CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/November 2016

CIS-A2K Newsletter, November and December 2016
WikiSangamotsavam 2016

Malayalam Wikimedian demonstrating WikiVoyage on Nileshwaram house boat in Kerala.

The Malayalam Wikipedia community held its fifth annual gathering, WikiSangamotsavam, in Kasaragod, the northernmost district of the state of Kerala. The culturally diverse district is a melting pot of seven actively spoken languages- Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, the Beary dialect, Tamil, Marathi and Konkani. It was a three day affair from the 26th to 28th December 2016, with the third day’s WikiVoyage incubator session fittingly held on a houseboat out in the Bekal lake! The event commemorated the regional Wikipedia’s completion of 14 years which fell on the 21st of the month. The community aims to build advanced technical support for its members in the next year.

. . . Read more on Blog

Meet Telugu Wikipedian Surampudi Meena Gayathri – the first South Indian Wikiwoman completing 100Wikidays Challenge

Meena Gayathri celebrating her 100wikidays completion

celebrated the Telugu Wikipedia Day and her accomplishment in the 100Wikidays Challenge – a challenge that requires Wikipedians to create one new article per day for one hundred days in a row. When asked about how it feels to take up the challenge and to become the first South Indian Wikiwoman who completed it, she replied "Like exericing, you would think it is hard to do it every day but if you try, it is really satisfying.” Ms. Meena Gayathri has been one of the few active female Telugu Wikipedians since 2014. Her contribution and passion towards her language and culture have transcended into what she called a “knowledge revolution.”

. . . Read more on Blog

Programme reports
Outreach, education programme and community engagement programme reports:

November
  • Sambalpur University Workshop: An Odia Wikipedia Orientation program cum workshop was organized by CIS-A2K team in Sambalpur University on November 27, 2016. Sailesh Patnaik attended the workshop.
  • Ongoing Proof-reading Effort by ALC Student Wikimedians in Telugu Wikisource Student Wikimedians at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada formatted and proof-read more than 1,900 folios in Telugu Wikisource during the last few weeks of November (2016). