[Wikimediaindia-l] an example of how to work with wikilivres
Hi Balasankaran, and Gautam (in continuation of your discussion from 2011!), Yann forward me the Wikisource page for Gandhi's book Experiments with Truth (published 1927) which is pretty much a perfect example of the problem in question (ie. a text that is PD in India and copyrighted in the US). http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experiments_with_Truth So, while the source document is hosted on Wikilivres, Wikisource has a nice page with some basic information, the copyright story, and an external link - thereby allowing people from within the Wikimedia community who reach it to access the full text outside. In the interim, this seems like a great way to get around US copyright law, and the Wikisource community seems to like it fine. Presumably, something like this can be done on Commons too. Thank you Yann. Cheers, -Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues
Hi Yann, Following on this, do you have some specific examples of Gandhi work (images, text or whatever) that is in the public domain in India but had a problem being put on to Commons or Wikisource because of copyright issues in the US? I suspect that a list of specific cases would be quite useful in thinking this through. Cheers, Achal On Sunday 12 May 2013 02:42 PM, Yann Forget wrote: Hello, Yes, this is a huge problem for Indian content hosted on Wikimedia servers, and not only for Wikisource, but also for pictures, movies, sounds, etc. hosted on Wikimedia Commons. There were quite a few famous images of Mahatma Gandhi deleted for this reason. Regards, Yann 2013/5/9 Balasankar Chelamattath c.balasan...@gmail.com: Hi all, As most of you know, the Indian copyright law says that a book gets relieved of copyright after 60 years from the author's death. But this is not the case with US Law. As given here , of all the works published outside US, only those published before 1923 are directly in the public domain. The ones published between 1923 and 1977 without compliance to the US formalities will be in the public domain only if they are in the public domain in their source country as of 1 January 1996. Almost all the other categories of published works will not be in the public domain until 95 years after publishing. This induces a confusion and when looked in a legal perspective, most of the books in Indian Wikisources, are still not in public domain and hence must be removed. This makes a huge negative impact on the hard work done by contributors. Their contributions are wasted which may cause them to stop contributing. In short, this may be a negative impact on Wikimedia's image in the society. The only solution to this problem is to host the servers of Indian Wikimedia services in India, so that the data we upload is stored under Indian Laws. Can Wikimedia India Chapter do anything on this? We can plan and conduct a fundraiser in India to raise money for the hosting expenses. Please consider this issue with maximum priority as it involves legal procedures and related headaches. Regards, Balasankar C https://ml.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Balasankarc Regards, Balasankar C ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues
Thanks Yann, this is extremely interesting. Balasankar, is there an easy to access list of actual or proposed deletions from Wikisource on similar grounds? (There's an interesting question on Gandhi here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Possible_copyright_violations#copyright_status_of_Gandhi.27s_original_works.3F - but no actions that I can easily see). On Monday 13 May 2013 04:23 PM, Yann Forget wrote: Hi Achal, Please see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Indian_law_deletion_requests The following are old photos from India deleted because of USA law: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Mountbatten_at_Gandhi_cremation.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Times_of_India_front_Page_15_August_1947.png http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Images_of_Life_magazine http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Sardar_patel.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Nargis_in_Awaara_film.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Gandhi_and_Jinnah_Bombay_1944.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Gandhi_and_Mountbatten_drink_tea.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Bapu_and_Baa.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Gandhi_looking.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Abdul_Wahid_Khan.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:V._A._Sundaram_with_C._Rajagopalachari_in_Benares_1948.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:V._A._Sundaram_around_1914.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:V_A_Sundaram,_late_1930s.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Post-1922_paintings_of_Nicholas_Roerich http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Lata_Mangeshkar.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Bhurji_Badeji_Baba.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Aurat_1940.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Alladiya_Khan.jpg Regards, Yann 2013/5/13 Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com: Hi Yann, Following on this, do you have some specific examples of Gandhi work (images, text or whatever) that is in the public domain in India but had a problem being put on to Commons or Wikisource because of copyright issues in the US? I suspect that a list of specific cases would be quite useful in thinking this through. Cheers, Achal On Sunday 12 May 2013 02:42 PM, Yann Forget wrote: Hello, Yes, this is a huge problem for Indian content hosted on Wikimedia servers, and not only for Wikisource, but also for pictures, movies, sounds, etc. hosted on Wikimedia Commons. There were quite a few famous images of Mahatma Gandhi deleted for this reason. Regards, Yann 2013/5/9 Balasankar Chelamattath c.balasan...@gmail.com: Hi all, As most of you know, the Indian copyright law says that a book gets relieved of copyright after 60 years from the author's death. But this is not the case with US Law. As given here , of all the works published outside US, only those published before 1923 are directly in the public domain. The ones published between 1923 and 1977 without compliance to the US formalities will be in the public domain only if they are in the public domain in their source country as of 1 January 1996. Almost all the other categories of published works will not be in the public domain until 95 years after publishing. This induces a confusion and when looked in a legal perspective, most of the books in Indian Wikisources, are still not in public domain and hence must be removed. This makes a huge negative impact on the hard work done by contributors. Their contributions are wasted which may cause them to stop contributing. In short, this may be a negative impact on Wikimedia's image in the society. The only solution to this problem is to host the servers of Indian Wikimedia services in India, so that the data we upload is stored under Indian Laws. Can Wikimedia India Chapter do anything on this? We can plan and conduct a fundraiser in India to raise money for the hosting expenses. Please consider this issue with maximum priority as it involves legal procedures and related headaches. Regards, Balasankar C https://ml.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Balasankarc Regards, Balasankar C ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues
Hi Balasankar, The question you raise is a very important one. The solution, however, is not likely to be to host content in India (I don't speak for the Wikimedia Foundation, but there are sound legal reasons why all Wikimedia content is hosted in the US; mostly liability risk and freedom of expression and this is unlikely to change). The default across Commons and Wikisource, the two projects that host the bulk of public domain content (images, videos, sounds, books) in Wikimedia, is the US copyright term - it's the only yardstick that matters for what qualifies as public domain by virtue of being out of copyright. You are absolutely right, however, in that there's a big difference btw US copyright terms and those of other countries, for instance: For photographs, while the binding limit (Berne/TRIPs) is 25 years from the making of the work, India is life of photographer + 60 years after death, and in the US it is life + 70. For literary works, the binding limit (Berne/ TRIPs) is life + 50 years, whereas in India it is life + 60, whereas in the US it is life + 70 or 120/95 if made on work for hire. (The binding limit is the WTO mandated term that country members - US and India and 150 others - have to follow. As you can see, typically, most countries exceed the limit for reasons of their own, which they are allowed to do, with the US exceeding in far greater amount than India.) In short, there can be a difference of between 10 and 40 years between the time a work goes into the public domain in a country with shorter terms than the US (any number of countries in the non-Anglo-European world) and the US. This seriously affects even 'Indian' works (where India is the first country of publication) because of the copyright protection granted to such works in the US, thus effectively placing them under copyright for our purposes within Wikimedia long after they've gone in to the public domain in their source country. The case to consider here is Golan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder A summary of the US Supreme Court decision in this case is - US law trumps international agreements, so the US copyright term holds within US territory, and restores copyright protection to any works that have gone into the public domain by virtue of a shorter copyright term in another country. Because Wikimedia servers are based in the US, Golan applies to us. But your question is an extremely pertinent one, and if we were to find unusual solutions to it, they would seem to lie in: 1) Whether hosting on US servers for a global audience makes any difference, since we do not serve readers only bound by US law (Wikimedia reader numbers bear this out, ie US readership = minority percentage of whole) and whether we specifically have anything special on the basis of which to mount some kind of strategic litigation on the issue of allowing us to exploit the shortest possible route to public domain anywhere in the world for all or some of our readers. 2) Whether hosting on US servers but using publicly audited geolocation to switch off for readers from IP addresses where the material in question is still under copyright is a legally and operationally feasible workaround (connected to whether Wikimedia Tech thinks this is both doable and worth our while to do) 3) Whether, if all fails and there is no getting around this in any way, Commons and Wikisource (if there is sufficient interest in those communities) should be interested in looking at a way of allowing external links to chapter-managed local sites from the US-served base to see the material in question; and if this is something, say, the India chapter wants and is willing to do, whether this route poses any legal risks. In any case, I passed around your question to a few friends for comments and suggestions - as well as to Geoff Brigham at the Wikimedia Foundation, who is not too hopeful for a solution but is very receptive to looking into it and getting back to us - and I'll tell you when I know something. Meanwhile, if you have other ways of looking into creative solutions around this problem (not at all easy to crack, but the benefits are significant) - or if anyone else on this list does - you should. Cheers, Achal On Friday 10 May 2013 10:20 PM, Balasankar Chelamattath wrote: Hi Srikanth, I didnt quite understand what you meant by example. An example for a work which is in public domain in India and not in US - Works by Changampuzha Krishnapillai ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changampuzha_Krishna_Pillai ). He passed away in 1948, and hence it is 65 years after the author's death. So the books are copyright-free in India as of now (in pubic domain). But they 1. were not published before 1923 2. were not in the public domain in India as of 1 January 1996 ( because criteria of 60 years after author's death not satisfied on 1996) Hence they are not in public
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Re: Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues
Of relevance here: http://www.publicdomainday.org/sites/www.publicdomainday.eu/files/World_copyright-terms.jpg Original Message Subject:Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 14:51:27 +0530 From: Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Hi Balasankar, The question you raise is a very important one. The solution, however, is not likely to be to host content in India (I don't speak for the Wikimedia Foundation, but there are sound legal reasons why all Wikimedia content is hosted in the US; mostly liability risk and freedom of expression and this is unlikely to change). The default across Commons and Wikisource, the two projects that host the bulk of public domain content (images, videos, sounds, books) in Wikimedia, is the US copyright term - it's the only yardstick that matters for what qualifies as public domain by virtue of being out of copyright. You are absolutely right, however, in that there's a big difference btw US copyright terms and those of other countries, for instance: For photographs, while the binding limit (Berne/TRIPs) is 25 years from the making of the work, India is life of photographer + 60 years after death, and in the US it is life + 70. For literary works, the binding limit (Berne/ TRIPs) is life + 50 years, whereas in India it is life + 60, whereas in the US it is life + 70 or 120/95 if made on work for hire. (The binding limit is the WTO mandated term that country members - US and India and 150 others - have to follow. As you can see, typically, most countries exceed the limit for reasons of their own, which they are allowed to do, with the US exceeding in far greater amount than India.) In short, there can be a difference of between 10 and 40 years between the time a work goes into the public domain in a country with shorter terms than the US (any number of countries in the non-Anglo-European world) and the US. This seriously affects even 'Indian' works (where India is the first country of publication) because of the copyright protection granted to such works in the US, thus effectively placing them under copyright for our purposes within Wikimedia long after they've gone in to the public domain in their source country. The case to consider here is Golan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder A summary of the US Supreme Court decision in this case is - US law trumps international agreements, so the US copyright term holds within US territory, and restores copyright protection to any works that have gone into the public domain by virtue of a shorter copyright term in another country. Because Wikimedia servers are based in the US, Golan applies to us. But your question is an extremely pertinent one, and if we were to find unusual solutions to it, they would seem to lie in: 1) Whether hosting on US servers for a global audience makes any difference, since we do not serve readers only bound by US law (Wikimedia reader numbers bear this out, ie US readership = minority percentage of whole) and whether we specifically have anything special on the basis of which to mount some kind of strategic litigation on the issue of allowing us to exploit the shortest possible route to public domain anywhere in the world for all or some of our readers. 2) Whether hosting on US servers but using publicly audited geolocation to switch off for readers from IP addresses where the material in question is still under copyright is a legally and operationally feasible workaround (connected to whether Wikimedia Tech thinks this is both doable and worth our while to do) 3) Whether, if all fails and there is no getting around this in any way, Commons and Wikisource (if there is sufficient interest in those communities) should be interested in looking at a way of allowing external links to chapter-managed local sites from the US-served base to see the material in question; and if this is something, say, the India chapter wants and is willing to do, whether this route poses any legal risks. In any case, I passed around your question to a few friends for comments and suggestions - as well as to Geoff Brigham at the Wikimedia Foundation, who is not too hopeful for a solution but is very receptive to looking into it and getting back to us - and I'll tell you when I know something. Meanwhile, if you have other ways of looking into creative solutions around this problem (not at all easy to crack, but the benefits are significant) - or if anyone else on this list does - you should. Cheers, Achal On Friday 10 May 2013 10:20 PM, Balasankar Chelamattath wrote: Hi Srikanth, I didnt quite understand what you meant by example. An example for a work which is in public domain in India and not in US - Works by Changampuzha Krishnapillai ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Re: Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues
