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Grants:TPS/Bodhisattwa/Wikimania/2018/Report

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Participant

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Bodhisattwa

Bengali Wikisource

Outcome

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Shared Experience

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  • With Bengali Wikisource Community: reported to the community about the resolved bugs and tool developments relevant to Bengali Wikisource during Wikimania.

Learning Pattern

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Building own Kiwix server

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I attended the workshop presented by User:GastelEtzwane on how to develop Kiwix server using Raspberry Pi. From James Heilman, I learned the details about how to set up the device, download the offline version of Wikimedia projects, add projects which are not included till now etc. The workshop gave me knowledge and insight, so that it can be implementated in my language community in future.

New Creation

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British Library EAP book downloader scripts
 

Pmlineditor created two python scripts for Endangered Archives Program (EAP) books of British Library (BL) upon request from Bengali Wikisourcer Hrishikes and with requirement inputs from me during hackathon. The scripts are already in use in Bengali Wikisource.

  • EAP mass downloader script

To mass download EAP collection books, a list of books from EAP collections should be created first by running a python script, created by Pmlineditor. The mass downloader script will read the list, download the jpg files from every book, stitch them to respective pdf files and rename them according to metadata provided. The script will not upload the books to Wikimedia Commons as some books may have copyright restrictions.

  • EAP selective downloader-uploader script

Pmlineditor also created a python script for EAP books to selectively download PD books and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. Like the previous script, this script will download jpgs and stitch them to create pdf file. The uploader needs to fill up the compulsory config file parameters. Please note, the config parameters will work for Bengali books by default, to change it to other languages, one need to fork the script and adapt accordingly.

Bangla Academy book downloader script

Pmlineditor created a python script to mass-download books from Bangla Academy website upon my request during the hackathon. The script does not upload the files to Commons to avoid copyright violation, as the books lack metadata and some of them may be within copyright status requiring human checking. This script is already in use in Bengali Wikisource.

Retrieving Coordinates of ASI monuments

West Bengal Wikimedians User Group has decided during Wikimania to organize Wiki Loves Monument in India this year. Apart from organizing the photo-competition, Wikidata migration of all monuments of national importance and state protected monuments is necessary. While looking for the coordinates of those monuments, I found the website called Bhuvan, India's geo-platform for Indian Space Research Organization, where the map of India is displaying the location of the ASI monuments. I requested Yarl and Lodewijk from WLM team along with Pmlineditor to retrieve the coordinate data from the website. Pmlineditor created a script to retrieve the data and it has been stored in a csv file. The coordinates are now being added by Wikidata contributors in items about ASI monuments under this wikiproject.

