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=500&days=60&translations=only&trailer=%2Fsa>is
made in the translation of system messages in Translate wiki. I am
sure
community will soon take up the Wikisource related translations also.

Now sa-wiki community is keen on enabling Proof read extension, Deja vu and
other wikisource related extensions on Wikisource. One issue that we face
is, most of the Indic wikipedians have not worked much on this. (ml
wikipedians done few of those wikisource stuff with your (John Vandenberg
)support). Of course community require the support
from experienced wikimedians l since not much progress is made in the
sister language wiki projects in most of the Indian languages.

Shiju



On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 10:20 AM, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> Sanskrit Wikisource needs translators.
>
> There are about 60 messages which are needed before Wikisource can
> start doing quality work
>
>
> https://sa.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%A6%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%8D#Changes_needed_in_wikisource
>
> On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 4:59 AM, Shiju Alex  wrote:
> > Dear All,
> > As mentioned in the last two mails, as part of the Indic Languages
> > initiatives of India Programs, I have been having detailed discussions
> with
> > a wide range of Indic language wikipedians for the past few weeks.  I
> > already shared the summary of the discussions I had with with
> the Assamese
> > and Hindi wikimedians.
> > Today I'm sharing a summary of the discussions I had with the Sanskrit
> > wikipedians. It is available here:
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Sanskrit/Discussions/2011
> > I must say the progress made by Sanskrit wiki projects in the past 2
> years
> > is marvelous, especially considering the fact that its speaker base is
> too
> > low (compared to the rest of the 20 indic languages having wikipedia).
> The
> > amount of activism is  Sanskrit wikisource is also very high. I am sure
> > Sanskrit wiki community is the one wiki community that is going
> > to utilize all the sister projects at its fullest.
> > Sanskrit wiki workshops are happening all over the country. Today I
> attended
> > a Sanskrit wiki workshop in a Sanskrit institution at New Dellhi. In
> Delhi
> > itself Sanskrit wikipedians are planning many other Sanskrit wiki
> > activities. With so many volunteers involved in the projects I am sure
> > Sanskrit is going to make good progress.
> > Inviting your comments on the talk page.
> > Regards,
> > Shiju Alex
> > ___
> > Wikisa-l mailing list
> > wikis...@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisa-l
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Hindi

[Shiju Alex]

Some of the important points from the discussions with Hindi wikipedians
are captured by
Hisham<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011>.
Thought of sharing that here also.

*Motivators for joining Indic Language Projects*

   - Awareness mostly through search engines not through outreach or media
   - It's not been about parochial (sic) notions about preserving culture
   or a language or lofty ambitions about knowledge access; but about core
   Wikipedia basics of building a knowledge repository
   - Wanting to stay away from antagonistic, aggressive en-wp edit
   environment
   - Helping the Indic language project - as the number of volunteers were
   low (especially when compared to en-wp which has higher numbers of
   volunteers)

*Community*

   - Very low community meet up attendance
   - Not finding meet-ups as they are currently run useful as the
   discussions are not engaging or relevant
   - Collaboration is weak (especially on articles) - and more about process

*Activities*

   - Doing a lot of clean up after damage done by bots
   - Categorisation, copyvio clean ups
   - Perform a different role on Indic projects (a lot of support work
   instead of article content) as compared to their roles in en-wp (where they
   edit articles on subjects of interest)

*Barriers*

   - Technical issues are not *such* a major challenge; though awareness
   that technical solutions exist is low.
   - Basic awareness of projects
   - Lack of reliable sources online

*Suggestions*

   - Media coverage on Indic language media vehicles (e.g., local language
   newspapers, etc.) to build basic awareness of the very existence of Indic
   language projects as well as invitation to edit
   - Tie-ups with education system of various kinds (colleges, teachers,
   state government bodies, etc.)



Shiju



On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:

> Dear Indic Language Wikimedia Community members,
>
> As part of the Indic Languages initiative of India 
> Programs<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages>,
> I have been having detailed discussions with a wide range of Indic language
> wikipedians for the past few weeks.  Yesterday I shared the summary of
> discussions with few Assamese Wikipedians which helped us to understand the
> current situation of  Assamese wikipedia.  Thank you for the discussions
> and ideas that emerged on the mailing list and the talk page.
>
> Today I'm particularly excited to share a summary of the discussions I've
> been been having with *Hindi wikipedians*. It is available here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011
>
> I will be honest and confess that I was not sure about the level of
> engagement I would have with Hindi wikipedians because the community is
> relatively quiet in public forums.  I'm really pleased to report that I was
> very pleasantly surprised by the broad-based, insightful, and constructive
> communications.  Hindi community might be silent but they are active and
> full of powerful ideas. We have seen wonderful Hindi wikipedians like
> Anirudh in WCI. Even though the current community strength of Hindi
> wikipedia might not be good cosidering the huge speaker base of Hindi, I am
> sure the situation will change soon.
>
>
> Even if you are not involved in Hindi projects, I invite you to read this
> report because the points raised are applicable to all Indic languages.
>  Personally, as someone who has been passionate about Indic languages for
> many years now, I found the discussions very educative and informative and
> thought-provoking.  I have learnt a lot from these discussions and I hope
> you find them as useful as I have.  I want to thank Hindi community for
> their time and their fantastic inputs.
>
> Remember most of the issues the Hindi editors raised are applicable not
> only to Hindi but for all the Indic languages. So it is important that
> other Indic language communities take lessons from it while building the
> community.
>
> As mentioned before, I've edited the discussions to protect
> confidentiality as well as to remove any specific personal comments.
>
> Inviting your  active participation in these discussions (either on talk
> page or in the mailing lists).
>
> Warm Regards,
>
> Shiju Alex
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Tamil

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

As part of the India Programs of
WMFI
am having discussions with wikipedians across various Indic languages.
 I
already shared the summary of the discussions I had with the
Assamese
, 
Hindi,
and 
Sanskrit
wikimedians.
Thanks for continuning discussions on that in meta and mailing lists.

Today I'm sharing a summary of the discussions I had with the *Tamil
wikipedians*. It is available here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Tamil/Discussions/2011

 As you all know, Tamil Wiki community is one of the most active Indic
language wiki community. It has more than 80 active users and the
 interaction between community members is very promising. Tamil wikipedians
are eager to collaborate with other Indic language wikipeans also. Since
the community is very vibrant, we already saw many innovative wiki projects
coming out of the community. The most recent one is, photo
contest
.

On the discussion
page,
you can see community members are sharing their best practices, need for
online outreach, need of getting state government support, their vision
about wiki projects in Tamil and in other Indic languages, organic growth
of wikipedia articles, and so on. While insisting on organic growth of
wikipedia articles, community is also open to new ideas. In the past we
have seen how successfully Tamil community handled (in fact controlled) the
google translation project while the same project badly affected few other
Indic wikis.

There is no wonder that the responses were also very encouraging from this
vibrant community. Ideas are flowing. :) I welcome you to go through the
responses and discuss the topic on the talk
page
.


Shiju




Regards,
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikihi-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wikipedias - Hindi

[Shiju Alex]

>
>  Unfortunately this has not been going on recently
> however in the past there were several articles where more than 3 people
> would contribute constantly to bring it to a featured article
> level.Hope we can see the same days again.


Hope those days will be back soon. Strengthening the community by bringing
back old experienced editors and retaining existing editors are the key.
For that focus need to be shifted to that direction.

I remember in 2010
January<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/indian-language-wikipedias-statistical-report-2010-march/>Hindi
wiki was having approximately 50,000 articles and 50 active users.
Now 2 years down the line, we have more than 1 lakh
articles<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-2011-september/>,
but the number of active users is still 50. Considering the huge speaker
base of Hindi, it should have at least 1000 active users now.

As we can see from the responses of the editors, most of them are not happy
with the results of google translation project or bot created articles. As
one editor said"

I think that the articles translated using machine translation tools should
go under a rigorous review for style, quality and flow before being made
'live'. A number of articles have been created on Hindi Wikipedia with
Google translation, but these serve no purpose. The style and the flow (and
the English text in untranslated templates, references section etc.) render
them of little interest to a native Hindi reader, and the unfixed errors
render them useless to Google (whose interest is most probably lies in
improving its algorithms and training its bots with good Hindi-language
content). When other editors look at such an article, most of them think
"Well, this article already has all the necessary content. There is no need
for me to edit this." I think a thousand short, unreferenced and
well-formatted articles are better than a million long, translated articles
translated from English Wikipedia.


Now it is duty of the community to address these concerns. As another
editor said "I feel presenting a project as a high-quality project is
important for attracting more contributors to it".


The latest statistics also shows that readership for Hindi
wikipedia<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-2011-september/>is
shooting up. It is showing exponential growth for the past few month.
So
there is no lack of visibility or awareness for Hindi wikipedia. We should
be able to convert at least a small percentage of our readers to editor.

According to me, the key solution to address all the current issues is
building the community.

Shiju



On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Gunjan Verma wrote:

> Thanks Shiju for compiling all this information. I have read through all
> the replies from diffrent editors. Some editors have mentioned that there
> is no "edit-war" and multiple edit for a single article or collabaration
> for a single article. Unfortunately this has not been going on recently
> however in the past there were several articles where more than 3 people
> would contribute constantly to bring it to a featured article level. Of
> course there were edit-wars and that too in good sense. Some examples are
>
> 1.
>
> http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%80
> 2. http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%AC%E0%A4%B0
> 3.
>
> http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%AB%E0%A4%BC%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE
>
> Hope we can see the same days again.
>
> Regards,
> Gunjan
>
> On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>
> > Dear Indic Language Wikimedia Community members,
> >
> > As part of the Indic Languages initiative of India
> > Programs<
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages
> > >,
> > I have been having detailed discussions with a wide range of Indic
> language
> > wikipedians for the past few weeks.  Yesterday I shared the summary of
> > discussions with few Assamese Wikipedians which helped us to understand
> the
> > current situation of  Assamese wikipedia.  Thank you for the discussions
> > and ideas that emerged on the mailing list and the talk page.
> >
> > Today I'm particularly excited to share a summary of the discussions I've
> > been been having with *Hindi wikipedians*. It is available here:
> >
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011
> >
> > I will be honest and confess that I was not sure about the level of
> > engagement I would have with Hindi wikipedians be

[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Telugu

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

As part of the India Programs of
WMF
I
am having discussions with wikipedians across various Indic languages.  I
already shared the summary of the discussions I had with the
Assamese
, 
Hindi,
Sanskrit
and
Tamilwikimedians.
Thank you all for continuing the discussions in meta wiki and
in mailing lists.

Today I am sharing the summary of the discussions I had with Telugu wiki
community members. It is available here.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Telugu/Discussions/2011

Among Indian language wikipedias, Telugu wikipedia is the first Indian
language wikipedia that caught the attention of other Indic language
wikipedians in 2006 itself.  I remember reading about Telugu Wikipedia and
the activities of Telugu wikipedians in many online forums during
2006-2007. Following are some of the blogposts published that time.


   -
   
http://telugutanam.blogspot.com/2006/09/telugu-wikipedia-crosses-1.html(News
about Telugu wikipedia crossing 10,000 articles - 2006 September)
   -
   
http://crossroads.veeven.com/2007/06/26/telugu-wikipedia-reaches-3-articles/(News
about Telugu wikipedia crossing 30,000 articles - 2007 June)
   -
   
http://crossroads.veeven.com/2007/09/10/3000-members-in-telugu-wikipedia/(News
about Telugu Wikipedia having 3000 registered users - 2007 September)

In technical front also Telugu wikipedia was showing the way for other
Indic language wikipedias. Telugu wikipedia is one of the first Indic
language wikipedia to integrate a typing solution into wikipedia. Even
though much activism happened during 2006-2008, the community was not able
to keep that tempo and increase the community size.

Also among Indian language wiki communities, the concept of *Community
Newsletter * came out
first from the Telugu wiki community. Community already published 5 or 6
editions of Telugu wiki Newsletter. Remember still no other Indic language
wiki community has a community newsletter.

Soon Telugu wikipedia will cross 50,000 articles, the third Indic language
wikipedia to cross that milestone. l  Hope Telugu wikipedians will make use
of that opportunity to add more members to its community. Telugu wikipedia
has roughly 30 active editors now.


Regards
Shiju
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Odia (Oriya)

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

Today I am sharing you the summary of discussions I had with Odia wiki (
http://or.wikipedia.org/) community. It is available here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011

Odia is a shining example of how a wiki project can be revived and build a
community around it, if few wonderful users with a vision for building free
knowledge in their mother language arrive in their mother language wiki.

Odia wikipedia was started in 2002. In fact it is one of the first Indic
language wikipedia. Nothing much had happened in Odia wiki till 2010
December. But the progress made by Odia wiki project (
http://or.wikipedia.org/) during the past one year is note worthy and it is
an example that can be replicated in some of the inactive Indic language
wikipedias. Odia was having just 600 articles (which were created over the
past 8 years) and no active users at the start of this year. Now 10 months
later, it has close to 1600 articles and 10 active users. The online and
offline outreach initiatives took by Odia wiki community for building the
community is showing positive result.

I was actively involved in the community building for Odia wikipedia. I
still remember the day (2011 January 15) when I introducted Odia wikipedia
and Odia tying tool (developed by Junaid) to an Odia speaker (Ashuthosh
Kar) during Wiki X celebration at Bangalore. Through him very soon we got a
wonderful wikipedian (Subhashish) who is leading the efforts for Odia wiki
now. Initially Subhasish and I used to meet at my home and work on the
basic things for Odia wiki. I remember us working on the Odia wikipedia
logo, FAQ booklet, Translate wiki, and so on. Soon Odia got more members to
the team through the few Odia wiki workshops happened at Bangalore. Along
with workshops, Odia wikipedians translated the FAQ booklet to Odia and
took efforts to integrate the Odia typing solution to Odia wikipedia. Later
with the support of Dhanada Mishra (the chairman of Human Development
Foundation (http://www.hdf.org.in/)) and a young student Odia wikipedian
Srikanth Kedia a wiki workshop is conducted at Bhubaneshwar. Odia
wikipedians from Bangalore are doing an excellent job and now many of them
are participating in Wikimedia India chapter activities also.

Odia wiki community is effectively making use of various social networking
sites to reach out to Odia speakers.

Odia wiki project picked up not because Odia has got huge speaker base,
high literacy among Odia speakers, access to computers, or any thing else;
it become active only because it has receieved the right volunteers who
have passion and vision of developing a wikipedia in their mother language.
We need similar volunteers for each Indic language wikipedia.


Requesting you to place your comments on the talk
page
.


Regards
Shiju
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikipedia-OR] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Odia (Oriya)

[Shiju Alex]

>
> would you like to keep the same content in OR WP as well, so new users who
> are not familiar with meta also can read them?


Of course. Please feel free to reuse the content and share it with all who
are not familiar with meta.

And we all are looking forward to having one more session with you, based
> on my learning I want to share few things on which we will work forward.


Sure. We shall schedule another meeting.




On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 12:12 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi <
psubhash...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks a lot Shiju for the summary, would you like to keep the same
> content in OR WP as well, so new users who are not familiar with meta also
> can read them?
>
> And we all are looking forward to having one more session with you, based
> on my learning I want to share few things on which we will work forward. I
> think new year is approaching and it's time to set a milestone for 2000
> article by new year!
>
> Cheers
> Subha
>
> On 29 November 2011 11:54, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> Today I am sharing you the summary of discussions I had with Odia wiki (
>> http://or.wikipedia.org/) community. It is available here:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011
>>
>> Odia is a shining example of how a wiki project can be revived and build
>> a community around it, if few wonderful users with a vision for building
>> free knowledge in their mother language arrive in their mother language
>> wiki.
>>
>> Odia wikipedia was started in 2002. In fact it is one of the first Indic
>> language wikipedia. Nothing much had happened in Odia wiki till 2010
>> December. But the progress made by Odia wiki project (
>> http://or.wikipedia.org/) during the past one year is note worthy and it
>> is an example that can be replicated in some of the inactive Indic language
>> wikipedias. Odia was having just 600 articles (which were created over the
>> past 8 years) and no active users at the start of this year. Now 10 months
>> later, it has close to 1600 articles and 10 active users. The online and
>> offline outreach initiatives took by Odia wiki community for building the
>> community is showing positive result.
>>
>> I was actively involved in the community building for Odia wikipedia. I
>> still remember the day (2011 January 15) when I introducted Odia wikipedia
>> and Odia tying tool (developed by Junaid) to an Odia speaker (Ashuthosh
>> Kar) during Wiki X celebration at Bangalore. Through him very soon we got a
>> wonderful wikipedian (Subhashish) who is leading the efforts for Odia wiki
>> now. Initially Subhasish and I used to meet at my home and work on the
>> basic things for Odia wiki. I remember us working on the Odia wikipedia
>> logo, FAQ booklet, Translate wiki, and so on. Soon Odia got more members to
>> the team through the few Odia wiki workshops happened at Bangalore. Along
>> with workshops, Odia wikipedians translated the FAQ booklet to Odia and
>> took efforts to integrate the Odia typing solution to Odia wikipedia. Later
>> with the support of Dhanada Mishra (the chairman of Human Development
>> Foundation (http://www.hdf.org.in/)) and a young student Odia wikipedian
>> Srikanth Kedia a wiki workshop is conducted at Bhubaneshwar. Odia
>> wikipedians from Bangalore are doing an excellent job and now many of them
>> are participating in Wikimedia India chapter activities also.
>>
>> Odia wiki community is effectively making use of various social
>> networking sites to reach out to Odia speakers.
>>
>> Odia wiki project picked up not because Odia has got huge speaker base,
>> high literacy among Odia speakers, access to computers, or any thing else;
>> it become active only because it has receieved the right volunteers who
>> have passion and vision of developing a wikipedia in their mother language.
>> We need similar volunteers for each Indic language wikipedia.
>>
>>
>> Requesting you to place your comments on the talk 
>> page<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011>
>> .
>>
>>
>> Regards
>> Shiju
>>
>>
>> ___
>> Wikipedia-OR mailing list
>> wikipedia...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-or
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> *
>   ସୁ ଭା ସି ସ ପା ଣି ଗା ହି
> **
> S u b h a s i s a P a n i g a h i
> **
>ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ
> ___
> Wikipedia Odia (Oriy

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [[Brian Horrocks]] not an Indian FA

[Shiju Alex]

I think what Srikanth meant is, creating a separate mailing list for
English wikipedians from India to discuss their topics of interest. I too
think that is a good idea.

Shiju


On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 9:42 PM, Ashwin Baindur wrote:

> Is that what you mean, Srikanth?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_India/Recognized_content
>
> I was also not aware till Pranav dhowed me the link today.
>
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Ashwin Baindur
> --
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ashwin,
>> I think the Indian English community needs a list of it's own.
>> Re,
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 6:12 PM, Ashwin Baindur > > wrote:
>>
>>> I found TinuCherianBot had mistakenly made Brian Horrocks, a British
>>> Army general unconnected with India except for his birth, as part of
>>> WikiProject India, a false positive. Sorry guys, he has nothing to do with
>>> us. We are now down another FA.
>>>
>>> Warm regards,
>>>
>>> Ashwin Baindur
>>> --
>>>
>>> ___
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
>> Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
>>
>>
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>>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Supporting the languages of India

[Shiju Alex]

Ravi shankar said:

> If your ambition is to teach the mother tongues for the convent educated
> minority English speaking Indians through a Wiki project and then make them
> contribute in Indic language Wikipedias, it may never happen. I am not even
> sure if it fits inside Wikipedia's mission.
>


Yes. that is true.  I do not forsee such a thing happening for Indic wikis.
:)


Is Gerard is trying to convey the idea of *Mother Language illiteracy?
*Remember
by illiteracy of a language, we mean the inability *to read or
write*(rather than speaking) that specific language. I must say Mother
Language
illiteracy is rising in Indian cities and in some states (for example,
Kerala).

In fact if you go through the discussions that I am sharing with you (about
different language wiki communities), many Indic language wikipedians are
also raising the same concern.