Hi David, On Sunday 12 May 2013 07:33 PM, David Cuenca wrote: Hi Achal, For those cases there is a Wikisource clone called Wikilivres, whose server is in Canada and it is operated by a Canadian citizen. http://wikilivres.ca/ Thank you - I've seen it, and think it's great. It is not very fast, but it serves as storage for such cases since the Canadian copyright law is quite permissive in that regard (50 years after author/translator death). Then you can link the works from the Wikisource author page to the work page in Wikilivres as some Wikisources do. So while I'm glad there's a relatively central source for such things, I guess there'd be no problem hosting such content on Indian servers, say, for work that's gone into the public domain on the basis of Indian copyright law. My earlier email (and the originating question) was to how to mesh Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource with such work - and whether we could. Hence the interest in the law and its workarounds. If you have time, take also a look to the proposed improvements for Wikisource. Thanks! https://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource_vision_development/Applying_the_WS_values This looks great, and I was wondering if the last point on the list (working with other entities) also includes finding a way to placehold works that have gone out of copyright in other countries, and are hosted on, say, Wikilivres. That is, for people who consider themselves to be working on Wikisource, and are dealing with such works, is there anything you can offer them even if they have to host elsewhere? David ---User:Micru On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 5:27 AM, Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com wrote: Of relevance here: http://www.publicdomainday.** org/sites/www.publicdomainday.**eu/files/World_copyright-**terms.jpghttp://www.publicdomainday.org/sites/www.publicdomainday.eu/files/World_copyright-terms.jpg Original Message Subject:Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 14:51:27 +0530 From: Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.** wikimedia.org wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Hi Balasankar, The question you raise is a very important one. The solution, however, is not likely to be to host content in India (I don't speak for the Wikimedia Foundation, but there are sound legal reasons why all Wikimedia content is hosted in the US; mostly liability risk and freedom of expression and this is unlikely to change). The default across Commons and Wikisource, the two projects that host the bulk of public domain content (images, videos, sounds, books) in Wikimedia, is the US copyright term - it's the only yardstick that matters for what qualifies as public domain by virtue of being out of copyright. You are absolutely right, however, in that there's a big difference btw US copyright terms and those of other countries, for instance: For photographs, while the binding limit (Berne/TRIPs) is 25 years from the making of the work, India is life of photographer + 60 years after death, and in the US it is life + 70. For literary works, the binding limit (Berne/ TRIPs) is life + 50 years, whereas in India it is life + 60, whereas in the US it is life + 70 or 120/95 if made on work for hire. (The binding limit is the WTO mandated term that country members - US and India and 150 others - have to follow. As you can see, typically, most countries exceed the limit for reasons of their own, which they are allowed to do, with the US exceeding in far greater amount than India.) In short, there can be a difference of between 10 and 40 years between the time a work goes into the public domain in a country with shorter terms than the US (any number of countries in the non-Anglo-European world) and the US. This seriously affects even 'Indian' works (where India is the first country of publication) because of the copyright protection granted to such works in the US, thus effectively placing them under copyright for our purposes within Wikimedia long after they've gone in to the public domain in their source country. The case to consider here is Golan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/** Golan_v._Holder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder A summary of the US Supreme Court decision in this case is - US law trumps international agreements, so the US copyright term holds within US territory, and restores copyright protection to any works that have gone into the public domain by virtue of a shorter copyright term in another country. Because Wikimedia servers are based in the US, Golan applies to us. But your question is an extremely pertinent one, and if we were to find unusual solutions to it, they would seem to lie in: 1) Whether hosting on US servers for a global audience makes any difference, since we do not serve readers only bound by US law (Wikimedia reader numbers bear this out, ie US readership = minority percentage
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Re: Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca)
Original Message Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 13:16:20 -0700 From: Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org To: wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org As Achal pointed out, we will put resources into researching this issue in depth and hopefully finding a solution that may work. It will probably take a month or two to ensure we are looking at all possibilities to see if this is possible. If you have any great ideas, please feel free to send them to me, and I will ensure our team will consider them fully. This will be an interesting project, and I greatly appreciate everyone's interest in finding a lawful solution that ensures the distribution of all materials in the public domain. Geoff ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Re: Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca)
Original Message Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca) Date: Sun, 12 May 2013 22:03:41 -0700 From: Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org To: wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org * Hi Theo, Thank you for your email. I'm truly sorry that you feel this way. I have been thinking for some time about the issue of finding alternative solutions to Golan-type issues, and frankly I have not been too optimistic in the past. I think it is an important issue to our mission, however, and I would like to take a closer look to make sure there is not a better solution out there. Achal did contact me about it. Although I have tremendous respect for Achal, his contact was not the reason for my desire to look into this further with the community. As General Counsel, I tend to exercise my own independent judgment. I have received a number of inquiries and I am aware of the past discussions, and, to be honest, the issue has been bugging me for some time: I’m not at all sure there is a solution but I would like to look more closely, especially given the ongoing community concern and available resources the coming month. If you - or any other community member - had contacted me directly, that, in addition to the community discussions, would have been important to me as well. If the community feels this is a bad use of my resources, I am more than willing to reconsider, but I don’t believe that is what people are saying. It is true that I do not post substantive statements on wikimedia-l anymore. I focus on my team leaving more detailed and comprehensive responses on wikilegal [1], our legal blogs [2], or on the wikis [3]. From my point of view, these venues allow for a more comprehensive development of sometimes difficult legal issues, serve as a more permanent source for future reference and cross-links, and allow for greater community participation on the issue at hand. I do try to announce and cross-link to important legal postings via announce-l and wikimedia-l. I was surprised to hear that individuals and committees are waiting weeks for responses from Legal. We try to be as responsive as possible. Sometimes people ask tough questions, and it takes time for us to figure out the issue with the individual or committee at issue. But we stay in close contact with those people, often sharing our thinking or drafts and incorporating their feedback. With AffCom, for example, we have been quite interactive as we try to figure out the naming issue and other legal issues. Sometimes the discussion takes longer than we all would like, but our practice, I believe, is to stay responsive and interactive as we work out the solutions with our community members. If you want to discuss with me offline or on the telephone, I will be more than happy to do so (as I would with anybody in our community). Take care, Geoff [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal [2] http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/legal/ [3] See, e.g., http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Thematic_Organizations#Thoughts_regarding_the_naming_of_thematic_organizations * -- Forwarded message -- From: Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com Date: Sun, May 12, 2013 at 6:42 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia Servers and Copyright Issues (David Cuenca) To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:46 AM, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.org wrote: As Achal pointed out, we will put resources into researching this issue in depth and hopefully finding a solution that may work. It will probably take a month or two to ensure we are looking at all possibilities to see if this is possible. If you have any great ideas, please feel free to send them to me, and I will ensure our team will consider them fully. This will be an interesting project, and I greatly appreciate everyone's interest in finding a lawful solution that ensures the distribution of all materials in the public domain. Well, this was interesting to note. In stark contrast to the other thread, this email was disappointing for the wrong reasons, maybe it's for me alone. It took about 70 emails and 3 threads, and 2 days of waiting to get a reply from the concerned staff members, but I believe Achal forwarded this to Wikimedia-l less than 12 hours before you responded on a Sunday and agreed to devote a month's resources to it. I don't think more than 2-3 people responded to the issue either on this list or the Indian one. I guess that's the sole difference of the position he occupies, speaking of which, the advisory board appointments seem indefinite, and the list doesn't seem to have been updated - for the past 2 years I have only seen Achal identify himself as that. As far as I know Mr. Prabhala has not even logged in to an
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] why to donate
Dear Karthik, Thank you for this and for your regular updates on chapter activity, though I wish it had been unnecessary to issue this particular clarification - whether individual or institutional, working with the Wikimedia India chapter is not some kind of conspiracy - it's what all of us should be doing more of. Dear Abhishek and others writing in the same vein, The chapter consists of enthusiastic volunteers who are doing their best to make things work under strict financial laws, very little money, one part-time employee who is generous with his time and skills, and too little outside help. Please leave them be. Constant accusations of conspiracy are tiring - God knows we have enough of them here already - and it makes it very hard to engage this list seriously. best, Achal On Monday 18 February 2013 03:59 PM, Karthik Nadar wrote: Dear All, This is with reference to Sunils invitation to members of the Chapters EC to help train the A2K team in Bangalore. A few clarifications from us: 1. Our Secretary was in touch with Sunil before he sent the clarifications to the list. We felt since its a CIS invitation, its better Sunil clarifies the issue and not us. 2. Our relations with Sunil and CIS are much older than A2K and our relations are cordial. That the invitation came directly from Sunil was a very important factor in our decision making. 3. Srikanth did say we will disclose if and when we do ever receive CIS funding for anything. The training is yet to take place and hence nothing was disclosed. 4. The EC never requested or expected any payment of fees nor was it offered anything of that sort for this training (apart from reimbursement of costs). 5. We are holding our board meeting while we will be in Bangalore. The decision was taken for cost effectiveness and Sunil is aware of this. 6. EC was planning to hold a F2F meeting in the third week of February. We would like to restate that it is purely a coincidence that both the activities happened to be on the same dates and both of us mutually decided to take advantage of this fact. On behalf of Wikimedia India Chapter, Karthik Nadar. (Secretary, Wikimedia India Chapter) On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 12:29 PM, Sunil Abraham su...@mahiti.org mailto:su...@mahiti.org wrote: Dear Abhishek, CIS is not supporting travel expenses for Chapter EC meetings. Nor has CIS provided funding to the Chapter so far from the Wikipedia grant. CIS has provided in-kind support to the Chapter in previous financial years for ex. society registration costs and the costs of their financial adviser during their first financial year. We strongly suppor This month, we are reimbursing the Chapter EC travel and related expenses because the Chapter EC has kindly consented to support a training programme that CIS is organising for it's A2K team in Bangalore. It is only happy coincidence that they were also organising a meeting in Bangalore during those dates. I was not aware of this when I reached out to the EC and asked for their support us. Dear Friends, In the first week of March, we hope to release a 6-monthly report of the utilization of the grant so far. Usually we only provide an annual consolidated report for all grants at the ledger group level. But for this particular grant we will increase the degree of transparency to address concerns of the community. If you have any suggestions on how we should structure this report or if you have any further questions about how CIS is spending the grant allocated do not hesitate to ask me. Best wishes, Sunil Original Message Subject: Training of CIS-A2K team on 23 or 24 of February Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:48:42 +0530 From: Sunil Abraham su...@cis-india.org mailto:su...@cis-india.org To: Wikimedia India EC wikimedia-in-e...@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-in-e...@lists.wikimedia.org Attn: Sudhanwa Jogalekar Karthik Nadar Anirudh Singh Bhati Nikita Belavate Pranav Curumsey Srikanth Ramakrishnan Viswa Prabha Dear Members of the Wikimedia India EC, Hope 2013 has gotten of to an excellent start for all of you. CIS is organising a training for the A2K team on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of February in Bangalore. The new Programme Director - Vishnu Vardhan will also be attending this event. We would like the EC to spend one day training the team on a variety of issues. We would prefer if you opt for either 23rd or the 24th as we have some other trainers that have confirmed for the 22nd. CIS will cover air travel and accommodation for all EC members. CIS will also provide per diem for meals that are not provided during the training. Unfortunately, we don't have a separate budget for fees. This idea has been discussed with Anasuya Sengupta and
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Leaving the Wikimedia Foundation
Dear Barry, you will be missed very much... I hope the move to Australia brings every happiness, and I'm glad you will still be 'here' - in a manner of speaking! Cheers, Achal On Wednesday 08 August 2012 08:27 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote: On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 12:28 AM, Barry Newstead bnewst...@wikimedia.org mailto:bnewst...@wikimedia.org wrote: It is difficult for me to leave Wikimedia and particularly leave the Global Development team, which I've had the pleasure of building and leading over the past two years. I am proud of what we have accomplished in raising the priority of much of the globe within the Wikimedia movement, strengthening our mobile strategy and education program, globalizing communications, and tackling the difficult movement roles issues that I hope can be put in the past. It hasn't been easy or uncontroversial, but I truly believe that we are heading in the right direction. Dear Barry, A huge thanks and a big salute for all you've done for global development, movement roles, the strategy plan and all else. I will retain many wonderful memories of working together. My favourite: kicking off the first Mumbai meet-up in September 2010, expecting a handful to show up, bemused surprise turning to delight as a handful grows to 45 people. Cheers and I'm delighted that you will continue to be a part of the movement, Bishakha ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Farewell
You will be missed, Hisham, and it's really good to know that you are around for the next few months. Take care, Achal On Monday 30 July 2012 04:07 PM, Hisham wrote: Dear Bangalore Community I'm writing to inform you that I plan to leave my current role supporting Wikimedia in India. I am going to be exploring opportunities and evaluating options that are closer to my career aspirations and my personal circumstances. I will be working through to ensure that there is a smooth transition - and this is likely to take 2-3 months. I am writing now because I felt it appropriate and opportune to inform you as early as possible. I want to start off by thanking the Wikimedia community and movement for giving me this extraordinary opportunity. Working on something like India Program has been something that has been professionally enriching and personally fulfilling. Over the past 1 1/2 years, I have been supported by so many of you - and I want to thank you for everything you have done! The passion and intellectual firepower of our community has been my constant source of drive and guidance. There are so many examples of powerful stories from all over the country: the incredible efforts put in by the IEP Campus Ambassadors in Pune; the army of volunteers that drove the outreach push across the country in the first few months of this year; the beautiful stories of fantastic community initiatives from far and wide across the country and sub-continent, and indeed the world; the remarkable stories from so many communities - large, small and tiny ones! I want to thank the team that I have had the pleasure and privilege of working with - Nitika, Noopur, Shiju Subha. You guys have been wonderful. The work that we are doing is experimental and we have been innovating every day, and I know the circumstances have not always been easy. Take strength and inspiration from the large number of community members who have been touched by you and appreciate your efforts and value your work. I will send an actual over and out message later. In the meantime, I will continue to work on everything that needs working on. Happy Editing! Warmest Regards, */hisham/* */ /* ___ Wikimedia-in-blr mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-blr ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Communication on Chapter Accomplishments and EC Vacancies
