Wikimedia Bangladesh/Bengali Wikimedia Projects
Bengali or Bangla (Bengali: বাংলা, [ˈbaŋla]) is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script. With nearly 230 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the most spoken languages (ranking sixth) in the world. Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_language
List of Bengali Wikimedia Projects
editFollowing Wikimedia Projects are available in Bengali:
| Prject | Native Name | URL |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়া (Bengali Wikipedia) | http://bn.wikipedia.org |
| Wikisource | উইকিসংকলন (Wikisangkalan) | http://bn.wikisource.org |
| Wikibooks | উইকিবই (Wikiboi) | http://bn.wikibooks.org |
| Wiktionary | উইকিঅভিধান (Wikiavidhan) | http://bn.wiktionary.org |
Current Status of Bengali Wikimedia Projects
editBengali Wikipedia
editBengali Wikipedia is the biggest wiki in Bengali Language and the most active wiki among all the Wikimedia Projects in Bengali. As of July 2010 Bengali Wikipedia has over 21,500 article. In Bengali Wikipedia the number total pages is over 106,000 with over 14,600 site registered user as of July 2010. There are only 3 active administrator and 1 bureaucrat at Bengali Wikipedia where the total number administrator is 8. Among 8 administrator 2 of them are Indian and rest of them are Bangladeshi by origin. According to List_of_Wikipedias Bengali Wikipedia has the depth 102, which is the second among all the Indian language's Wikipedia after Malayalam. Fully localized mobile interface (bn.m.wikipedia.org) is available for Bengali Wikipedia with a nice homepage portal. On June 30, 2010 the Usability Initiative deployment has been done at Bengali Wikipedia and switch to "Vector" from "Monobook" as default interface.
Bengali Wikisource
editBengali Wikisource is the youngest Wikimedia project in Bengali language. Bengali Wikisource start it's journey on September 2007 right after Wikimania 2007. But this wiki is the second most active after Bengali Wikipedia. Very recently Bengali Wikisource has been crossed the 5,000 pages milestone. Bengali Wikisource has the literary works of many prominent writer in Bengali language including Rabindranath Tagore. According to List of Wikisource page, Bengali Wikisource is now at rank 21 among 56 Wikisource based on number of content pages.
Other Projects in Bangla
editOther than Wikipedia and Wikisource, Wiktionary and Wikibooks projects are available in Bengali language. But they are least active projects in Bengali. Recently there is some initiative from the community to increase the contributor at the project. The community is so active in collection and upload free licensed regional photos at Wikimedia Commons site. Also community localized 100% of most often used messages and 85% of MediaWiki messages at translatewiki.net. Also community is active in translation of site notice messages at Meta site.
Bengali Wikimedia Community
editThe members of Bengali Wikimedia Community are mainly from Bangladesh and West Bengal but some of them are living in other part of the world as well. To spread the words of Wikipedia to all over the country, the community members from Bangladesh are working actively from the end of 2005. From the beginning, to promote Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, the community members from Bangladesh have focused on Bengali blog sites and have written numerous blogs related to projects and activities in different popular Bengali language blog sites. Since the internet penetration rate is very low in this part of the world, Bangladeshi Wikimedia community identifies that Bengali blog sites are the place where Bengali Wikimedia projects can get a good number of contributors who can type Bengali in Unicode at their PC. In different occasions, Bangladeshi members of the community also published news items in the national newspapers regarding the projects and the activities to spread the words of Wikipedia to the mass people all over the country. They regularly arrange physical or online meetups in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, and in regional towns. They already conducted some workshops on Wikipedia in different universities with help of local Open Source communities. To collect free licensed photos related to Bangladesh for Wikimedia projects, the Bangladeshi Wikimedia community has campaigned several times and collected and uploaded thousands of photos in Wikimedia Commons for use in Wikipedia and other projects. Also, they are working with local individuals and organizations to collect photos and references about Bangladesh.
Bangladeshi Wikimedia community now feel that they need to be more organized to do better for Wikimedia Projects. They are planning to be organized as a Wikimedia Chapter called "Wikimedia Bangladesh". The chapter formation process is now under discussion. Wikimedia Bangladesh now has a meta page, a mailing list, Facebook page and twitter account to contact with them. The URLs are,
- Page at Meta Wikimedia:
- Mailing list:
- Facebook Page:
- Twitter:
Recent advocacy programs
edit- August 3, 2010 Published press release at national Bengali newspapers in occasion of achieving "5,000 pages milestone" of Bengali Wikisource. Weblink:http://prothom-alo.com/detail/date/2010-08-03/news/83464
- August 2, 2010 Bengali Wikimedians at Bangladesh have organized "Wikipedia Workshop" at Dhaka with the support of local Open Source community.
- July 28, 2010 There was a Wikipedia meet up at an historical place Bahadurshah Park in Old part of Dhaka.
- July 23, 2010 Publised article at national Bengali newspaper on "Wikimania 2010". Weblink:http://www.prothom-alo.com/detail/date/2010-07-23/news/80847
Others
edit- On June 30, 2010 the Usability Initiative deployment has been done at Bengali Wikipedia and switch to "Vector" from "Monobook" as default interface.
- From Bengali Wikimedian community Belayet Hossain (User:Bellayet) and Nasir Khan (User:Nasir8891) have participated in Wikimania 2010, held in Gdansk, Poland.
- Bengali Wikipedia was the subject of The Telegraph (Kolkata)’s top story on July 14, 2010. In an article titled “Wiki Learns a Lesson in Bengali”, the Telegraph discussed how Bengali Wikipedia took the stance of not allowing low-quality automated and paid assisted translations. Bengali Wikipedians Ragib Hasan, Belayet Hossain, and Jayanta Nath talked about different issues related to this decision. Weblink: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100714/jsp/frontpage/story_12681775.jsp
- New York Times also mentioned the posture of Bengali Wikipedian community regarding Google generated content for Wikipedia at an ariticle titled “How Can Wikipedia Grow? Maybe in Bengali”. Weblink:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/business/media/12link.html?_r=2&src=busln