Shiju









On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> The one thing I have come to understand is that many native speakers of
>> Indic languages are effectively illiterate in their own language. The
>> combination of highly educated people being functionally illiterate had me
>> talking with many people. Given the structure of the Indic scripts, it is
>> possible for me to learn to read the text; it will get me as far as
>> pronouncing something I do not know the meaning of. For native speakers it
>> must be not that hard at all when they surmounted the challenge of learning
>> to read and write English already.
>>
>
> Dear Gerard,
>
> I am intrigued by this, yet struggling to understand what you mean here.
>
> Do you mean that many educated people can speak their own language, but
> not read or write it? (because they communicate in English instead). If so,
> that is probably true - but is that what you mean?
>
> For example, my mother tongue is Bengali - I speak it much more than I
> read or write it (even though I can read and write in Bengali), since I
> usually read and write in English. However, there are many people in India
> who have the opposite experience eg who not just speak, but also read and
> write in indic languages.
>
> Cheers
> Bishakha
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Supporting the languages of India

[Shiju Alex]

Sharing a news also (related to Mother language illiteracy).

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2008011357590300.htm&date=2008/01/13/&prd=th&;


Shiju




On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 6:56 PM, Shiju Alex wrote:

> Ravi shankar said:
>
>> If your ambition is to teach the mother tongues for the convent educated
>> minority English speaking Indians through a Wiki project and then make them
>> contribute in Indic language Wikipedias, it may never happen. I am not even
>> sure if it fits inside Wikipedia's mission.
>>
>
>
> Yes. that is true.  I do not forsee such a thing happening for Indic
> wikis. :)
>
>
> Is Gerard is trying to convey the idea of *Mother Language illiteracy? 
> *Remember
> by illiteracy of a language, we mean the inability *to read or write*(rather 
> than speaking) that specific language. I must say Mother Language
> illiteracy is rising in Indian cities and in some states (for example,
> Kerala).
>
> In fact if you go through the discussions that I am sharing with you
> (about different language wiki communities), many Indic language
> wikipedians are also raising the same concern.
>
>
>
> Shiju
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Bishakha Datta 
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Gerard Meijssen <
>> gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> The one thing I have come to understand is that many native speakers of
>>> Indic languages are effectively illiterate in their own language. The
>>> combination of highly educated people being functionally illiterate had me
>>> talking with many people. Given the structure of the Indic scripts, it is
>>> possible for me to learn to read the text; it will get me as far as
>>> pronouncing something I do not know the meaning of. For native speakers it
>>> must be not that hard at all when they surmounted the challenge of learning
>>> to read and write English already.
>>>
>>
>> Dear Gerard,
>>
>> I am intrigued by this, yet struggling to understand what you mean here.
>>
>> Do you mean that many educated people can speak their own language, but
>> not read or write it? (because they communicate in English instead). If so,
>> that is probably true - but is that what you mean?
>>
>> For example, my mother tongue is Bengali - I speak it much more than I
>> read or write it (even though I can read and write in Bengali), since I
>> usually read and write in English. However, there are many people in India
>> who have the opposite experience eg who not just speak, but also read and
>> write in indic languages.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Bishakha
>>
>>
>> ___
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>> Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>>
>>
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Nepali

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

Today I am sharing the experience of the Nepali Wiki community.

As part of my discussion with Indic language Wikipedians I spoke with
Nepali wikipedians also (Rajesh pandey, Bhawani Gautham, and Saroj Dhakal).
You know all of them since they are active in India list also. Please read
their experiences with the Nepali Wiki projects here.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Nepali/Discussions/2011


Nepali with more than 16 million speakers world wide, has more than 3
million speakers in India. Nepali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of
india. The speakers of Nepali are distributed across India, even though a
more concentration of speakers of Nepali language is in North Eastern
India.

>From the English Wikipedia article about Nepali  language:

In India, there are a large number of Nepali-speaking people. There are an
estimated 500,000 Nepali speakers in Sikkim (where Nepali is the official
state language.) In Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri districts of West Bengal,
there are about 1,400,000 Nepali speakers. In North-East India (states of
Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal
Pradesh), there are several million Nepali speakers. A considerable number
of Nepali-speaking people are also present in many Indian cities such as
Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Visakhapatnam, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad.


At the recently concluded WikiConference a Nepali Wikipedian, Saroj Dhakal,
gave us a wonderful overview of Nepali Wikiprojects. I just noticed that
most of the active contributors of Nepali wikipedia are staying in India.

Kindly read the experience of Nepali Wikipedians at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Nepali/Discussions/2011


Inviting your comments on the talk page.

Shiju
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] FW: [Wikipedia-l] Creation of new language - Ahirani

[Shiju Alex]

Ahrinai is one of the languages of Khandeshi languages
group.


I assume Ahirani language is eligible for a test wiki in Wikimedia
incubator.
It has valid ISO code also. May be Gerard or some one else from LC can
provide more details.

Please follow the instructions documented by Kundan in the last few slides
of this 
PDFto
create a test wiki in Wikimedia incubator.

Shiju



On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Jayanta Nath  wrote:

> Oh!  779,000 (1997) speakers !
>
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ahr
> http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=ahr
> --
> With Warm Regards,
> *Jayanta Nath*
> Calcutta,West Bengal
>
>
>
>
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Kannada

[Shiju Alex]

 Dear All,


As part of my discussion with Indic language Wikipedians I spoke with few
Kannada wikipedians. I have summarized the discussion in meta wiki. It is
here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Kannada/Discussions/2011


Kannada with more than 4 crore speakers and is one of the 22 scheduled
languages of india. Kannada is primarily spoken in the Indian state
Karnataka.

Kannada Wikipedia has a very interesting heritage.  This is the community
that started Wiki outreach programs in India.  In fact, the first Indic
wiki workshop that I am aware of was organized by HPN way back in 2004! A lot
of interesting things happened for a while and there was a time when Kannda
has a vibrant 40+ strong community.

However, off late, things appear to have slowed down and the number of
active editors is on a relative decline.  Having said that, the seeds have
already been sown in this community and I am confident that with a little
nurturing, we can see activism in Kannada wikipedia coming back. I am
basing my optimism on Kananda Wiktionary -where the community has taken it
to the 2nd largest wiktionary in the country.  There is much activism
happening around kannada wiktionary. In Kannada wikipedia I got opportunity
to interact with high prolific editors like User:Radhatanaya who is
silently doing wonderful job.

Kannada wikipedia has more than 11,000 articles now and kannada wiktionary
has whopping 1,50,000 entries (making it the second biggest Wiktionary
among Indic language wiktionaries).

Kindly read the experience of Kannada Wikimedians at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Kannada/Discussions/2011



Regards
Shiju
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [OT] Government will now prefer ‘hinglish’ words over Hindi translation

[Shiju Alex]

In fact this is very much on-topic. A discussion regarding this topic is
going on in Hindi
wikipediaalso.

Shiju


On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 6:06 PM, sankarshan wrote:

> 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
> 
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Malayalam

[Shiju Alex]

 Dear All,

As part of my discussions with Indic language Wikipedians I spoke with few
Malayalam wikimedians also. Malayalam wikimedians spoke about their editing
experiences, their vision about ml wiki projects, and other related topics.
I have summarized the discussions in meta wiki.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Malayalam/Discussions/2011

Malayalam with more than 3.5 crore speakers is one of the 22 scheduled
languages of India. Malayalam is primarily spoken in the Indian state of
Kerala. There are some very interesting features of Kerala, from a
Wikimedia perspective.  It has amongst the highest rates of literacy in the
country.  It also has a (relatively) high Internet reach.  Unlike most
states, there is (relatively) lower urban rural divide in Kerala.  In fact,
the term "rurban" is sometimes used to refer to the state.

I have been personally associated with Malayalam Wikipedia for the past 5
years and it has been a labour of love for me.  Along the way, I have seen
this community growing from just 3 active editors to more than 90 active
editors now.

There are 2 particularly compelling chapters in the Malayalam Wikimedia
story.  The first is the huge importance and concerted efforts made for the
community development.  Personally, I think community development is the
single most important aspect for the growth of Indic wikimedia projects and
it is inspiring to see how this community has adopted it. Another really
noteworthy feature is the efforts made to retain existing editors.
 Malayalam Wikimedia has done this very successfully by starting
interesting Wikiprojects on specific subject areas.

Personally I had associated with lot of ml wiki outreach activities. When I
looked at the statistics recently, I found community had conducted more
than 20 wiki workshops across 14 districts of Kerala.  Then offline CD
release, photo events, numerous non-offfical wiki workshops that are
happening as part of blog meetings, introducing ml wiki projects during the
meeting of various social organizations, there are so many things happening
around. The involvement of government organizations and social
organizations is another noteworthy thing.

The activism in sister projects (Wikisource, wiktionary, and Wikiquotes) is
also noteworthy. I have seen sister projects (especially wikisource)
getting more attention than wikipedia and school students are involved in
adding content to wikisource.


Malayalam wikimedians have achieved a lot and there are lessons for the
other indic language communities from what the community had done.
 However, there is so so much that still needs to be done to build the
community, improve the quality and size of articles, and increase the reach
of ml wiki projects.

Kindly read the experience of Malayalam Wikimedians at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Malayalam/Discussions/2011


Regards

Shiju
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Marathi

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

As part of my discussions with Indic language Wikipedians I spoke with few
Marathi wikimedians (Abhay, Mahitgar, and Mandar) also. All of them are
highly experinced wikimedians. They their editing experiences, their vision
about ml wiki projects, and other related topics. I have summarized the
discussions in meta wiki.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Marathi/Discussions/2011


For the past few years I got the opportunity to interact and with
highly experienced wikimedians of Marathi wikipedia like Abhay, Mahitgar,
and Sankalp. The ideas they had shared about Indic wikis had defintely
helped when Indic wikipedians came together for some of the common
projects.

The focus that Marathi wikipedians given to mediawiki translation at
Translate wiki had inspired many other Indic language wikipedians. Many of
them contributed to the interface translation of Hindi and Sanskrit wikis
also.

Right now Marathi wikipedia has close to 35,000 articles, and about 40
active editors.

During and beyond WikiConference, it has been really inspiring to see the
increase in the activity levels across many communities in the country.  In
particular, Marathi community have been exploring opportunities and
formulating plans to drive community growth and project quality.
 WikiConference gave a big boost to the Marathi community because of the
increased profile of the projects, especially the press.  To illustrate,
between September and October 2011, the number of active editors increased
from 31 to 40.  It will be really important to keep us this momentum and to
translate this into sustained community building for a small but vibrant
community.

Community is working very hard to make Wikisource a reality for Marathi.
Hope that will happen soon.

I am personally very optimistic that Marathi is at an inflection point -
and this the right time to make concerted efforts at community building to
realize this opportunity.

Kindly read the experience of Marathi Wikimedians at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Marathi/Discussions/2011

Regards

Shiju
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Gujarati

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

As part of my discussions with Indic language Wikipedians I spoke with
Dhaval Vyas from Gujarati wikipedia. Dhaval has shared his editing
experiences, his vision about Gujarati wiki projects, and other related
topics. I have summarized the discussion in meta wiki. It is available
here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Gujarati/Discussions/2011


Gujarati wikipedia has more than 21,000 articles now. Gujarati wiki
community is slowly making its presence among Indic wiki communities. Though
the current community strength is small (15 active users), veteran users
like Dhaval have started conducting various outreach programs to spread the
message about Gujarati wiki among Gujarati speakers. Community is working
on to enable Narayam in Gujarati wikipedia and soon community will have
their own mailing list also.  Hope all these efforts will bring in more
active users to Gujarati wikipedia.


Kindly read the experience of Dhaval at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Gujarati/Discussions/2011

Regards
Shiju
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Mailing list for Gujarati wikipedia is created

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

A mailing list is created to facilitate the discussions about Gujarati wiki
projects. The URL is
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-gu

Kindly subscribe if you are interested in Gujarati wiki projects.

Shiju Alex
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Indian Language wikipedia Statistics – 2011 October

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

I am sharing the statistical report of Indian language wiki projects for
the month of 2011 October.  It is available here.
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-october-2011/


Some interesting facts that I discovered this month are:

   - Nearly *4.3 crore* readers are there for all Indic language
   wikipedias!  This number is huge and increased by nearly 1/3 in just 1
   month! So Indic wikis has huge reader base.
   - Marathi wiki community has increased its active editor base by nearly
   33% in just 1 month.
   - Sanskrit wikipedia has been amongst the shining stars of *all* Indic
   language wikipedias in terms of adding new articles (12 new articles every
   day in October) and edits per article (nearly 18 edits across all articles,
   old and new.)

You can find more interesting facts from the report at
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/indian-language-wikipedia-statistics-october-2011/


Shiju
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Gujarati

[Shiju Alex]

To address this issue, I will reword the subject line a bit for the
remaining languages.

Shiju



On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 8:37 AM, Subhashish Panigrahi  wrote:

> A small suggestion:
>
> if you can keep the subject line as:
> *
> Hindi: Sharing insights...*
> *
> *
> format then from the first word gives idea about the language.
>
> Best
> Subha
>
> On 10 December 2011 21:57, Theo10011  wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 9:46 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
>> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Ermm, Theo, my Google Mail shows them up as separate. Infact any mail
>>> service or client would. The title thread itself is different. I don't
>>> want to derail the topic. Nice work Shiju, but why did you speak only
>>> to one person? Lack of participants? Noone willing to talk to you?
>>
>>
>> Actually no. I didn't say they don't show up as different, I said the
>> subject-line or "title" in your description is nearly identical,
>> discussions are hard to separate and recognize, especially when there are
>> 12 emails with nearly identical title. The actual mention of the language
>> is not in the first 70 characters, so they end up looking identical.
>>
>> Have a look at the mail archive for this month and the last sorted by
>> author and see the mails from Shiju. They all start as "Sharing insights
>> and experiences from Indian language wiki communities"  Followed by the
>> language name, which is towards then end and not displayed by gmail and
>> most client. The first mention of the language is after 70 character
>> spaces, which is usually too long for most clients including gmail to
>> render in the inbox itself.
>>
>> Here's November
>>
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-November/author.html#start
>>
>> Here's December.
>>
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-December/author.html#start
>>
>> Regards
>> Theo
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> *
>
>ସୁ ଭ
>
> *
>
> *S u b h a *
>
>  *ଓଡ଼ିଆଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ*
>
> *O d i a W i k i M a i l i n g l i s 
> t*
>    
> 
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Indian language wiki communities - Kannada

[Shiju Alex]

>
>  Hindi, sadly is scaring them away.


Srikanth, do you have any specific example/experience that made you to say
so?

 Shiju

On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Agree with Logic. Each community differs in every way. Needs, usage,
> exposure and more. Each community, while running on a common backend,
> must have a different frontend. Tamil is doing its best from what I've
> seen to be different and get new editors. Hindi, sadly is scaring them
> away. Kannada must ensure new editor retention.
>
> On 11/12/2011, Srikanth Lakshmanan  wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 04:18, Jessie Wild  wrote:
> >
> >> I just got off the phone with a wonderful woman who works for EDC India
> >> who was asking me how she could participate in Kannada Wikipedia
> editing.
> >> Obviously I can just direct her to the homepage of kn-wiki, but is there
> >> somewhere she could go to get some coaching to begin? She's never edited
> >> before, but is fluent in English too and wants to increase the
> educational
> >> content.
> >>
> >
> > The answer is above. I think communities must use front page much more
> > effectively. There are many communities which don't update front
> > page regularly, still keep it similar to English Wikipedia, wasting(IMO)
> > some space. Instead, they could redesign front page to allocate
> significant
> > space for attracting newbies.
> >
> > --
> > Regards
> > Srikanth.L
> >
>
> --
> Sent from my mobile device
>
> Regards,
> Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
> Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Sharing insights and experiences from Bengali wiki community

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

As part of my discussions with Indic language Wikipedians I spoke with few
members of Bengali wiki community.They have shared their editing
experiences, their vision about Bengali wiki projects, and other related
topics.  I have summarized the discussion in meta wiki. It is available
here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Bengali/Discussions/2011

As you know most of the current active editors of Bengali Wikipedia is from
Bangladesh. Bengali wikipedia has close to 50 active editors as on 2011
October
. Over the years I got opportunity to work closely with Bengali wikipedians
for various programs (Newsletter, developing typing solution, and so on are
some of them). I remember Tinu and I closely worked with Jayantha to
conduct a wiki workshop in Kolkata.

There are a couple of very interesting features I noticed about Bengali
community.  First of all, even though it is a small community, it is very
evident from the tone and content of the discussions that it is a very warm
and welcoming community.  The second aspect I noticed is that there are
frequent community meet ups (though in fairness, there are many more
happening in Bangladesh than in India) and there is a  reasonably good
response to these meet ups.  Meet ups are a really useful way of community
building because it helps people connect and collaborate.  Common to all
Indic languages, there is a strong gap of awareness about the existence of
Bengali projects and the need is felt to get media & press coverage to
promote this.

In the context of the Kolkata Book Fair, one very interesting point that I
found about Tanvir is, he cam to know about Wikipedia at a similar book
fair in Dhaka!  I wish West Bengal wikipedians all the very best in the
Book Fair so that we can introduce and invite newbies to the Bengali
wikipedia.  We need to figure out a practical way of improving the
collaboration between Bengali wikipedians in Bangladesh and in India. I
felt very sorry when Tanvir couldn't attend WikiConference due to some VISA
issues.

Read the discussion at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Bengali/Discussions/2011

Shiju
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Narayam updates

[Shiju Alex]

>
> I am not sure whether it is really required to post these changes
> every week here, because not every one is interested in reading the
> code changes. I hope the code review page helps to find out all the
> changes for an extension/component
>

That is true. Community is definitely NOT interested to know the technical
details of all the updates.

But these type of changes (like the change in shortcut key) which affect
the typing habit of users needs to be communicated to commuity (here Indic
wikimedians), at least in this list.

How you know


On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 2:14 PM, Santhosh Thottingal <
santhosh.thottin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:34 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan 
> wrote:
> > Shortcut key on Mac :- Refer bug[1] for details, in summary the shortcut
> key
> > is now dynamic based on browser / OS combination so that the shortcut
> works.
> > Control+G is new shortcut on Mac largely. This was done during Hackathon.
> > //Surprise surprise, more Indic users on mac :)
>
> Small correction, this fix was not done during hackathon, but before
> that. And for Opera in OSX, shortcut is control+command+m.
>
> > There are more bugs reported by others and the software keeps changing,
> so
> > If you want to follow Narayam in close detail, subscribe to the feed[3].
> >
> > i18n team,
> > Some of us know, you push i18n patches every Monday. Can you also give a
> > feed for recent changes in patch *every week*, so we could see if
> something
> > relevant to us changed in the patch and test so that we may not miss any
> > regression caused and be quick to report issues. I know wikitech wiki has
> > the logs somewhere on deployment(forgot now), but a plain text feed will
> > help and save much time for many folks.
>
>
> We post the i18n deployment notes in Mediaiwiki-i18n list , one or two
> days before deployment.
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-i18n
>
> Gerard blogs about the deployment , see
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/12/going-live-december-12-2011/ and
> he plans to do this blog post for every deployment.
>
> If anybody is interested particularly in some extension, they can
> follow all the commits to that path in subversion For eg:
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Code/MediaWiki&path=%2Ftrunk%2Fextensions%2FWebFonts
> gives all the code changes happened in webfonts.
>
> I am not sure whether it is really required to post these changes
> every week here, because not every one is interested in reading the
> code changes. I hope the code review page helps to find out all the
> changes for an extension/component
>
> Another way to find out planned revisions for i18ndeploy is looking at
> this tag:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/tag/i18ndeploy
>
> > To those communities which don't have any input method solution :-
> > Please invest some time, the returns are really great. Juniad / i18n team
> > will help you get Narayam.
>
> Happy to help.
>
> -Santhosh
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Shiju Alex]

Rajesh and other Nepali wiki community members,  I am really sorry about
the spelling error.

I have corrected the error in the meta wiki
version<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Summary_of_initial_discussions_-_2011>
.