While I join Ashwin in thanking all the outgoing chapter board members, as well as Anirudh and Sudhanwa for staying, as a chapter member myself, I would like to understand why 5 out of 7 members of a board are resigning, some in excess of 1 year of their term left, and others with more than 6 months to go on their term. I know that some of the reasons may well be personal, and some, not. However, this is an unusual situation, and if each one of the departing chapter board members might write to this list explaining why they are leaving, with some idea of what they learnt and things they wish to see in the future, that would be very useful - and it would serve as a good record for this chapter's growth and future. Best wishes, Achal On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 5:04 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala arjunaraoc at gmail.com https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-lwrote: / Sorry, Here is a better readable version after fixing layout.. Arjuna // // Communication on Chapter Accomplishments and EC vacancies // // Dear Members Wikimedia India Community, // // Greetings from EC. // // As we are getting started for this year's AGM and Elections, here is a // summary of the Chapter accomplishments from the time of last AGM and also // update on the EC vacancies. // Accomplishments since last AGM Statutory // // - Last AGM was conducted on 24 Sep 2011. All statutory reports were // filed with Registrar of Societies and Income Tax Department. // - Chapter applied for FCRA prior permission and obtained the same. // This gave financial stability to the Chapter with no additional government // applications required for 3 years. // - TAN was obtained, which is required for complying with Income Tax // when making payments to Consultants, any future staff etc. // // Finances // // - Bank accounts for FCRA was set up with SBI // - Online operation of Bank account was put in place. // // Communication // // - Press page and kit were prepared. // - Updates and Interaction with members, community, WMF and other // stakeholders were maintained using various mechanisms. // - Wikimedia India site is revamped with portal for all Wikimedia India // sites and Wiki project sites, advanced search facility, which was well // received. // // Membership // // - Chapter membership reached a high of 197 at the end of Financial // year 2011-12 // - There were 39 renewals and 61 new applications adding up to a total // current year membership of 100 as of 18 Jul 2012. // // Projects and Events // // - Chapter co-hosted first national WikiConference India 2011 and // helped in organizing it successfully. // - Chapter supported over 15 Wiki Academies at colleges and other // institutions in India from Sep 2011 till March 2012 initiating around 600 // people into Wiki editing // - Coordinated the conduct of Wiki Academies along with India programs // as relevant. // - Kick started Wiki Loves Monuments 2012. // - Community meetups, Indian Langauge Wiki Anniversary events were // conducted with help of City/Language SIGs across India. // - Supported WikiSangamotsav Malayalam Wiki Conf and Wiki Eleven // Celebrations at several places, Anniversary of Assamese and Kannada // Wikipedia were some of the prominent events. // // Governance. // // - Chapter had a smooth induction of new EC members, revamped the // structure and assigned the responsibilities to support further growth. // - CIS support for using their office as Chapter Address has been // extended till end of FY 2012-13 // - Consultant, Auditor are appointed and have been offering their // services for smooth conduct of chapter operations // - Special Interest group for Language and Cities were created. // - Special Projects team was formed for GLAM // - Teams for Administration,Fundraising,Communications were started // - MoU with Crafts Museum for GLAM project.. // - Policies for conduct of chapter operations, elections, funding have // been put in place. Wiki is used effectively as the knowledge repository for // the Chapter operations. // // *As you can see from the above, Chapter bootstrapping is completed and it // now ready for the next phase of growth.* // EC Vacancies // // From the present EC, the following members (in alphabetical order of their // first names) have decided to step down from EC after the upcoming AGM. // // - Arjuna Rao Chavala // - Arun Ramarathnam // - Naveen Francis // - Srinivas Gunta // - Tinu Cherian // // Anirudh Singh Bhati and Sudhanwa Jogalekar will continue on the EC. // Further Anirudh will be continuing till his term ends, i.e Jan 2, 2013. // // All the EC members who are stepping down will continue to perform their // roles till a revised EC is put in place following the Elections for EC. // //
[Wikimediaindia-l] on the recent internet bans in india
Greetings - if any of you are trying to make sense of the recent banning of several popular websites by Indian ISPs, Lawrence Liang and I have an article in the current issue of Open Magazine that tries to unravel the plot: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/a-ludicrous-ban Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] on WCI, the report, and more
Pradeep maintains a personal blog and wrote up his thoughts on the WCI report earlier shared with this list: http://pradx.me/2012/05/22/wikiconference-india-2011-report-more-personal-thoughts/ This is in the context of: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:WM_IN/WikiConference_India_2011/Report I appreciate his perspective very much, and I believe it's worth thinking about seriously - Pradeep confirmed that he doesn't mind me sending the link to this list. More than just providing a fuller perspective on the WCI report, I am particularly moved and distressed by the fact that his decision to retire (I hope temporarily) is based on the harsh politics he encountered while working in the movement; a situation that is far from ideal and surely something that is affecting more people than just him. There's a lot to reflect upon and learn from here. Best, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
On Wednesday 07 March 2012 01:38 PM, Pradeep Mohandas wrote: I think that although the chapter and community are volunteer based, the chapter has more legal sanctity and is answerable as an organisation against as a person being held responsible. Hence, it is important that even the chapter and the community be seperated. As an action taken by a member stating that he's taking on behalf of a chapter, makes the Chapter answerable. I think it is necessary to seperate the chapter and community as well. 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. This also makes it necessary for people who hold multiple positions within Chapter and Office to define their actions even more concretely since we're now speaking in terms of transparency and accountability. This makes a lot of sense. It's useful to understand exactly what people acting on behalf of the Foundation, the chapter, or themselves (the community) are doing; it's also very useful to understand exactly how they are working with others. To have a record of this (admittedly complex) cooperation will be very valuable in understanding how things actually work. warm regards, Pradeep -- Pradeep Mohandas How Pradeep uses email - http://goo.gl/6v1I9 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
In keeping with this spirit :) and the difficulty of distinguishing between all these roles, I propose a simple purity test: Are you a paid employee of the foundation or a paid contractor? (-25) Have you ever been a paid employee or contractor? (-15) Did you resign/stop? (+5) Did you resign/stop in disgust? (+25) Are you on the board of the foundation? (-200) Did you ever serve on the board of the foundation? (-100) Are you on the advisory board of the foundation? (what's that?) Have you ever met a current or former foundation board member or staff member? (-25) Did you decontaminate yourself in a registered medical facility immediately after this meeting? (+50) Did you talk to this person for more than 30 seconds? (-50) Did you share a meal with this person? (-75) Did you share, er, anything else with this person? (-300) Do you know anyone who has met with a foundation board member or staff member for more than 30 seconds? (-15) Do you know this person well? (-30) Have you ever been helped in your work by a foundation board member or staff member who was a 'former volunteer'? (-100) Have you ever been helped in your work by a foundation board member or staff member who was not a 'former volunteer'? (-200) Do you know anyone who has been helped by a foundation board member or staff member? (-50) Do you know why you're even bothering to read these questions? (+1000) For convenience's sake, anyone with a score of -100 or below should be branded on the forehead with hot irons for easy identification. Cheers :) On Wednesday 07 March 2012 02:56 PM, Anirudh Bhati wrote: On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com mailto:shijualexonl...@gmail.com 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. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] India Program: Community Monthly Report: Feb 2012
On Wednesday 07 March 2012 03:47 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan wrote: On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 15:43, Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com mailto:aprabh...@gmail.com wrote: In keeping with this spirit :) and the difficulty of distinguishing between all these roles, I propose a simple purity test: Can you please stop trolling? This is not I-Dont-want-mention-list-l Apologies. That was meant as a joke. -- Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
There's an interesting article out in the current issue of the Chronicle: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/ It's behind a paywall, but in the spirit of fair use and in keeping with the author's intent (the article is on Wikipedia, and I believe the author would want to have us discuss it) I reproduce it here: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia By Timothy Messer-Kruse For the past 10 years I've immersed myself in the details of one of the most famous events in American labor history, the Haymarket riot and trial of 1886. Along the way I've written two books and a couple of articles about the episode. In some circles that affords me a presumption of expertise on the subject. Not, however, on Wikipedia. The bomb thrown during an anarchist rally in Chicago sparked America's first Red Scare, a high-profile show trial, and a worldwide clemency movement for the seven condemned men. Today the martyrs' graves are a national historic site, the location of the bombing is marked by a public sculpture, and the event is recounted in most American history textbooks. Its Wikipedia entry is detailed and elaborate. A couple of years ago, on a slow day at the office, I decided to experiment with editing one particularly misleading assertion chiseled into the Wikipedia article. The description of the trial stated, "The prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing. ... " Coincidentally, that is the claim that initially hooked me on the topic. In 2001 I was teaching a labor-history course, and our textbook contained nearly the same wording that appeared on Wikipedia. One of my students raised her hand: "If the trial went on for six weeks and no evidence was presented, what did they talk about all those days?" I've been working to answer her question ever since. I have not resolved all the mysteries that surround the bombing, but I have dug deeply enough to be sure that the claim that the trial was bereft of evidence is flatly wrong. One hundred and eighteen witnesses were called to testify, many of them unindicted co-conspirators who detailed secret meetings where plans to attack police stations were mapped out, coded messages were placed in radical newspapers, and bombs were assembled in one of the defendants' rooms. In what was one of the first uses of forensic chemistry in an American courtroom, the city's foremost chemists showed that the metallurgical profile of a bomb found in one of the anarchists' homes was unlike any commercial metal but was similar in composition to a piece of shrapnel cut from the body of a slain police officer. So overwhelming was the evidence against one of the defendants that his lawyers even admitted that their client spent the afternoon before the Haymarket rally building bombs, arguing that he was acting in self-defense. So I removed the line about there being "no evidence" and provided a full explanation in Wikipedia's behind-the-scenes editing log. Within minutes my changes were reversed. The explanation: "You must provide reliable sources for your assertions to make changes along these lines to the article." That was curious, as I had cited the documents that proved my point, including verbatim testimony from the trial published online by the Library of Congress. I also noted one of my own peer-reviewed articles. One of the people who had assumed the role of keeper of this bit of history for Wikipedia quoted the Web site's "undue weight" policy, which states that "articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views." He then scolded me. "You should not delete information supported by the majority of sources to replace it with a minority view." The "undue weight" policy posed a problem. Scholars have been publishing the same ideas about the Haymarket case for more than a century. The last published bibliography of titles on the subject has 1,530 entries. "Explain to me, then, how a 'minority' source with facts on its side would ever appear against a wrong 'majority' one?" I asked the Wiki-gatekeeper. He responded, "You're more than welcome to discuss reliable sources here, that's what the talk page is for. However, you might want to have a quick look at Wikipedia's civility policy." I tried to edit the page again. Within 10 seconds I was informed that my
[Wikimediaindia-l] The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia (from the Chronicle) + some citation discussions
There's an interesting article out in the current issue of the Chronicle: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/ It's behind a paywall, but in the spirit of fair use and in keeping with the author's intent (the article is on Wikipedia, and I believe the author would want to have us discuss it) I reproduce it here: The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia By Timothy Messer-Kruse For the past 10 years I've immersed myself in the details of one of the most famous events in American labor history, the Haymarket riot and trial of 1886. Along the way I've written two books and a couple of articles about the episode. In some circles that affords me a presumption of expertise on the subject. Not, however, on Wikipedia. The bomb thrown during an anarchist rally in Chicago sparked America's first Red Scare, a high-profile show trial, and a worldwide clemency movement for the seven condemned men. Today the martyrs' graves are a national historic site, the location of the bombing is marked by a public sculpture, and the event is recounted in most American history textbooks. Its Wikipedia entry is detailed and elaborate. A couple of years ago, on a slow day at the office, I decided to experiment with editing one particularly misleading assertion chiseled into the Wikipedia article. The description of the trial stated, The prosecution, led by Julius Grinnell, did not offer evidence connecting any of the defendants with the bombing. ... Coincidentally, that is the claim that initially hooked me on the topic. In 2001 I was teaching a labor-history course, and our textbook contained nearly the same wording that appeared on Wikipedia. One of my students raised her hand: If the trial went on for six weeks and no evidence was presented, what did they talk about all those days? I've been working to answer her question ever since. I have not resolved all the mysteries that surround the bombing, but I have dug deeply enough to be sure that the claim that the trial was bereft of evidence is flatly wrong. One hundred and eighteen witnesses were called to testify, many of them unindicted co-conspirators who detailed secret meetings where plans to attack police stations were mapped out, coded messages were placed in radical newspapers, and bombs were assembled in one of the defendants' rooms. In what was one of the first uses of forensic chemistry in an American courtroom, the city's foremost chemists showed that the metallurgical profile of a bomb found in one of the anarchists' homes was unlike any commercial metal but was similar in composition to a piece of shrapnel cut from the body of a slain police officer. So overwhelming was the evidence against one of the defendants that his lawyers even admitted that their client spent the afternoon before the Haymarket rally building bombs, arguing that he was acting in self-defense. So I removed the line about there being no evidence and provided a full explanation in Wikipedia's behind-the-scenes editing log. Within minutes my changes were reversed. The explanation: You must provide reliable sources for your assertions to make changes along these lines to the article. That was curious, as I had cited the documents that proved my point, including verbatim testimony from the trial published online by the Library of Congress. I also noted one of my own peer-reviewed articles. One of the people who had assumed the role of keeper of this bit of history for Wikipedia quoted the Web site's undue weight policy, which states that articles should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views. He then scolded me. You should not delete information supported by the majority of sources to replace it with a minority view. The undue weight policy posed a problem. Scholars have been publishing the same ideas about the Haymarket case for more than a century. The last published bibliography of titles on the subject has 1,530 entries. Explain to me, then, how a 'minority' source with facts on its side would ever appear against a wrong 'majority' one? I asked the Wiki-gatekeeper. He responded, You're more than welcome to discuss reliable sources here, that's what the talk page is for. However, you might want to have a quick look at Wikipedia's civility policy. I tried to edit the page again. Within 10 seconds I was informed that my citations to the primary documents were insufficient, as Wikipedia requires its contributors to rely on secondary sources, or, as my critic informed me, published books. Another editor cheerfully tutored me in what this means: Wikipedia is not 'truth,' Wikipedia is 'verifiability' of reliable sources. Hence, if most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that. Tempted to win simply through sheer tenacity, I edited the page again. My
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Report on Wikipedia Takes Mumbai II