Connections

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  • User:Pmlineditor - We sat together for 3 days in hack space and discussed about some of our tech needs in Wikisource, the result for which Pmlineditor created some useful scripts, discussed above and in his scholarship report.
  • User:Shyamal - This was my second opportunity to meet Shyamal after Wikimania 2016. We had long discussions on the Wikimedia community dynamics in India. He agreed to our proposal to be one of the three national juror to judge the photographs which will be submitted under Wiki Loves Monuments 2018 in India competition. We also sat for some time together and figured out on how to create animated gifs which I was planning to do for caligraphy animaton for Bengali alphabets. We also had a discusson if it was possible to organize online training sessions on SVG illustrations before Wikigraphists Bootcamp happens in September this year.
  • User:Satdeep Gill - Satdeep and me had long discussions on the complex Wikimedia community dynamics and the issues we are facing in India. We discussed about different possible collaborations between West Bengal Wikimedians and Punjabi Wikimedians user groups, the result of which both the user groups joined hands together in organizing Wiki Loves Monument in India this year. I extended my help to grow Punjabi Wikisource, both from user group and my personal account.
  • User:KCVelaga - This was my first encounter with KCVelaga face to face, although we have communicated online before. We discussed a lot about the issues Wikimedia India is facing and the complex community dynamics in India. We discussed about logistics support for WLM 2018 in India.
  • User:Sumitsurai - We discussed about community dynamics and how we can organize more offline events in a planned way in West Bengal. He also agreed to be one of the organizer of WLM this year upon my request.
  • User:Rogueassasin123 - I was excited to learn about Videowiki website founded by Rogueassasin123 from the founder himself. In this free multi-media encyclopedia website, he tried to create an editable video versions of English Wikipedia by adding audio layer using Text to Speech software. The The source code is in github. User:Doc James created a meta page to propose it as a new sister site. I had a discussion with Rogueassasin123 if the site can be hosted in tool labs.
  • User:Romaine - It is always good to see Romaine in every Wikimania in the as an extremely helpful and cheerful volunteer organizer. During hackathon, I asked Romaine to help us plan for Wiki Loves Monuments this year in India and he directed to User:LilyOfTheWest of WLM team to clarify my doubts, for which I am thankful to him.
  • User:LilyOfTheWest - I had a discussion with LilyOfTheWest if it is possible to organize WLM 2018 locally in West Bengal and not whole of India, as I was not sure about the strength of our user group to run a nation-wide competition. She was very helpful to find practical solutions to the issue and led me to User:Effeietsanders for further help, which ultimately resulted in the decision to organize WLM in India.
  • User:Effeietsanders - I had a discussion with Effeietsanders if it is possible to organize WLM 2018 locally in West Bengal and not whole of India, as I was not sure about the strength of our user group to run a nation-wide competition. Effeietsanders assured and extended his help us organize the competition throughout India this year. We discussed about our limitations and strength and the workflow of WLM with him.
  • User:NahidSultan - After 2 years we had met, but its always a pleasure to interact with him personally. Apart from the Bengali Wikimedia meetup discussed below, we discussed about how he is trying to run different impactful projects of Wikimedia Bangladesh despite legal and executive obstacle to get funds. He has also been honorably mentioned as one of the strong candidate of Wikimedian of the year by Jimmy Wales, he really deserved it and as a fellow community member, I am so proud of him.
  • User:Hasive - Apart from the Bengali Wikimedia meetup discussed below, we about his plan to start d:Wikidata:Wikiproject Bangladesh and I helped him to chalk out some initial plans and how Wikidata can help contents related to Bangladesh in a qualitative way.
  • User:AStinson (WMF) - I attended the panel discussion of Gaps in Global GLAM capacity coordinated by AStinson. After the panel discussion ended, I had a discussion with him about the direct relation of Wikisource with GLAM projects and why Wikisource is less known among Wikimedians as a potential and important project.
  • User:Spiritia - I attended the panel discussion of Gaps in Global GLAM capacity and learnt from her about the difficulties in executing GLAM projects in Bulgaria, which was pretty similar to the situation we face in India. After the discussion, we had a short discussion about the condition of Bulgarian Wikisource and the difficulties the community is facing working there. I tried to convince her to use Wikisource for her GLAM project and as a gesture of solidarity from a fellow Wikisource contributor, I showed her how to use Google OCR in Bulgarian Wikisource. While doing this, I found out that the difficulties they are facing is because some important modules, templates and javascripts were not installed. Due to time constraint and no admin access from my side in the project, I could not help her then and there.
  • User:Wassan.anmol - We met again after a mediawiki training in Bangalore on February this year, where I requested him to work on the Book Uploader Bot, which has stopped working and not maintained for last 2 years. During Wikimania, I followed-up about any progress happened to make it operational. He informed me that he is working on it and most likely going to create a new tool, as the old tool is difficult to fix.
  • User:Manik Soren - Manik from Bangladesh was one of the most active contributors to bring Santali Wikipedia out of incubator, for which I congratulated him and extended any help needed from my personal capacity and from West Bengal Wikimedians User Group if he wanted to conduct outreach activity in West Bengal.
  • User:Diptanshu Das - We are from the same community but it was our first time after 9 years, I met him again. I learned from him about some of his work, he is doing in Wiki Journal of Medicine.

Anything else

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