Shiju

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:42 PM, Rajesh Pandey wrote:

> Hi Shiju,
> Thanks for sharing this. This is great. However the link for Nepali should
> have been
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Nepali/Discussions/2011
> which might have been misspelled.
>
> Thanks Shiju for the excellent work.
>
> Cheers,
> Rajesh Pandey
>
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 10:11 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Excellent Shiju, very well written. I hope the community will learn a
>> lot from your research and surveys and use them in a positive manner
>> to ensure that our local indic Wiki projects are in as good health as
>> English, French, Spanish, etc.
>>
>> On 12/16/11, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>> > Dear All,
>> >
>> > Apologies beforehand for a rather long and winding mail - but there is
>> so
>> > much that I want to say. I want to share how my thoughts are being
>> > crystallised.  I want to try and cross-pollinate ideas from some Indic
>> > language communities across to all communities.  I want to reach out and
>> > ask your views and suggestions.  I want to understand how best we can
>> help
>> > each community in a manner that is most appropriate to that community.
>> >
>> > I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory
>> discussions
>> > with a host of community members from across Indic language
>> communities.  I
>> > have shared these for 12 languages
>> > (Assamese<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Assamese/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Hindi<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Tamil<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Tamil/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Telugu<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Telugu/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Kannada<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Kannada/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Nepali<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Neplai/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Malayalam<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Malayalam/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Marathi<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Marathi/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Odia<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Sanskrit<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Sanskrit/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > Bengali<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Bengali/Discussions/2011
>> >,
>> > and
>> > Gujarati<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Gujarati/Discussions/2011
>> >.)
>> >  I haven't (yet) got any response from 7 other communities (Bhojpuri,
>> > Kashmiri, Punjabi, Urdu, Bhisnupriya Manipuri, Pali, and Sindhi).
>> >
>> > At the very outset, I want to thank all of you who took time out and
>> shared
>> > your experiences and thinking.  It has been really useful and I hope you
>> > found it is as productive and constructive as I did.  The purpose behind
>> > this exercise was to hear, learn, and understand the evolution of the
>> > various communities - and to therefore suggest ideas going forward. I
>> urge
>> > everyone to go through all the other languages (even if they are not
>> > personally involved in those specific communities) because there are
>> > learnings for everyone from everywhere.
>> >
>> > I have been reflecting on the various insights and inputs and ideas I
>> have
>> > got from all these folks as well as subsequent discussions on mailing
>> lists
>> > and talk pages

[Wikimediaindia-l] Mailing list is created for Assamese wiki projects

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

A mailing list is created to facilitate the discussions about Assamese wiki
projects.

The URL is https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-as

Kindly subscribe if you are interested in Assamese wiki projects.

Shiju Alex
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] ONE simple step to double or triple visits to Indic Wikipedias

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Currently, the landing page for www.wikipedia.org (wikipedia.comredirects to
> wikipedia.org) lists the ten largest Wikipedia projects.  Apart from the
> English Wikipedia, the rest of the projects are practically useless for
> most of us in this country.  Replacing the foreign language projects (for
> Indian IPs) with Indic language projects will help drive more traffic.
>


I think this is a very good suggestion. I remember  seeing many of friends
using wikipedia.org to reach English wikipedia. Replacing the current
non-english wikipedias with Indic wikipedias (for Indian IPs) can also be
one of the solution. It will definitely catch the attention of a few
percentage of Indian readers.

Shiju





On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 10:01 PM, Anirudh Bhati wrote:

> Most of the visitors on Wikipedia end up there through search engines.
>  But there is another group which attempts to access Wikipedia directly by
> typing in www.wikipedia.com or www.wikipedia.org in the address bar of
> their browsers.
>
> Currently, the landing page for www.wikipedia.org (wikipedia.comredirects to
> wikipedia.org) lists the ten largest Wikipedia projects.  Apart from the
> English Wikipedia, the rest of the projects are practically useless for
> most of us in this country.  Replacing the foreign language projects (for
> Indian IPs) with Indic language projects will help drive more traffic.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Anirudh Bhati
>
> +855 975 529 803
> Skype: anirudhsbh
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 4:59 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I agree with Ravi.
>>
>> On 12/20/11, Ravishankar  wrote:
>> >>
>> >> This is a really useful discussion and there's a powerful idea.  I
>> agree
>> >> with Ravi that there is an opportunity to build awareness and traffic
>> to
>> >> Indic language sites.  While we are already seeing considerable
>> readership
>> >> of Indic languages, there's clearly a lot more that can be done to
>> support
>> >> this and also to help build Indic language communities.  I also hear
>> >> Theo's
>> >> point that it didn't work last time, or maybe wasn't adequately
>> measured.
>> >>
>> >> I'd like to suggest that - even as the technical challenges are
>> resolved -
>> >> to explore this.  The first step would be finalise what the objectives
>> are
>> >> (e.g., is it basic awareness building of the existence of Indic
>> language
>> >> projects or to is it to drive readership of these projects or is it
>> >> encourage more active participation in these proejcts?)  The next stage
>> >> would be to test different banner/notice/page design options and figure
>> >> out
>> >> the most appropriate solution (in the same systematic way that the WMF
>> >> fundraising team tests banners and optimises the ones that work best.)
>>  If
>> >> you see value and you think we need resources for this, I'm happy to
>> see
>> >> what we can do about it.  (Maybe see if any of the fundraising team's
>> >> people are free after the fundraiser to help with the analytics for
>> >> determining what might work best?)
>> >>
>> >> What say?
>> >>
>> >> hisham
>> >>
>> >
>> > +1.
>> >
>> > Instead of saying it won't work, we have to think how to make it work as
>> > the ultimate goal of increasing awareness about Indic projects should
>> not
>> > be neglected !
>> >
>> > Ravi
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
>> Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
>>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Translation request - An Indic wikipedian's appeal

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

As part of fund raising, Dr. Sengai Podhuvan's appeal is running now. Few
communities asked why there is no link for translating the Sengai
Podhuvan's appeal. I found this banner is targeted for translating only to
Indian languages.

The page for transition is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Sengai_Letter/en I found
Hindi translation is already done. Requesting the support of other language
communities to translate this.



Thanks

Shiju
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Translation request - An Indic wikipedian's appeal

[Shiju Alex]

I suggest to keep it as Rs.100, Rs.500, Rs.1000...

Since those figures are shown as sample amount, meaningful figures like
100/250/500/100 will serve the purpose.


Thanks

Shiju

2011/12/21 రహ్మానుద్దీన్ షేక్ 

>
>
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> That's odd. I saw it in Indian Rupees today afternoon.
>>
>> What were the Indian equivalent values?
>
>> On 12/21/11, Netha Hussain  wrote:
>> > Malayalam done!
>> > Shouldn't we seek the donations in INR? As for now, the en. version of
>> the
>> > appeal asks the donations be given in dollars.
>> >
>> > Regards
>> > --
>> > Netha Hussain
>> > Student of Medicine and Surgery
>> > Govt. Medical College, Kozhikode
>> > User: Netha Hussain
>> > *nethahussain.blogspot.com
>> > swethaambari.wordpress.com*
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Jayanta Nath 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Bengali too!!
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> ___
>> >> Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
>> >> Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> >> To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
>> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
>> Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/Coimbatore
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Rahimanuddin Shaik
> నాని
> ॥రామానుజార్య దివ్యాజ్ఞాం వర్ధతామభివర్ధతాం॥
>
>
> A new address for ebooks : http://kinige.com
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-blr] [Wikimedia-IN-AMD] Welcoming Subhashish Panigrahi

[Shiju Alex]

Congrats Subhashish.


Shiju


On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 8:22 PM, Subhashish Panigrahi  wrote:

> Thanks a lot for all of you for your good wish, I'd love to take up this
> new responsibility and take active part in expanding this great vision
> across the country.
>
> Love
> Subha
>
>
> On 22 December 2011 19:55, N Rana - EC Lists wrote:
>
>> **
>>  Thank you Hisham and congratulations Subhashish! Myself, Nilesh Rana, a
>> new entry in the list, a wiki-enthusiast from Ahmedabad. Was quite a
>> delight and motivating to learn about Subhashish. Keep it up and all good
>> wishes from here...
>>
>> Kindest regards and season's greetings to everybody.
>>
>> Nilesh
>>
>> - Original Message -
>> *From:* Hisham 
>> *To:* wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org ;
>> wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org ; India Mailing list for
>> Wikimedians / Wikipedians in & from 
>> Bangalore;
>> wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org ;
>> wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org ;
>> wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> *Cc:* Subhashish Panigrahi 
>> *Sent:* Thursday, December 22, 2011 6:27 PM
>> *Subject:* [Wikimedia-IN-AMD] Welcoming Subhashish Panigrahi
>>
>>  [cross-posting to reach pan-India; apologies if you have got it from
>> some other mailing list.]
>>
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> As you might be aware, the Consultant, Team Support position is to be
>> filled as part of the India Programs team.  (
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-September/004251.html.)
>>
>>
>> I am really pleased and excited to announce that Subhashish Panigrahi has
>> agreed to join as Consultant, Community & Program Support.
>>
>> Some of you might know Subhashish (or Subha as he's also called.) He is
>> all of 23 and a wonderful Wikimedian from Odisha.  He has a BE in
>> Biotechnology from Sapthagiri College of Engineering, Bangalore.  He has
>> worked for about 1 1/2 years in business development and is currently based
>> in Bangalore.  He's been an active Wikimedian since a friend of his
>> attended a Wikipedia 10th event in Bangalore in January and told Subha
>> about Wikipedia.  Subha then spent considerable time - quite a bit of it in
>> Shiju Alex's living room apparently :-) - learning about Wikipedia.  Since
>> then, he's been on fire!  He's helped the Bangalore community organise the
>> monthly meet-ups, been a central figure in building community & momentum
>> for Odia Wikipedia and has conducted outreach programs for Odia projects
>> back home in Odisha as well as in Bangalore. He's also been helping out
>> other projects and communities; a couple of weekends ago he was in Chennai
>> conducting a WikiAcademy there.  He is a fantastically inspiring example of
>> a complete outsider being welcomed into the family, having his hand held in
>> his growth as a newbie, charging forward taking responsibility & ownership
>> and then spreading his skills & knowledge to others. He is also one of the
>> sweetest human beings I have ever met. He is a perfect example of the
>> Wikimedia Dream.
>>
>> His interests (outside of Wikimedia) are cooking, graphic design and
>> handwriting analysis.  (I bet most of you who know Subha don't know that
>> last bit about him.  So the next time you see him, show him your writing
>> and get him to reveal your deep dark secrets!)  He has also been
>> involved with campaigns for social work during the floods and cholera
>> outbreak in Odisha and been involved with a Odisha community organisation,
>> eOdissa.com .
>>
>> Originally, the Consultant, Team Support position (
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs#Team_Structure)
>>  was
>> to manage the back-end aspects of India Programs (basic accounting, basic
>> personnel management, office administration, travel support, expense
>> statement management, logistics support for the community, etc.) I have
>> been looking at the actual work load involved and I do not think this is a
>> full time role.  The functions listed are essential and need to be done -
>> but there is an opportunity to improve the richness of the position and
>> it's value to the community.  I'm therefore proposing that the Consultant,
>> Team Support be redesignated to Consultant, Community & Program Support.
>> I envisage this position to have about 1/3 of time spent on the back-end
>> work listed above but 2/3 of time can be very productively utilised
>> supporting community efforts - such as helping community building &
>> outreach and supporting community-led initiatives.  An important
>> consideration I have for this redesignation is after looking at the
>> specific skills that Subha brings to the table; I want to make sure that he
>> has the required space to realise his potential and to support the
>> community and movement.
>>
>> Subha will of course continue to pursue his personal voluntary work for
>> and as part of the Wikimedia community.  The one question that he
>> emphasized during the selection process was w

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Shiju Alex]

>
> What I found one of the key factor behind active communities particularly
> Tamil and Malayalam, is the support of Government for the initiative.  This
> could be a priority area for  other Wikipedias as well.


According to my knowledge, World Classical Tamil Conference
2010<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Classical_Tamil_Conference_2010>was
the only time Tamil wikipedians and Tamil Nadu Government
collaborated.
During the conference there was an article writing contest which attracted
many people to Tamil wikipedia. Also during the same time a huge repository
of tamil words were donated to Tamil wiktionary. Apart from that, according
to my knowledge,  there are no other Govt initiatives. But I should say at
least in the case of Tamil the collaboration was a direct one.

But the case of Malayalam is slightly different. There was no direct
collabration. For Malayalam, the support community received was mainly due
to the personal efforts of IT@School director. IT@school supported most of
the wiki workshops across kerala, sponsored ml wiki CD, and so on. There
were couple of instances when community received indirect support. I have
listed some of those
here<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/ldf-keralam-website-and-wikipedia/>.
 One good thing about Malayalam is the involvement of social organizations
(for example 
KSSP<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_Sasthra_Sahithya_Parishad>).
This has directly or indirectly helped/helping Malayalam wiki projects. But
even though community tried to directly interact with Kerala government
multiple times (for example, to discuss about Kerala Govt website licenses)
none of them fetched any positive result till now.

So even though both Tamil and Malayalam communities received limited
support it became possible only because some volunteers from the community
were ready do physical outreach programs, meetup, and to talk to people. In
short I should say these all some of the after effects of public outreach
programs. There are many other things related to the outreach of Indic
wikipedias and its benefits, it is not just adding more users to wiki. I
may share that at anther point of time. More important is, to grow Indic
wikipedias some community members need to take some extra effort.


 But unfortunately, the community could not be strengthened due to various
> issues like access to Internet. computing platform, issues with rendering
> and input methods and we ended up with stub articles remaining in the same
> state.


That is the case in all Indic wikis which used bots to increase the number
of articles. According to me strength of the community also should grow as
the number of articles grows. If we focus on community growth, articles
numbers will grow as a natural outcome of that. As we already saw it will
not happen the other way round for Indic wikipedias. As one editor pointed
out in discussions, *Users will be attached to a wiki only if they feel
proud about it*. So it is important that we should plan some programs to
retain existing users and attract more new users to Indic wikis. We need to
have some programs to bring back our old editors also.


Shiju



On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala wrote:

> Hi Shiju,
>
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 5:37 PM, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>>
>> --cut--
>>
>> I have now completed sharing initial, introductory, exploratory
>> discussions with a host of community members from across Indic language
>> communities.  I have shared these for 12 languages 
>> (Assamese<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Assamese/Discussions/2011>,
>> Hindi<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Hindi/Discussions/2011>,
>> Tamil<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Tamil/Discussions/2011>,
>> Telugu<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Telugu/Discussions/2011>,
>> Kannada<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Kannada/Discussions/2011>,
>> Nepali<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Neplai/Discussions/2011>,
>> Malayalam<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Malayalam/Discussions/2011>,
>> Marathi<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Marathi/Discussions/2011>,
>> Odia<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Odia/Discussions/2011>,
>> Sanskrit<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages/Sanskrit/Discussions/2011>,
>> Bengali&

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Summary and perspectives from Discussions with Indic language wikimedians - 2011

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Ravishankar  wrote:


Thanks for these great suggestions Ravi.

*1. Active participation of Wikipedians having English Wikipedia experience.
> *


Yes this is very important. Infact I already mentioned this in my second
point (attracting newbies) This is what I wrote:

We must also look at both newbies to editing as well as existing *English
Wikipedia editors* who have inclinations and abilities on Indic languages.
Remember that many Indic editors initially started off in English Wikipedia
and we must actively seek them out. I know some communities - like Marathi
- who look for editors who have Marathi sounding names or edit
Marathi/Maharashtra centric topics and quietly invite them to contribute to
Marathi Wikipedia.


As we can see already few language communities understood the importance of
reaching out to users with English wikipedia experience.

*2. Developing friends of Wikipedia network.*


Yes this is very very important for the growth of Indic wikipedias. In the
previous reply to Arjuna I mentioned about the involvement of Social
organizations. That will directly or indirectly help Indic wiki projects.
One immediate example I can show from ml wiki project is the free licensing
of LDF keralam , Kerala State Electricity
Board,
and Dutch in Kerala  website. All those
became possible since friends of Wikipedia or community members were ready
to talk to people outside wikipedia about the importance of such landmark
decisions.

*3. Developing the sister projects.*



A very valid point. Many Indic languages have rich cultural heritage. There
are rich litereacry works in most of them. No need to mention about the
rich vocabulary. We have lot of things to do at least in Wikisource,
Wiktionary, and Wikiquote. Infact from the example of Tamil and Kannada we
have seen the efforts put by community to develop wiktionary. Remember in
Kannada, Wiktionary project is  active even more than Wikipedia. Also in
Malayalam and Sanskrit wikisource is very active. So some communities
already understood the importance of sister projects. Infact what I found
is, we can use sister wiki projects also (especially wikisource and
wiktionary) to develop a wiki community for  a language.

Networking with state and central governments, various educational
institutions, social organizations, and so on are required to grow Indic
wikipedia projects. As mentioned before some extra effort and leadership
role from some community members of each language is required to grow the
community and wiki projects for any Indic language.

Thanks for providing all these suggestions. All these important suggestions
will help us as we try to help various indic language wiki communities.

Thanks
Shiju





On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Ravishankar  wrote:

> Hi Shiju,
>
> Thanks for the excellent analysis on Indic Wikipedia communities.
>
>
>>  When I consider community building, I think of 5 broad aspects:
>>
>>1. Editor retention
>>2. Attracting newbies
>>3. Community communication
>>4. Community collaboration and
>>5. Community celebration
>>
>> Based on Tamil Wiki experience, I would like to add few more key points
> that can make a difference:
>
> *1. Active participation of Wikipedians having English Wikipedia
> experience.*
>
> While small communities should not enforce all en wiki practices and rules
> as such, active participation of people having English Wikipedia experience
> is a great plus. They can help implement the best practices, clarify on
> wiki procedures, help in technical aspects and act as ambassadors for the
> local wiki. Throughout Tamil Wikipedia's growth, we have had such
> contributors who made immense difference to the project. It is this
> context, I emphasize that awareness about Indic Wiki for people visiting en
> wiki should be increased.
> *
> 2. Developing friends of Wikipedia network.*
>
> Not everyone can contribute to Wikipedia directly even if they know how to
> do it. But they can still support the cause of Wiki. Efforts should be made
> in getting friends in blogosphere, technosphere, media, academia and the
> Government (if possible). These people can be of great help in outreach and
> other logistical help.
>
> *3. Developing the sister projects.*
>
> For small communities, developing Wikipedia to a useful stage ( 100K
> articles of decent quality) is a very long term and intensive process. But,
> with some meticulous planning, the sister projects like Wiktionary,
> Wikisource can be scaled with less effort. When these projects grow, they
> in turn bring visitors and contributors for Wikipedia. They will also serve
> as a reference source for citations and vocabulary. This is one solution
> for the chicken and egg problem of building content to get contributors Vs
> having contributors to build content. This is also one are where formal
> entities like WMF and the chapter can help the community to network w

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] StatisticsBot for closer look on Indic numbers

[Shiju Alex]

Srikanth,

Good work. And thanks for sharing.

Since in this we are calculating edits per day, new users per day, new
articles per day, and so on, I feel it will be good if those details are
displayed instead of the current total edits/users/articles. In fact for
daily analysis that data is more valubale than total edits/users. I know
for developers like you it is just one line of code. But for non-developer
users like me it makes big difference. :)

Also is is it possible to get the data of number of users who do at least 5
edits per day. I know that makes sense only for very active wikipedias. But
still it is a good metric I suppose.

Thanks once again for sharing this.


Shiju


2011/12/26 Srikanth Lakshmanan 

> Hi all,
>
> ar:User:OsamaK had developed a pywikipedia based bot to collect daily
> stats[1] and has been running for over 2 years. I had just "translated" it
> and started running for Tamil wikipedia here[2]. I am now looking
> ApiSandbox[3][4] to build queries which will get more data(Bot activity,
> number of users with atleast 1 edit on the day,anon edits etc) which might
> be useful to log and keep track on daily basis.let me know if some other
> parameter might be useful to collect.
>
> Feel free to run this on your Indic wiki project and observe the numbers
> :) This can help notice sudden spikes on any parameter on day-day basis and
> help relate to some event (outreach / real world events)
>
> Thanks to Osama for the base code, the english version of which is
> available here[5]. Please feel free to fork and and add to it :)
>
> [1] http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/مستخدم:OsamaK/إحصاءات/ديسمبر_2011
> [2] http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics/December_2011
> [3] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ApiSandbox
> [4] http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox
> [5] https://gist.github.com/b37a1d07888597f7c9ac
>
> --
> Regards
> Srikanth.L
>
> PS : This entire thing was a by-product of Bala's Doha visit when he
> interacted with Osama in the Arabic wiki convention and got to know of
> this. Apparently Bala learnt this from Osama and he learnt about wmf grant
> process from Bala :)
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Birthday of Indic language wikipedias

[Shiju Alex]

Dear Indic wikipedians

One of the aspects that was raised during the discussions with almost all
Indic language wiki communities was the need to build existing
communities, motivate existing community members, attract new community
members by increasing awareness of projects and communities, and to
celebrate all the possible occasions.