On Monday 30 January 2012 11:56 AM, Vickram Crishna wrote: On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:19 AM, Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com wrote: On Monday 30 January 2012 03:28 AM, Theo10011 wrote: Looks great Anshuman! My best wishes to you and the Mumbai community! I wish we could figure out an easier way to upload, possibly direct mobile uploads to common for events like this. I know it would be a gold-mine for participation when it comes to events like this. For anyone who'd like to send images to commons directly from your android camera phone, there is an app that does exactly this - I've used it to send images directly from my phone to commons; it's simple, easy-to-use and extremely useful: https://market.android.com/details?id=nl.michiel1972.main Achal, this is great! It will help such events enormously, as many of the users will be able to perform 'instant uploads' - Photowalks can be organised with regular breaks to allow successive images to be populated with metadata. The app is rather good actually; very clean, and uses minute amounts of data for the actual upload - I have a 5 MP camera, and to upload one image took up some 0.5 MB of data. (Other than this android app, there appears to be an IPhone app under development: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiSnaps) Regards Theo On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 9:54 PM, Anshuman Fotedar anshuman.fote...@gmail.com wrote: Greetings! This is a short note on Wikipedia Takes Mumbai II. Forty people turned up near the Oval Maidan at Churchgate at 8 am yesterday. The landmarks that were photographed included theBabulnath Temple,Nehru Science Centre, Opera House, St Thomas Cathedral, INS Vikrant and Yazdani Bakery. After the photos had been clicked many of the participants proceeded toHomi BhabhaCentre for Science Education, TIFR where they were shown how to upload to Commons using both the usual upload process and by using the mediawiki-uploader mass upload script. Nikita Belavate and Karthik Nadar put in a lot of work into the event. They helped many people contribute to the Commons while having a good time, and they deserve praise for making all of this happen. Our heartfelt gratitude to Pranav Curumsey, Vickram Crishna, Dr Nagarjuna,Noopur Raval andMoksh Juneja for all the help and mentoring. Thanks to Shrinivasan T for mediawiki-uploader :) And apologies if I missed anyone out. Do visit our maintenance category WTM, specially created for the event. 313 pictures have been uploaded so far. Sincerely Anshuman Fotedar PS: 1. During the photowalk, some of the participants who were taking pictures of Bombay House were interrupted by private security personnel and asked to handover their cameras so that the pictures could be removed.Pranav andAditya Sengupta, who were among them, peacefully put forth the fact that they were not not breaking any laws by photographing the structure from the outside since it was not a legally protected one. They were
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Report on Wikipedia Takes Mumbai II
On Monday 30 January 2012 03:28 AM, Theo10011 wrote: Looks great Anshuman! My best wishes to you and the Mumbai community! I wish we could figure out an easier way to upload, possibly direct mobile uploads to common for events like this. I know it would be a gold-mine for participation when it comes to events like this. For anyone who'd like to send images to commons directly from your android camera phone, there is an app that does exactly this - I've used it to send images directly from my phone to commons; it's simple, easy-to-use and extremely useful: https://market.android.com/details?id=nl.michiel1972.main (Other than this android app, there appears to be an IPhone app under development: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiSnaps) Regards Theo On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 9:54 PM, Anshuman Fotedar anshuman.fote...@gmail.com wrote: Greetings! This is a short note on Wikipedia Takes Mumbai II. Forty people turned up near the Oval Maidan at Churchgate at 8 am yesterday. The landmarks that were photographed included theBabulnath Temple,Nehru Science Centre, Opera House, St Thomas Cathedral, INS Vikrant and Yazdani Bakery. After the photos had been clicked many of the participants proceeded toHomi BhabhaCentre for Science Education, TIFR where they were shown how to upload to Commons using both the usual upload process and by using the mediawiki-uploader mass upload script. Nikita Belavate and Karthik Nadar put in a lot of work into the event. They helped many people contribute to the Commons while having a good time, and they deserve praise for making all of this happen. Our heartfelt gratitude to Pranav Curumsey, Vickram Crishna, Dr Nagarjuna,Noopur Raval andMoksh Juneja for all the help and mentoring. Thanks to Shrinivasan T for mediawiki-uploader :) And apologies if I missed anyone out. Do visit our maintenance category WTM, specially created for the event. 313 pictures have been uploaded so far. Sincerely Anshuman Fotedar PS: 1. During the photowalk, some of the participants who were taking pictures of Bombay House were interrupted by private security personnel and asked to handover their cameras so that the pictures could be removed.Pranav andAditya Sengupta, who were among them, peacefully put forth the fact that they were not not breaking any laws by photographing the structure from the outside since it was not a legally protected one. They were standing on the road, and not trespassing. To resolve the matter, Aditya, Pranav and Krutikaa Jawanjal accompanied the security personnel to the police station where they explained that they were within their rights to do what they did, and that citizens of the country need not take prior permission to take exterior photographs of private property that was not accorded legal protection.The PSI on duty made a noting in his station diary and informed us that Bombay House has security fears, which is why one should speak to their bosses before taking pictures, but agreed with them per se that there is no law that prohibits people from taking pictures there. 2. The group that went to Bombay House (and subsequently to Yazdani Bakery, St. Thomas Cathedral) and other places was delayed owing to the incident at Bombay House and discoveredserendipitouslythat entry to INS Vikrant was open. Covering Vikrant took a while, adding to the delay. Consequently they (this includes me)never reached HBCSEbut uploaded from home instead. Although we did get several good contributions from the participants in this group as well, I do recognise that it may have been nice if we could have joined in with the participants who uploaded together at HBCSE. I apologise.
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Re: [Foundation-l] Indian Minister Kapil Sibal wants to censor social media
A useful update on the situation: http://blogs.outlookindia.com/default.aspx?ddm=10pid=2665 On Wednesday 07 December 2011 10:36 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan wrote: Vickram, while I agree with you my point was something else. What I meant to say was that if you add a source, you make your point, you're being neutral, and thus what you're doing is factually correct. On 07/12/2011, Vickram Crishnavvcris...@radiophony.com wrote: Exactly my point. I suspect that the addition of a line referring to the current controversy, where the hashtag #IdiotKapilSibal has been trending, and to quote some of the numbers over time during this crisis, would not be out of place. On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 5:29 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.comwrote: Adding Kapil Sibal is an idiot on the Wikipedia article is vandalism http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kapil_Sibalaction=historysubmitdiff=464355055oldid=464353638 Addling verifiable facts is acceptable ( including controversies and criticism http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kapil_Sibalaction=historysubmitdiff=464367647oldid=464366606 Hope I clarified the difference. Regards Tinu Cherian P.S. On a lighter note, Please feel to add Kapil Sibal is an idiot , if you can provide/prove that with Verifiable references from Reliable Sources :) On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 5:20 PM, Vickram Crishna vvcris...@radiophony.comwrote: Oh, the mention of 'idiot' on that page is vandalism (no, I haven't done it - yet)? I thought we had a very interesting discussion about current affairs at WikiConf where there seemed to be a consensus that presenting every side of the picture is important. Is reporting the fact that major websites like Kafila.org and literally hundreds or thousands of Twitter users are tweeting the hashtag #IdiotKapilSibal wrong, in that case? On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 5:05 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: On a related note, this has appeared on *The Economic Times* : Five reasons why India can't censor the Internet http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/five-reasons-why-india-cant-censor-the-internet/articleshow/11018330.cms *Yes, Internet content has the permanence and public-impact potential that a phone call does not, but equally, it lends itself brilliantly to self-regulation. * * * *3. Peer review works: Wikipedia is the best example. Who could have imagined that a user-created encyclopedia could be so objective, and comprehensive? Yes, anyone can go in and edit anything (barring entries like Kapil Sibal, which have been locked due to vandalism!). * * * *If you make an inappropriate change, someone will come in and correct it.* Regards Tinu Cherian On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 4:04 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan parakara.gh...@gmail.com wrote: This is basically restriction of freedom of expression and it will hurt Wikipedia much more than it hurts Twitter or Facebook. On 07/12/2011, Srikanth Lakshmanansrik@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 12:06, Achal Prabhalaaprabh...@gmail.com wrote: fyi Original Message Subject:Re: [Foundation-l] Indian Minister Kapil Sibal Wants to Censor social Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:02:10 +0530 From: Achal Prabhalaaprabh...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org I just want to write that there was a community member who seemed to be of the notion ImageFilter is the technical fix for what Kapil Sibal is proposing(without probably understanding / knowing much) and connecting the two distinct things. Yes Sibal showed some images as examples for his support, but what Sibal means is much more and prescreening of every byte of user generated content. Please tell that member that linking up 2 different things is not a good idea. ImageFilter needs to be discussed with its own merits / demerits and this thing that Sibal proposes means much more than images. If at all the legislation comes and is being enforced, I think Wikimedia projects are better equipped *technically* than other social media sites cited to support the local laws(so that we need not be banned if that goes to that extreme) with a combination of ImageFilter / FlaggedRevisions and some more customizations, but thats not where we would like to go. Community is already not so strong and needs support, there is so much work to do in increasing content, censorship will cripple Indian community if such a thing happens. There are many questions that the communities need to decide as to submit to Indian laws (if at all they come through) and I hope the situation does not arise for us to take those tough calls. PS : I would not like to post / join foundation-l myself since it has high SNR IMO. -- Regards Srikanth.L -- Sent from my mobile device Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. Wikipedia Coimbatore Meetup on December 10th.
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Re: [Foundation-l] Indian Minister Kapil Sibal wants to censor social media
fyi Original Message Subject:Re: [Foundation-l] Indian Minister Kapil Sibal Wants to Censor social Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:02:10 +0530 From: Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org Some updates on this, for anyone interested: http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/any-normal-human-being-would-be-offended/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/facebook-google-tell-india-they-wont-screen-for-derogatory-content/2011/12/06/gIQAUo59YO_blog.html http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/12/06/indias-dreams-of-web-censorship/#axzz1fpN86lWI http://www.legallyindia.com/201112072434/Regulatory/kapil-sibal-to-sterilise-net-but-cis-sting-shows-6-out-of-7-websites-already-trigger-happy-to-censor-content-under-chilling-it-act http://www.livemint.com/2011/12/06130244/Govt-wants-to-scrub-the-Intern.html There's still no clarity on what Kapil Sibal meant/means; whether he's serious; and the rules of the proposed IT act are still worrying; but at least the outcry is now entrenched. On Tuesday 06 December 2011 10:24 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote: On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 9:07 PM, Kim Bruningk...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: On Tue, Dec 06, 2011 at 09:25:03PM +0530, Achal Prabhala wrote: On Tuesday 06 December 2011 08:27 PM, Kim Bruning wrote: I do not believe that the Indian internet community shares Kapil Sibal's position. Though they'll have to speak for themselves, of course! :-) They have: http://blogs.outlookindia.com/default.aspx?ddm=10pid=2664 and Mr Sibal's passing thought of yesterday is probably not going anywhere. And hurrah for that! :-) A cautious hurrah. In April this year, the Indian government tried to restrict web content by holding sites and service providers - or 'intermediaries' liable for content. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/technology/28internet.html?_r=2scp=1sq=india%20onlinest=cse These new rules will be considered by Parliament in the winter session - and continue to pose a huge threat to online freedom of expression in India. Best Bishakha ___ foundation-l mailing list foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Supporting the languages of India
Hi Gerard, On Wednesday 30 November 2011 06:21 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote: On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com mailto: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 I think the problem may be with the phrase effectively illiterate. One term we use here a lot is functional illiteracy, but (like with the word illiteracy) it refers to a very specific problem, a developmental education problem. I, for instance, also do not recognise myself in your email. My mother tongues are Kannada and Telugu, and I speak a little Tamil and Hindi. I would describe myself as illiterate in Tamil, but literate in the other three languages. At home, for instance, I speak to my family mainly in English, and only sometimes in Kannada and Telugu. But, also, I'm one of the convent-educated people that Ravi wrote about earlier, and the language I am most comfortable with is English. I don't regularly read or write in Kannada, Telugu or Hindi, but I can - and I certainly use these languages regularly in speech. As Ravi pointed out earlier, I'm a minority and certainly not the core target of Indic language Wikipedias (and probably should not be). Everyone is comfortable with one language or another, and it's certainly true that most people in India (most middle-class, internet-accessing people even) are most comfortable reading, writing and speaking their mother tongues than not. This is best evidenced by media; in print, radio, television, and film; where the Indian-language media outstrips English-language media hugely, in terms of either readership or revenue. Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Thank you from the Wikimedia Foundation
I just made my annual donation today, and I must say this is one of the warmest, smartest and most endearing thank-you letters I've ever received. (I wanted to give by clicking on the Brandon banner - to encourage him to grow his hair - but I missed it!) I'm also glad that the WMF is going the rupee route - it makes the fundraiser more understandable to us here. And the localisation is pretty detailed, so if for instance you happen to be viewing Portuguese Wikipedia in India, the fundraising banner displays the same local donation message (in rupees) but in the Portuguese language. Quite impressive :) Cheers, Achal Original Message Subject:Thank you from the Wikimedia Foundation Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2011 05:56:37 + From: Sue Gardner don...@wikimedia.org Reply-To: Sue Gardner don...@wikimedia.org To: Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com Dear Achal, You are amazing, thank you so much for donating to the Wikimedia Foundation! This is how we pay our bills -- it's people like you, giving five dollars, twenty dollars, a hundred dollars. My favourite donation last year was five pounds from a little girl in England, who had persuaded her parents to let her donate her allowance. It's people like you, joining with that girl, who make it possible for Wikipedia to continue providing free, easy access to unbiased information, for everyone around the world. For everyone who helps pay for it, and for those who can't afford to help. Thank you so much. I know it's easy to ignore our appeals, and I'm glad that you didn't. From me, and from the tens of thousands of volunteers who write Wikipedia: thank you for helping us make the world a better place. We will use your money carefully, and I thank you for your trust in us. Thanks, *Sue Gardner* Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director For your records: Your donation on 2011-11-27 was INR X. This letter may serve as a record of your donation. No goods or services were provided, in whole or in part, for this contribution. The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit charitable corporation with 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in the United States. Our address is 149 New Montgomery, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA, 94105. U.S. tax-exempt number: 20-0049703 /Opt out option:/ We'd like to keep you as a donor informed of our community activities and fundraisers. If you prefer however not to receive such emails from us, please click below and we'll take you off the list: Opt out https://civicrm.wikimedia.org/thank_you/unsubscribe?c=1683663h=495d5ee2b9e59c7eea489b6d5973dee586ebbb35 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] On the issue of the maps...
