User:Gopala (CIS-A2K)/Progress report 2018-19

Collaborations

Collaboration with Hampi University

Activity

Kannada University, Hampi is a research-oriented public university in Hampi, Karnataka, founded in 1991 by the Government of Karnataka. In previous year work plan CIS-A2K collaborated with Dravida Samskruthi Adhyayana Vibhaga of Kannada university to digitize Dravida Nighantu. This program was the gradual step to have the bigger collaboration with the University. As follow-up of that, CIS-A2K have conducted meeting with Mallika Ganti, vice-chancellor of the university in the month of September. Kannada University already initiated the process to scan and digitize older books by setting up scanners. CIS-A2K will be helping in this process to digitize 100 books initially. We proposed digitizing and re-licensing the encyclopedias and other important books which is published by Kannada university, Hampi. Vice-chancellor showed interest in re-licensing the books which university thinks Kannadiga should read. Also, CIS-A2K proposed conducting workshops for the research scholars. These workshops progressive steps for the research scholars to understand the importance of publishing research papers online under creative commons license and those research papers can be used as references in many articles on Kannada Wikipedia.

Follow-up

CIS-A2K is going to submit proposal to the university in the month of February.

Tumakur University Wikipedia workshop

Activity

Tumakur University workshop introduction session

CIS-A2K conducted a workshop for Tumakur University physics department students on 25 July 2018 in Tumakur, Karnataka. The workshop was conducted for under graduation science students of the university and 12 participants participated in this event. Among these participants 10 were female and 2 were male. CIS-A2K also involved Kannada community member User:Lokesha kunchadka, who participated as a trainer in the workshop.

An important discussion topic during the workshop was Kannada science related articles project. The project page contains a long list of science related articles to be created and improved on Kannada Wikipedia. Following the workshop the students started working on the articles.A challenge in this workshop was internet connection was not stable. The students faced difficulties to browse and work from the computers and a few students edited from their mobile phones.

Learnings

• Involving students to work on the topics which match with their study curriculum may interest the students to work more actively.

Similar activity

Baduku Community College workshop

Baduku Community College workshop was conducted on November 28 2018. The students are from journalism background. So we asked them to add content about history and notable people. Also, it was very important them to know about copyright. So we explained copyright in details and how to use photos and why specially journalists should upload media files to commons. Total 25 participants were participated in the workshop. Out of twenty five 11 are female and 14 are male participants.

ಒಂದು ದಿನ ಸಂಪೂರ್ಣವಾಗಿ ನಡೆದ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಕಾರ್ಯಗಾರದಲ್ಲಿ, ಪ್ರಾಕ್ಟಿಕಲ್ ಮತ್ಯು ಥಿಯರಿ ಜೊತೆಯಾಗಿ ಮಾಡಿದ್ದರಿಂದ ಆಸಕ್ತಿದಾಯಕವಾಗಿತ್ತು. ಇದರ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಇನ್ನಷ್ಟು ತಿಳಿಯಲು ಮತ್ತೊಂದು ಕಾರ್ಯಗಾರದ ನಿರೀಕ್ಷೆಯಲ್ಲಿದ್ದೇನೆ. (English - Since the workshop was perfect blend of theory and practical session it was very interesting. I would like to learn more about this. So I want to attend one more workshop) - Yogini suki

Follow - up

• CIS-A2K is following up with the faculty User:Mangalapandith, who is guiding the students to continue working on the science-related articles.
• Before the end of this work plan year CIS-A2K will conduct a follow-up workshop to further enhance their skills.

Kannada community meet-up

Activities
CIS-A2K conducted a Kannada community meet-up on 19 August 2018 at Bengaluru. 12 community members participated. In that 3 are the participants were female and 9 were male. This was the first meetup conducted by CIS-A2K for the Kannada Wikimedia community in this work-plan year. This meetup was conducted as a follow-up activity of Wiki Advanced Training (WAT), that took place in Ranchi in July 2018. Kannada Wikimedians User:Vikashegde and User:Mallikarjunasj, who participated in WAT, debriefed the community about the topics they learnt. They discussed Good article and Did you know process, application of Wikipedia policies such as Neutral point of view, and Verifiability.