I have a suggestion that can contribute to all of these in some manner. The
suggestion is to celebrate the anniversaries of Indic language wikipedias.
And as you might agree, the first edit date of a wiki is the best *
anniversary* that a community can celebrate.  I have collected information
for the birthdays of each Indic Wikipedia.  This is the day on which the
first edit happened on the respective language wikipedia. (The *Indian
Standard Time* is used while recording the date and time).


I am listing those days below for your reference,

   *Indic Language wikipedia*

*Birthday/Anniversary (Date of first edit)*

*Number of active editors*

*Assamese* <http://as.wikipedia.org/>

*June 02 (2002-June-02) <http://as.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

10

*Nepali* <http://ne.wikipedia.org/>

*June 03 (2002-June-03) <http://ne.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

13

*Punjab <http://pa.wikipedia.org/>i*

*June 03 (2002-June-03) <http://pa.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

3

*Malayalam* <http://ml.wikipedia.org/>

*December 21 (2002-December-21) <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

93

*Kannada* <http://kn.wikipedia.org/>

*January 12 (2003-January-12) <http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

20

*Bhojpuri* <http://bh.wikipedia.org/>

*February 21 (2003-February-21) <http://bh.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

0

*Hindi* <http://hi.wikipedia.org/>

*July 11 <http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1> (2003-July-11)
<http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

55

*Kashmiri* <http://ks.wikipedia.org/>

*July 26 (2003-July-26) <http://ks.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=5>*

1

*Tamil* <http://ta.wikipedia.org/>

*September 30 (2003-September-30) <http://ta.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=5>*

85

*Marathi* <http://mr.wikipedia.org/>

*October 20 (2003-October-20) <http://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

44

*Gujarati* <http://gu.wikipedia.org/>

*December 09 (2003-December-09) <http://gu.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

11

*Sanskrit* <http://sa.wikipedia.org/>

*December 21 (2003-December-21) <http://sa.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

16

*Sindhi* <http://sd.wikipedia.org/>

*December 26 (2003-December-26) <http://sd.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

5

*Bengali* <http://bn.wikipedia.org/>

*January 27 <http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=6>
(2004-January-27)<http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=6>
*

52

*Urdu* <http://ur.wikipedia.org/>

*January 27 (2004-January-27) <http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=2>*

15

*Odia (Oriya <http://or.wikipedia.org/>)*

*January 29 (2004-January-29) <http://or.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

10

*Telugu* <http://te.wikipedia.org/>

*January 29 (2004-January-29) <http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

32

*Pali* <http://pi.wikipedia.org/>

*July 29 (2004-July-29) <http://pi.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=1>*

0

*Newari* <http://new.wikipedia.org/>

*October 01 (2006-October-01) <http://new.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=4>*

1

*Bishnupriya Manipuri* <http://bpy.wikipedia.org/>

*October 01 (2006-October-01) <http://bpy.wikipedia.org/wiki/?diff=2>*

2


This list is available in meta also.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_Languages#State_of_Indic_Language_Projects


I recommend that we use these anniversary dates to do the following

   - Organize a small wikiconfernce or some other major event for the
   respective language wikipedia
   - Organize community meetups to celebrate this
   - Coincide community events around these meetups (such as outreach
   sessions, photo events, or launching specific WikiProjects)
   - Invite press to these meetups and use different platforms to spread
   word about respective language wikipedia.

>From the above table we can see that *Assamese* is the first Indic language
wikipedia, and 4 Indic language wikipedias will celebrate *10th
anniversary* this
year (2012). :) So it is time to get prepared for the celebration.

Happy Birthday Celebrations!


Regards,


Shiju Alex
India Programs of Wikimedia Foundation
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Delhi Wiki Meetup on the 2012 January 15

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

Delhi Wikimedians are planning to meetup on *2012 January 15* to celebrate
the 11th Anniversary of Wikipedia.

The details of the meetup can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Delhi/Delhi5.  Please
sign up<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Delhi/Delhi5#Signed_up>
.

Shiju Alex
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Assamese wikipedia crossed the 1000 article milestone

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

Assamese wikipedia has crossed the 1000 article milestone yesterday (2012
January 7). Congrats to all Assamese wikipedians who contributed to
this. Started
in 2002 June 2 , Assamese wikipedia
is the first Indic Language wikipedia. Assamese wikipedia will celebrate
its 10th Anniversery this year June.


I remember last year this time Assamese
wikipediawas
having just 300 articles and just one highly active user. The
excellent
efforts put forward by some of the senior community members using various
social networking sites are helping Assamese wikipedia to grow its
community. Now it crossed 1000 article milestone and has more than 10 high
active users. Hope community will be able to add more members to its crew
this year.


Shiju

Consultant, WMF India Programs
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Building the Assamese Wiki Community - Outreach programs during next week

[Shiju Alex]

ing efforts.


This is the start of a very exciting journey!

Kind Regards,

Shiju Alex
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Foundation-l] REMINDER: Wikimania 2013 - invitation to bid

[Shiju Alex]

+1 Ashwin.

As far as I know none of the Wiki communities of India (either language or
city) are in a stage to host an international conference. For time being
let us concentrate on building communities and let us gain confidence by
doing some good regional and language specific conferences.

Shiju


On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 8:34 AM, Ashwin Baindur wrote:

> As one intimately involved in the planning and execution of the last
> WikiConference India, we need to have a cold rational thought on this
> process for bidding for Wikimania, not hubris.
>
> Without prejudice to User:Vibhijain, a bid from Delhi cannot be made
> unilaterally by an under-age editor  who is not in a position to
> execute any of the responsible roles. There should be a requirement
> for each bidding city community to show support and backing. Otherwise
> the bid should be thrown out.
>
> That Delhi has editors is without question, the real question is does
> Delhi have a strong and united wikicommunity which will be able to
> take on this kind of huge commitment? There are few signs of such an
> established community, not withstanding lot of relatively new editors
> such as Noopur taking up new activities to do which hopefully will
> lead to a strong and vibrant community in the future.
>
> For the reasons mentioned above, the Delhi bid should be re-examined
> in all seriousness.
>
> I'm not siding with Mumbai either. In my opinion, we should have a few
> more WikiConferences India before we ask for Wikimania. India needs
> WikiConference Indias, not to host the international community. It is
> akin to the person who has not yet furnished his house or setup his
> residence in a city falling over himself to invite others from
> outside.
>
> WikiConference India 2011 stretched the volunteer community of the
> nation's Wikipedians and was possible due to the unflinching support
> of so many others not from the city. Which is as it should be. So can
> the country deal with both a WikiConference and Wikimania in the same
> year? I think not. Suppose another city, say Kolkata hosted
> WikiConference India, where would the funds, volunteers attention go?
> I think it is a raw deal for the city hosting the WikiConference. The
> amount of volunteer effort which goes into these is not funny. I think
> around 5000 edits worth of effort of mine went into the Conference.
>
> WikiConference India 2011 proved to be beyond the resources of Mumbai
> wikipedians alone. If they have bid for Wikimania 2013, can they
> assure the Indian wikipedian community that they can tackle this even
> larger event without extensive external help when they could not
> tackle the smaller?
>
> If Indian editors are supposed to all join in loyally to support
> Mumbai should it  win the bid, isn't it right that Mumbai ask the
> community's opinion at large first before bidding instead of taking it
> for granted that Indian volunteers will pitch in when needed?
>
> I do not grudge supporting Mumbai, I identify strongly with it and
> will do whatever I can do to help those wonderful guys, but I strongly
> feel that this light hearted attitude to such serious subjects in fact
> takes the rest of the Indian community for granted.
>
> My own personal take is let this opportunity go. Let us have
> WikiConferences 2012 and 2013 and bid instead for Wikimania 2014 and
> that year we should not have a WikiConference. 2013 is too early. The
> need of the hour is building strong Indian wikipedias and communities
> not hosting foreigners.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Ashwin Baindur
> --
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 7:16 AM, Béria Lima  wrote:
> > Since we have not one, but two bids from India,  I think that is
> important
> > to be announced here (I would rather prefer if all of you could work
> > together in a single bid, but if is not possible, at least list both
> under
> > the right section in the page)
> > _
> > Béria Lima
> > (351) 925 171 484
> >
> > Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre
> > acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir
> > esse sonho.
> >
> >
> > On 23 January 2012 23:15, Thomas Goldammer 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Dear all,
> >>
> >> I want to remind everyone to officially start a bid for the locale of
> >> Wikimania 2013. All bids made so far are *unofficial* and cannot be
> >> considered, as long as they are not in the list of official bids on
> >> this page:
> >>
> >>   http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2013_bids
> >>
> >> The possibility to make an official bid closes at ***January 28, 23:59
> >> UTC***, this is in less than five days! So hurry up if you want
> >> Wikimania to happen at your place. :)
> >>
> >> Note that you then have two more months to make your actual bid (and
> >> one more month to refine it). You don't need to have everything
> >> completely ready by now, so don't worry. :) For now, just create the
> >> bid page and list

[Wikimediaindia-l] Wiki meetups in Assam - A small report

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

2 weeks back I had informed the news of Assamese Wikipedians getting ready
for their first wiki
meetup.
Last
week we had two wiki meetup-cum-workshops for the Assamese language
wikipedia. I got the opportunity to attend both these wiki meetups and meet
many wonderful Assamese Wikipedians.  Here is a brief report about these
meetups.

As some of you might know Assamese wikipedia is the first Indic langiuage
wikipedia .
The first edit on assamese Wikipedia was happened on 2002 June 02 which
means Assamese wikipedia will celebrate its 10th Anniversary in next few
months. Even though wiki was created in 2002 nothing much had happened in
AS wiki till the beginning of 2011. If you look at the statistical report
for 
2010you
could see that the number of articles on AS wiki was just over 300
during January  2011. And the number of active users was just 4. But in
2011 many things happened in wiki and many online outreach activities had
done by few community memebers which had resulted in the change of scenario
for AS wiki. Now AS wiki has more than 1100 articles and close to 20 active
users.

Even though AS wikipedia is in exitence for the past 9 years, only last
week (*2012 January 29* to be exact) Assamese wikipedians got an
oppurtunity to arrange their first wiki meetup. As an after effect of the
first meetup at Guwahati, second meetup also happened just after 3 days in
Tezpur. I am very happy to be part of both these meetups. here is a brief
report of the meetup (This report is based on the meetup reports created by
Assamese wikipedians* Jyothi*, *Bishnu*, and *Dipankar*)



*Meetup 1 - 2012 January 29 - Venue - Gawahati University Computer Science
Departmen*t

This was the first meetup of Assamese wikipedians and I am very happy to be
part of this historic meetup. Wiki page of this meetup is  available in
Assamese 
wikipedia
(in
Assamese).

The meetup started at 2:30 PM with the welcome speech by
Assamese Wikipedian Jyothi Prasad
(User:Jpnath008)
who was the main organizer of the first wikimeetup. After the welcome
speech computer science department HOD Dr. Anjana Kakati Mahanta
inaugurated the first wiki meetup. In the inaguaration speech she mentioned
that she is very glad that she could host the first wiki meetup of Assamese
wikipedians and extended support for future wiki meetups also. Then
User:Psneog
 a senior Assamese Wikipedian and Asst. Prof at NIT Silchar, shared
his experience with the Assamese Wikipedia and his vision about the future
of Assamese wiki projects.

After that all the participants introduced themselves. Then User:
Gitartha.bordoloi
started
the Introduction to Wikipedia session. Some of the important points that
Gitaratha covered in this session are:


   - What is Wikipedia?
   - What is Wiki?
   - History of Wikipedia.
   - Introduction to Assamese Wikipedia.
   - Present status of Assamese wikipedia
   - Current status of Assamese wiki communoity
   - Sister projects of Assamese Wikipedia, and so on

Then we started the editing session.
User:Jpnath008
 explained how to approach Assamese wikipedia as a reader and how to search
for articles in AS wiki. He also showed how to open a new account. This
is demonstrated with the help of new user Amrit who created his account
during the session.

Then 
User:Simbu123
demonstrated
the users how to create an article in Assamese wikipedia and expalined the
basic wiki syntaxes. He also explained about the Narayam keyboard and how
to activate it and how one can write in Assamese script using the Narayam
typing tool.

This is followed by a question answer session. The queries are answered
by experienced Assamese wikipedians. Meanwhile all the guests were served
with tea and Assamese snacks like Tillpitha, Narikolor Ladu, Tilor Ladu,
Sirar Ladu, etc.


The first wiki meetup was wonderful. We finished this first historic meetup
of Assamese Wikipedians by 5 PM.

Around 35 people had attended this meetup. I am sure for the first meetup
35 attendees is a very big number. That itself shows how people are waiting
for these type of outreach programs across various regions of India.


Wiki page of this meetup page with more details are available in A

[Wikimediaindia-l] Indic language wikipedias - 2011 annual update

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

I have compiled the, statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias
for the year 2011. In this report, my aim is to provide an *analysis* as
well as *my perspectives* on the health of various Indic language
communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias for
the year 2011. (The period of analysis is editor contributions between 2011
January 1 and 2011 December 31). As always, a lot of the data for this
report and analysis are based on the statistical data published at
http://stats.wikimedia.org. Thanks to Erik Zachte for compiling all this
information.

I must also point out that this annual update contains a number of insights
*that are derived not only from this data but directly from community
members* who have shared a very real-world picture.

Read the annual update here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages/Statistics/2011_Annual_Update


I welcome your comments on this annual update. Please discuss it on the
talk page. You can also reach me at sh...@wikimedia.org

Thanks
Shiju Alex
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic language wikipedias - 2011 annual update

[Shiju Alex]

Sure Ashwin, I will do that.

Shiju

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 9:52 PM, Ashwin Baindur wrote:

> Shiju, I request you to forward this to Wikimedia-in-en. This is also an
> Indic language list & as such such a generic post will help WikiProject
> Indians to be of more relevance to Indic language WikiProjects.
>
> I could forward it myself but I prefer you to do it and add this list to
> your language wikipedia email group list.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Ashwin Baindur
> --
>
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 9:21 PM, Mandar Kulkarni  > wrote:
>
>> Dear Shiju,
>>
>> This is an extremely comprehensive and useful report you have shared.
>> This gives insight for not only for my Indic language but also for other
>> Indic languages.
>>
>> I would be happy if we make such analysis every month which will make
>> sure that we are on right track.
>>
>> Thanks once again.
>>
>> With Regards,
>>
>> Mandar V. Kulkarni
>> http://mr.wikipedia.org
>>
>>   --
>> *From:* Shiju Alex 
>> *To:* nepaliw...@googlegroups.com; wikis...@lists.wikimedia.org;
>> Wikimedia India Community list 
>> *Sent:* Thursday, 16 February 2012, 12:39
>> *Subject:* [Wikimediaindia-l] Indic language wikipedias - 2011 annual
>> update
>>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> I have compiled the, statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias
>> for the year 2011. In this report, my aim is to provide an *analysis* as
>> well as *my perspectives* on the health of various Indic language
>> communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias for
>> the year 2011. (The period of analysis is editor contributions between 2011
>> January 1 and 2011 December 31). As always, a lot of the data for this
>> report and analysis are based on the statistical data published at
>> http://stats.wikimedia.org. Thanks to Erik Zachte for compiling all this
>> information.
>>
>> I must also point out that this annual update contains a number of
>> insights *that are derived not only from this data but directly from
>> community members* who have shared a very real-world picture.
>>
>> Read the annual update here:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages/Statistics/2011_Annual_Update
>>
>>
>> I welcome your comments on this annual update. Please discuss it on the
>> talk page. You can also reach me at sh...@wikimedia.org
>>
>> Thanks
>> Shiju Alex
>>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] The Hindu : "The struggles of keeping Kannada Wikipedia afloat"

[Shiju Alex]

I think there are 3 issues that this newsarticle raises.

The first is the is the desperate urgency for community building.
 Community building is a combination of:

   - increased community communication (in increasing order of importance:
   events, mailing lists, talk pages, meet-ups and village pumps)
   - stronger community collaboration (small wikiprojects starting of with
   even 2 editors and on virtually any topic of interest whether it is a
   subject area like health articles or a task like translate articles
   clean-up)
   - more frequent and impactful outreach (including targeting the most
   suitable audience profile for outreach, combination of classroom & hands-on
   editing experience during the workshop, staying in touch with newbies after
   the session, hand-holding newbies during their first 100 edits and
   integrating newbies into the existing community)
   - reaching out retired editors - which is a particularly severe problem
   in Kannada (and Telugu) because active editor numbers have declined (or not
   grown) over the past 1 year.  This is particularly alarming given the small
   community size.  Also, the reason why these editors retired is not because
   of technology but a whole host of other reasons (including changing
   personal circumstances, lack of an adequate sense of community, lack of
   collabaration inside wiki, lack of pride of projects, over usage of bots,
   and so on.

The second is that while there are very real issues that the Google
translate project created (some of which were outlined below), the biggest
problem is that it focuses on content and not community.  This is a similar
problem to using bots to create content - which has been shown time and
time again to downright harmful to projects and hence to communities.  On
the specific issue of Google translate project, it also represents a solid
opportunity to get existing editors (and maybe some newbies as well) to get
involved with the clean up.  Some editors in Kannada wikipedia have already
started preparatory work on this - and there is great potential in this.
 It is a great way of building the community through collaboration around a
common mission.

The third issue is on technology.  I know that - historically for PCs -
there have been issues around fonts, browsers, OS, and so on.  However, I
think these are becoming less critical as technical developments have
resolved many issues.  (This is evidenced by the increased Kannada presence
in the blogosphere as well as on sites like facebook and twitter.)  Having
said that, editing wikipedia - in any language - does require certain basic
technical comfort especially when one clicks on "edit" and sees the HTML
mark-ups that pop up.  To that extent, I would suggest that we don't focus
too much on the technical challenges but place all our emphasis on
community building.  According to me technical challenge is not a major
issue for most of the major indic languages (when it come to PCs). And now
it is time for us to come out this excuse and contribute to our own
language wikipedia.

Omshivaprakash is right when he says that too few knew that they can edit.
 To address this, a combination of outreach and press coverage is essential
to convey this message.  On press coverage, it is tempting to put out
stories that a particular language has achieved a milestone (for example,
10,000 article milestone.) is great but the even more useful ones are
stories that mention that anyone can edit, give the very basics of editing,
suggest specific areas where readers might be interested and give them
contact details in case they are interested.

In all this, do keep in mind that readership of Indic language wikipedias
is growing exponentially. The audience is there now!  We need to get the
community built so that the can edit the content.

Thanks
Shiju







On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Ashwin Baindur
wrote:

>
> As a person working in the relevant field, we would welcome Shiju's
> comments on the article, its facts, proposed steps by the editors mentioned
> and what Kannada Wikipedia needs for revival.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Ashwin Baindur
> --
>
>
>
> 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.
>>
>> While there has been a surge in Kannada content in the last two years,
>> contributors to the language have been grappling with technology barriers.
>>
>> After floundering for years, the Kannada Wikipedia picked up with font
>> availability, said Hari Prasad Nadig, a Kannada Wikipedian. The software
>> to add to Kann

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Tamil Wiki Media Contest

[Shiju Alex]

The fact that 300 volunteers participated in this contest in really an
exciting news. Hope the contest helped to attract many Tamil speakers to
Tamil Wiki projects.