:) Though in fact we have definitive news sources indicating that only 21 people showed up. (As well as photographic and video evidence from news media who were there). And you're right, it really should be merged with the WikiConference article - I'm not sure if the suggestion has been made on the deletion discussion yet. On Friday 25 November 2011 03:50 PM, wheredevelsd...@hotmail.com wrote: Achal - can we accept an oral citation from Aditya? ;-) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:09:40 +0530 From: aprabh...@gmail.com To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] On the issue of the maps... The number (and the total inconsistency with how many people actually protested) comes from here: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/protest-against-wrong-map-mars-countrys-first-wiki-conference/877826/0 in which it simultaneously describes hundreds of protesters *and* that all 21 who protested were arrested. Go figure. The article that's been created out of the controversy is a storm in a teacup (and as such is hardly notable) but the storm was so small it was barely noticeable - and would have stayed that way except for the misreporting of it. On Friday 25 November 2011 01:02 PM, Aditya Sengupta wrote: On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 11:11, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com mailto:shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: 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 Over 100 protesters were present on the opening day of the first Wiki Conference India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Conference_India? If this is indeed true, this was the most unfortunate morcha I've (barely) seen. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] On the issue of the maps...
The number (and the total inconsistency with how many people actually protested) comes from here: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/protest-against-wrong-map-mars-countrys-first-wiki-conference/877826/0 in which it simultaneously describes hundreds of protesters *and* that all 21 who protested were arrested. Go figure. The article that's been created out of the controversy is a storm in a teacup (and as such is hardly notable) but the storm was so small it was barely noticeable - and would have stayed that way except for the misreporting of it. On Friday 25 November 2011 01:02 PM, Aditya Sengupta wrote: On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 11:11, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com mailto:shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: 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 Over 100 protesters were present on the opening day of the first Wiki Conference India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Conference_India? If this is indeed true, this was the most unfortunate morcha I've (barely) seen. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] The copyright question: What would Gandhi do?
A friend of mine in South Africa, Isabel Hofmeyr, passed on this image of the first page of the first edition of the English translation of Gandhi's Hind Swaraj - or Indian Home Rule in translation. The book was published in South Africa in 1909, and is rarely available. Isabel was able to see it courtesy Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, who owns a copy. And the copyright legend on this front page? It reads: No rights reserved Isabel and Uma kindly offered to donate the image to Commons, and you can see it here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gandhi-Home-Rule-First-Edition-1909.jpg Finally, an answer to the great copyright question that has never been asked: What would Gandhi do? :) Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India - AGM and Election Results
Congratulations to the new board members, and on a personal note, I'd like to express a big thank you to Gautam for all his help and work as part of the Wikimedia India chapter over these last few years (he is stepping down from the board). You will be missed! Cheers, Achal On Saturday 24 September 2011 06:48 PM, Gautam John wrote: Hello Everyone: Just to say that the AGM is over as are the EC Elections. The results are as below: Naveen Francis Sudhanwa Jogalekar Tinu Cherian More here along with the reports presented: http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Announcements/AGM_and_EC_Elections We'd like to thank the Nominations Committee and everyone else who contributed to making this a success. Thank you. Best, Gautam http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe / mailing option visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe / mailing option visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [WMIN-Members] Report on First Wiki Academy organised by Wikimedia Chapter
This is amazing - congratulations to you and Gautam. On Tuesday 13 September 2011 03:13 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala wrote: Friends, 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. Cheers Arjun -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Wikimedia Chapter, India Member's Group. To post to this group, send email to wmin-memb...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wmin-members+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/wmin-members?hl=en?hl=en ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Oral citations project update: more articles + full English subtitle track
*apologies for cross-posting* Dear friends, A quick update on the oral citations project. 1) We have now posted sample articles in all 3 project languages, Malayalam, Sepedi and Hindi: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations#Articles.2F_Discussions_.28in_development.29 2) A full English subtitle track for the film is now available on Wikimedia Commons (the previous one only covered non-English speech): http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/TimedText:People-are-Knowledge.ogv.en.srt --- There are a couple of things yet to come, some of which are intrinsically linked to the suggestions and comments coming in from the discussion on the previous thread. These are: a) A few more articles in development, which will be posted when done b) Transcripts of the audio interviews in Hindi, Sepedi and Malayalam, each accompanied by an English transcript (in development) c) An FAQ, where we can begin thinking collaboratively about ways in which an exercise like this could work/be made to work under existing policies within the Wikimedia movement, and Wikipedia specifically; as well as ways in which this project could be extended to think about sources and citations generally. --- Lastly, if you haven't had a chance to see the work of the project, you can do that here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations ...and if you would like to watch the film made during the course of the project, please check it out: on Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv or on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/26469276 Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : DNA : Mumbai blasts: Ajmal Kasab's birthday confusion
Just to add to this, there are a few articles in each researched language (Malayalam, Hindi, Sepedi) in development, all of which use oral citations, and each of which will be catalogued on the research page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Projects/Oral_Citations (As of now, there are two that have been posted: one in Malayalam and one in Hindi) There are also links to the discussions happening both broadly and within very specific Wikipedia communities, which should give you some sense of why/how this is being taken up. Cheers, Achal On Sunday 24 July 2011 10:20 AM, Ramesh N G wrote: There is one Malayalam article http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neeliyar_bhagavathi where we already used oral citation User:Rameshng On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 9:21 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com mailto:anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: /“We have started using oral citations for non-controversial content. A tayyam dance form has been documented using such citations of proponents,” says Cherian, who is also at the forefront of creating Wikipedia content in Indian languages. / We have already started using oral citations? anirudh On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 9:38 AM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com mailto:tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: *DNA : Mumbai blasts: Ajmal Kasab's birthday confusion* http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_mumbai-blasts-ajmal-kasab-s-birthday-confusion_1568800 /As Mumbai reeled under shock, despair and anger over being attacked again on July 13, a message started clogging the jammed telephone networks and set the internet on fire. Though other information — another blast in Navi Mumbai, suspicious bag found in Santa Cruz — was also flying thick and fast, this one had the potential to spill mass anger onto the streets. The blasts were apparently a ‘birthday gift’ for convicted 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab, it said, and no less than Wikipedia said so. The user-generated online encyclopaedia insists on verifibility, says *Tinu Cherian*, a Bangalore-based Wikipedia administrator: “It is all about verifiability, not necessarily of the truth, but whether readers and editors can check that the material has been published by a reliable source, and not whether they think it is true.” the resource has become a definitive go-to for unbiased information. But on that fateful Wednesday, verifiability itself was the problem. Three sources — Indian Express (2009), IBNLive (2009) and Hindustan Times (2010) had mentioned Kasab’s date of birth (DoB) as September 13, 1987, while two — The Times of India (February 2011), The Hindu (2008) said it was on July 13 that year. The entry on Kasab was created on November 29, 2008, three days after the attacks, and since December that year, his DoB has been mentioned as July 13. No wonder then that when a Chennai-based user changed it to September 22 at 8.18pm (the last blast occurred at 7.05pm), there was consternation among Wikipedians, and minutes later, an ‘edit war’ as the community calls such rapid changes, had begun. Unable to verify the date, an administrator locked the page. Wikipedians say such problems are not uncommon, two recent cases being the rumour that freedom fighter Bhagat Singh was born on Valentine’s Day (February 14), and premature reports that West Bengal chief minister had died. Though there is no laid-down code, and no one in particular monitors changes to the database, the loosely organised community says it self-regulates and decisions are arrived at on case-to-case basis and actions depend on creating consensus. Soon after the edit war, a group of Wikipedians went into a huddle on the ‘Talk’ page of the website. Among them was *Utkarsh Raj Atmaram*, a 27-year-old Wikipedia administrator from Hyderabad. Though he too had learnt about the controversy on Twitter, he was initially circumspect about the real date being July 13. However, when he checked the revision history of the article, he realised the truth was at best a shade of grey. “Though the DoB had always been July 13, somewhere down the line the reference was deleted. This fuelled the confusion further,” Atmaram says. A Washington Post blog later attributed a part of this confusion to: “Those who are making the Wikipedia entry changes [to September 13] are trying to delegitimise the terrorists behind the attack.” It was finally decided at 11.26pm that both the dates should be reflected after one
[Wikimediaindia-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
Dear friends, At the beginning of 2011, a group of us began working on a project to explore alternative methods of citation on Wikipedia. We were motivated by the lack of published resources in much of the non-Anglo-European world, and the very real difficulty of citing everyday aspects of lived reality in India and South Africa. We are now at a stage where the project is almost complete, and we'd like to share our work with the broader movement, especially within India and South Africa. There are three languages we worked within: Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi. The project page documents the process and logistics employed, as well as the findings and results: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations A film made from the project is available here: http://vimeo.com/26469276 There have been discussions on oral citations for some time now within the language communities we worked with for the duration of the project. At this stage, we are really interested in *your* feedback, either on this list, or on the Discussion section of the project page. There are still some things to come, namely: - Better (high resolution) versions of the film on Wikimedia Commons with an open subtitle track for translation, in process - Updates on events, meetings and discussions held around the project (updated as they happen) - Updates on articles created in Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi as a result of the project (updated as they happen) We would be very grateful to hear your feedback, and begin a broader discussion. Best wishes, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia ZA] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge
Hi David, the audio interviews are up on Wikimedia Commons under the Oral Citations Project category: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Oral_Citations_Project For all interviews in South Africa, we have parallel Sepedi/English translation in the main interview itself; for the Hindi and Malayalam interviews, we're working on a way to provide transcripts in English. (At the moment, the film contains excerpts of all interviews, subtitled in English). I guess we should have transcripts on all the interviews though, so that's something to work on... Cheers! Achal On Friday 22 July 2011 07:29 PM, David Richfield wrote: Hi Achal, Congratulations, this is excellent work! I think Oral Citations are a great idea, and when used in the right context, and to support the right type of claim, they can be extremely useful. Do the interviews get transcribed, and if so, where are the transcriptions kept? Kind regards, David ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Oral Citations update: People are Knowledge film now on Wikimedia Commons
Thanks to Michael Dale and Erik Moller, the People are Knowledge film is now available in an open video format on Wikimedia Commons. This is a considerably better version than the one available on Vimeo (the link circulated earlier). Please see it at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv?withJS=MediaWiki:MwEmbed.js or in the standard player at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv You will have to switch the subtitle track on (instructions on the pages). We are working on creating a full English subtitles track, not just for non-English sections as is currently enabled - help appreciated here and for translation. Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Community-Chapter Relations
I think it's great that there is communication, and I'd like to believe that the difficulties expressed are not insurmountable. I would also like to believe that the chapter and community are entirely capable of working out a collaborative plan together. The chapter executive committee knows what it is collectively capable of and interested in, and with serious community input - tacit suggestions as to what the community would like the chapter to do - the chapter will have tangible 'wants' to consider. The chapter, it's executive committee and it's members have a choice in the matter, of course, and it is likely that they will themselves have ideas, and not want to execute everything that is suggested - however, those suggestions can be turned back to the community to carry out. Discussions oriented towards having some or a large part of the chapter agenda driven by community input could be a formal part of the WikiConference 2011; it could also become an annual feature, by, say, having a day devoted to the exercise every year. I'm unsure of how the WikiConference in India squares off with the proposed annual chapter AGM, though I assume that the former could be better used for planning and discussion, while the latter is best suited for bureaucratic discussions, elections, and other technical aspects. To me, it appears like we need to think about a few, specific things: 1) The 2011 WikiConference: are there other communities with proposals or is the Mumbai/Pune proposal the only feasible one on the table? 2) If so, how will the chapter work with the Mumbai/Pune community to make a WikiConference happen this year to the satisfaction of everyone concerned? 3) Once the WikiConference 2011 is decided, how can the community and chapter evolve a framework by which the chapter's plans are up for discussion and input? Cheers, Achal On Thursday 09 June 2011 12:31 PM, jayanta nath wrote: I am full agree with Shiju. We should support Mumbai/Pune community to make arrangements for the Wikimedia India conference. Community and Chapter should help each other. On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com mailto:shijualexonl...@gmail.com wrote: In fact all of us know the effort and pain took by Mumbai/Pune community to make arrangements for the Wikimedia India conference. They have reached out to almost all community members and asked for the support. As per the below mail they have reached chapter also. The response from chapter is also listed below :) Chapter should support the efforts of Mumbai-Pune community; not to discourage/derail the great work done by a community. There are many other points listed by Ashwin in the below mail, all those need to be discussed. On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.bain...@gmail.com mailto:ashwin.bain...@gmail.com wrote: The national chapter recently informed the community about its Membership and Community engagement plan -June 2011. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-June/003346.html In that document, the regulatory framework for conduct of Wikiconferences was released. http://wiki.wikimedia.in/India_Wiki_Conference_Framework Shortly thereafter, a clarification was issued. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-June/003378.html Members of the community must be puzzled at the need for clarification from the Chapter on the issues of its regulatory framework when there was no discussion online. This is because the recent announcement of the framework, in conjunction with other issues, led to the community believing that the chapter had forsaken it. A little history - the idea for a Wikiconference was mooted way back in March by the Mumbai community and they asked the Pune community to co-host it to which the Pune community agreed. As India now has a national chapter, we naturally asked for their support more than two months ago. For more than two months they were silent. Yesterday, they responded saying that the community was invited to submit their proposal, duly modified as per the said framework, and resubmit it for consideration with other bids. The cavaliar treatment of the serious efforts put in to date by the communities and the contents of the Framework of Regulations were disturbing to the community. At the face off it, one may just consider the Regulatory Framework as just another logical and reasonable document, but its language, text and subtext upset the community, in light of Chapter's attitude. The first and over-riding issue was the type of language used and its indication of the