User:Ashoka KG, who is a professor at Alva's College, informed about the activities being conducted by the Wikipedia association. He also discussed the future Wiki-plans of the association.

There was brief session on Wikidata discussing Wikidata labels and descriptions. There was also a hands-on session where the participants improved Kannada Wikidata labels as a part of Indian Independence Day 2018.

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  Discussion about good article process
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  Discussion about good article process

Follow-ups

• We'll conduct at least one more Kannada community meetup in Bangalore in April/May 2019.

Conference about Telangana Culture, Literature, Language and Festivals

Activity

Mamidi Harikrishna releasing Culture department publications in Telangana Digital Media Conference; Picture has many Telugu Wikimedians who are receiving the books from Hari krishna

CIS-A2K collaborated with the Language and Culture Department of the Government of Telangana and Digi”Tel” Telangana to organize the conference about “Telangana Culture, Literature, Language and Festivals in Digital Medium” on October 12 and 13 2018. The event was collaborated with CIS-A2K where Telugu Wikimedians Pranayraj was the main coordinator in planning and executing. Along with Pranayraj another Telugu Wikimedian Ajay Bandi was part of the event. In this event Mamidi Harikrishna, Director of Telangana Language and Culture Department announced to re-license 8 Telugu books and oil paintings of 38 Telangana luminaries into CC-BY license. In this event 19 Telugu Wikipedians were commended by the Government of Telangana for their effort and contributions to Telugu Wikipedia.

Follow-up

As follow-up A2K will support in the OTRS process and uploading of the scanned media files to Commons in order to accomplish the announcement. Pranayraj is planning to conduct Telugu Wiki conference about direction of the project with the help of CIS-A2K.

Completion of First phase of Telugu Village Articles improvement

Activity

Yarra ramarao presenting about improvement of Telugu Wikipedia articles on Telangana Villages to other Telugu Wikimedians

Telugu Village articles project aimed to improve thousands of articles about Telangana and Andhra Pradesh villages completed of its first phase in November 2018. Community members User:Chaduvari, User:Yarra Ramarao, and User:Bhaskaranaidu collaborated with CIS-A2K to complete the first phase. These articles were created in 2006 using a bot and were considered as quality issue to the project for more than decade. During this period more than 7000 articles improved. Those articles have information about education, health, irrigation, geographical, demographic status of that village based on 2011 Indian census data.

Learning

Updating information of Telangana Village articles which affected by state reorganization, district reorganization, and mandal reorganization.

Follow up

In the next phase for this project deals with creating mandal level articles and updating correct names of villages. A2K would like to work on obtaining the data required for this from the Government. A2K is also coordinating an personalized training for User:Ajaybanbi with one of the major contributors of the projects User:యర్రా రామారావు to create and improve mandal articles.

Initiating Good article process in Telugu Wikipedia

Activity

A2K started working with User:Chaduvari to frame and start Good article process in Telugu Wikipedia. In this process, A2K also conducted a workshop for Telugu Wikipedia quality improvement. In that analyzed quality gaps of articles featured on Telugu Wikipedia main page and conducted personalized trainings on Good article process. Later in this process new Wikimedians like te:User:Yasshu28 joined along with others who are interested on contributing to quality. In this initial stage, 9 articles were improved and proposed for GA process. According Telugu Wikipedian User:Chaduvari who is working on this project suggested that "It requires push" in the form of popularizing the process among Wikipedians, encouraging them to evaluate and improve the articles based on GA guidelines, and creating system to reward wikipedians based on GA review. A2K will conduct online sessions on weekends to Telugu Wikimedians who are interested on Quality improvement of the project initially to increase participation in GA process.

