wikipedia

On how Google irreparably wounded Kannada Wikipedia

Google India paid local companies/agencies to test and use their Indian language translation tool. The platform they chose was Wikipedia.

What happened next was disastrous. Especially on Kannada Wikipedia.

Rumors spread that "You get paid for writing on Wikipedia". The regular  contributors felt discouraged as they continued to contribute as volunteers while others, the translators commissioned by agencies were getting paid pretty well.

Google was actually paying the agencies, translators who used their translation tool to translate articles from English Wikipedia to the Indian language projects.

Just back from Wikimania 2011

Wikimania 2011 at Haifa, Isreal

Back home from Haifa. Wikimania 2011 was excellent.

It was great to meet Wikipedians from all over the world. There's plenty to take forward from the event.

A special thanks to Wikimedia Israel for the marvellous event. I heard from others that this one has been the best Wikimania to the date. I haven't been to any of the previous events, but this one was quite an event in terms of planning and organization. It was the best.

Kannada Wikipedia workshop in Dharwad

Karantaka University, Dharwad

Photo: Hari Prasad Nadig

Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Dharwad on 28th May


The first ever workshop on Wikipedia in North Karnataka is being organized by Wikipedia volunteers on 28th May, 2011 (Saturday) at Karnataka University, Dharwad. The focus will be on Kannada projects of Wikimedia. Writers, academicians, students and all wiki enthusiasts in Hubli/Dharwad, we invite you to participate.

Date: Saturday, 28, May 2011
Time: 10.00 a.m. to 1.30 p.m.
Venue: Auditorium, Mass communication and Journalism Department, Karnataka University, Dharwad

Schedule:
Session 1: Introduction to the projects of Wikmedia, their present status.
Session 2: Editing Kannada Wikipedia, contributing to projects of Wikimedia in Kannada language.

Wikimedia India

Back in 2004, we used to have discussions on how to improve Indian language projects on Wikipedia and related projects. It was then that the discussions had also channeled towards a probable Indian Chapter that could provide support and backing for the local community and the local projects. At that time, there were just a few chapters worldwide.

We have since then had attempts almost every year to form an Indian Chapter. Most of us involved in each of these attempts were volunteers active in the Wikimedia community. I had coordinated most of the efforts except for the last one. Sadly though, we never had the resources or the backing needed to kick-start the formal process. So, the idea of an Indian Chapter never got realised. It was quite an ordeal to even arrange a meet-up back then.

Some of the earlier attempts failed either due to lack of consensus among the volunteers participating on varying issues or due to the natural processes of attenuation in the crowd that was interested. While the excitement was very much palpaple and the interest genuine among the people involved, we were unable to give the idea the time
and commitment it needed primarily because we lacked the critical mass.

Fortunately, things have changed for the better. Things changed drastically last year when Sunil from Center for Internet and Society brought several Wikimedians under one roof. Thanks to the invaluable efforts from Achala Prabhala in getting a few committed and responsible volunteers together back again to boot start the process during that time, we now are much closer in realising the Chapter idea than we were ever before. The team that had come together for this purpose has spent plenty of time towards this in the last one year.

Weekend log

It was a busy weekend, last one. On Saturday morning I had to dust curtains, vacuum the floor of the entire house as my sister had called up and said she would be moving in for couple of days to be with mother. She wouldn't like it if it isn't clean and things aren't organized! And then Murali was here to discuss about Tech Sampada, which is a new initiative on Sampada that we're coming up with (with an ambitious plan of getting people to write about technology, and developments surrounding technology in Kannada). Interviews we had recorded with Prof. U R Rao, Prof. C N R Rao (in Kannada) would be featured during the launch of the portal.

But of course, Saturday evening was the program where Professor Eben Moglen was to give a talk. I was listed as a guest on that program despite me insisting strongly that I would rather just join in like everyone else. Professor's talk was enlightening. The clarity with which he spoke was so good that people listening to him seemed overwhelmed and filled with admiration. Not many among that audience, I bet, would have known much about the Professor before. The event was arranged by Avadhi originally for Kannada bloggers, but I couldn't see many familiar faces in the audience. Many of those who participated were from the Free Software Users Group. And I felt that there wasn't much Kannada audience too. Hence, when my turn came for the talk (and since I was supposed to talk in Kannada), I just kept it to the basics and spoke for 10 minutes or so.

The errors on Wikipedia Logo

Wikipedia logo
The incorrect characters on the Wikipedia logo [:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/25/technology/25wikipedia.html|has now made it to the New York Times] as news. There were numerous people wondering about the incorrect characters (easily four of them for Indians), and many had started talking about it on Wiki last year. Turns out that there is a petition now and [:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ambuj.Saxena/Wikipedia-logo|much more discussion going on].

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