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Delhi Chapter (User:AroundTheGlobe)
Dear all, As someone who follows this list and occasionally joins in, I don't find this discussion productive. In the interests of getting on, may I please request you to stop for the time being. There is a lot of excellent work being done by everyone who has contributed to the thread, and while disagreements have been expressed, we have to learn to deal with differences politely -- over-stressing an argument usually only makes the disagreement deeper. Maybe we should all step back and chill a little, perhaps even discuss all the other things that are going on :) Good wishes, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-IN-PUN] Pune community member in Grants Advisory Board
Congratulations, Sudhanwa and Mayur - I hope it goes really well for you. On Saturday 04 June 2011 04:54 PM, Anirudh Bhati wrote: Wow, congratulations Sudhanwa! On 4 Jun 2011 16:51, Ashwin Baindur ashwin.bain...@gmail.com mailto:ashwin.bain...@gmail.com wrote: Sudhanwa Jogalekar, a member of the Pune has been accepted as a member of the Grants Advisory Committee! Great going - Sudhanwa! http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/06/03/gac-it-up-introducing-the-grant-advisory-committee/ http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grant_Advisory_Committee Heartiest congratulations, Sudhanwa! We are sure you will serve really well on the committee. Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur -- ___ Wikimedia-IN-PUN mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-pun ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikipedia for World Heritage Online Petition
This is really great, thanks for sending on the link - I just signed it, and urge others to as well. For more context, there's a really nice NY Times article on the subject that might be of interest: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/technology/23wikipedia.html?_r=1hpw=pagewanted=all (The story was picked up by several Indian media outlets as well) Cheers, Achal On Sunday 29 May 2011 04:43 PM, naveenkumar palaniswamy wrote: Hello all, I have signed the petition of the WIKIPEDIA for WORLD Heritage. This petition is useful for the protection of wikipedia and protection of free knowledge. And also please do translations in Indian languages. Thank you, p.naveenkumar For details: http://wikipedia.de/ http://wikipedia.de/wke/Petition ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Foundation-l] Fwd: Copyright problems of images from India
Sreejith's point is that proving the date of authorship in commonly used religious iconography is difficult; it's also difficult to work through the dates of derivatives of the 'original' work in order to establish which versions have what period - if any - of copyright validity left. For what it's worth, Indian copyright law does have provisions to address orphan works. It's just that the provisions (linked to below my text) are rather cumbersome, and ultimately do not result in a public domain license being applied on the work even if it is found that the author is untraceable or doesn't exist; it merely results in a license to the individual who applied to use the work, possibly even the payment of royalty to the 'public account.' Current Indian copyright law has provisions around orphan works for 'Indian works' only (where questions of citizenship, as you described below, could play some part), but the law is about to be amended, and the new copyright law, effective very shortly, applies the orphan works provisions to all/any works vis-a-vis their use/effect in India, so this question will soon be moot. But the larger point is that unless one can definitively show that a work is out of copyright in terms of years since published or by the terms of an alternative copyright license, the law does not offer a way to deposit that work in the public domain. Current Indian copyright law (with suggested amendments from government and civil society): See s.31A - http://www.altlawforum.org/intellectual-property/advocacy/proposed-amendment-to-the-copyright-act-1957 Proposed amended copyright law (soon to be tabled in parliament): See s.31A - *http://tinyurl.com/3tb7drx* On Tuesday 10 May 2011 07:12 PM, FT2 wrote: Why would the creator's citizenship, or the place of its creation, be decisive? The works of an Indian citizen are granted copyright under US law in the United States, on a parity with the works of a US or any other citizen, even if copyright has expired or still continues in India -- and it is US law that governs Wikimedia. FT2 On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 12:07 PM,wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: Welcome to the problem of Orphan Works. what you have to show is that either of the following is true? (i) the author of which is a citizen of India; or (ii) which is first published in India; or (iii) the author of which, in the case of an unpublished work, is, at the time of the making of the work, a citizen of India; ___ foundation-l mailing list foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Grant Advisory Committee: Call for Volunteers
Original Message Subject:[Foundation-l] Grant Advisory Committee: Call for Volunteers Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 13:15:58 +0300 From: Asaf Bartov asaf.bar...@gmail.com Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org Hello, everyone. As announced in the Wikimedia Conference 2011 in Berlin, the Wikimedia Foundation would like to set up a Grant Advisory Committee, to help evaluate grant requests and to benefit from a wider movement perspective. We are now looking to populate the committee with volunteers. Please take a look at the description in the committee page on Meta[1], and if you have relevant background and are so inclined, apply at the bottom of the page. Cheers, Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grant_Advisory_Committee -- Asaf Bartovasaf.bar...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : The Hindu : Attempts on to revive Odia Wikipedia
In the Hindu today, this article appears prominently on the back page of the main newspaper - congratulations! On Saturday 09 April 2011 08:12 AM, CherianTinu Abraham wrote: *The Hindu : Attempts on to revive Odia Wikipedia* http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article1629497.ece /Some people who edit the Odia Wikipedia say that getting a Wikipedia in the language is an important tool to keep the language alive. At present, an attempt is on to revive Odia Wikipedia (or.wikipedia.org http://or.wikipedia.org), one of the earliest Indian language Wikipedias to be created./ / / /Interestingly, the guidance to stoke the Odia Wikipedia is led by Bangalorean *Shiju Alex*, who edits the Malayalam Wikipedia, while another Bangalorean, *Subhashish Panigrahi,* translates and creates templates for the language./ / / /While Mr. Panigrahi has spoken about the Odia Wikipedia to 6,000 students across six schools in Bhubaneswar, Mr. Alex, who is passionate about growing Indian language Wikipedia and writes for the Malayalam Wikipedia, noticed the low content in Odia Wikipedia. He scouted for Odia editors in Bangalore and finding no response initially, he took the initiative to Orissa. On April 3, he helped organise the second Odia Wikipedia Academy in Bhubaneswar, to bring an awareness of the Odia Wikipedia among people./ / / /The Odia Wikipedia was one of the first few Indian language Wikipedias to be created. Although started in 2002, along with Wikipedias in Assamese, Punjabi, Nepali, Oriya and Malayalam, prior even to the Hindi Wikipedia in 2003 July, the Odia Wikipedia never grew. It has, to date, only 700 articles./ / / /“We have to save Odiya. We have to take the movement online and Odiya Wikipedia is a vital part of it,” says *Sambidhan Mohanty*, a Cuttack-based businessman from a family of Odiya writers who studied in Bangalore./ / / /Mr. Mohanty says he appreciates Shiju and Subhashish as they got Odia speakers involved in Odia. “We came together because of them,” he says./ / / /Mr. Mohanty says the main aim is to get people attracted to Odia Wikipedia, to get more people to speak the language and write in it. Next is to get the State Government's attention so that Odiya Wikipedia can be made part of school curricula./ / / /A big challenge he sees is the number of Odia dialects. Although the language has a script, it has six dialects, including Sambalpuri (or Kosali), Kalahandia and Berhampuri. So even within a small group of editors, there is a difference of opinion of how a word should be written (for example, “dharm” or “dharma”)./ / / /Mr. Alex says the reasons for the low interest in Odia Wikipedia might be many including the number of people who speak the language, the number of people with access to a computer, availability of required fonts and browsers./ / / /A major challenge was the inability, till now, to type in Odiya within Wikipedia, and the large dependence upon an external tool to add content. However, now a typing solution has been developed for Odia so that problem has been resolved to some extent./ / / /Mr. Alex says lack of a typing solution within Wikipedia was a problem that assailed content creation across all Indian languages (using a non Latin script) on Wikipedia. A big help has been the typing solution for Malayalam within Wikipedia, which was developed in 2007. The solution has a base, which can be extended to other Indian languages and was used for creating typing solutions in Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Hindi and Bengali WIkipedias through 2010. Other languages are going on./ / / /*Srikant Kedia* has introduced the Wikipedia to at least 35 people./ / / /“Now, we need support from the Odia community to test the language. Now that it has a mature community, I can move on,” says Mr. Alex, who has given demos of edits in Odia Wikipedia in Bangalore and Bhubaneswar./ Regards Tinu Cherian http://www.wikimedia.in/wiki/In_the_news#April_2011 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] GLAM meeting at NGMA, Friday 3 pm, Feb 18
On Friday at 3 pm, a group of us from Bangalore (Arun, Gautam and I) organised a GLAM presentation and meeting at the NGMA (National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore http://ngmaindia.gov.in/ngma_bangaluru.asp) with Liam. (Announced here: http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Projects:GLAM_2011/Bangalore_Feb2011) This is a quick update: NGMA is a grand Indian art institution, and the Bangalore museum is it's latest expansion. The director of the museum, Sobha Nambisan, was keen to make this a small meeting for NGMA staff and invited curators/ gallery owners from Bangalore. Of the people present, other than us, there were about 10 NGMA staff, including all the main curators and coordinators, as well as Aashti Mudnani from Gallery SKE (www.galleryske.com) - a leading contemporary art gallery, Suresh Jayaram from 1 Shanthi Road (www.1shanthiroad.com), - an arts centre for residencies and experimentation, Suman Gopinath from Colab - curatorial space for arts and architecture, and Namita Malhotra from Pad.ma (www.pad.ma) - an open video archive. Liam spoke for about half an hour about his experiences at the British Museum, interspersed with questions from the curators present. Following his talk, we had a discussion that lasted another half hour. There was plenty of interest evinced in continuing similar work in Bangalore at the institutions present; questions ranged from fairly interesting (What can I get out of this?) to the expectedly basic around tenets of Wikipedia - as is perhaps to be expected from a specialist audience in a different field. Gallery SKE, for instance, is already working in-house on looking at ways of enhancing Wikipedia around the artists it represents; 1 Shanthi Road, which is a far looser arts-space, expressed interest in finding ways to document events, happenings and art that might otherwise be lost, and NGMA as a whole - as expressed by Sobha - seemed very interested in following up the conversation, by starting to think about what they would want to get out of a relationship with Wikimedians. Personally, it was very interesting for me to see the intersection between high-culture and Wikimedia, a connection that's not often expressed or articulated in Bangalore or India. Gautam and Arun, who were both at the meeting, have suggested that they could follow up in terms of coordinating community involvement with NGMA and other art galleries present at the meeting, especially in terms of interest expressed at the public CIS meet-up where Liam also spoke. If there is anyone on these lists who'd like to get in touch with any of the institutions mentioned here, please drop either Arun, Gautam or I a line and we'll be delighted to connect you :) Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-del] Indian academicians on Wikipedia?
Hi Rohini, Scholarpedia is not a Wikimedia project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholarpedia But looks interesting anyway :) Cheers, Achal On Wednesday 16 February 2011 09:33 PM, Rohini L wrote: Are there any on Scholarpedia which is also run by the Wikimedia foundation? -- On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 7:19 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com http://gmail.com wrote: Hi Tinu, Srinivas Gunta is an Assistant Professor for Strategic Management at Indian Institute of Management Indore. He is copied on this email. Please connect him with the reporter. Yours sincerely, Anirudh Bhati 00 91 9328712208 Skype: anirudhsbh On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 4:38 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com mailto:tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, A reporter is doing a story on Indian academicians on Wikipedia.. . If you know about any academicians / people from the education system who edit Wikipedia, it would be great help.. Are there anyone in the India mailing list ? Please drop _a personal mail to me_ with the contact informations , if so. Thanks in advance. Regards Tinu Cherian ___ Wikimedia-in-del mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-del ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Liam/ Wikipedia GLAM discussion @ NGMA @ 3 pm, Feb 18 (Friday)
Dear all, A group of us here in Bangalore have been arranging GLAM sessions on Feb 18/19. NGMA (the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore: http://ngmaindia.gov.in/ngma_bangaluru.asp) will host a semi-public discussion with Liam, NGMA staff, and invited curators/ art gallery owners at their premises on Feb 18, Friday, 3 pm in the NGMA staff boardroom. The other organisations invited are: 1 Shanthi Road (http://www.1shanthiroad.com/), Gallery SKE (www.galleryske.com), Colab (an art and architecture curatorial concern) and pad.ma (www.pad.ma). Wikipedians and other interested folk from Bangalore are welcome to join, but since space is slightly limited, NGMA would prefer to keep this a private event (without press) and ask that you send in your names beforehand. Therefore, if you are interested in this event, could you please add your names here: http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Projects:GLAM_2011/Bangalore_Feb2011#18-Feb Will update http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/India after the event. There are many other events in the planning, and there will be more notifications here as these events are finalised. Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
Couldn't agree more. I think that there is/ has been a lot of needless noise. It's not productive to cast insinuations against the chapter or foundation (or community for that matter) as a whole. I do think, however, that communication from the chapter regarding the last set of meetings (and changes then on) have not been communicated very well. If, for instance, some of the basic questions were to be addressed, I suspect that there would be much less basis for this kind of distracting and unhelpful noise. As far as I am concerned, I have fairly simple question: I still don't know why one set of the India chapter leadership (scroll down: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA-ChapComVer) was suddenly replaced by another (as detailed here:http://wikimedia.in/wiki/Announcements/Communication_from_the_Executive_Committee_regarding_first_meeting_on_January_22,_2011). Not being on the EC, I am aware that there might well have been good reasons to reshuffle of the chapter leadership team; I would merely like to know what these reasons were. And also how you decided to change the structure, who stood for elections to various posts, etc. - as I would expect from any Wikimedia community body. Perhaps this is something that the chapter can consider in this instance, and in the future. As for Praveen's email, thanks for the explanations, Delphine, Anirudh, others. However, Anirudh, while the point about moderation/spam filters makes sense, mailman does generate emails (on a daily/per instance basis) to the admins of a list to check/approve messages caught in the filter. So I would imagine that for a message to stay unanswered/unresolved for three days indicates that the burden of administration on WikimediaIndia-l deserves to be shared by more than two people from the Wikimedia India chapter. Specifically, and to follow up on the intent expressed in previous messages (from Jyothis, Salman, Delphine and others), how can we help to immediately create a process whereby two non-chapter community members from India might be added as Admins to WikimediaIndia-l? Hari and Anirudh, I would imagine that the instant you can facilitate this process, there will be sufficient uptake from the community to fill these two slots - many thanks in advance for considering this request from us seriously. Good wishes, Achal On Sunday 13 February 2011 02:41 AM, Theo10011 wrote: I have no idea what's been happening lately on the mailing list. Please keep it civil, this is getting rude and inappropriate for a national list. It would be archived and viewed by many others, please do bear that in mind. User:Theo10011 On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 12:37 AM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org mailto:li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Sudhir Ponappa ponappasud...@yahoo.com mailto:ponappasud...@yahoo.com wrote: Hello everybody. I am a Wikipedian who is very interested in translation. I am helping with English to Kannada, but I am also learning chapter language. What is this? For eg. Thank you for helping the thread by providing an example of a message that would require moderation! Rude personal attacks such as these are the perfect examples of what should be moderated on a mailing list. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
