CIS-A2K/Reports/CIS-A2K Quarterly Report 2

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CIS-A2K

CIS-A2K (Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge) is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape.
If you have a general proposal/suggestion for Access to Knowledge team you can write on the discussion page. If you have appreciations or feedback on our work, please share it on feedback page.

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Quarterly Report: (October - December 2013)

Project: Access to Knowledge Programme
Grantee: Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, India
Grantor: Wikimedia Foundation
Grant Period: 22 months
Grant Sanctioned: INR 26,000,000/-
Grant Disbursed: INR 25,782,032/-

Background to the Access to Knowledge Programme

The Wikimedia Foundation approved a grant to support the growth of Indian language Wikimedia communities to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) to expand their Access to Knowledge program (A2K) in India. The grant enabled CIS to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand upon Wikimedia’s Indic language free knowledge projects, including Wikipedia in Indic languages. Further, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects and wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge within India.

Introduction[edit]

This is the second quarterly report CIS-A2K has published for the time period October to December 2013. The report provides a brief overview of the quarterly progress of CIS-A2K Program.

Overview[edit]

By the beginning of this quarter CIS-A2K was three months into rolling out it's annual work plan July 2013-June 2014. We had already developed relations and partnerships with organizations to roll out intensive programs to involve more people as Wikimedia editors and to generate quality content on Indic Wikipedias. Among the five focus language areas, we could not achieve much progress with the Bengali work-plan as we were short of staff. Focussed Wikimedia outreach was done across all the focus languages other than Bengali.
In addition to the efforts put in these focus language areas, CIS-A2K has also extended support to the Wikimedia communities across India in organizing respective language Wikipedia Anniversaries and other events. Some key activities and events were organized cutting across various Indian languages resulting in significant outcomes. CIS-A2K has also generated various resources for use of the Volunteer community and also worked on the technical front during this quarter. Most of the work that was commenced last quarter got delivered during this quarter making it more hectic.

Progress achieved[edit]

The following are the key highlights of CIS-A2K's work during this quarter which gives a glimpse of the progress. A detailed quarterly growth of the five language Wikipedias is capture below:

Telugu[edit]

The effect of the Telugu Wikipedia Mahotsavam held in April 2013 remained through this quarter. CIS-A2K's Train the Trainer program helped three Wikipedians from Telugu Wikipedia Community to enhance their skills and they played a key role in organising Tewiki10 (Telugu Wikipedia's Decennial celebrations that were held in February 2014 at Vijayawada). During this quarter, CIS-A2K focussed on bringing in new editors by organising Wikipedia Training Workshops at various educational institutes in Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Tiruvur and Pedda Kakani (Guntur). In addition, support to community members in terms of organising monthly meet-ups and collaborative projects continued in this quarter. Some of the key highlights during this quarter include:

  • 6 Wiki Training Sessions were organised at Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Tiruvur and Pedda Kakani (Guntur).
  • Lilavati Koothullu project (Project on Indian Women Scientists) was revisited and incomplete and non-existent articles were created.
  • Improving village articles project and monthly tracking of stub article creation and improvement continued.
  • As part of Tewiki10 Target 55555 was started that aimed at making total count of articles in Telugu Wikipedia to 55,555 without compromising on quality of articles.
  • A total of 3 Telugu Wikipedia monthly meet-ups were held in Hyderabad and Bangalore.
  • Planning for Tewiki10 was initiated and actively worked upon by CIS-A2K in consultation with Telugu Wikipedia Community.

For more details on the progress of Telugu Wikipedia see here.

