Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2020-2021 round 2/The Centre for Internet and Society/Impact report form

Language diversity in Content relicensing activity

There used to be active relicensing efforts going on in several languages before A2K stopped their Language-specific programs (Focus-language programs). Several valuable books were relicensed in languages like Telugu, Kannada, Odia, etc even before 2017. Right now, I can not see any activity except Marathi, Hindi, and English languages. This might be because of sudden closure of the programs without any exit-plan. Does CIS-A2K have any plan to control the damage happened to the efforts and momentum of these languages in this regard? Pavan Santhosh Surampudi (talk) 11:16, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Hello Pavan, thanks for the response. A2K has always encouraged relicensing efforts in various languages and continue to offer support to all communities who identify opportunities in their respective languages. Apart from Marathi we have facilitated the process of relicensing in various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Konkani and English in the last 3-4 years. These include organisations and individuals from Delhi, Rajasthan, Goa, West Bengal and Arunachal Pradesh. Being one of the most vibrant communities in India, we are happy to collaborate with your Telugu community to enrich content on Wikimedia Commons & Wikisource through relicensing and digitisation programs. We supported the ‘Project to create training material’ upon request from the Telugu community. We are committed to partner with and support any noble initiative taken by the community. We welcome your ideas and innovations. Regards, on behalf of A2K team - Subodh (CIS-A2K) (talk) 14:43, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the response @Subodh (CIS-A2K)! I am well aware of "Project to create training material" as I am one of the stakeholders. But, that is a project from Telugu Wikipedia and is proactively reached out by Telugu Wikipedia leadership including me. My concern is about Telugu Wikisource. I am worried about the inactivity in regard to relicensing programs in Telugu due to sudden exit without a plan from A2K's side.

I also would like to stress on lack of having an exit plan for these languages. Telugu and other language communities were very helpful through out these years to CIS-A2K's work. But, I do not remember even having a fair communication with these communities that A2K is no longer having them as "FLA"s and what is their way to scale activities down and hand it over to leadership.

I believe some resources should be directed towards a gradual handing over of responsibilities from A2K to community at least in case of Telugu Wikisources. What's your thoughts on that? Pavan Santhosh Surampudi (talk) 15:01, 21 October 2022 (UTC)