Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Wikipedia Takes Pune
Draft post[edit]
Taking inspiration from various Wikipedia Takes Your City photo hunts such as Wikipedia Takes Ahmedabad, Wikimania Takes Manhattan, the members of Wikipedia Club Pune thought they should have a similar photo hunt for Pune too. Prior to this event, articles like Alandi, Shinde Chatri had very few, if any, images linked to their articles on English and Marathi Wikipedia.
Thus, Wikipedia Club Pune, with the help of PAI International Learning Solutions Pune organized Wikipedia Takes Pune, which aimed to photograph the entire city and put it up on Commons so that people can use the photographs freely. Wikipedia Club Pune aimed to invite all of the interested photographers via social media. We reached out to as many photographers and photography clubs as we could and asked them to join us for this event. We got more than 250 registrations online, and over 150 photographers turned up on Sunday morning October 7th, 2012 at the PAI International Learning Solutions Azam Campus in Pune.
After the onsite registrations were done, we introduced Wikimedia Commons to the participants and answered their queries. Participants asked a number of questions, such as what and what not to photograph, what is Creative Commons Licensing, why shouldn't they watermark their images, and how will they know if their image is being used. After answering these and few more questions, we showed them how easy it is to upload their photographs on Commons.
Afterwards, participants formed into groups and started to move around to photograph different parts of the city while we, (the organizers), stayed behind to help upload the photos as they came in. We specifically uploaded the images to Category : Wikipedia Takes Pune so that we have one centralized category where we can get all of images together. Within a few hours, participants started uploading photographs on Commons. In approximately 6 hours, we passed the 5,000 image mark. By the end of event, we had approximately 6,500 images.
Now, our next big hurdle is to categorize all of these images appropriately, so Wikipedia Club Pune is planning a small edit-a-thon where we will place the images on relevant articles and categorize them on Commons. We would like to thank all the volunteers as well as PAI International Learning Solutions who provided us the space, computers, and Internet connectivity to make this event so successful.
Arnav Sonara (Rangilo Gujarati).