Shiju



On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:

>  Hello All,
>
> The contest is now closed. A total of 15217[1] (5 times our
> expectation[2]) files were uploaded by around 300 contributors. We are
> planning to announce the results by March 25th (Yes, selecting 9 prizes out
> of 15,000 entries is slightly tough task). A detailed report / statistics
> will be available soon. Thanks for your support.
>
> [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:TamilWiki_Media_Contest
> [2]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Tamil_Wikimedians/TamilWiki_Media_Contest#Measures_of_success
>
> Regards,
> Srikanth L
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Annual Report of Indic language wikipedias

[Shiju Alex]

will be good if some
volunteers translate it to English so that rest of the world can read and
understand what happened in the respective wikis)

Personally, I think these reports serve multiple purposes.

   - It help the current active community to share with the larger
   community (including retired or not current active editors) all the many
   things that individual volunteers are doing - which gives a sense of
   momentum to a community.
   - It help the community to reach out to the rest of the language
   speakers and tell them about what is happening in their respective language
   wiki
   - It allows other community members to learn from others' experiences -
   and also provides a contact point for any queries they might have.
   - It is very useful for media / PR - because it gives a tangible story
   for the press which is newsworthy and uplifting
   - it documents the editing history of community every year

My main objective behind sharing this is that I know most communities don't
do this.  My guess is that many of them don't know that such a thing is
possible.  Another concern that you might have is whether there is enough
to fill into an annual report.  I think if you just step back and think of
all the many things that are happening in your communities, you would be
amazed by how much is actually taking place.  Even if it has not happened
historically, the increased activity in India over the past few months
should reassure you that there is so much to write about.  In this context,
I would specifically call out the wonderful activity levels of Assamese,
Marathi, Nepali, Odia and Sanskrit as just 5 illustrations of communities
which have load of stories to share.

If you are interested and need some help, please feel free to ask me and I
will help out.

Happy Reporting!

Shiju Alex
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press]: Medianama : "Wikimedia India Rolls Out Realtime Search; Supports Indic Editions"

[Shiju Alex]

>
> *We hope that Wikimedia works on delivering better transliteration
> support or improving the results for Indic languages. *


Typing scheme for Transliteration is an issue (for readers) since there is
no standard transliteration scheme for any language. For editors it is not
an issue since they use that in wiki. Providing *help link* to typing
schemes (transliteration/Inscript or other schemes) once a scheme is
selected can be one solution. But the issue here is live.wikimedia is meant
for readers. So they may not really like to go and understand the typing
scheme. So it is a tricky situation.

In addition to the existing typing schemes we can think about providing
more typing schemes to readers (including the google transliteration
option, but not sure that is viable since it is not open source ).

*However, we got accurate results with the Hindi Inscript input option.*


since Inscript uses same layout for all indic scripts if Inscript solution
works for Hindi then it work for all other indic languages including
Kannada.



*
*
On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Tinu Cherian wrote:

> *Medianama : "Wikimedia India Rolls Out Realtime Search; Supports Indic
> Editions"
> *
>
> http://www.medianama.com/2012/03/223-wikimedia-india-rolls-out-realtime-search-supports-indic-editions/
>
>
> *It looks like Wikimedia India has implemented a project by engineering
> student Shrey Gokani to roll out an instant search engine of its own at
> live.wikimedia.in. The site is under a creative commons license, with the
> code dual licensed under GPL and Creative Commons. The Wikimedia Instant
> site does appear to have additional functionality over Gokani’s version,
> with the ability to choose an Indic Input keyboard, since the service
> supports Indic language editions of Wikimedia services.
>
> The search engine works quite similar to Wikilive, another student project
> about which, we had written in November 2011. And similar to what we had
> wished, Wikimedia Live also covers Wikipedia, Wikitionary, Wikibooks,
> Wikiquotes, Wikiversity, Wikinews and Wikisource, and their Indic editions,
> in realtime. The site also offers other relevant Wikipedia search results
> on the top, followed by a preview of the most relevant Wikipedia article to
> the search query.
>
>
> Indic Language Support: The site allows users to type in queries in 21
> Indic languages including Kannada, Hindi, Telugu, Marathi, Sanskrit, Bangla
> and others. How it works is that the search engine allows the user to
> choose the language of his preference, following which he has to choose an
> input script which is apt for his language. For instance, if one chooses
> Kannada as his preferred language, he has to choose between the Kannada
> transliteration option or choose the Kannada Inscript option, however if
> you choose Hindi as your preferred language, you will have to select the
> sole Hindi Inscript option.
>
> Irrelevant Results? We weren’t too happy with results generated through
> Indic language transliteration input, since it delivered wrong results in
> most cases when we gave it a spin (we tried it on OS X Lion on Google
> Chrome). We hope that Wikimedia works on delivering better transliteration
> support or improving the results for Indic languages. However, we got
> accurate results with the Hindi Inscript input option.
>
> Similar Portals: Deepanshu Mehndiratta, a second year engineering student
> at BITS-Pilani KK Birla Goa Campus, had created an instant Wikipedia search
> called ‘Wikilive‘ which allowed users to type in a search query and get
> relevant Wikipedia article and topics instantly. WikiInstant and The
> Instant Wiki are other portals which allow users to search Wikipedia in
> realtime. *
>
>
>
> Regards
> Tinu Cherian
> pr...@wikimedia.in
> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news
>
> Important Note : Non-commercial reproduction for informative purposes
> only. The publisher ( Medianama) of the above news article owns the
> copyrights of the article / content. All copyrights are duly acknowledged.
>
>
> ___
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press]: Medianama : "Wikimedia India Rolls Out Realtime Search; Supports Indic Editions"

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Correct me if am wrong, this is not due to the transliteration, it might
> occur for any Indic / language text which is entered through more than one
> keystrore(which might include Inscript as well) due to the nature of
> algorithm used for instant search?.


I am not sure about the technical details of the
project. Santhosh, Shreyas, Junaid, or some one else involved in this
project can clarify this.

What I felt is, the reader (here a Medianama employee) tried to search some
article in Kannada wikipedia using Kannada transliteration scheme. He
didn't got the desired results. This might have happened due to two reasons

   - the articles he searched might not be there in kananda wikipedia
   - the typing scheme he tried was different


If we can enhance the typing tool as per the requirement of reader then
that would be nice.

Shiju





On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 11:54, Shiju Alex  wrote:
>
>> Irrelevant Results? We weren’t too happy with results generated through
>> Indic language transliteration input
>
>
> Correct me if am wrong, this is not due to the transliteration, it might
> occur for any Indic / language text which is entered through more than one
> keystrore(which might include Inscript as well) due to the nature of
> algorithm used for instant search?. Somewhat relevant post by Santhosh
> here[1] although its about fuzziness.
>
> [1]  https://plus.google.com/105440198958793955794/posts/ekSPWgodBzU
>
> --
> Regards
> Srikanth.L
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012

[Shiju Alex]

I am replying to this mail as a *Malayalam wikimedia community member*.


Fact:  Subhashish, *former volunteer*, and now paid consultant with India
> Programs.
>

What do you mean by this? I Shiju Alex is a Indic language wikipedian now
close to 6 years. According to Mr. Anirudh (an EC member of India chapter)
I am a former volunteer. is this is the official position of wikimedia
India chapter? As a community member I require an explanation for this.


Shiju Alex

(An Indic language wikipedian)







On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Anirudh Bhati  wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:42 PM, Hisham  wrote:
>
>>
>> Nothing is conducted solely by India Program - and hence I said
>> "supported."  Everything is conducted by the community - sometimes under
>> the aegis of the Chapter and sometimes independently.  The support that we
>> have provided varies - from getting the actual event fixed up to providing
>> presentation material to interested community members to participating in
>> these events.
>>
>
> Can this be clearly specified in the report?  That is more helpful than
> simply "supported".  For instance, when you say "Supported the community
> to get a venue in Guwahati University", it would help us understand more if
> you could tell us how.
>
>  On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:45 PM, CherianTinu Abraham <
> tinucher...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Pranav,
>> In India, it is extremely difficult to hairline separate who has done
>> which event. - Chapter, Community and WMF India Programs.
>>
>
> I agree it's not possible to do that, but it is entirely possible to list
> out the work done in specific.  This enhances our accountability and
> transparency towards the community.
>
>
>> Let us take the case of the Trichy event, the request came to a community
>> member Rsrikanth to the chapter. Nitika was actively involved along with me
>> and Naveen. The chapter signed the MoU and supplied some goodies. Nitika
>> was actively involved in coaching Sohan, a chapter member and Rsrikanth.
>> One must not also forget that both Hisham & Nitika are also chapter
>> members.
>
>
> Fact: Nitika is a paid employee of the WMF India Programs and is not a
> chapter/community volunteer.
>
>
>>
>> Another event in Chennai (Jaya eng college) , where Subha led, his travel
>> expenses was reimbursed by the Chapter, Subha is a Chapter SIG Chair .. The
>> event is supported by Hisham & Nitika too. Subha is also an India Programs
>> executive.
>>
>
> Fact:  Subhashish, former volunteer, and now paid consultant with India
> Programs.
>
>
>>
>> I actively organize Bangalore Meetups and support several others ..
>> Should I be worrying whether I am doing as a chapter member, board member
>> or a community member?
>>
>
> By a matter of principle, chapter and community volunteers are just...
> volunteers.  Paid consultants are hired to executive specific programs, and
> hence the results of their work and reports should be presented with
> clarity.  Simply "supporting" something does not clarify the extent of
> their involvement.
>
>
>> As with Assam meetup recently, coordinated by Shiju, some of the expenses
>> were met from a personal grant from the Foundation to me & Shiju.
>>
>> There was a recent Malayalam Wiki Academy in Bangalore organised by
>> Malayalam Community. Some of them are also Chapter members. People like me
>> and Naveen actively helped the event ..Are we doing as chapter board member
>> or community member? We don't really know.. But we are just genuinely
>> helping the movement, with worrying about what capacity we are doing it.
>>
>
> I don't think it's a good idea to separate the chapter and the community.
>  The chapter is a membership-based organization and by definition an
> umbrella organization which represents the community.  There is no reason
> for differentiation as long as it is volunteer work done by a chapter
> member.
>
>
>>
>> The various academies that we do, some of the requests comes directly to
>> the chapter, community or India programs, but each supporting each other in
>> different capacities.
>>
>> Now Noopur is a GLAM Champion, Chapter member and Delhi SIG Chair and
>> also part of Chapter Communications Team. She now also heads the
>> Communication & PR for the India Programs.
>>
>> As I explained, it is difficult to separate the contributions of
>> different entities or individuals for the Wikimedia  movement in India.
>>
>> IMHO, we should be only concerned about the outcomes of t

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Shiju, you and Subhashish have been volunteers but now you are paid
> contractors hired by the Foundation.  Any work you do within the purview of
> your contractual relationship with the Foundation will be work as a paid
> contractor and cannot be deemed to be the same as a volunteer. You can
> continue being volunteers once your contractual assignment is complete.  Is
> that so difficult to understand?
>

You are totally wrong. That is the difference between your involvement with
wikimedia movement and mine. My involvement with wikimedia movement will be
there *even if this job is not there*. So just DO NOT compare your
wikimedia contribution with mine. As a volunteer I will decide which  all
projects I need to work. Which means I still  continue to contribute to
various wiki projects as a volunteer. I do not want your permission for
that. Who had given you the authority to expel or exclude me from Wikimedia
community?



Let me ask you a basic question. Are you with wikimedia movement for
helping it or for screwing it up. I was going through the replies and your
wiki contributions over the past few months. What is your intention in
being with Wikimedia movement in India.


Shiju Alex

(An Indic language wikipedian)







On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Anirudh Bhati  wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Shiju Alex wrote:
>
>> I am replying to this mail as a *Malayalam wikimedia community member*.
>>
>>
>> Fact:  Subhashish, *former volunteer*, and now paid consultant with
>>> India Programs.
>>>
>>
>> What do you mean by this? I Shiju Alex is a Indic language wikipedian now
>> close to 6 years. According to Mr. Anirudh (an EC member of India chapter)
>> I am a former volunteer. is this is the official position of wikimedia
>> India chapter? As a community member I require an explanation for this.
>>
>>
> Shiju, you and Subhashish have been volunteers but now you are paid
> contractors hired by the Foundation.  Any work you do within the purview of
> your contractual relationship with the Foundation will be work as a paid
> contractor and cannot be deemed to be the same as a volunteer. You can
> continue being volunteers once your contractual assignment is complete.  Is
> that so difficult to understand?
>
> The difference is this: I am an unpaid volunteer who cannot expend the
> same amount of time and energy towards our projects as you are currently
> able to.
>
>
>> ___
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>>
>>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Let me first explain what he was trying to refer to. He called you a
> volunteer, from the Latin word voluntarius[1], meaning voluntary or
> willing. The noun form [2] describes it as -
> 1.One who enters into, or offers for, any 
> service<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/service> of
> his/her own free will, especially when done without pay.
>

That exactly is the difference of my contribution as a volunteer.  My
contribution to wiki as a volunteer do not depend on the above definition
or my official involvement in WMF or other WMF entities.

On one side few people (for example, Anirudh) are screwing up volunteers
for taking job in WMF; On the other side they themselves criticizing WMF
staff for not being recruited from community. So what is the real intention
of all these discussions?



Shiju

(Again an Indic language wikipedian)


On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:24 PM, Theo10011  wrote:

> Hi Shiju
>
> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:09 PM, Shiju Alex wrote:
>
>> Shiju, you and Subhashish have been volunteers but now you are paid
>>> contractors hired by the Foundation.  Any work you do within the purview of
>>> your contractual relationship with the Foundation will be work as a paid
>>> contractor and cannot be deemed to be the same as a volunteer. You can
>>> continue being volunteers once your contractual assignment is complete.  Is
>>> that so difficult to understand?
>>>
>>
>> You are totally wrong. That is the difference between your involvement
>> with wikimedia movement and mine. My involvement with wikimedia movement
>> will be there *even if this job is not there*. So just DO NOT compare
>> your wikimedia contribution with mine. As a volunteer I will decide which
>> all projects I need to work. Which means I still  continue to contribute to
>> various wiki projects as a volunteer. I do not want your permission for
>> that. Who had given you the authority to expel or exclude me from Wikimedia
>> community?
>>
>
> Let me first explain what he was trying to refer to. He called you a
> volunteer, from the Latin word voluntarius[1], meaning voluntary or
> willing. The noun form [2] describes it as -
>  1.One who enters into, or offers for, any 
> service<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/service> of
> his/her own free will, especially when done without pay.
>
> I'm not sure what you are reacting to. It is a simple distinction between
> paid and non-paid effort. You were a community member, you still are, and
> you shall remain one until you choose to leave it.
>
> You are however, currently a paid employee, there is a very clear
> distinction between volunteers and staff. I assure you it exists on en.wp
> and outside India when the senior staff interact and talk about other
> community members, they always use the word "volunteers" as opposed to
> "staff". You can check with this in several hundred of Sue and Barry's
> email if you like. The distinction is paid vs. non-paid, nothing more. This
> extends to community members and beyond.
>
> There is no reason to be angry over this, it's just terminology and
> possibly a misunderstanding.
>
>
>> Let me ask you a basic question. Are you with wikimedia movement for
>> helping it or for screwing it up. I was going through the replies and your
>> wiki contributions over the past few months. What is your intention in
>> being with Wikimedia movement in India.
>
>
> No one should be asking that question to another community member. I can
> ask you that, you can ask me, it is all a matter of perspective. We are
> only accountable to ourselves, and what we choose to do or say.
>
> I would ask you to please calm down and don't take this as an offense.
> It's probably just a misunderstanding with terminology that is usually
> applied in these situations.
>
> Regards
> Theo
>
> [1]http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/voluntarius#Latin
> [2]http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/volunteer
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012

[Shiju Alex]

>
> IEP volunteers
>

This is another branding going on  to side line wikipedia editors. Remember
once a person start editing in Wikipedia they are wikipedians.  But here we
are branding and sidelining them to prove our POV.

I have seen members (both in this list and in other lists)  using the words
outsiders, non-xyz language speakers, non-xyz city people to sideline few
community members (especially if they are newcomers).  See now I am side
lined as an *ex-volunteer* so that the interested parties can prove their
POV.

For me that is not an issue since my wiki contributions are not depending
on these branding and I will continue my volunteer contribution. The
community atmosphere in Indic wikis is entirely different especially when
it comes towards treatment towards new users.

But when new members joining wiki if they are branded and sidelined how
will community grow for any language. From my experience with Malayalam
wikipedia, I must say Indic wiki communities perform better in this aspect.
When a user start editing in wiki, we must value their wiki contributions,
not by their association or non-association with any
organization/groups/individuals.


Shiju

(Again this mail is sent as a current volunteer of Malayalam wiki projects)




On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:05 AM, Sudhanwa Jogalekar
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Let me take the focus of discussions back to the report/s where it all
> started.
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 4:58 PM, Hisham  wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Mar 7, 2012, at 1:38 PM, Pradeep Mohandas wrote:
> >
> >
> > In retrospect, I also understand the need for seperating the Foundation
> > activities as well. I think it is best to either go for total seperation
> of
> > community, chapter and Office or have general statements.
> >
> >
> > The work that India Program is doing is integrally embedded in community
> > building.  This means we work directly with interested community members
> > across the world and with the Chapter.   I don't think a total
> separation is
> > either practical or advisable.  We should obviously avoid taking the
> option
> > of "general statements" - and we need to find a suitable island in
> between.
>
> I was going through the report and also saw another page here:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs/Outreach_Sessions/Feb
> that gives listing of outreach sessions by IP.
>
> Another page by chapter also shows outreach reports. It is on the main
> page of wiki.
>
> IP and Chapter are having more or less similar functions. They do
> similar outreach efforts and have same people in some functions.
>
> Somehow, the reports from IP as well has chapter has about 9 entries
> each for outreach program and only 2 are common !!
>
> One of them is the now famous NITT academy and the other one is GNUnify.
> I was surprised to see only the English academy entry in GNUnify that
> was conducted by Ashwin and helped by IEP volunteers. The Marathi
> academy conducted at the same lab immediately after the lunch break is
> not mentioned at all. Also surprising was the entry where Moksh was
> involved. Possibly, it was supported by some IP person.
>
> General observation is that the report from IP shows the listing where
> only the IP, IEP people were involved and the chapter report mentions
> otherwise.
>
> This clearly means that there is a disconnect. I dont see any of the
> IEP/IP people joining the Pune community activities (except a few). In
> fact, one of the outreach session (mentioned in the report) by the IEP
> was not even mentioned on any of the lists.
>
> Possibly, there is some polarisation somewhere and personally I feel
> that it could be in favour of IP; simply because volunteers become
> paid activists there.
>
> Lets take a very much possible theoretical case(like the NITT, where
> volunteers had bad experiences) where a volunteer goes for conducting
> an academy and is not treated well and has bad facilities of
> lodging/boarding/travel etc. And for the same academy, a person from
> IP is also going and flies to/from the place and lives in a nice
> hotel. In such case, where and how to compare the voluntary work v/s
> paid staff work? The volunteer has spent his time and resouces for
> hardly anything but the staff is being paid for the same activity as
> part of the job.
>
> Ashwin has hinted about evaluating voluntary efforts. Is there any
> method to do it?
>
> Community members are same for both- chapter as well as IP. However,
> chapter is answerable to the community even when all the community
> members are not necessarily chapter members. (just a technical point.
> not to be emphasised), Whereas IP may not have any binding on anything
> and still get all kind of funds from WMF.  And also hire people from
> the community for doing the same work people were earlier doing
> voluntarily. Also remember that chapter and the community members do
> their work voluntarily and not get paid for it.
>
> Well, just to clarify, I am not saying that com

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fw: India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012

[Shiju Alex]

>
> I am still not clear as a small wikipedian, I should contribute to
> Foundation, Chapter, Community.
>

I would say since you are already contributing to Marathi wikipedia and its
sister projects you continue contributing there. If interested you can
contribute to other WMF wikis also (for example English wiki, metawiki, may
be other language wikis also).

Chapter and other organizational setup are subset of community. Contribute
to if you are interested.  According to me we have enough options available
to contribute.


