CIS-A2K//Work plan July 2014 - June 2015/Making the Tulu Wikipedia Live

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Tulu is one of the Dravidian languages spoken primarily by people of south coast of Karnataka and north coast of Kerala.[1] There are a lot of Tulu speaking people living outside this region also. Sizeable of them are living in other cities in India such as Mumbai and the rest outside of India such as Gulf countries. As per the Census of 2001, there were 1,722,768 Tulu speakers.[2] It is estimated that the total number of Tulu speaking people will be much above 2.5 million. Tulu is mostly written in Kannada script. Though Tulu had its own script in earlier days but it is not in much use anymore.[3] A book on Tulu grammar dates back to year 1872.[4] Tulu has a rich written literature and huge oral literature. Karnataka Govt has constituted Tulu Sahithya Academy to nurture and promote Tulu literature.[5] There is an interactive and searchable online Tulu dictionary.[6]

About the Project[edit]

Tulu Wikipedia is in incubation since 2007.[7],[8] The current stats, as of July 2014 stands like this:

  • 365 articles including categories, templates, and talk pages (It was 147 in March 2014).
  • 50 total number of editors; including those who have done just one edit (it was 31 in March 2014).
  • 19 editors with more than 10 edit counts (it was 8 in March 2014).
  • Majority of the strings needed for regular use have been translated.

There was some editing activity in the year 2007-2008. Post that most of the editors stopped editing and Tulu Wikipedia went into almost dormant status. As mentioned earlier, since Tulu script is no more in use Tulu Wikipedia is using Kannada script. Universal Language Selector helps to input the Tulu text in Kannada script.

CIS-A2K envisages to give new life to Tulu Wikipedia and bring it out of incubation.

Work done so far[edit]

CIS-A2K has held several face to face meeting and phone dicsussions to discuss the growth of Tulu Wikipedia. Attempts were made to build awareness about this project in various forums like literary meets, newspaper and radio interviews and in social media. A lot of people showed interest in participating in the endeavor and making useful contributions. A preliminary meeting was held at Mangalore on Jan 19, 2014 with interested people to work out plans to help build Tulu Wikipedia. Tulu scholars and other interested persons participated in the meeting. Everyone was the opinion that this project needs attention and they all have agreed to take active role in the project. Outreach activities to bring Tulu Wikipedia out of incubation in April 2014. This resulted in some increase in the number of articles and number of editors.

Implementation Plan[edit]

To bring Tulu Wikipedia out of incubation, the project needs to meet certain per-requisites and CIS-A2K will organise events and programs to meet these minimum standards. There is a need to build a vibrant active editor community, increase the number of good quality articles and translate MediaWiki system messages. CIS-A2K's activities will be focusing around these goals. It is planned to increase awareness amongst Tulu literary persons, students and volunteers and conduct outreach programs for them. There are several books published in Tulu, many of those are of encyclopedic in nature and can be brought under Creative Commons license to feed into Tulu Wikipedia articles. There are some books written in Kannada and English depicting the history of Tulu and Tulu literature which can also be used to write Tulu Wikipedia articles.

Project Execution[edit]

  • Outreach programs - It is planned to organise and conduct regular outreach programs in Mangalore, Udupi and some other cities in Tulu speaking areas. There could be two types of outreach events. The first kind, where there will be just presentations to increase the awareness amongst the people; and the second kind, where there will be actual hands-on workshop for the volunteers to edit and contribute to Tulu Wikipedia. The workshops will be conducted at places where required facilities exist. Efforts will be made to rope in some organisations and institutions to partner in these events.
  • Content Donation/Release under CC-BY-SA 3.0 - World Tulu conference (Vishwa Tulu Sammelana) was conducted in the year 2009.[9] During this conference, 51 books were published on various topics. Some of them are encyclopedic in nature. Efforts will be made to bring these books under CC-BY-SA 3.0. Articles will be created and added to Tulu Wikipedia making use of this content.
  • Institutional Partnerships - Efforts will be made to establish partnerships with institutes and academies working towards preserving and promoting Tulu. Some notable institutions are Karnataka Tulu Sahithya Academy, Regional Research Centre at Udupi[10], Rashtra Kavi Govinda Pai Samshodhana Kendra[11], Kerala Tulu Academy, Rani Abbakka Adhyayana Kendra at B C Road, Dept of Tulu of Dravidian University at Kuppam,[12] and Akhila Bharata Tulu Okkoota.
  • Awareness creation and social media - Efforts will be made to create awareness about Tulu Wikipedia by using mainstream media and social media.

Projected Outcomes[edit]

  • Increase total number of articles to minimum 500.
  • Have minimum of 5-6 active editors per month.
  • Organise regular Tulu Wikipedia community meet-ups.

Budget[edit]

Expenditure Item FDC Support (INR) FDC Support (US$) Other Sources and in kind Support (INR) Other Sources and in kind Support (US$)
1 PM x 30% * 288,000/- 4,660.07 - -
Travel and Stay ** 80,000/- 1,294.46 50,000/- 809.04
Volunteer Support 50,000/- 809.04 50,000/- 809.04
Events/Meet-ups/Workshops 50,000/- 809.04 100,000/- 1,618.08
Digitisation costs 25,000/- 404.52 - -
Consumables/Printing/Stationery/Swag 20,000/- 323.62 - -
Miscellaneous 5,000/- 80.90 - -
Total 518,000/- 8,381.66 200,000/- 3,236.16

Notes: * 30% of Dr. U.B. Pavanaja's time as Program Manager, who will anchor this plan at CIS-A2K.
** Expenses incurred by the CIS-A2K program team towards executing the plan.

References[edit]