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Bengali Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Celebration Kolkata/Submissions/Wikipedia and Culture

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Submission no.
Title of the submission
Wikipedia and Culture
Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)
Presentation
Author of the submission
Skashifakram
E-mail address
skashifakram@outlook.com
Username
Skashifakram
Country of origin
India
Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
Research Student, Black hole Physics, IIT Bombay
Personal homepage or blog
Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

Every language has its own associated culture.The culture can be uniquely interesting if the language is natively spoken by People of an identifiable region.Bengali is a multinational language with primary presence in Bangladesh and eastern part of India, specially West Bengal and Tripura. Though the experiences of Bengali People have diverse experiences across India and Bangladesh, they are united in being part of same Bengal of British India before partition. The Bengali culture is rich, vivid and diverse in Literature, Scientific thought, Customs, Festivals, Folk Music, Sports, Arts, Painting and Spirituality. It has a long history of evolution and nourishment through contributions by People of different backgrounds - rich and poor, Hindus and Muslims, Buddhists and Christians, Brahmins and Dalits, Urban and Rural. Every culture that wants to survive and flourish should preserve it and improve upon it.

The otherwise rich Bengali culture has some unique challenges in modern times. It has low presence in Internet. Hundreds of years of literature is not as easily accessible as it should. The tradition is not well documented digitally and younger generation lacks motivation to work and improve upon their local lingual traditions. Though the Bengali Wikipedia improved drastically in last few years, it still lacks its own documentation of very important international subjects and topics. worse, it does not have an articulate documentation of Bengali culture and its traditions. Editorial process is slow and cumbersome and those who want to create new pages are promptly discouraged. Though the situation is changing slowly, it still lacks the dynamics of a successful Wikipedia. The funny thing that I noticed is that even this conference does not have a Bengali page, not even a translation.

Therefore, we think that Bengali Wikipedia community should form an editorial group which will be responsible for creating sections of Bengali Wikipedia with particular attention to Bengali culture and heritage. Like English Wikipedia, we should also encourage Universities in India and Bangladesh in creating and maintaining Wiki pages in Bengali in various topics with a special attention for documentation of the summary of all Bengali culture. We may thus inspire people of different and smaller lingual and cultural traditions to document every important aspect of their culture. And the driver of this much needed documentation can well be the Wikipedia, which can be accessed by all People in a near future.

Track
  • WikiCulture & Community
Language of Track

English and Bengali

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
30 minutes
Will you attend Conference at Kolkata with own cost if your submission is not accepted?

Possibly Yes.

Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests

Allow me to use both English and Bengali during presentation.

Interested attendees

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