Shiju

(A Malayalam wikimedia projects volunteer)





On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Mandar Kulkarni wrote:

> +1 from my side for Sudhanwa's views.
>
> I am still not clear as a small wikipedian, I should contribute to
> Foundation, Chapter, Community.
>
> With Regards,
>
> Mandar V. Kulkarni
> http://mr.wikipedia.org
>  http://mr.wikisource.org
> http://live.wikimedia.in
>
>   - Forwarded Message -
> *From:* Sudhanwa Jogalekar 
> *To:* Wikimedia India Community list 
>
> *Sent:* Thursday, 8 March 2012, 2:05
> *Subject:* Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly
> Report: Feb 2012
>
> Hi,
>
> Let me take the focus of discussions back to the report/s where it all
> started.
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 4:58 PM, Hisham  wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Mar 7, 2012, at 1:38 PM, Pradeep Mohandas wrote:
> >
> >
> > In retrospect, I also understand the need for seperating the Foundation
> > activities as well. I think it is best to either go for total seperation
> of
> > community, chapter and Office or have general statements.
> >
> >
> > The work that India Program is doing is integrally embedded in community
> > building.  This means we work directly with interested community members
> > across the world and with the Chapter.   I don't think a total
> separation is
> > either practical or advisable.  We should obviously avoid taking the
> option
> > of "general statements" - and we need to find a suitable island in
> between.
>
> I was going through the report and also saw another page here:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Outreach_Programs/Outreach_Sessions/Feb
> that gives listing of outreach sessions by IP.
>
> Another page by chapter also shows outreach reports. It is on the main
> page of wiki.
>
> IP and Chapter are having more or less similar functions. They do
> similar outreach efforts and have same people in some functions.
>
> Somehow, the reports from IP as well has chapter has about 9 entries
> each for outreach program and only 2 are common !!
>
> One of them is the now famous NITT academy and the other one is GNUnify.
> I was surprised to see only the English academy entry in GNUnify that
> was conducted by Ashwin and helped by IEP volunteers. The Marathi
> academy conducted at the same lab immediately after the lunch break is
> not mentioned at all. Also surprising was the entry where Moksh was
> involved. Possibly, it was supported by some IP person.
>
> General observation is that the report from IP shows the listing where
> only the IP, IEP people were involved and the chapter report mentions
> otherwise.
>
> This clearly means that there is a disconnect. I dont see any of the
> IEP/IP people joining the Pune community activities (except a few). In
> fact, one of the outreach session (mentioned in the report) by the IEP
> was not even mentioned on any of the lists.
>
> Possibly, there is some polarisation somewhere and personally I feel
> that it could be in favour of IP; simply because volunteers become
> paid activists there.
>
> Lets take a very much possible theoretical case(like the NITT, where
> volunteers had bad experiences) where a volunteer goes for conducting
> an academy and is not treated well and has bad facilities of
> lodging/boarding/travel etc. And for the same academy, a person from
> IP is also going and flies to/from the place and lives in a nice
> hotel. In such case, where and how to compare the voluntary work v/s
> paid staff work? The volunteer has spent his time and resouces for
> hardly anything but the staff is being paid for the same activity as
> part of the job.
>
> Ashwin has hinted about evaluating voluntary efforts. Is there any
> method to do it?
>
> Community members are same for both- chapter as well as IP. However,
> chapter is answerable to the community even when all the community
> members are not necessarily chapter members. (just a technical point.
> not to be emphasised), Whereas IP may not have any binding on anything
> and still get all kind of funds from WMF.  And also hire people from
> the community for doing the same work people were earlier doing
> voluntarily. Also remember that chapter and the community members do
> their work voluntarily and not get paid for it.
>
> Well, just to clarify, I am not saying that community members, IP
> staff and IEP volunteers are not doing work. They are really doing
> fantastic work and that must to be appreciated. However, all those
> efforts/work has 

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

I would like to join Tinu in apologizing for any emotional comments that I
made.  I care for our movement.  I want our movement to grow.  I will do my
very best for our movement.


*NOTE*:My access to Internet is limited now due to the change in service
provider. Sorry for not sending this note earlier.


Shiju Alex

(Malayalam Wiki projects volunteer)


On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 4:48 AM, CherianTinu Abraham
wrote:

> Thanks Srikanth for the clarification.
>
> 
> The India Chapter is here to serve the community. It makes
> no distinction between chapter or (other) community members in these
> efforts. AFAIK, Naveen had told RSrikanth that his travel expenses (
> related to NITT) will be reimbursed by the chapter ( Before his travel &
> after). There was no reason why he had a different thought. If any chapter
> member has told you differently, it is his personal view and not the
> chapter's .
>
> Everyone is free to join the chapter as member or not. But regardless of
> whether you are a member or not, we will support you in your Wikimedia
> activities in the best efforts we can and the limited resources we have.
>
> 
>
> 
> I think this thread has gone too far with unnecessary & off-topic
> discussions, personal attacks  .. While I stand by my personal views
> expressed in this thread, the tone used by me wasn't the best of me. I
> think I got a bit carried by the emotions and heat in this discussion.
>  Please understand that there was nothing personal, but I was just standing
> up for the values and philosophies that I personally believe in.  If I have
> unknowingly & unintentionally hurt anyone through my words, I express my
> deepest apologies..
> 
>
> Enjoy your weekend. For those in Bangalore, Don't forget to come for the
> monthly meetup tomorrow. :)
>
> -TC
>
> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 7:20 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Okay, so the person who blasted me about Trichy caught me on this one too.
>> Let me clarify.
>> Tinu, I know the Chapter has been supportive of my actions even though
>> I'm not a member [yet].
>> Naveen was more than ready to sign the MoU much before I informed Nitika.
>> I am NOT claiming travel amount from the Chapter as I feel there is NO
>> justification in me claiming INR 395 [275+120 Kovai-Tiruchi-Kovai], from a
>> Voluntary Non profit organisation, especially when I made so many mistakes
>> and errors before, after and during the T'palli event.
>> The India Chapter has always been supportive of the Community, whether
>> they're members or not.
>> Naveen, as an EC member of the Chapter was the first person to offer
>> support to me for setting up the Coimbatore community.
>> Apart from this, the India Chapter has been the only body [in India, the
>> Chair of the UK chapter offered his support] that has supported me for my
>> QR Pedia ideas.
>> I hope this clarifies everything.
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
>> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Tinu,
>>> Someone from the Chapter, [I DO NOT want to name him] told me so.
>>> I do not want to take the matter furtheer because I travelled at my
>>> expense. I am NOT claiming it from the Chapter.
>>> Good Day, Cheerio.
>>> --
>>>
>>> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 4:01 PM, CherianTinu Abraham <
>>> tinucher...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Srikanth,
>>>>  Who told you that your travel expenses for NITT
>>>> will not be reimbursed since you are not a chapter member ? Don't spread
>>>> false accusations !
>>>> Didn't Naveen say that your travel expenses related to NIIT,  even
>>>> before you are traveling to Trichy?
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>> Tinu Cherian
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 8:47 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
>>>> parakara.gh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> This was the sole reason I went to Trichy, [at my expense, There is
>>>>> some ambiguity, there too, I was told that the Chapter would reminburse my
>>>>> travel amount, later was told that since I'm not a member, it wouldn't be
>>>>> possible, whatever be the case, I don't care, I still had fun].
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ___
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>>>> Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>> To unsubs

[Wikimediaindia-l] Encyclopaedia Britannica stops the print version

[Shiju Alex]

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/technology/encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-never-ending-story-as-print-editions-bite-the-dust/story-fn5h1vlf-1226299200770

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2012/03/britannica-no-more-wikipedia-wins

Journalists already concluded it is due to Wikipedia

--Shiju Alex
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikipedia Telugu article count crosses 50, 000

[Shiju Alex]

Congrats to all Telugu Wikipedians.

Telugu wikipedia is the 3rd Indic Language wikipedia to cross the 50,000
article milestone.

As Naveen mentioned it would be nice if you could create a banner and use
that for outreach. Please let me know if you require support on this.

Shiju




On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 12:03 AM, రహ్మానుద్దీన్ షేక్ wrote:

> Hi all
>
> Wikipedia Telugu's article count has crossed 50,000 mark. On this
> occasion, I congratulate everyone who was directly and indirectly involved.
>
> Now I request every tewiki user to concentrate on articles' quality
> improvement.
>
> తెవికీ సభ్యులందరి కృషి వలన తెవికీ ౫ వ్యాసాల మైలురాయిని దాట గలిగింది.
> అందరికీ శుభాకాంక్షలు. ఇకపై ప్రత్యేక వ్యాసం యొక్క నాణ్యతను మెరుగుపరుద్దాం.
>
> --
> Rahimanuddin Shaik
> నాని
> ॥రామానుజార్య దివ్యాజ్ఞాం వర్ధతామభివర్ధతాం॥
> Telugu Wikipedia : http://te.wikipedia.org
>
> A new address for ebooks : http://kinige.com
>
>
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>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Digitization of books in Wikisource using DjVu

[Shiju Alex]

Dear Wikimedians,

This mail is more relevant to wikimedians working in Wiksiource.

Here is a small blog post about the digitization of books using DjVu (or
about using Proofread extension).
http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/digitization-of-books-in-wikisource-using-djvu/


Post is also placed in metawiki at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages/Digitization_of_books_in_Wikisource_using_DjVu

Few Indic wiki source communities (Sanskrit and Malayalam) are using this
method extensively to digitize the books. But some other communities are
not aware about the use of such an extension.

This post is for sharing the best practices from differenent Indic wiki
communities.  Going forward I will be sharing these type of best practices
and lessons from various Indic language wiki communities. This
is essential since in most cases challenges, issues, and solutions are
similar for Indic wiki communities.

Shiju Alex
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Ones and O’s: The Advantages of Digital Texts in Wikisource

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

When I wrote about the digitization in Wikisource using
DjVu<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/digitization-of-books-in-wikisource-using-djvu/>few
Indic language community members asked me the following question.

When we are able to store the books in its graphic format say PDF/DjVu
> format. what is the need to type it? why not let it be as it is, the reader
> will read it in its graphic format."


This question is very important from Indic wikimedian's perspective. The
immediate answer I could give is about the importance of *searchable* and *
reusable* text.

But when I discussed this topic with Amir Aharoni (a multi language
wikimedian, which includes Indic languages also :)). Amir shared with me
lot of other important topics about this, which helped me
to understand that digitization in Wikisource is more than
about searching and reusing.

The result of our discussion turned out to be blog post. Here it is:
http://aharoni.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/the-advantages-of-wikisource/ In
this blog post Amir discusses about the Advantages of Digital Texts in
Wikisource.  Kindly share your comments.


Thanks
Shiju Alex
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhiji is added to Gujarati Wikisource

[Shiju Alex]

Dear All,

On behalf the Gujarati community, I wanted to share a nice update.  On 22nd
April, Gujarati Wikisource reached a major milestone with the completion
of " સત્યના પ્રયોગો અથવા
આત્મકથા<http://gu.wikisource.org/wiki/%E0%AA%B8%E0%AA%A4%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%AF%E0%AA%A8%E0%AA%BE_%E0%AA%AA%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%B0%E0%AA%AF%E0%AB%8B%E0%AA%97%E0%AB%8B_%E0%AA%85%E0%AA%A5%E0%AA%B5%E0%AA%BE_%E0%AA%86%E0%AA%A4%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%AE%E0%AA%95%E0%AA%A5%E0%AA%BE>"
(Saty Naa Prayogo Athavaa Aatmakathaa)  It is the Autobiography of Mahatma
Gandhi (The story of my experiments with
truth<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_My_Experiments_with_Truth>).
 This book has 454 pages in 169 chapters in 5 sections.

The work to digitize this book was started less than 1 month before.

The following Gujarati wiki librarians contributed to this project.

   1. સુશાંત સાવલા (Sushant Savla)
   2. ધવલ વ્યાસ (Dhaval Vyas)
   3. vyom25 (Vyom)
   4. સતિષ પટેલ (Satish Chandra)
   5. જેઠાભાઇ ઓડેદરા (Jethabhai Odedara)
   6. અશોક મોઢવાડીયા (Ashok Modhavadia - Captain)
   7. jaishree
   8. Roopal Mehta
   9. સંજય બાલોતિયા (Sanjay Balotia)
   10. જીતેન્દ્રસિંહ (Jinedrasinh)
   11. નિલેશ બંધીયા (Nilesha Bandhia)
   12. Findjigar
   13. દેવેન્દ્રસિંહ ગોહિલ (Devendrasinh Gohil)

To me, this is actually the biggest part of this story!  *13
wikilibrarians*from all over the world collaborated on this! That is
amazing for
a relatively new community.

I would like to acknowledge the contributions of Ashok Modhavadia from
Junagadh for managing the project, and for Sushant Savla and Dhaval Vyas
for being inspirations behind it.  Incidentally, Ashok managed the scanning
of all the pages, the allotment of chapters, and all other aspects of
project management.

For anyone interested in how to manage a Wikisource initiative, do look at
the discussions on this page

[
http://gu.wikisource.org/wiki/%E0%AA%9A%E0%AA%B0%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%9A%E0%AA%BE:%E0%AA%B8%E0%AA%A4%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%AF%E0%AA%A8%E0%AA%BE_%E0%AA%AA%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%B0%E0%AA%AF%E0%AB%8B%E0%AA%97%E0%AB%8B_%E0%AA%85%E0%AA%A5%E0%AA%B5%E0%AA%BE_%E0%AA%86%E0%AA%A4%E0%AB%8D%E0%AA%AE%E0%AA%95%E0%AA%A5%E0%AA%BE
]

Digitization of the next book will be managed by Vyom.

There is an lovely quote I will close this mail with:  આજ આનંદ મારા આંગણે
રે લોલ! (Aaj aanand maara aangane re lol!) which means "Today is a joyous
day for us!"
Congratulations to the Gujarati community.

Wishing Gujarati wiki community all the best.

Warmest Regards,

Shiju Alex
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhiji is added to Gujarati Wikisource

[Shiju Alex]

>
> What is the bug number?
> Has the PDF been uploaded to Commons?



John, this is related to the PDF export option in Wiki. The current
solution  won't support Indic scripts.  There are several bugs related to
this. One is this. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28206


An alternate solution (not a good solution) is using LibreOffice by copying
text and format the text outside wiki. But I hope a solution will come as
we move forward. I know Santhosh was working on this earlier. Do not know
its status now.



Shiju

On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 7:01 AM, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> Hi Dhaval,
>
> What is the bug number?
>
> Has the PDF been uploaded to Commons?
>
> On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 4:02 AM, Dhaval S. Vyas  wrote:
> > Thanks once again Ashwin,
> >
> > I have been considering to release the books officially, but
> unfortunately,
> > PDF conversion is not working with Gujarati. The bug is filed a while
> ago,
> > and I have been told that it may get quite a long time to fix the issue.
> > Without having capability of exporting the page as PDF or preparing a
> book,
> > I won't really feel to rush for the book release.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Dhaval
> >
> >
> > On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Ashwin Baindur  >
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Dhaval,
> >>
> >> That is really very good to hear. We must maintain the highest
> >> standards in all things WikiSource. Unlike Wikipedia, errors cannot be
> >> allowed to co-exist. Well done to all Gujarati Wiki-Source-ians. Keep
> >> yup your great work.
> >>
> >> I request that this book may be please be got "officially" released to
> >> gain publicity and attention to Gujarati WikiSource & the community.
> >>
> >> Ashwin
> >>
> >> On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 9:56 PM, Dhaval S. Vyas 
> wrote:
> >> > Thanks Ashwin,
> >> >
> >> > Not only this book, but the other one that is completed and the one
> >> > underway, are all proof read against original. These are all manually
> >> > typed
> >> > and not OCR'd. Thanks to the lack of available OCR Tool/software for
> >> > indic
> >> > scripts.
> >> >
> >> > If you or anybody else here is aware of good and reliable tool for
> >> > Indic,
> >> > especially Gujarati, script please share. That will help us upload
> book
> >> > in
> >> > remarkably less time than it has taken.
> >> >
> >> > Best,
> >> > Dhaval
> >> >
> >> > On 2 May 2012 17:01, "Ashwin Baindur" 
> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Hi Dhaval,
> >> >>
> >> >> No doubt a great achievement and my very sincere congratulations. I
> >> >> just wanted a clarification. This is very important! Have you checked
> >> >> each word for correctness against the original text? Or is it OCR'd
> >> >> text?
> >> >>
> >> >> Sincerely
> >> >>
> >> >> Ashwin
> >> >>
> >> >> On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 9:04 PM, Dhaval S. Vyas 
> >> >> wrote:
> >> >> > Dear Shiju,
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Thanks a million for sharing this with the wider community.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > An update:
> >> >> >
> >> >> > The next collaborative work is already started and in just a week's
> >> >> > time, it
> >> >> > is almost 25% completed as well.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Kind Regards,
> >> >> > Dhaval
> >> >> >
> >> >> > On 2 May 2012 16:11, "Shiju Alex"  wrote:
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> Dear All,
> >> >> >>
> >> >> >> On behalf the Gujarati community, I wanted to share a nice update.
> >> >> >>  On
> >> >> >> 22nd April, Gujarati Wikisource reached a major milestone with the
> >> >> >> completion of " સત્યના પ્રયોગો અથવા આત્મકથા" (Saty Naa Prayogo
> >> >> >> Athavaa
> >> >> >> Aatmakathaa)  It is the Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi (The story
> >> >> >> of
> >> >> >> my
> >> >> >> experiments with truth).  This book has 454 pages in 169 chapters
> in
> >> >> >> 5
>

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Blog post]: Numerals in Indic languages

[Shiju Alex]

>
> I would also like to ask Shiju if Wikipedia community has the right to
> adopt the say its own numeral standard without considering the fact that
> whole world does not use it.
>

This is my personal opinion as an Indic language wikimedian. According to
me, Wikimedia community should be following what the speakers of that
language use. We cannot force numerals/script through wikimedia projects on
the speakers of a language if the  speakers of that languages are not even
aware about it. That is the reason why few Indic language like Tamil,
Malayalam and so on completely moved to Arabic numerals since the
respective language speakers do not know the language numerals. But take
the case of Kannada. The Kannada speakers are aware about kannada numerals
and they use both numeral system in their daily life. So it was easy for
Kannada community to stick to Kannada numerals. This will not be possible
in Malayalam or Tamil since majority of the speakers of the respective
language  do not know the respective numerals. So in short Wiki community
cannot forcefully adopt a numeral system with out considering the speakers
of the language. That is why it was so easy for Assamese and Bangla to
adopt the respective numeral.


Can Wikipedia be used as medium to introduce language changes or should the
> task be just documenting things?
>

If we think from English or European language wikipedias the answer might
be No. Here I am answering from the perspective indic language wikipedias.
So the answer (according to me) to this question is, *to some extent* Yes.
Remember for most Indic languages, Wikipedia is the first unicode website
in that respective language. Even though the primary mission of wikimedia
is to document things through various projects, for Indic languages
knowingly or unknowingly we are brining many revolutionary things for that
language in the cyber world. So for Indic language, Wikimedia projects are
not just another website in that language. Which means there is some sort
of language intervention is happening through the work done by Indic
Wikimedians.

Over the past 6 years I have seen many of us asking (only we Indians will
ask like that) about the relevance of Indic Wikipedias when English
Wikipedia is available. I personally met and heard wikipedians itself
speaking against it and lobbying for it. But now a days I am able to note
that these same people who had criticized the existence of Indic wikipedias
now started speaking for it and even slowly started editing on it :) I have
seen users who never used an Indic language for their studies earlier, now
started studying their mother language just to contribute to the wiki
project in their mother language. This trend is going to continue and
increase now and we will see more speakers of a language speak and work for
their language wiki projects. That is why I told Indic language wiki
projects are doing more than "just documenting the things".

May I also please ask you to add a Copyright notice on blog(similar to
> copied text/images wmf blog) since the same is pasted from meta.
>

I have asked the chapter blog administrators to add copyright notice at the
footer of the blog. I do not have access to that.