Dear Hari and Anirudh, As moderators of WikimediaIndia-l, could you describe the policy you normally adopt towards moderation? Do you only block obvious spam or other messages, and if so on what basis? I am naturally curious since a message from Praveen that you only just released seems to have been sent in 3 days ago. Furthermore, I think we'd benefit from understanding how people may apply to become administrators on this list. In light of Anirudh's recent appointment to administrator of this list, is there an open process by which other members might apply? (Foundation-l seems to have three administrators, though I would imagine that there is nothing stopping WikimediaIndia-l from having more than three). Please note that I don't ask with persecutory intent, but merely to clear gaps in my own understanding, which might be a problem that other people on this list face as well. Since WikimediaIndia-l is such an important place for all kinds of conversations that cut across the movement in India, it's in all our interests to know exactly how it is managed. Best regards, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l
Ah yes, sorry - thank you! Cheers, Achal On Friday 11 February 2011 10:16 PM, Shiju Alex wrote: why Praveen's message does not appear in the archive for WikimediaIndia-l, even though messages subsequent to it - like mine - do? Praveen's mail is there in the archive. Even though we all have received Praveen's reply *only today*, it is archived as the mail of 2011 Feb 8 (the actual date on which that mail was sent). I assume even if some one's mail is moderated it will be archived as the mail of the original date. Shiju Alex On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 10:01 PM, Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com mailto:aprabh...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Hari and Anirudh, Further to my message below, could you help me understand why Praveen's message does not appear in the archive for WikimediaIndia-l, even though messages subsequent to it - like mine - do? http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/date.html I'm sure there must be some simple technical reason for this, just asking to understand better how moderation/ archiving works. Best, Achal Original Message Subject:Moderation policy on WikimediaIndia-l Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:14:50 +0530 From: Achal Prabhala aprabh...@gmail.com mailto:aprabh...@gmail.com To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Dear Hari and Anirudh, As moderators of WikimediaIndia-l, could you describe the policy you normally adopt towards moderation? Do you only block obvious spam or other messages, and if so on what basis? I am naturally curious since a message from Praveen that you only just released seems to have been sent in 3 days ago. Furthermore, I think we'd benefit from understanding how people may apply to become administrators on this list. In light of Anirudh's recent appointment to administrator of this list, is there an open process by which other members might apply? (Foundation-l seems to have three administrators, though I would imagine that there is nothing stopping WikimediaIndia-l from having more than three). Please note that I don't ask with persecutory intent, but merely to clear gaps in my own understanding, which might be a problem that other people on this list face as well. Since WikimediaIndia-l is such an important place for all kinds of conversations that cut across the movement in India, it's in all our interests to know exactly how it is managed. Best regards, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Fwd: Wikipedia Ponders Its Gender-Skewed Contributions - NYTimes.com
It's a great article. I notice that LinuxChix (http://www.linuxchix.org) has an Indian chapter and what seems to be an active community (http://www.linuxchix.org/india.html) - sounds like it would be a good idea to talk to them soon. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] WikimediaIndia-l list description
Dear admins of WikimediaIndia-l and others connected to it, I only noticed recently that the list description for WikimediaIndia-l reads Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. Personally, I find that a bit limiting - given that it (seems) to exclude English - which is of course an official Indian language, though not everyone knows that. I'd appreciate it if you considered changing the title appropriately, to perhaps Discussion list on Wikimedia projects in and about India or something to the effect. Others might have thoughts on this too (or better title suggestions)? Thanks, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] WikimediaIndia-l list description
I don't agree. The point is simply to make the list more inclusive to all Indians (and everyone else) interested in Wikimedia in India, and this includes those working in English. Having said that, I don't think the title has stopped anyone from posting on subjects not related to a specific Indian language Wikimedia project. But if the intention is to include the widest possible group of people why not say so explicitly? Achal. *Gerard Meijssen* gerard.meijssen at gmail.com mailto:wikimediaindia-l%40lists.wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BWikimediaindia-l%5D%20WikimediaIndia-l%20list%20descriptionIn-Reply-To=4D47D5BF.304%40gmail.com /Tue Feb 1 10:07:56 UTC 2011/ * Previous message: [Wikimediaindia-l] WikimediaIndia-l list description http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/001948.html * *Messages sorted by:* [ date ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/date.html#1949 [ thread ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/thread.html#1949 [ subject ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/subject.html#1949 [ author ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/author.html#1949 Hoi, There are several mailing lists that are about the English Wikipedia. The problem with including discussing particular English subjects on the Indian mailing list will not help in coming to a consensus in the English language community. My expectation is that when English becomes a major topic, it will drown out much of the language issues that are specific to India and the organisational issues that are specific to India. It is the same as with a developers list for India. It is the perfect way of ghettoising yourself and effectively become more frustrated and helpless. Thanks, GerardM ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 31, Issue 54
Stepping in here without knowing all there is to about this, so excuse me if there are gaps. It seems to me as if no one metric in any way outdoes others; i.e. one high metric is just that, and can be well celebrated on it's own without imputing (or relating to) 'overall' strength/ success based on multiple metrics. Might it make sense to think of it this way? That is to say, the overall strength of a language Wikipedia is something like the overall strength of an average Wikipedian; a good score on a commonly acceptable metric is a wonderful thing but by no means is *the* thing. In the discussion so far, it doesn't seem to as if you can substitute depth with any other metric (even a more commonly acceptable one like article count) and say that a particular language Wikipedia - as a whole - is better on that basis. Simultaneously, it doesn't mean that an achievement in depth is anything to scoff at either.. It seems as if there are a whole host of tangible and intangible factors that make up the success of a Wikimedia project; some are measurable, others definitely not. On Thursday 27 January 2011 05:58 PM, wikimediaindia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: Send Wikimediaindia-l mailing list submissions to wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to wikimediaindia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at wikimediaindia-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of Wikimediaindia-l digest... Today's Topics: 1. The Hindu : One among the clan of Wikipedians (CherianTinu Abraham) 2. Re: Malayalam wikipedia crossed the 10 Lakh/1 million edits milestone (BalaSundaraRaman) 3. Re: Malayalam wikipedia crossed the 10 Lakh/1 million edits milestone (Ravishankar) 4. Why do new users create accounts on Wikipedia? (BalaSundaraRaman) 5. Re: Malayalam wikipedia crossed the 10 Lakh/1 million edits milestone (praveenp) -- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:46:52 +0530 From: CherianTinu Abrahamtinucher...@gmail.com Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] The Hindu : One among the clan of Wikipedians To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, Bangalore Wikimedia list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Achal Prabhala \(Wikimedia Foundation\)aprabh...@gmail.com Message-ID: aanlktikop7awwfg_qkkosx-xusaa0n-xhbjho01zd...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 The Hindu : One among the clan of Wikipedians, featuring Achal Prabhala http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-neighbourhood/article1128553.ece Regards Tinu Cherian -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20110127/090ffee9/attachment-0001.htm -- Message: 2 Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:29:47 -0800 (PST) From: BalaSundaraRamansundarbe...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Malayalam wikipedia crossed the 10 Lakh/1 million edits milestone To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID:770912.87393...@web59916.mail.ac4.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii +1. Yes, milestones are nice things to celebrate, but not something to start regarding as a metric. - Sundar That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted. - George Boole, quoted in Iverson's Turing Award Lecture From: CherianTinu Abrahamtinucher...@gmail.com To: Discussion list on Indian language projects of Wikimedia. wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, January 27, 2011 11:45:17 AM Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Malayalam wikipedia crossed the 10 Lakh/1 million edits milestone Although page depth was not really connected with the current trend, Personally, I think page depth is no longer a reliable metric for comparison, here is why I think so. Assamese Wikipedia ( 312 articles) : page depth is 339 . Sindi ( 355 articles): 381 Compare this with Bengali ( 22,062 articles) : 374 Malayalam ( 16,414 articles) : 320 It is self-explanatory... Technically 1 million edits is a cute milestone ( congrats to ml wiki) to take notice, but we cannot consider it as real metric for comparison among Wikipedias. There are language Wikipedias where Google translation/Machine translations or bot created articles are banned or controlled tightly
[Wikimediaindia-l] 10,000+ articles on Kannada Wikipedia
Congrats! And I see that Kannada is the Indian language Wiktionary with the second highest count... http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/Table *Hari Prasad Nadig* hpnadig at gmail.com mailto:wikimediaindia-l%40lists.wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BWikimediaindia-l%5D%2010%2C000%2B%20articles%20on%20Kannada%20WikipediaIn-Reply-To= /Thu Jan 27 16:11:48 UTC 2011/ * Previous message: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikipedia meetup at Mangalore http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/001868.html * Next message: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indian Wikipedias and various stats http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/001870.html * *Messages sorted by:* [ date ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/date.html#1869 [ thread ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/thread.html#1869 [ subject ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/subject.html#1869 [ author ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/author.html#1869 An update was due. Kannada Wikipedia has recently crossed 10,000 articles milestone: http://kn.wikipedia.org/ Kannada Wiktionary now has more than 85,000 entries. Congratulations and heartfelt thanks to each contributor who has made this possible. -- Hari Prasad Nadig http://hpnadig.net |http://twitter.com/hpnadig http://flickr.com/hpnadig -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL:http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20110127/73fac3a0/attachment.htm ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] 10,000+ articles on Kannada Wikipedia
Congrats! And I see that Kannada is the Indian language Wiktionary with the second highest count... http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/Table *Hari Prasad Nadig* hpnadig at gmail.com mailto:wikimediaindia-l%40lists.wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BWikimediaindia-l%5D%2010%2C000%2B%20articles%20on%20Kannada%20WikipediaIn-Reply-To= /Thu Jan 27 16:11:48 UTC 2011/ * Previous message: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikipedia meetup at Mangalore http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/001868.html * Next message: [Wikimediaindia-l] Indian Wikipedias and various stats http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/001870.html * *Messages sorted by:* [ date ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/date.html#1869 [ thread ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/thread.html#1869 [ subject ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/subject.html#1869 [ author ] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-January/author.html#1869 An update was due. Kannada Wikipedia has recently crossed 10,000 articles milestone: http://kn.wikipedia.org/ Kannada Wiktionary now has more than 85,000 entries. Congratulations and heartfelt thanks to each contributor who has made this possible. -- Hari Prasad Nadig http://hpnadig.net |http://twitter.com/hpnadig http://flickr.com/hpnadig -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL:http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20110127/73fac3a0/attachment.htm ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-in-blr] The Hindu : One among the clan of Wikipedians
Hi Gokuldas, the good news is he's 'temporarily free' as of one month ago, albeit at a high price: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11962032 On Friday 28 January 2011 02:09 AM, gokul das wrote: Hi Wikies, Ignite a movement to free Hossein Derakhshan from the prison in Iran.It should be possible with the reach of Internet into 2 billion thinking heads. Gokuldas On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 12:46 PM, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com mailto:tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: The Hindu : One among the clan of Wikipedians, featuring Achal Prabhala http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-neighbourhood/article1128553.ece Regards Tinu Cherian ___ Wikimedia-in-blr mailing list wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org mailto:wikimedia-in-...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-blr ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Your business card
Kiruba, A friend who is at the INK conference in Lavasa sent me this scan of your business card; a card that you handed out yesterday. Can you please explain to all of us why it says you are a Director of Wikimedia India when as you perfectly well know - and has been publicly documented - you have had nothing to do with the chapter formation in India for over a year? As you know, you were asked to leave the founding group because of your promotion of yourself as a Director of a non-existent entity; as you also know, Wikipedians in India were/are extremely annoyed by your false representation. I'm going to send out a short and clear message to WikimediaIndia-l on the subject of your association with us. Meanwhile, please understand that this is absolutely ridiculous - you are wasting our time, and have done so repeatedly in the past. Achal attachment: kirubacard.jpg___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] You will love Erik Zachte for this :)
Yes Gerard, I assumed it was obvious that we're talking about India-based traffic and edits to EN - the information is reported on the main stats page, my point was simply that it would be interesting to see in the same table (though we're measuring slightly different things, since the Indian language Wikipedia stats are not based on geographical origin but destination). ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] You will love Erik Zachte for this :)
This is invaluable - thank you Erik, and thanks Gerard for bringing it to attention. Erik, I know that you report geographic trends on EN on the main stats page, is there any way you can easily and comprehensibly integrate India edits and readership to EN on the India page? That would be very helpful, esp. as it probably dominates all other Indian languages currently (and since English is an official Indian language too). Also, Shiju has been putting out India stats for some time now, and (Shiju) perhaps you can share/integrate what you do, in terms of depth, article quality and editorship with this information - perhaps you can have a conversation with Erik about this. Good wishes, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Bangalore Mirror story: Parishat bats for Wiki boost to Kannada
In today's Bangalore Mirror 4/11 there is a story on how the Kannada Sahitya Parishat wants to engage with Kannada Wikipedia on it's strategy to make internet use in Kannada more vibrant. It's quite a well-written story, not online as yet. Do you know these folks Hari? If there are others interested in engaging with them, perhaps we can convene a meeting with them and help. Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] community, chapter and foundation: who is who and who does what
This is an excellent idea - why not just place the current press kit at presskit/en and then place the Hindi translation at presskit/hi? (And likewise for any other translations?) ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] creative commons superhero meets wikimedia india
Creative Commons has just put out a list of people it considers 'superheroes' https://creativecommons.net/superheroes/ - and of the six people highlighted, one is our very own Gautam John, an initiator of the Wikimedia India chapter. Congrats, and let's hope some of that superhero super-dust falls on us too. Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] community, chapter and foundation: who is who and who does what