Building Communities of Concern

During the organisation of thematic workshops, it was realised that communities of concern in the society are genuinely interested in content generation. These communities are working for more than 10 years on one sector in a organised way. They have built cumulative knowledge through action and research with an objective to disseminate it to masses. Hence the following process in water and biodiversity sector is being evolved to integrate this approach with Wikimedia projects for mutually beneficial impact.

Jal Bodh

As the water crisis is worsening day by day, the citizen's initiatives are taking more efforts to spread knowledge about it. We actively participated in the River Dialogue held in April 2018 to introduce the potential of Wikimedia projects to organisations working across Maharashtra state. After this orientation, a follow-up plan is prepared in which various groups have expressed their readiness to start content building on water & rivers. Jeevit Nadi organisation took first initiative in May 2018 to train team of activists in open knowledge and Wikimedia Projects. Total 15 Activists and researchers from Jeevit Nadi, EcoUniv, Jal Biradari (Tarun Bharat Sangh), Ecological Society, Sagarmitra organisations participated in this workshop.

In the second iteration on 25th July, five participants presented their work, the database and the resources with them. These include photographs, videos, training material and data collected on site. They also worked on category tree and structure of article on river. The media available in the repository were sorted and analysed for uploading. This team has started preparing the database of local issues, maps of rivers and heritage places on the banks for uploading in respective categories.

The third iteration of building content on rivers in Sangli district was organised on 7th December by Jal Biradari & Tarun Bharat Sangh organisation. In this one day workshop, 11 participants worked on category tree and structure of articles for Agrani river basin.

The fourth national level iteration was conducted between 22-25th December at Tarun Bharat Sangh, Bhikampura, Alwar district, Rajasthan for activists of Jal Jan Jodo Abhiyan from 8 states. The 30 participants were trained in this 4 day workshop. They started contributing in various languages. Tarun Bharat Sangh has decided to re-license 30 books and training material on river in CC-BY-SA.

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  Understanding the river basin to design the category tree of articles
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  Participants of River knowledge workshop conducted in Pune
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  National level Workshop of river activists in Rajasthan
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  River activists involved in documentation of rivers

Van Bodh

CIS-A2K has started 'Van Bodh' project i.e. knowledge repository on biodiversity and forests with the organisations working in this sector. The partnerships with Tribal Research & Training Institute of State government, Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy, Mumbai University, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (MKCL), Vrikshamitra and Gramsabha Mendha (Lekha) are being developed for the implementation of various activities. CIS-A2K is recognised as official agency through resolution for - developing new and utilising existing Open & free platforms like Wikimedia Projects to build knowledge resources on Community Forest Management, Development of training modules in Unicode, Digitisation of reference books, training booklets, govt docs, archives, images etc and making it accessible. Community Advocate for Marathi Language is representing CIS-A2K in this group.

Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy, Mumbai University has started a "Diploma course in Community Resource Management " with the support of TRTI, Pune on 2nd October 2018. The first pilot workshop was conducted at Mendha(Lekha) village in Dhanora block of Gadchiroli District to start the process of development of Open knowledge resources on Community Forest Resource and content development in Wikimedia projects with community participation. These contents will become a part of "Van Bodh Knowledge repository". The methodology for creation of village articles which include information on forest resources and management plans was finalised.

The orientation session for technology partner MKCL was conducted on 11th September for exploring integration of Wikimedia projects.

Learnings

The rural communities are interested in documenting their local knowledge and exchange it with similar groups. Due to good internet penetration, readership of this content on smartphone is also increasing according to KPMG-Google report. But there is dearth of locally relevant content in their language. These two projects will hopefully bridge this gap to some extent.

Follow-up

Bi-monthly workshops are planned on both the themes. The support and discussions are continued on social media and email groups. The support from Open Source community is being taken to resolve the issues regarding maps and database for uploading on Wikimedia projects. The discussions for getting reference material re-licensed by authors are in progress. Till now 15 books are donated by two authors. The scanning of these books is in process.

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  Tribal youth being trained in building knowledge on forest & biodiversity at Gadchiroli
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  Hands-on activity of mapping with Open Street Maps
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  Participants creating village articles on Wikipedia