CIS-A2K/Reports/CIS-A2K Quarterly Report 6

The Funds Dissemination Committee of 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 (CIS-A2K) in India. The grant enabled CIS to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India and to expand upon Wikimedia’s Indic language free knowledge projects, including Wikipedia in Indic languages. Further, the grant aims to generate sustainable ideas in the context of India-relevant free knowledge domain and in sync with Wikimedia’s English projects and also for wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge aim within India. This is the fifth quarterly report being published by CIS-A2K program and it reports about the Wikimedia projects and community related activities held during October to December 2014 and their outcome. The report provides a brief overview of the quarterly progress of CIS-A2K's initiatives.

CIS-A2K

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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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Project: Access to Knowledge Programme
Grantee: Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, India
Grantor: Funds Dissemination Committee of Wikimedia Foundation
Grant Period: 12 months (July 2014 to June 2015)
Grant Sanctioned: 12,000,000/-
Grant Disbursed: 7,000,000/-

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Background to the Access to Knowledge Programme

Overview

CIS-A2K during this quarter continued to work with the same momentum as displayed in the earlier quarters. CIS-A2K hired a Programme Officer (Institutional Partnerships) and two Language Anchors for Marathi and Konkani respectively. These new hirings have provided a shot in the arm for the existing CIS-A2K team.

With the inclusion of the new team members CIS-A2K hopes to implement its language focus initiatives, sustain and explore new institutional partnerships during this quarter and the coming plan year.

CIS-A2K organised a four day long Train-the-Trainer programme in which Wikimedians from the South Asian Indic communities participated. The TTT provided much needed inter wiki connect to the Wikimedians and resulted in many interesting multilingual Wikipedia projects in Indic languages. TTT Participants were taken to Janapada Loka an organisation that serves as a museum, archive and a performance centre. This visit encouraged TTT participants to pursue similar GLAM partnerships in their own regional and cultural context.

CIS-A2K has also been part of the many community organised events and initiatives during this quarter. CIS-A2K supported the Bangla Wikipedia 10th Anniversary celebrations held at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. CIS-A2K also had the privilege of sponsoring the 11th Anniversary of TEWiki community held at Tirupati, AndhraPradesh. CIS-A2K along with Sanskrita Bharathi organised a Wikipedia Orientation programme in Bangalore for Sanskrit teaching faculty from all over India.

CIS-A2K during this quarter has held extensive discussions with the community members, senior wikimedians and like minded individuals regarding the future of the language focus plans and has imbibed them in the proposed annual plan for July 2015-June 2016.

Language area

This section gives a brief overview of the language area work plans based on several parameters mentioned in the work plan.

Telugu

Telugu Wikipedians train the students of Government Degree college Khairatabad, Hyderbad during an outreach session

CIS-A2K continue its work of sustaining its institutional partnerships during this quarter as well. The beginning of the quarter witnessed and incredible feat of hundred articles being added on Wikipedia through Andhra Loyola College students on topics such as Physics, Statistics and Telugu. Telugu students of ALC also worked on digitizing the works of Kandukuri Veeresalingam. February saw the 11 years celebrations of Telugu Wikipedia at Tirupati. Five community members from Telugu Wikimedia community participated in Train the Trainer program organised by CIS-A2K in February-March. Viswanadh, an IEG grantee from Telugu Wikipedia community took lead in organising outreach events at Guntur and Rajamundry.

CIS-A2K had the privilege to be an active participant and sponsored the Tewiki 11th anniversary celebrtions held at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. Please see here for the detailed report of all activities and events in Telugu language area during this quarter.

Odia

CIS-A2K has continued to work closely with the Odia Wikimedia community and its institutional partners during this quarter. It gives CIS-A2K immense pleasure to notice that the Odia Wikimedia community volunteers are taking initiatives on their own regarding initiating GLAM partnerships, organising 'edit-a-thons' and focusing on quality based articles.

Odia Wikimedia community was represented at the TTT 2015 by Sailesh Patnaik. CIS-A2K is glad to note that based on the discussions held during TTT and the GLAM visit that was organised as a part of the TTT, Sailesh Patnaik from Odia community has initiated discussions with Archeological Survey of India for a possible GLAM partnership. CIS-A2K expects more such fruitful engagements with the Odia community during the coming plan year.

