CIS-A2K/Reports/CIS-A2K Quarterly Report 4/Telugu
During this quarter CIS-A2K collaborated with Andhra Loyola College (ALC), Vijayawada to create open knowledge in Telugu through Wikipedia,digitize appropriate works for Telugu Wikisource, create a free & open software environment at campus and to modify their mandatory introductory course to include FOSS and Wikipedia.[1] 30 faculty and about 100 students were trained to contribute to Wikipedia and sister projects. CIS-A2K was instrumental in converting Licenses of 10 books of historian, advocate, journalist and author Syed Naseer Ahamed to Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 (CC-by-SA 4.0) free license. CIS-A2K has also got two poetry compilations relicensed under a CC-by-SA 4.0 license. All of these books will eventually be digitized on Telugu Wikisource.
Key highlights[edit]
- Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access[2]
Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ were released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0); For the first time an educational institution in the state of Andhra Pradesh is signing an MoU with CIS-A2K to work collaboratively to qualitatively improve Telugu Wikipedia; ALC faculty and students will create free e-content in Telugu on Telugu Wikipedia; Digital content from the fields of Botany, Physics, Chemistry, Telugu, Statistics, Ethics and Religion, Music and Dance will be produced on Telugu Wikipedia.
- 10 books of Syed Naseer Ahamed donated to Telugu Wikisource
Noted journalist, historian, advocate and author Syed Naseer Ahamed's 10 books have been re-licensed to free license CC-BY-SA 4.0 and further donated to Telugu Wikisource. These 10 books are a research work involving many field trips, direct interactions with people and visiting 100s of libraries. Each of these books deals with Muslims and their involvement in India's national movement. This topic is very less discussed about, and references or citations are far a dream otherwise. These books will open up such referencing and citing. Also they will be a good value add to Telugu Wikisource. These books can be found at Telugu Wikisource, they have added 2123 pages to Telugu Wikisource.
Statistics[edit]
Throughout this quarter, ore emphasis is given to acquiring content under content donation for Telugu Wikisource and outreach in the form of institutional partnership with Andhra Loyola College.
Total editors[edit]
The number of total editors has a higher growth, though not significant, in the total number of editors which is also an indication of CIS-A2K's intervention through outreach.
New editors[edit]
The number of new editors is comparatively high when compared to last quarter. The sudden spike and a fall are due to outreach and no outreach done in August and September respectively.
Active editors[edit]
There has been an activity of editing thematic projects like Literature during August. Lack of such activity in July and September shows a fall in active editors, which is above the average count of active editors on Telugu Wikipedia.
Very active editors[edit]
There is a concern with the number of very active editors. It has been low in this quarter's last month, in the previous quarter and the same quarter in last year. Though the average of very active editors is well above the previous quarters.
Number of articles[edit]
The total number of articles shows a growing trend. The impact of outreach activities and strengthening the existing community showed good results.
Outlook and next quarter projections[edit]
CIS-A2K while succeeded immediately with organisations like Andhra Loyola College for institutional partnership, and persons like Prabodhananda Yogeewarulu from Indu Gnana Vedika and Syed Naseer Ahamed for content donation to Telugu Wikisource, still discussions are going on with RGUKT, PSTU and some individuals for content donation.
Partnership with KBN College, Vijayawada[edit]
While KBN college has partnered with CIS-A2K and offered venue for celebrations of Tewiki 10, and students actively participated in creating articles on Wikipedia in January, no further interest has been shown from the college management in taking the movement forward with the students. In the coming quarters, an attempt would be made to have few more workshops at the college and inspiring students to contribute back to Wikipedia movement.
Digitizaion work with Indu Gnana Vedika[edit]
Indu Gnana Vedika first promised to donate 50 works of Acharya Prabodhananda, but they decided to donate 10 books. They released the 10 books in a public event at Golden Threshold, Hyderabad in June 2014. PDF versions of the books were given to CIS-A2K by Indu Gnana Vedika people.Volunteers from Indu Gnana Vedika were trained to edit Wikipedia, upload books to Commons, create index files at Wikisoure and type pages into Wikisource. 6 such training sessions happened, 3 face to face and 3 over telecon. Since the books are in extended ANSI based proprietary Anu font, they could be converted to Telugu unicode using a converter. 3 books are converted and 2 books put up onto wikisource with the help of Rajasekhar. 5 more books would be converted and put up soon by volunteers of Indu Gnana Vedika.
Partnership with ALC[edit]
CIS-A2K organised a workshop for students and faculty towards the end of June. Impressed by the Wikipedia goals, the management wanted to be partners in propagating the ideas of free knowledge movement into the institution in a long term basis. They invited CIS-A2K to organise one more workshop. CIS-A2K organised another workshop in August and suggested management to have a permanent Wikipedia hub at Andhra Loyola College.
Partnership with RGUKT[edit]
RGUKT has shown interest in digitising Telugu works, which is a common goal they share with CIS-A2K program. Discussions are going on and this partnership may bring in about 5000 foils of Telugu text on to Telugu Wikisource.
Partnership with PSTU[edit]
PSTU is one of the few language universities in India. This University specializes in Telugu language studies from cultural, literature, folk and classical language diaspora. Discussions are going on harnessing the assets of the University that would benefit Wikipedia projects and general public.
The Wikipedia Adventure[edit]
The Wikipedia Adventure is an educational, interactive, web-game using a simulated Wikipedia interface which leads new users through a series of realistic missions to familiarize them with the mechanics, navigation, philosophy, and practices of actual Wikipedia editing. The TWA game is a potential tool that can help new users learn Wikipedia easily. This was imported to Telugu Wikipedia and is available here. The interface translations have been done by the Telugu community, and is being reviewed. TWA would be available for users very soon with complete Telugu interface.
Monthly stub tracking and improvement[edit]
A list of stub articles created in the last one month has been generated on a monthly basis, and the creator of stub article himself insisted upon improving stub article into a start class article. Stub article list created could be found for July, August and September. This attempt has resulted in encouraging some of the users to turn their stub articles into good articles.