Bengali Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Celebration Kolkata/Call for Participation

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Attention for full papers
We are preparing a template according to our style sheet and we will ask the authors to make necessary changes. This has to be done to maintain the international standard publication guidelines.

Bengali Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Celebration will be held on 9 and 10 January, 2015 at the main campus of Jadavpur University, Kolkata. The Conference is a get together of Indian Wikimedians, Students, Research Scholars, Faculty members and all individual experts. The conference will give the Wiki users, Wiki editors and developers of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet each other, exchange ideas, report on researches and projects and collaborate for the future projects and ideas. Beside the Conference is open to the public and widens the chance for the educators, researchers, programmers and cultural activists who are interested in the Wikimedia projects to meet the Wikimedians. It is an opportunity to learn more and share ideas about the projects run by Wikimedia.

Expectation and Approach edit

The following are the expectations from the conference:

  1. Indian Wikimedia community is unique. It is heterogeneous, with people representing multiple languages,literature & cultures. Yet there are many commonalities. The conference aims to provide a meeting place for various communities to interact, share, learn and know each other.
  2. The conference will not be about talks or presentations all the time. We expect interactive, creative and interesting discussions on various tracks identified.
  3. To provide an opportunity to every Wikimedian in the conference to talk if they wish to share anything interesting with the rest of community.We are providing 10 minutes lightning talksin this regard. These talks may not require prior registration.
  4. To utilize the expertise and experience of Wikimedians in the conference, we plan to have open discussions on each track between a panel of experts and interested Wikimedians. Anything related to Wikimedia,Meta-wiki or Wikipedia can be discussed, asked and be commented upon. There will be a moderator for each of these discussions.

The conference will have a mix of

  • Invited Expert's speech
  • Submitted presentations
  • Panels
  • Tutorials
  • Workshops
  • Open space meetings
  • Lightning talks
  • Poster presentations
  • Skype sessions

Submissions will be reviewed and selected in advance by the program committee. Selection of the talks is the prerogative of the program committee and all decisions will be final and binding.

Submissions can be made online, via email or hand to hand to our Wikimedia volunteers listed under the registration page. The online Submission link is placed at the bottom of this page. Before submitting the program proposals, please read the guidelines below.



Tracks edit

This year's conference offers four tracks for submissions: Community, Technology, Knowledge and Outreach. Additionally papers are also invited in the areas of Open source software and technology, Technological glitches of softwares/platforms/interfaces developed in Indian Languages. We offer a few scholarships for papers from various Indian languages.See Scholarships for details.

Community: edit

  • Strengthening the existing community - Ways to improve the existing communities and encouraging participation.
  • Community Interactions - Interactions within Wikimedia communities and between various communities
  • Expanding to more languages - Expanding Wikipedia and sister projects to more languages in India.
  • Gender Gap - Best practices, Strategies, Statistics for filling the gender gap of editors. Reasons and solutions for the less women representation in Indian context.
  • Best practices and Case studies.

Technology edit

  • Issues and Solutions - Input tools, fonts, browser, rendering, etc.
  • Training, Outreach of existing solutions
  • Building developer community around mediawiki and Wikimedia, Student programs- GSOC.
  • Best practices, Case studies.

Knowledge edit

  • Digital archiving of Written , copylefted books and importance of wikisource
  • Alternate strategies for Knowledge collection like Oral Citation, Collaborative Editing
  • Wikimedia Commons, GLAM project, Maps
  • Wikipedia sister projects - Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, wikiquotes, etc.
  • Copyright laws and practice in Wikimedia projects.
  • Issues affecting knowledge availability for editing e.g. Open science etc.
  • Case studies.

Outreach edit

  • Social media, print, visual media strategies
  • Workshops, Trainings, WikiAcademies, Collaborations
  • Focused community outreach -eg: Campus programs, Wikipedia Takes/loves India
  • Offline solutions
  • Accessibility
  • Case studies


The presentations should be in any of the tracks mentioned above.Each Track will have the following sessions:

  1. A 30 minutes talk, workshop, or a tutorial - Proposals are invited for these from all. The 30 minutes duration is as per the standard guideline and can be extended on need basis. The expectations about these sessions are to present innovative solutions, present the existing issues, and case studies or best practices from the communities.
  2. Lightning talks related to each track- These are 10 minute talks by community members and do not require registration. Speaker can just inform the track lead during the session. Duration of the talks may be increased if needed.
  3. Organizers will present an expert panel on each track- Wikimedians interested/working on that track can discuss any issues, experiences, suggestions etc. openly with the panel and within the audience. The discussion will be moderated by the track lead.
  4. Skype sessions - If substantial number of papers come for this mode then skype sessions can be arranged. Duration will be 15-30 minutes as required.
  5. Posters - Some of the innovative ideas can be represented through posters.

Abstracts/full Papers of these talks should be submitted prior to the conference and they should be selected by organizers. Proposals can be sent via email to

  • conference-bn10(_AT_)wikimedia.in
cc-ed to
  • atanu.jnu(_AT_)gmail.com and tanmaybir(_AT_)gmail.com

Mode & Format edit

Format of the Abstract edit

-Abstracts must not exceed two A4 pages in length (including data and references) have one inch margins (2.5 cm) on all sides in Times New Roman font with a font size no smaller than 12 pt and single line spacing.
-For papers written other than English unicode fonts need to be used. If Unicode fornts are not used, the name of the keyboard/ software used must be mentioned.
- The authors must clearly mention the track name, mode, duration and state whether the abstract should be considered for 30 minutes talk/panel/workshop/10 minutes lightning talk/ Skype session/ Poster presentation.

- submissions in .docx,.doc,.rtf,.pdf-format will be accepted.

Format of the Paper edit

-Papers must not exceed 10 (Ten) A4 pages in length (including data and references), have one inch (2.5 cm) margins on all sides, be set in Times New Roman with a font size no smaller than 12pt and single line spacing. Other instructions as above.

Format of the Poster edit

-Posters can be sent in A0 size format.

Format of the presentation edit

.ppt/.pptx files can be sent prior for consideration. For a 10 minutes talk 10 slides and for a 30 minutes talk the slide numbers may not exceed 30.

Only the full papers may be published in our conference proceedings published by a renowned publisher with an ISBN number.

What if you don't have a paper edit

In case you think you can't manage paper in the given timeline, you can also prepare a power point presentation or a handout. We encourage that too. In that case you can express your interest to us by shooting an email or by sending an abstract.

Important dates (updated) edit

The deadline for submissions is given below

  • Call for abstracts/proposals opens: 8th October 2014
  • Deadline for abstracts: 10 December, 2014, 23:59:59 hours IST (UTC +5.30)
  • Notification for accepted abstracts : 13 December, 2014 by email and also in this page
  • Deadline for submitting Full papers: 25 December, 2014, 23:59:59 hours IST (UTC +5.30)
  • Notification for changes: 27 December, 2014
  • Notification for final acceptance: will be notified – the full program will be updated soon.

Submission of proposals edit

The above guidelines are only meant as a pointer to help speakers and is not expected to be exhaustive. You can submit talks within all aspects of Wikimedia even if the topic is not specifically included here. Be Bold/Be innovative.

How to upload paper/ abstract proposals here edit

In the input box delete 'your proposal title' and write the title of your proposal, click on create page and It will redirect you to a new page, fill in all the details. If you can't do it this way kindly send your proposals through emails. Mention 'Abstract submission' in the subject line



See the list of all Bengali Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Celebration submissions. See also this category.