Shiju




On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 4:58 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Noopur Raval  wrote:
>
>> Hey folks,
>>
>> Shiju has published an interesting post on numerals in an Indic context.
>>  It's a really fascinating overview - including how numerals are depicted
>> across Indic languages, their use across languages, the policies adopted by
>> the various Indic communities, the need for some community decisions to
>> take things forward, a bit of Shiju's personal grumble on the fact that
>> Hindi film posters are no longer in Hindi :-) and a picture of a Northern
>> Railways bed sheet!
>>
>> Intrigued?  Read more on either on  
>> meta
>>  and
>> or the Chapter 
>> blog
>> .
>>
>> [1]
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages/Numerals_in_Indic_Languages_%26_Indic_language_Wikipedias
>> [2]
>> http://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/06/01/numerals-in-indic-languages-indic-wikipedias-2/
>>
>
>
> Good read. Thanks for the post Shiju.
>
> Coincidentally I came across Kaplan's blog[1] about digits and numbers
> just yesterday. It was a good read, also throws in implementation
> (technical + usage) related issues. I would also like to ask Shiju if
> Wikipedia community has the right to adopt the say its own numeral standard
> without considering the fact that whole world does not use it. Can
> Wikipedia be used as medium to introduce language changes or should the
> task be just documenting things?
>
> I ask this because we are also having similar debates about language
> style[2] (not to be confused with grant

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] OT: Open Content and Open Educational Resources in India

[Shiju Alex]

>
> Assuming a lower threshold as well, that it's just available for free
> and no necessarily the other elements, are there resources that come
> to mind?
>


Texts books (of few subjects) are available for download from the education
department website of the following states (There might be some more state
government sites).

   - Tamil Nadu - http://www.textbooksonline.tn.nic.in/
   - Gujarat - http://gujarat-education.gov.in/textbook/
   - Karnataka:  http://dsert.kar.nic.in/textbooksonline/first.asp
   - Kerala - https://www.itschool.gov.in/initiatives.php
   - Madhya Pradesh -
   http://www.educationportal.mp.gov.in/Public/TextBooks/View_TextBooks.aspx

But as you already mentioned, like the NCERT text books,  these PDFs (in
some cases it is scanned PDF) are available just for download. None of
these are in Public Domain or under free license.


Shiju

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Gautam John wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I'm trying to write a piece on Open Content and Open Educational
> Resources in India and am asking for your help.
>
> Open Content is defined as:
>
> Reuse - the right to reuse the content in its unaltered / verbatim
> form (e.g., make a backup copy of the content)
> Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content
> itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
> Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with
> other content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content
> into a mashup)
> Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your
> revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the
> content to a friend)[3]
>
> [from: http://opencontent.org/definition/]
>
> Wikipedia and sister projects apart, do you know of content, both
> educational and otherwise, in India that would fit this definition?
> Assuming a lower threshold as well, that it's just available for free
> and no necessarily the other elements, are there resources that come
> to mind?
>
> I can think of the NCERT textbooks
> [http://www.ncert.nic.in/ncerts/textbook/textbook.htm], NPTEL
> [http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/], VASAT [http://vasat.icrisat.org/],
> FlexiLearn [http://www.ignouflexilearn.ac.in/flexilearn/] and Pratham
> Books, if I say so myself,
> [http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/Pratham_Books].
>
> What else comes to mind? Examples and links would be very helpful.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Best,
>
> Gautam
> 
> http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
>
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[Wikimediaindia-l] മലയാളം വി ക്കിപീഡിയ-സ്ഥി തിവിവരക്കണക്കു കള്‍ ‍- 2009 മാര്ച് ച്

[Shiju Alex]

*2009 മാര്‍ച്ച് *മാസം അവസാനിച്ചപ്പോള്‍, മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയുടെ
സ്ഥിതിവിവരക്കണക്കുകള്‍ താഴെ പറയുന്ന വിധം ആണ്. മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയ ഉപയോക്താവായ
ജേക്കബ് തയ്യാറാക്കിയ വിക്കിപീഡിയയുടെ സ്ഥിതിവിവരക്കണക്കുകളുടെ പട്ടികയില്‍
നിന്നും, അല്ലാതെയും ശെഖരിച്ച വിവരങ്ങളാണു് ഇതില്‍.
മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയ 10,000 ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍ എന്ന നാഴികക്കല്ലിനോടു് അടുത്തു്
കൊണ്ടിരിക്കുകയാണു്. നിലവിലുള്ള വളര്‍ച്ച് വച്ചു് ജൂണ്‍ പകുതിയോടെ ആ കടമ്പ
കടക്കും എന്നു് പ്രതീക്ഷിക്കുന്നു.

   - 2009 മാര്‍ച്ച് മാസം മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍ 332 ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍ പുതുതായി
   കൂട്ടിച്ചേര്‍ക്കപ്പെട്ടു. 2009 മാര്‍ച്ച് 31-നു മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍ 9240
   ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍ ഉണ്ട്.
   - പേജ് ഡെപ്ത് 140ല്‍ നിന്നു 145 ആയി ഉയര്‍‌ന്നു. പേജ് ഡെപ്‌‌ത്തില്‍
   നമ്മള്‍ ലോക വിക്കിപീഡിയകളില്‍ മൂന്നാം സ്ഥാനം നിലനിര്‍ത്തുന്നു. ഇംഗ്ലീഷും
   (415) ഹീബ്രുവും (178) ആണ് ഒന്നും രണ്ടും സ്ഥാനങ്ങളില്‍.
   - ഇതു വരെയുള്ള എഡിറ്റുകളുടെ എണ്ണം: 3,30,000. 2009 മാര്‍ച്ച് മാസം മലയാളം
   വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍  11,500 എഡിറ്റുകള്‍ ആണ് നടന്നത്.
   - ഇതു വരെ വിക്കിയില്‍ അം‌ഗത്വമെടുത്ത ഉപയോക്താക്കളുടെ എണ്ണം: 9659. 2009
   ജനുവരി മാസത്തില്‍ ഏതാണ്ട് 400ഓളം പേരാണു പുതുതായി അംഗത്വമെടുത്തത്. 13,000
   രജിസ്റ്റേര്‍‌ഡ് ഉപയൊക്താക്കളുമായി ഹിന്ദി വിക്കിപീഡിയ ആണു് ഇന്ത്യന്‍
   ഭാഷകളിലുള്ള വിക്കിപീഡിയകളില്‍ ഉപയോക്താക്കളുടെ കാര്യത്തില്‍ ഒന്നാം
   സ്ഥാനത്തു്. ഹിന്ദി കഴിഞ്ഞാല്‍ ഏറ്റവും കൂടുതല്‍ രജിസ്റ്റേര്‍‌ഡ്
   ഉപയൊക്താക്കള്‍ മലയാളത്തിലാണു്. നമ്മുടെ തൊട്ടുപിറകേ 9300 ഉപയോക്താക്കളുമായി
   തെലുഗ് വിക്കിപീഡിയ ഉണ്ട്.
   - ഇതുവരെ വിക്കിയില്‍ അപ്‌ലോഡ് ചെയ്ത ചിത്രങ്ങളുടെ എണ്ണം:5786. 2009
   മാര്‍ച്ച് മാസത്തില്‍ 100 ഓളം ചിത്രങ്ങളാണു് മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍
   ചേര്‍ക്കപ്പെട്ടത്.


ജേക്കബ് തയ്യാറാക്കിയ ഫോര്‍ക്കാസ്റ്റ് താഴെ.*2009 മാര്‍ച്ചില്‍
പ്രതീക്ഷിക്കപ്പെട്ട താളുകളും യഥാര്‍ത്ഥ്യവും:*  കഴിഞ്ഞ 3 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 6 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 9 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 12 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 18 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ യഥാര്‍ത്ഥം  9309 9311 9377 9417
9367 *9240*

*നവീകരിച്ച forecast*
   കഴിഞ്ഞ 3 മാസത്തെ വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 6 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 9 മാസത്തെ വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക്
പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 12 മാസത്തെ വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ
18 മാസത്തെ വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍  ഏപ്രില്‍ 2009 9427 9531 9585
9657 9615  മേയ് 2009 9630 9783 9827 9927 9892  ജൂണ്‍ 2009 9822 *10015* *
10072* *10182* *10169*  ജൂലൈ 2009 *10022* 10244 10334 10449 10451  ഓഗസ്റ്റ്
2009 10216 10506 10596 10710 10746  സെപ്റ്റംബര്‍ 2009 10414 10757 10846
10976 11037  ഒക്ടോബര്‍ 2009 10610 10992 11099 11257 11318  നവംബര്‍ 2009
10807 11236 11372 11538 11588  ഡിസംബര്‍ 2009 11003 11485 11633 11810
11851  ജനുവരി
2010 11200 11732 11879 12085 12124  ഫെബ്രുവരി 2010 11397 11974 12140 12372
12393  മാര്‍ച്ച് 2010 11593 12218 12400 12644 12669
*ക്ഷമാപണം:* ജോലിസ്ഥലം പൂണെയില്‍ നിന്നു് ബാംഗ്ളൂരിലേക്കു് മാറുന്നതിന്റെ
തിരക്കില്‍ പെട്ടു പോയതിനാല്‍, ഫെബ്രുവരി മാസം തൊട്ടു് ഇതുവരേയും മലയാളം
വിക്കികളില്‍ സജീവമാകാന്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞില്ല. അതു കൊണ്ടു് തന്നെ ഫെബ്രുവരി മാസത്തെ
സ്ഥിതിവിവരക്കണക്കും പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിക്കാന്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞില്ല. എല്ലാവരും
ക്ഷമിക്കുമല്ലോ. തുടര്‍ന്നു് വിക്കികളില്‍ സജീവമാകാം എന്നു് കരുതുന്നു.
ഷിജു അലക്സ്
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: മലയാളം വ ിക്കിപീഡിയ-സ്ഥ ിതിവിവരക്കണക്ക ുകള്‍ ‍- 2009 മാര്ച ്ച്

[Shiju Alex]

Sorry. The below mail was supposed to send to Malayalam wiki projects
mailing list. I sent it to this list by mistake. I apologize. Sorry for the
spam.

Shiju Alex

-- Forwarded message --
From: Shiju Alex 
Date: 2009/4/10
Subject: മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയ-സ്ഥിതിവിവരക്കണക്കുകള്‍ ‍- 2009 മാര്ച്ച്
To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org


*2009 മാര്‍ച്ച് *മാസം അവസാനിച്ചപ്പോള്‍, മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയുടെ
സ്ഥിതിവിവരക്കണക്കുകള്‍ താഴെ പറയുന്ന വിധം ആണ്. മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയ ഉപയോക്താവായ
ജേക്കബ് തയ്യാറാക്കിയ വിക്കിപീഡിയയുടെ സ്ഥിതിവിവരക്കണക്കുകളുടെ പട്ടികയില്‍
നിന്നും, അല്ലാതെയും ശെഖരിച്ച വിവരങ്ങളാണു് ഇതില്‍.
മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയ 10,000 ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍ എന്ന നാഴികക്കല്ലിനോടു് അടുത്തു്
കൊണ്ടിരിക്കുകയാണു്. നിലവിലുള്ള വളര്‍ച്ച് വച്ചു് ജൂണ്‍ പകുതിയോടെ ആ കടമ്പ
കടക്കും എന്നു് പ്രതീക്ഷിക്കുന്നു.

   - 2009 മാര്‍ച്ച് മാസം മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍ 332 ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍ പുതുതായി
   കൂട്ടിച്ചേര്‍ക്കപ്പെട്ടു. 2009 മാര്‍ച്ച് 31-നു മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍ 9240
   ലേഖനങ്ങള്‍ ഉണ്ട്.
   - പേജ് ഡെപ്ത് 140ല്‍ നിന്നു 145 ആയി ഉയര്‍‌ന്നു. പേജ് ഡെപ്‌‌ത്തില്‍
   നമ്മള്‍ ലോക വിക്കിപീഡിയകളില്‍ മൂന്നാം സ്ഥാനം നിലനിര്‍ത്തുന്നു. ഇംഗ്ലീഷും
   (415) ഹീബ്രുവും (178) ആണ് ഒന്നും രണ്ടും സ്ഥാനങ്ങളില്‍.
   - ഇതു വരെയുള്ള എഡിറ്റുകളുടെ എണ്ണം: 3,30,000. 2009 മാര്‍ച്ച് മാസം മലയാളം
   വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍  11,500 എഡിറ്റുകള്‍ ആണ് നടന്നത്.
   - ഇതു വരെ വിക്കിയില്‍ അം‌ഗത്വമെടുത്ത ഉപയോക്താക്കളുടെ എണ്ണം: 9659. 2009
   ജനുവരി മാസത്തില്‍ ഏതാണ്ട് 400ഓളം പേരാണു പുതുതായി അംഗത്വമെടുത്തത്. 13,000
   രജിസ്റ്റേര്‍‌ഡ് ഉപയൊക്താക്കളുമായി ഹിന്ദി വിക്കിപീഡിയ ആണു് ഇന്ത്യന്‍
   ഭാഷകളിലുള്ള വിക്കിപീഡിയകളില്‍ ഉപയോക്താക്കളുടെ കാര്യത്തില്‍ ഒന്നാം
   സ്ഥാനത്തു്. ഹിന്ദി കഴിഞ്ഞാല്‍ ഏറ്റവും കൂടുതല്‍ രജിസ്റ്റേര്‍‌ഡ്
   ഉപയൊക്താക്കള്‍ മലയാളത്തിലാണു്. നമ്മുടെ തൊട്ടുപിറകേ 9300 ഉപയോക്താക്കളുമായി
   തെലുഗ് വിക്കിപീഡിയ ഉണ്ട്.
   - ഇതുവരെ വിക്കിയില്‍ അപ്‌ലോഡ് ചെയ്ത ചിത്രങ്ങളുടെ എണ്ണം:5786. 2009
   മാര്‍ച്ച് മാസത്തില്‍ 100 ഓളം ചിത്രങ്ങളാണു് മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയയില്‍
   ചേര്‍ക്കപ്പെട്ടത്.


ജേക്കബ് തയ്യാറാക്കിയ ഫോര്‍ക്കാസ്റ്റ് താഴെ.*2009 മാര്‍ച്ചില്‍
പ്രതീക്ഷിക്കപ്പെട്ട താളുകളും യഥാര്‍ത്ഥ്യവും:*  കഴിഞ്ഞ 3 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 6 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 9 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 12 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 18 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നിരുന്നെങ്കില്‍ യഥാര്‍ത്ഥം  9309 9311 9377 9417
9367 *9240*

*നവീകരിച്ച forecast*
   കഴിഞ്ഞ 3 മാസത്തെ വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 6 മാസത്തെ
വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 9 മാസത്തെ വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക്
പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ 12 മാസത്തെ വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞ
18 മാസത്തെ വളര്‍ച്ചാനിരക്ക് പിന്തുടര്‍ന്നാല്‍  ഏപ്രില്‍ 2009 9427 9531 9585
9657 9615  മേയ് 2009 9630 9783 9827 9927 9892  ജൂണ്‍ 2009 9822 *10015* *
10072* *10182* *10169*  ജൂലൈ 2009 *10022* 10244 10334 10449 10451  ഓഗസ്റ്റ്
2009 10216 10506 10596 10710 10746  സെപ്റ്റംബര്‍ 2009 10414 10757 10846
10976 11037  ഒക്ടോബര്‍ 2009 10610 10992 11099 11257 11318  നവംബര്‍ 2009
10807 11236 11372 11538 11588  ഡിസംബര്‍ 2009 11003 11485 11633 11810
11851  ജനുവരി
2010 11200 11732 11879 12085 12124  ഫെബ്രുവരി 2010 11397 11974 12140 12372
12393  മാര്‍ച്ച് 2010 11593 12218 12400 12644 12669
*ക്ഷമാപണം:* ജോലിസ്ഥലം പൂണെയില്‍ നിന്നു് ബാംഗ്ളൂരിലേക്കു് മാറുന്നതിന്റെ
തിരക്കില്‍ പെട്ടു പോയതിനാല്‍, ഫെബ്രുവരി മാസം തൊട്ടു് ഇതുവരേയും മലയാളം
വിക്കികളില്‍ സജീവമാകാന്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞില്ല. അതു കൊണ്ടു് തന്നെ ഫെബ്രുവരി മാസത്തെ
സ്ഥിതിവിവരക്കണക്കും പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിക്കാന്‍ കഴിഞ്ഞില്ല. എല്ലാവരും
ക്ഷമിക്കുമല്ലോ. തുടര്‍ന്നു് വിക്കികളില്‍ സജീവമാകാം എന്നു് കരുതുന്നു.
ഷിജു അലക്സ്
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] about difficulties in localisation of templates from english wikipedia

[Shiju Alex]

I am forwarding the discussion to
*wikimediaindi...@lists.wikimedia.org*mailing list. The wikipedians
who haven't subscribed to the Wikimedia India
mailing list can subscribe it by visiting
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l I have moved
the email addresses of all to bcc.

Let all the Indic language Wikipedians benefit from these type of
discussions. This list is one place where we can share our experiences.
<https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l>To move
forward, we need more co-operation from all the Indic language wikipedians
since we have many things in common.That will benefit many of us.

Thanks

Shiju Alex

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 4:36 AM, Ganesh Krishnamurthy <
ganeshkmur...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Why isn't the e-mail distribution list,
> wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org being used? Using that will put these
> discussions at a central place. If you are not subscribed, please visit
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l and get
> yourself subscribed.
>
> If you are going to translate the visible content on template, it does not
> matter if you change the name as well. You will not be able to overwrite the
> template anyway. You can still add interwiki links so that you let people
> know the related templates in other language wikipedias. My 2 cents.
>
> Saravask and myself tried adding a translation layer that receives values
> in English fields, but displays them in other language. It was slowing
> things down, and so we decided not to proceed with it. But it is something
> that you can be tested further. This way the English template can be copied
> over anytime and a few changes will need to be made to the the transaction
> layer.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ganesh Krishnamurthy
> User:Ganeshk
>
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 11:24 AM, Shiju Alex wrote:
>
>> I assume that you are talking about this template:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Rapid_transit_in_India
>>
>>
>> Yes, leave the name of the template as is. And translate all the content
>> that is visible to the user
>>
>>
>> Shiju Alex
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 8:47 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <
>> rsrikant...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> So, if I coy Template:Rapid Transit in India to hiwiki, I leave it with
>>> the same name?
>>>
>>> 2009/8/21 Shiju Alex 
>>>
>>> Mahitgar,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Here is my experience.
>>>>
>>>> You can name a template according to your wish *if you have any
>>>> template that is specific to your wiki*.There is no harm in that. We
>>>> have many templates in Malayalam Wiki with localized names. None of these
>>>> templates have their counter part in English Wikipedia.
>>>>
>>>> *But*, I won't recommend using a localized name for a template if you
>>>> are copying a template from English wikipedia. You can very well localize
>>>> the contents (NOT WIKI CODES) of any template according to your wish.
>>>> Remember, a reader will see only the human readable output format of a
>>>> template, and not the name of a template or the wiki codes inside the
>>>> template.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My recommendation is, DONOT use *localized name* for templates
>>>> especially if the template is a copy of an English wikipedia template.
>>>> Localized *Template names* without the interwiki links will make the
>>>> life of a future local wiki user very very difficult.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> As you might be aware, many of the templates in English Wikipedia are
>>>> related to each other. How you keep track of  the changes in the templates
>>>> (English wiki templates) if the name is localized and if there are no
>>>> interwiki links added to the localized template. I might have created 
>>>> around
>>>> 1000 templates in Malayalam Wikipedia. But I never went back to any 
>>>> template
>>>> to update it nor I have added any interwiki links. If the name of the
>>>> Template is in English, any interested user can always go back and check 
>>>> the
>>>> same in English Wikipedia and update the same in local wiki. This type of
>>>> update has happened many times in Malayalam Wikipedia.
>>>>
>>>> As mentioned above, many templates are related to each other. So
>>>> translating the name of some templates may lead to the non working of some
>>>> other templates. Remember one o

[Wikimediaindia-l] Online encyclopedia in Kannada

[Shiju Alex]

If the tentative plan fructifies, *there will be an online encyclopedia in
Kannada*, similar to Wikipedia in English, an online encyclopedia, expected
to launch on November 1 by the CM BS Yeddyurappa.

>From the below link.

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=KDA%E2%80%99S+big+plans+for+rajyotsava&artid=O1pQmSPtupQ=&SectionID=Qz/kHVp9tEs=&MainSectionID=wIcBMLGbUJI=&SectionName=UOaHCPTTmuP3XGzZRCAUTQ==&SEO=


Any idea about the license that is going to be used in this online
encyclopedia? Is Government is planning for a Wiki? Is Government is aware
about the existence of a Kannada Wikipedia?