Odia[edit]

Outreach in Indian Institute of Mass Education (IIMC), Dhenkanal and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Bhubaneswar were the major outreach activities during this quarter. Students of Odia journalism batch at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Dhenkanal were introduced to the Odia Wikimedia community and Wikipedia editing sprints were organized. After the assessment of students and faculty of KISS and KIIT University and understanding about the partnership, Wikipedia introductory workshops were conducted for management and engineering students at KIIT University. Students as well as the faculty learnt Odia typing. Wikipedia editing output from the first workshop at KISS was moderately satisfactory. This was a useful exercise to assess the interest of participating wikipedians before initiating a bigger program. Wikipedians from Bhubaneswar took active part in conducting the workshops. Some of the key initiatives during this quarter were:

  • First phase of Odia Wikipedia Education program: : 19 Odia journalism students were taught about Wikipedia editing over the three day Wikipedia workshop series. Two on-ground workshops were conducted. The first workshop was a whole day affair and the second one went on for two days.
  • Pre-program workshops at KISS: 11 faculty and 16 masters students were taken in the initial phase of Wikipedia workshop to assess the basic computing ability and scope for a mass scale program at KISS. One basic editing workshop and an advanced Wikipedia editing workshop were organized.
  • Preparing for collaboration with KISS and KIIT: CIS-A2K signed two MoUs with KISS and KIIT for working on building digital knowledge repositories by using Wikimedia projects as a tool. Preparation for the overall objective and strengthening relation with the two institutions by assessment workshops for faculty and students were the key activities during this quarter.
  • Preparation for Odia Wikipedia's 10th anniversary: Odia Wikipedia completed 10 years by January 29. Planning and Preparation for this event started during this quarter.

Details of the statistical analysis in this quarter could be found here.

Konkani[edit]

During this quarter, CIS-A2K was able to build closer ties with Dalgado Konknni Akademy and Nirmala Institute of Education to forward the work done in Roman and Devanagari script. CIS-A2K also organised translation sprint to help translate Media Wiki interface messages. You can read detailed progress of Konkani work plan during this time frame here.

Kannada[edit]

CIS A2K's partnership with Christ University is a major achievement for Kannada Wikipedia which was inked in November 2013. A major outcome of this partnership was the creation of 10 video tutorials on editing Kannada Wikipedia which was produced in the Green View Studio of the Christ University. The videos showcase different editing scenarios and the voice-over is rendered by a Kannada student. Echo notifications were implented in Kannada Wikipedia during this period. Kannada Wikipedia celebrated its tenth anniversary on November 17, 2013 at National College, Basavanagudi, Bangalore. Universal Language Selector was implemented for Kannada Wikipedia during this period. Detailed report is available here.

Bengali[edit]

It should be noted that we could not achieve much progress with the Bengali work-plan as we were short of staff. However, growth of Bengali Wikipedia in this quarter can be seen here.

Support to Community[edit]

Technical Support[edit]

  • Participation in Wikimedia Language Engineering Office Hours remotely
  • Support to various Indian language communities on ULS changes (over social media, through VPs, one-on-one tele-cons)

Other Key Events/Activities[edit]

  • Organised Train the Trainer, a four-day long residential training workshop to enable Indian Wikipedia community members conduct outreach sessions effectively and independently. This was attended by 20 members from 9 Indic language wikimedia communities.
  • Implemented Wikipedia Education Program for the UG students at Christ University for language students of Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil and Urdu. Total Wikipedia outreach to about 1200 students.
  • Created Hindi Wikipedia tutorial videos and released under CC-BY-SA 4.0. Total of 10 videos can be viewed on:
  • Created Kannada Wikipedia tutorial videos and released under CC-BY-SA 4.0. Total of 10 videos can be viewed on:
  • Set up a Wikipedia stall at TISS Indian Languages Mela. Organised Marathi workshop in TISS Mumbai; and Malayalam and Marathi workshop at TISS Hyderabad. This workshop was organized as part of the CIS-A2K MoU with TISS.
  • Presented at Wikimedia Diversity Conference about Challenges and opportunities for Wikimedia movement in India.
  • Organised Marathi Wikipedia outreach at SVERI College of Engineering, Pandharpur.
  • Accelerated Lilavati's Daughters project in Indian language Wikipedias.
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