During this quarter CIS-A2K has been in conversation with Dharitiri Media House to allow access to their archives under the 'content donation' initiative. These archives will immensely help the upcoming articles on Odia Wikipedia and will prove as a useful resource in maintaining quality and providing references.

CIS-A2K conducted an IRC for a discussion regarding the road ahead for the Odia Wikimedia community during this quarter. An outreach session was conducted at IIMC Dhenkanal during this quarter.

Subahashiah Panigrahi, Program Officer, A2K has contributed to the Varnam-SMC Project during this quarter

Konkani

CIS-A2K was working remotely with the Konkani Wikipedia as it did not have a Language Anchor to facilitate the developments and nurture the Konkani Wikimedia community. This lacunae was addressed by hiring a Language Anchor based out of Goa to liason with the Konkani community. The following are a few activities conducted by CIS-A2K during this quarter:
Konkani Wikipidia community along with CIS-A2K has started 'Wikimedian of the Month' competition to promote editing culture and attract new editors.
CIS-A2K along with the Konkani Wikimedia community organised edit-a-thon for Goa university students on 15 March, 2015.
On the same day senior Konkani Wikimedians worked on translating system messages and translated more than 90% of these messages. It was done on preferential basis as it was one of the requirements to make Konkani Wikipedia become live.
By introducing eminent Konkani writers Prof. Jayesh Naik, Dinesh Munnerkar and Rajni Bhembre to Konkani Wikipedia CIS-A2K hopes to bring about quality articles with regard to Konkani literature and culture.
Had initial talks with HoD of Konkani Department of Goa University for introducing Konkani Wikipedia as one of the papers.
Had meeting with NIE and GVMs B.Ed.students focusing on the importance of their contribution to Konkani Wikipedia.
Initial talk with Government of Goa, highlighting the importance of Konkani wikipedia and there by also supporting our efforts financially.
Donation of one book named as Bhoddvo Yadnik a biography on St. Joseph Vaz for uploading on Wikisource.

Kannada

University of Mysore re-released Vols 7 to 14 of their famous Kannada Vishwakosha (encyclopaedia) under CC-BY-SA during this period in which CIS-A2K played a crucial role for the license migration. They have previously released Vols 1-6 under CC-BY-SA. MoU for partnership with Guru-G Learning Labs was signed for taking Indian language Wikipedias in the classroom. Partnership with Department of State Educational Research and Training of Govt of Karnataka, popularly known as DSERT, has been initiated. CIS-A2K will work together with DSERT to enhance the quality of training imparted to the Teachers in Karnataka and introduce them to digital resources. 8 outreach programs at various parts of Karnataka were conducted to instill growth in Kannada Wikipedia and also create increased awareness about Kannada Wikipedia among general public and media.

Marathi

With the hiring of a Language Anchor CIS-A2K has been able to plan and execute various activities in the Marathi Wikimedia domain.
As a first step towards initiating the Marathi volunteer community two Marathi Wikimedians were trained at the TTT 2015 held at Bangalore.

CIS-A2K has consulted many senior Wikimedians along with Marathi Wikipedia administrator to help plan the activities to benefit Marathi Wikipedia during the coming year.
CIS-A2K has had preliminary discussions with Maharashtra Government officials regarding bringing Marathi Vishwakosh on Wikisource. CIS-A2K has also been a part of the discussions relating the development of open and free knowledge resources for Marathi medium classrooms across Maharashtra.

Community strengthening initiatives

Several community specific initiatives were taken in the priority language areas and they are covered in the respective language area subsections. Similar initiatives for Stand-alone projects are explained in detailed in the next section.

Stand-alone Wikimedia projects

Main article: /Stand-alone Wikimedia Projects.

Publicity, Research and Documentation

For the core language projects and all other Indian language projects CIS-A2K has helped in various ways to publicize the activities and community efforts. Details of the blog posts published, print and digital media coverage and all work related documentations are listed here.

General support and service to the movement

CIS-A2K has tried its best to address all requests for various kinds of support from the Indian Wikimedia communities. The requests that we have received and have supported are listed here and here.