Kannada Wikipedians, any idea about this news?


Shiju Alex
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[Wikimediaindia-l] Indic Language Wikipedias - Statistics - 2009 December

[Shiju Alex]

Hello All,

Here is a brief statistical analysis of some of the major Indic
language wikipedias for the month of 2009 December.
http://shijualexonline.googlepages.com/2009_december_en.pdf

The data for this report is taken from the statistical analysis (of
all the WikiMedia foundation wikis) prepared and maintained by Erik
Zachte (Website: http://infodisiac.com/). The statistics is available
at http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm. Special thanks to Erik
for all the support he has extended while I was compiling this report.

The report is prepared by collecting the data available on the last
day of every month. That is, the statistical data for the month of
2009 December is collected at 2009 December 31 23:59 PM GMT and so on.

Kindly note that, for time being, I have included the statistical
information of only those Indian language wikipedias that crossed the
1000 articles milestone. Following are those Indian Language
Wikipedias.

* Bengali
* Bishnupriya Manipuri
* Gujarathi
* Hindi
* Kannada
* Malayalam
* Marathi
* Tamil
* Telugu


I have plans to add the following SEA language wikipedias in the
future statistical reports (Statistical report for the month of
January 2010 onwards)

* Sinhala
* Sanskrit
* Bhojpuri
* Oriya
* Punjabi
* Assamese

I hope this initiative will improve the interaction between different
Indic Language Wikipedias/wikipedians.

We (Malayalam Wikipedians - http://ml.wikipedia.org) are maintaining a
similar comparison study of the major Indic Language wikipedias for
the past two years. This analysis has helped us to understand the
status of Malayalam Wikipedia as compared to the other Indic Language
Wikipedias. I hope this report will help other Indic language
wikipedias also.

The PDF of detailed analysis is available at
http://shijualexonline.googlepages.com/2009_december_en.pdf

Please let me know in case there are any issues.


Regards
Shiju Alex

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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] wikipedia.org.in

[Shiju Alex]

I don't think http://wikipedia.in/ is registered by any one. Kindly verify.


But, do we actullay require this site? What is its purpose?  Is it just for
listing link to Indic languages wikis.



*NOTE:* Some Indic languages like Tamil, Bengali, and Urdu are the official
languages in more than one country.

Shiju



On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 4:53 AM, Casey Brown  wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 10:46 PM, Jyothis Edathoot  wrote:
> > I believe that the name wikipedia is owned by foundation. If that is the
> > case, Foundation can officially request the InRegistrar to revoke the
> domain
> > from him.
> > Casey, Please correct me if I am wrong.
>
> From what Mike told me, it depends on how India works with foreign
> trademarks, domain names, etc.  It's hard for the Foundation to get
> involved until there's some kind of organization or chapter setup in
> India.  It gets a lot more complex if the Foundation has to come in,
> which is why it's best to work informally with the registrar/owners
> first.
>
> Maybe you guys could try asking InRegistrar about this and see how far
> that goes?  Maybe they already have a process setup for this.
>
> --
> Casey Brown
> Cbrown1023
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] wikipedia.org.in

[Shiju Alex]

>
> He is interested in making wikipedia.in  as homepage for indian language
> wikipedias.
> *But his condition is that his name must be there in that page. Is it
> possible for us to give the credit on that page ?*
>

I don't think Wikipedians will accept that idea. If that is the case, it is
better to go with the current system.

Shiju




On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Naveen Francis  wrote:

> Hi Shiju,
>
> wikipedia.in is owned by Jitendra Jain. but he has not put up anything.
>
> I guess, finding an indic language wikipedia is difficult from
> http://wikipedia.org/ from a users perspective.
>
> Thanks,
> Naveen Francis
>
>
>
> 2010/1/18 Shiju Alex 
>
> I don't think http://wikipedia.in/ is registered by any one. Kindly
>> verify.
>>
>>
>> But, do we actullay require this site? What is its purpose?  Is it just
>> for listing link to Indic languages wikis.
>>
>>
>>
>> *NOTE:* Some Indic languages like Tamil, Bengali, and Urdu are the
>> official languages in more than one country.
>>
>> Shiju
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 4:53 AM, Casey Brown wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 10:46 PM, Jyothis Edathoot 
>>> wrote:
>>> > I believe that the name wikipedia is owned by foundation. If that is
>>> the
>>> > case, Foundation can officially request the InRegistrar to revoke the
>>> domain
>>> > from him.
>>> > Casey, Please correct me if I am wrong.
>>>
>>> From what Mike told me, it depends on how India works with foreign
>>> trademarks, domain names, etc.  It's hard for the Foundation to get
>>> involved until there's some kind of organization or chapter setup in
>>> India.  It gets a lot more complex if the Foundation has to come in,
>>> which is why it's best to work informally with the registrar/owners
>>> first.
>>>
>>> Maybe you guys could try asking InRegistrar about this and see how far
>>> that goes?  Maybe they already have a process setup for this.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Casey Brown
>>> Cbrown1023
>>>
>>> ___
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>>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
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>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India chapter/ ET article

[Shiju Alex]

I really do not know who has asked all the below questions. Now a days many
"Wikipedians" who doesn't have much idea about Wikipedia or Wiki editing are
representing Wikipedia in many forums. Many technical inaccuracies are
creeping in the report that carry these discussions.

Recently I read some news paper reports like, *WikiPedia hits sixer this
year*,  *the only Wikipedia Editor from bangalore*.., and so on



> The work and administration of the chapter will be *transparent,
> democratic and open*; it will function in exactly the way you decide it
> should.
>

One thing I noticed about the process of "Wikimedia India chapter" setup is,
there is no transparency in the things happenings there.

I know that a *secret/closed-door/confidential *meeting happened during some
time in *2009 June/July*, which is attended up by some bangalore based IT
professionals to discuss about Wikimedia India chapter. I do not know how
many of them are genuine active Wikipedians and on what basis the selection
is made. I haven't seen any invitation/notice/report/MOM/press release
regarding this in Wikipedia *or in this mailing list*.

None of the Indian of the Indian Language Wikipedian Communities are
informed while initiating such a discussion. At least we (Malayalam
Wikipedians) we haven't received any communication regarding this.


Is this chapter is meant only for India based *English language
Wikipedians*and for some IT professionals?



Shiju Alex

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 6:21 AM, Achal Prabhala  wrote:

> There's been some discussion on this list of an Economic Times article
> that appeared a few days ago
>
> (
> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/Wikipedia-may-soon-open-its-India-chapter/articleshow/5526084.cms
> )
>
> and seeing as I am apparently quoted in the article, I thought I'd
> clarify a few things.
>
> On the ET article:
>
> 1) I did not in fact speak to the Economic Times - the quotes they've
> attributed to me are their own summaries of discussions that I've had
> with you and others on this mailing list and on the strategy project
> wiki (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/India) as well as an
> interview with Bridgespan, the consultants who are working with the
> Wikimedia Foundation on this strategy exercise
> (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interviews/Achal_Prabhala). A pity
> that ET didn't think it necessary to make contact; I could have put them
> on to Wikipedians on this list, and if they had spoken to you, I think
> it would have made for a more complete article.
>
> On the India chapter:
>
> 2) As most of you know, there have been discussions around starting up
> an India chapter since about 2004. As you also know, the early
> initiatives stalled. In 2008, Jimmy Wales and Sue Gardner visited Kochi,
> Bangalore and Chennai - and during that visit, were able to stir up
> considerable enthusiasm among Wikipedians to get a chapter going. Since
> that time, I have helped a few interested Wikipedians to set up the
> infrastructure for a future Indian Wikimedia chapter - a few good people
> who were unwise enough to sign up for a long slog through the annals of
> bureaucracy, and who were furthermore willing to devote the better part
> of 2009 to understanding the minutiae of Indian tax law! (Not to mention
> extended - and extremely useful - discussions with the Wikimedia
> Chapters Committee).
>
> 3) The people who have been involved in the exercise thus far are:
> Gautam John (gkjohn at gmail dot com), Anirudh Singh Bhati
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sir_Nicholas_de_Mimsy-Porpington),
> Anoop (anoop dot ind at gmail dot com), Arjuna Rao Chavala (arjunaraoc
> at googlemail dot com), Arun Ram (arunram25 at gmail dot com), Hari
> Prasad Nadig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:HPN), BalaSundaraRaman
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sundar) and Kiruba Shankar (kiruba at
> kiruba dot com). The institution in India which has been helping them,
> along with me, is a Bangalore-based organisation that many of you might
> already be familiar with: the Centre for Internet and Society
> (www.cis-india.org). CIS is a non-profit that works to broaden the scope
> of the internet and related technologies in India; it has been providing
> weekly space for Wikipedia meet-ups, as well as some financial
> assistance with the actual drafting of registration documents.
>
> 4) As you have pointed out, the information on meta is not up to date.
> This, in part, is because the folks who have been working so hard on
> getting a chapter registered are yet to formulate an acceptable draft of
> the bye-laws to share with the broader Wikipedian community. However,
> they will soon have that information ready, and welcome your feed

[Wikimediaindia-l] Indian language Wikipedias - Statistical report - 2010 January

[Shiju Alex]

Hello All

Please see the PDF file available at the location
http://shijualexonline.googlepages.com/2010_01_january_en.pdf for a detailed
statistical analysis of the Indian language wikipedias for the month of 2010
January.

The data for this report is taken from the statistical analysis of all the
WikiMedia wikis prepared and maintained by Erik Zachte (Website:
http://infodisiac.com/). The statistics is available at
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm. Special thanks to Erik for all
the support he has extended while I was compiling this report.

The data is collected on the last day of every month. That is, the
statistical data for the month of 2010 January is collected at 2010 January
31 23:59 PM GMT. The statistical analysis of the following Indian language
wikipedias is included in this blog post.


   * Assamese (http://as.wikipedia.org)
   * Bengali (http://bn.wikipedia.org)
   * Bhojpuri (http://bh.wikipedia.org)
   * Bishnupriya Manipuri (http://bpy.wikipedia.org)
   * Gujarathi (http://gu.wikipedia.org)
   * Hindi (http://hi.wikipedia.org)
   * Kannada (http://kn.wikipedia.org)
   * Kashmiri (http://ks.wikipedia.org)
   * Malayalam (http://ml.wikipedia.org)
   * Marathi (http://mr.wikipedia.org)
   * Odia (Oriya) (http://or.wikipedia.org)
   * Pali (http://pi.wikipedia.org)
   * Punjabi (http://pa.wikipedia.org)
   * Sanskrit (http://sa.wikipedia.org)
   * Sindhi (http://sd.wikipedia.org)
   * Tamil (http://ta.wikipedia.org)
   * Telugu (http://te.wikipedia.org)
   * Urdu (http://ur.wikipedia.org)


I have also included some other languages of Indian Subcontinent like
Sinhala, Burmese, and so on;


   * Burmese (http://my.wikipedia.org)
   * Nepal Bhasha/Newari (http://new.wikipedia.org)
   * Nepali (http://ne.wikipedia.org)
   * Sinhala (http://si.wikipedia.org)

I know that these languages are not among the official languages the India.
But I am very much interested to see the wiki activity for  these languages
due to various reasons. Especially Sinhala and Burmese Wikipedia.


I hope this initiative will improve the interaction between different Indian
Language Wikipedias/wikipedians. We (Malayalam Wikipedians -
http://ml.wikipedia.org) are maintaining a similar comparison study of the
major Indian Language wikipedias for the past two years. This analysis has
helped us to understand the status of Malayalam Wikipedia as compared to
other Indian Language Wikipedias. I hope this report will help other Indian
language wikipedias also.


Please feel free to add your suggestions/analysis as comment to this post. I
have divided this report into two different sections.


  1. Statistical analysis of Wikipedias
  2. Localization status of Mediawiki software


Following are the different topics covered under each section.

*Wikipedia Statistics*

Article statistics

Number of Articles
Number of Edits
Break up of edits (2009 February – 2010 January)
Edits per article
Number of new articles/day
Average size of an article (bytes)
Database size (in Mega Bytes)
Percentage of articles with size greater than 500 bytes
Percentage of articles with size greater than 2000 bytes (2 kilobytes)

User Statistics

Number of active wikipedians

Page views per month (All figures in Lakhs/month)
MediaWiki Statistics

*Localization statistics*

Media Wiki Localization status (percentage)



See the PDF http://shijualexonline.googlepages.com/2010_01_january_en.pdffor
the detailed analysis. You can make your own analysis and conclusions
after going through each topic in the PDF.

Along with each month's statistical report, I would like to put forward a
question related to Indian langaugage Wikis  The question for this month is
:


*Question for 2010 january:* *Which is the first Indian language Wikipedia?*

Support your answer with sufficient references.


Please let me know in case there are any issues.


Regards

Shiju Alex
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indian language Wikipedias - Statistical report - 2010 January

[Shiju Alex]

Do you - or someone else - have any plans to add these at some point in
time?



Yes very much. I am preparing a blog post based on these numbers. Infact for
the past 1.5 years we are publishing an analysis based on these numbers in
Malayalam wiki mailing list each month.

I know the current information is not "analysis". But I hope it will improve
as we move forward based on the valuable inputs from all of you.

Siebrand, Erik,

I have noticed that in all the statistics tables at different
locations,   *Bhojpuri
language* is representented as *Bihari*. But Bhojupuri is one of the *Bihari
languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bihari_languages)*. Other Bihari
languages are : Angika <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angika_language>  *·*
Bhojpuri <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpuri>  *·* Fiji
Hindi<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiji_Hindi>
*·* 
Kudmali<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kudmali&action=edit&redlink=1>
*·* Magahi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magahi>  *·*
Maithili<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maithili_language>
*·* Majhi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majhi_language>  *·*
Musasa<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musasa_language>
*·* 
Panchpargania<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Panchpargania&action=edit&redlink=1>
*·* Sadri <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadri_language>  *·* Sadri,
Oraon<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadri_language>
*·* Sarnami Hindustani <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarnami>  *·*
Surajpuri<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Surajpuri&action=edit&redlink=1>
*·* Vajjika <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajjika_language>

Please see whether this information needs to updated.


Thank you

Shiju


On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:39 AM, Siebrand Mazeland wrote:

> Hi Shiju Alex,
>
> *very* nice overview in numbers.
>
> You’re calling it an ‘analysis’. Usually I expect some prose with an
> analysis – reasoning, assumptions and conclusions.
>
> Do you - or someone else - have any plans to add these at some point in
> time? Currently each reader has to go through all the tables, make his own
> observations, mix in some assumptions and distill conclusions from those. I
> truly understand that commenting on numbers is probably even more work than
> gathering them in the current format in the first place.
>
> It could however be very valuable – and a great discussion starter – if
> someone would comment on the numbers say every 6 months. It would also allow
> readers of the report to just read the words, and have the tables as an
> annex.
>
> Next steps could be to add goals, strategies to archieve them, and assess
> the goals and strategies later on, based on this type of report.
>
> Comments?
>
> Siebrand
>
> From: wikimediaindia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:
> wikimediaindia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Shiju Alex
> Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 7:29 PM
> To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indian language Wikipedias - Statistical report
> - 2010 January
>
> Hello All
>
> Please see the PDF file available at the location
> http://shijualexonline.googlepages.com/2010_01_january_en.pdf for a
> detailed statistical analysis of the Indian language wikipedias for the
> month of 2010 January.
>
> 
>
>
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Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indian language Wikipedias - Statistical report - 2010 January

[Shiju Alex]

Do you - or someone else - have any plans to add these at some point in
time?


I have added my views about the Indian Wikipedias statistics (2010 January)
in my blog. The link to the blog post is
http://shijualex.blogspot.com/2010/02/indian-language-wikipedias-statistics.html

Please feel free to add your suggestions/analysis as comment to the post. I
encourage publishing your views/comment as separate blog post also. We can
also discuss about the same in the mailing list.

I hope analyzing the statistics will benefit all the Indian language wikis.
I would like to emphasis one point regarding the localization of MediaWiki
messages.

*Localization of the Wiki software is very important when we are trying to
reach to prospective Wikipedians in any language*. A website with the
interface and all system messages in your local language has edge over a
website with English only content among your language community.

GerardM <http://translatewiki.net/wiki/User:GerardM>  has been enlightening
us regarding this many times. He has also send mails regarding this to the *
wikimediaindia* mailing list a couple of times. I request the respective
community to give top priority to localize the Mediawiki messages to your
language.


Thank you

Shiju Alex



On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 7:24 AM, Shiju Alex wrote:

> 
>
> Do you - or someone else - have any plans to add these at some point in
> time?
> 
>
>
> Yes very much. I am preparing a blog post based on these numbers. Infact
> for the past 1.5 years we are publishing an analysis based on these numbers
> in Malayalam wiki mailing list each month.
>
> I know the current information is not "analysis". But I hope it will
> improve as we move forward based on the valuable inputs from all of you.
>
> Siebrand, Erik,
>
> I have noticed that in all the statistics tables at different locations,
> *Bhojpuri language* is representented as *Bihari*. But Bhojupuri is one of
> the *Bihari languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bihari_languages)*.
> Other Bihari languages are : 
> Angika<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angika_language>
> *·* Bhojpuri <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpuri>  *·* Fiji 
> Hindi<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiji_Hindi>
> *·* 
> Kudmali<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kudmali&action=edit&redlink=1>
> *·* Magahi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magahi>  *·* 
> Maithili<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maithili_language>
> *·* Majhi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majhi_language>  *·* 
> Musasa<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musasa_language>
> *·* 
> Panchpargania<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Panchpargania&action=edit&redlink=1>
> *·* Sadri <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadri_language>  *·* Sadri, 
> Oraon<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadri_language>
> *·* Sarnami Hindustani <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarnami>  *·*
> Surajpuri<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Surajpuri&action=edit&redlink=1>
> *·* Vajjika <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajjika_language>
>
> Please see whether this information needs to updated.
>
>
> Thank you
>
> Shiju
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:39 AM, Siebrand Mazeland 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Shiju Alex,
>>
>> *very* nice overview in numbers.
>>
>> You’re calling it an ‘analysis’. Usually I expect some prose with an
>> analysis – reasoning, assumptions and conclusions.
>>
>> Do you - or someone else - have any plans to add these at some point in
>> time? Currently each reader has to go through all the tables, make his own
>> observations, mix in some assumptions and distill conclusions from those. I
>> truly understand that commenting on numbers is probably even more work than
>> gathering them in the current format in the first place.
>>
>> It could however be very valuable – and a great discussion starter – if
>> someone would comment on the numbers say every 6 months. It would also allow
>> readers of the report to just read the words, and have the tables as an
>> annex.
>>
>> Next steps could be to add goals, strategies to archieve them, and assess
>> the goals and strategies later on, based on this type of report.
>>
>> Comments?
>>
>> Siebrand
>>
>> From: wikimediaindia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:
>> wikimediaindia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Shiju Alex
>> Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 7:29 PM
>> To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indian language Wikipedias - Statistical
>> report - 2010 January
>>
>> Hello All
>>
>> Please see the PDF file available at the loc

Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Advanced toolbar needs your support

[Shiju Alex]

I have reservations about this enhancement.

Introducing  language specific icons for BOLD and ITALIC is not a good idea.
It may make sense for the languages that use Latin script. According to me,
these are some standardized icons accepted by all the language communities
irrespective of the software applications that they use.

A normal computer literate is familiar with the current *B* and *I* icons
available in all the word processors, text editors, and other editing tools.
Most of them are aware about its use also. So changing that to a language
specific icon may remove that edge.  We have the tool tips for an icon to
convey its usage. I think that is more than enough.

If we are changing the BOLD and ITALIC icons then we need to consider lot of
other similar icons strike though.  Also this move may affect the cross wiki
contributions also.

Shiju Alex





On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 2:35 AM, Gerard Meijssen
wrote:

> Hoi,
> Yesterday there were two blogposts about improving support for your
> language(s) in MediaWiki ... Parul wrote about technical bits and bobs and I
> wrote to ask you all to help her help you..
>
>
> http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/02/mediawiki-seeks-to-support-your.html
>
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
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