To add to the recent discussion on this list, perhaps a few clarifications are in order. All of you are familiar with yourselves - i.e. us - the community; people who edit, organise and otherwise help Wikimedia projects move ahead in interesting and productive ways. Many of those interesting and productive things happening here are captured in this first edition of the Wikimedia India Community Newsletter: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_India_Community_Newsletter_2010_September.pdf Then there is the chapter. Chapters are independent organizations founded to support and promote the Wikimedia projects within a specified country. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters). Chapters are approved by the Chapters Committee, constituted by folks whose mission is to further Wikimedia, and while affiliated to and recognised by the Wikimedia Foundation, are yet independent entities which plot their own course. Chapter efforts in India started up as early as 2004 and critical momentum was achieved from 2008 onwards, the result of which is that we now have an approved Wikimedia India chapter - awaiting registration in India as a non-profit organisation (for more see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India). The Wikimedia India chapter is currently being registered as a 'society' in Karnataka and will function as a national organisation. As a 'society' it is required to have founding 'members' - and in our case, those members are Arun (President), Sundar (Secretary), Hari (Treasurer), Gautam, Srinivas and Arjuna. (See: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA-PostChapComVer). Once the chapter is recognised as a legal entity within India, these members will serve as the Executive Committee of the organisation. Contrary to earlier discussions, the Wikimedia India chapter has never had 'Directors' or 'Directors (designate)' - it's a society, and societies have members. On operation, it will, of course, extend membership widely to anyone who wishes to join. Chapters have a wide variety of functions, all of which are evolving - for now, a crude summary of their purpose would be that they allow individuals from within the community to do more than they could normally do alone, besides providing the benefits of a formal, organisational setup to utilise when necessary. Then we have the Wikimedia Foundation, the organisation based in San Francisco that is the legal home of all Wikimedia projects. Over the last few years, the Wikimedia Foundation has grown in staff strength and capacity, and works to facilitate everything we do as volunteers from around the world. In the last few months, and on the basis of a strategic planning exercise (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy) the Wikimedia Foundation decided to actively help a few geographies grow, one of which is India. The National Country Director job that Barry Newstead (Chief Global Development Officer) talked about on this list (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-August/000850.html) is a position that will report to him, which is to say, the staff employed at the Wikimedia Foundation office in India are exactly that, and not to be confused with the India chapter - they are a separate entity, an off-shoot of the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, though they will obviously be working closely with both the community and the chapter. Further clarifications on the Wikimedia Foundation's office plans in India are available in this email from Barry (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2010-August/000849.html). I trust this helps somewhat in understanding the landscape. Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] community, chapter and foundation: who is who and who does what
I agree that the press coverage is (and always tends to be) skewed when it comes to Wikipedia, Wikimedia and India. And it doesn't help that the explanation is pretty clear but complicated. In a few months, we will have the Wikimedia Foundation India office, the Wikimedia India chapter, and of course - as always - the Wikimedia community in India. I can only see more confusion! Perhaps you - or others - can set up something on India-meta? An explanation such as the one just offered (who does what) + something about the difference between Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects would be very useful for the press, if kept simple. Then we could point them to this page every time there's interest - or print it out and distribute it for subsequent press interactions as well. I'll help, and others will too - I'm sure - if you get it going. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 22, Issue 29
On translations and google in particular, my understanding is that it is up to each Wikipedia community to decide how/if to use translations as a whole, and whether google's translation tool is useful or not. I'm not aware of anything that either binds us or restricts us from using translation technologies, and my guess would be that you should decide on the basis of your experience. If you'd like to get a broader or comparative view, my suggestion would be to check in with the Board, ask Foundation staff members you know, or perhaps post to foundation-l and see if others have useful experience to share. wikimediaindia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: Send Wikimediaindia-l mailing list submissions to wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to wikimediaindia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at wikimediaindia-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Wikimediaindia-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Philosophical view on Google translated articles (Srikanth Ramakrishnan) 2. Re: Philosophical view on Google translated articles (Manish Goregaokar) 3. Re: Philosophical view on Google translated articles (Srikanth Ramakrishnan) 4. Re: Number of local Wikipedians (Jyothis Edathoot) -- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:34:12 +0530 From: Srikanth Ramakrishnan rsrikant...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Philosophical view on Google translated articles To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: h2ye6ab1cca1004201104k247d4492z4d351947e685f...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" I agree with Shiju and Ramesh. I tried it out for Hindi. And the phrase 'A fully charged battery' got translated to what would mean a battery that got charged [the court charged]. It isn't all that accurate right now, but it may improve. While to a certain extent, it may seem like Google is catalising Localised content, you can clearly see that Google might be trying to gain Monopoly over Wikipedia as well. This may rsult in editors quitting and doing what Nichalp allegedly did a while back. My two paise [not cents].. Regards, On 20 April 2010 23:27, Ravishankar ravidre...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Shiju, Ramesh Thanks for the input. Can you update the status in ml wiki regarding Google translated articles? Seems it is banned in Bengali Wikipedia. We understand that this project is run in many Indian language Wikis but not sure of the exact list. Manish, This whole conversation is about using http://translate.google.com/toolkit/ The Kit by itself may be somewhat flexible to edit as you mentioned. But the paid translators don't seem to be using it. Ravi ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 22, Issue 29
On translations and google in particular, my understanding is that it is up to each Wikipedia community to decide how/if to use translations as a whole, and whether google's translation tool is useful or not. I'm not aware of anything that either binds us or restricts us from using translation technologies, and my guess would be that you should decide on the basis of your experience. If you'd like to get a broader or comparative view, my suggestion would be to check in with the Board, ask Foundation staff members you know, or perhaps post to foundation-l and see if others have useful experience to share. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2010 - deadline April 11
If you are interested in applying for a scholarship to attend Wikimania in 2010, please see: http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships The deadline for applications is *April 11*. The call for proposals (talks and sessions) is not yet out, but should be soon. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
[Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India Chapter
Brother Shahid, thanks for your comments, but for the record (and for any other Indian Wikipedians who want to get things off their chest like he did) please direct your criticism at me in the future, not the folks who have worked incredibly hard over the last year to fashion the bye-laws you see on Meta. I've been on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation since its inception, towards the end of 2006. Like you, I'm an admirer and supporter of the mission of Wikipedia, and of the work of the Wikimedia Foundation. Over time, and with much subsequent interest from various people within Wikimedia, it became clear that the lack of an Indian chapter was an obstacle. An obstacle for Wikipedians like you; an obstacle that prevented people in India from doing everything they could to help Wikipedia grow. As there were several Wikipedians who wanted to form a chapter but were seemingly unable to, between 2008 and 2009, I contacted anyone who had previously expressed an interest in setting up an Indian chapter. These are people who had interacted here on WikimediaIndia-l, and also on meta, or who had written in to Cary Bass at the Wikimedia Foundation in his capacity as volunteer coordinator. The folks whose names you now see on the Indian chapter bye-laws are those who stepped up from among a vast list to give roughly one year of their time - a couple of hours a day, several hours a week, to make this happen. Was the process perfect? No. But was it a fair process, given the options and constraints? Yes. Is the group of people that drafted the MoA perfectly representative of the Indian Wikipedian community? No. But are they as representative as was possible? Yes. Personally (and everyone who has been associated with the Indian chapter will agree) I don't believe we have enough Wikipedians from North India, or North-East India; I also don't believe we have enough female Indian Wikipedians on board. This is a pity; but this is also an opportunity, as long as it's stated upfront - as I have in several emails to this list before - for both increasing membership to the chapter from specific regions and from women, and for reconstituting the legally required stewards of this process from time to time with appropriately representative members. I appreciate you pointing out the flaws. But I don't appreciate you assuming that no one had considered these flaws before. And I would appreciate you participating in a manner that can correct the imbalances that exist in the ensuing Wikimedia India chapter, now and later. The process, as you will understand, is complicated and there have been several ups and downs. ChapCom (the Chapters Committee) has stringent requirements; Indian tax law is complicated and rigorous to say the least. This process also required money to host people from various different cities in one place for a meeting, to hire an accountant, to get constant legal and tax advice - and the organisation that stepped up to fill this gap is a new and vibrant non-profit called the Centre for Internet and Society (www.cis-india.org). We're now at that lucky stage when our rules comply with everyone concerned. What the rules need, however, is your input. Now, while I appreciate your concern and criticism, can I ask you in turn, why it is so easy to lash out with no restraint and so hard to actually contribute positively? I don't see your input on the India strategy (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/India). I can't see your input on meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_India/MoA). And this is despite numerous messages, announcements and entreaties for contribution. Everything I've written here in this email, I've written before to WikimediaIndia-l, so this is not new, but you don't seem to have been reading your messages. And you must start doing so. There are several thousands of Wikipedians in India who want to help, and not all of them are prolific editors, indeed some of them help in other ways, and we should welcome them all, while realising the invaluable role that editors play in making this thing we love. You are scaring them away - and I am pointing this out because I don't think you want to; you wouldn't be on this list if you didn't want to help make Wikimedia better. I ask that you please join us in this exciting new phase for Wikimedia in India. Like you, I plan to apply for membership of the society as soon as the India chapter commences, and like you - I hope - I plan to submit my ideas on what the India chapter should do. Perhaps we will even meet in person. I'm actually very fond of wining and dining, and it would be my pleasure to show you some hospitality in the Wikimedia way: I promise to buy you a plate of idlis and a glass of water the next time we're in the same city. Best wishes, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 12
Dear Praveen, I help the Wikimedia Foundation through it's advisory board, and just wanted to say that I'm both grateful for your interest and glad that Nadig, Sundar, and others have been able to clarify the situation. If you look at meta, and particularly at the MoA, the process that has unfolded over the last few years is clearly outlined, and the names of Wikipedians associated with chapter efforts at different stages, including currently, are clearly listed. Any suggestions you have for Indian Wikipedians in general, and the chapter efforts in particular, need to be taken seriously - and they will be. Dear Kiruba, Thank you for your message of clarification. As you agreed to some time ago, could you please remove all the "Wikimedia India" references in connection with yourself, on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.? As you have just explained, you are not involved in the set-up effort currently. Therefore, removing references that connect you to the ensuing Wikimedia India chapter would prevent the kind of miscommunication that Praveen's message highlights. I appreciate your urgent attention to this matter. Cheers, Achal wikimediaindia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: Send Wikimediaindia-l mailing list submissions to wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to wikimediaindia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org You can reach the person managing the list at wikimediaindia-l-ow...@lists.wikimedia.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Wikimediaindia-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Wikimedia India Chapter (Shiju Alex) 2. Re: Wikimedia India Chapter (kir...@kiruba.com) 3. Re: Wikimedia India Chapter (Hari Prasad Nadig) 4. Re: Wikimedia India Chapter (Hari Prasad Nadig) 5. Re: Wikimedia India Chapter (BalaSundaraRaman) -- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:25:46 +0100 From: Shiju Alex shijualexonl...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia India Chapter To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: d8f18e211003110225o6a4525afrc88ba1747dbc9...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" I request all the current committee members to *at least create a user page*in MetaWiki ( http://meta.wikimedia.org). If you could mention your home wiki and your contributions to WikiMedia foundation wiki projects (both inside and *outside wiki*) there, that will enlighten many of us. Shiju On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Praveen Prakash me.prav...@gmail.comwrote: I am very happy and proud to hear that we got a wikimedia indic chapter. But I wonder why all these activities taken so hidden? We are a community (or a community of communities), we've an active mailing list, but I didn't hear anything about such an active effort (may be i missed). Is there any separate communication medium? Or is this a special chapter for wikimedia English projects? I recently learned someone as wikimedia indic chapter director from linkedin (http://in.linkedin.com/in/kiruba). He is also being CEO, Founder, Co-Founder, Director of many other initiatives (Actually I don't have any problem about that). I am thinking about that election process and members. I am sorry but frankly I don't know any of other guys also. If possible introduce them, and their home wiki. I wish, an informed community about any further steps. If someone can clarify my thoughts originated from poor knowledge, I'll be more happy. PraveenP Hari Prasad Nadig wrote: Dear all, As Srikanth has already noticed in an earlier e-mail, the draft Memoranda of Association for the proposed Wikimedia India Chapter has been put up on Meta here:http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India/MoA Even as the team working on the current draft has spent the better part of a year working on it, I am sure that there would be scope for improvement. Please provide your invaluable comments and suggestions on the relevant talk page:http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_India/MoA. However, given the time we have spent on the document, it is important that we proceed quickly and hence, I suggest that the comments be made on or before this Saturday, the 13th of March 2010. Let us maintain the Wiki-etiquette expected out of us during the discussion. People curious about the earlier and the current efforts at forming the India chapter may find my blog post on it,http://hpnadig.net/blog/2010/03/08/wikimedia-india/563 a complimenting read. More on Wikimedia India chapter can be seen onhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India. Let us look forward to a great response in discussing and debating the MoA of the proposed Wikimedia India chapter. -- Hari Prasad Nadighttp://hpnadig.net |
[Wikimediaindia-l] [Fwd: India task force]
In plain text, in case the previous message is not accessible. Original Message Subject:India task force Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:02:27 +0530 From: Achal Prabhala a_prabh...@yahoo.co.uk To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org CC: Eugene Eric Kim ee...@blueoxen.com Greetings...my name is Achal Prabhala and I am helping the Wikimedia Foundation with their strategy exercise (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), specifically, by coordinating the India task force (http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/India_Task_Force). While several people have applied to be on the task force, and others have been invited, we are still looking for Wikipedians and Wiki enthusiasts with some very specific attributes, namely: - Hindi Wikipedians (or Wikipedians who live in Delhi/ North India and come from there) - Northeastern Wikipedians (who originate from and preferably live in some part of Northeast India, excluding Calcutta and W. Bengal) - Urdu/ Punjabi Wikipedians (either from Pakistan and living there, or from India) Lastly, there is a somewhat embarrassing lack of female participation in the Wikimedia world generally, and this reflects almost more sharply in our region. Should any of you be (or know of) good candidates to correct this apparent representational imbalance, we are very interested in hearing from you. I'm writing to ask for your help in trying to identify some names/ leads around all four categories listed above. If you feel you fit these attributes yourself, please don't hesitate to nominate yourself - all we need to know is a little about what you do and why you think you could contribute to the India task force. Could you please send your suggestions to me (aprabh...@gmail.com) and Eugene Kim (ee...@blueoxen.com) in the next one or two days? Thank you in anticipation. Cheers, Achal ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
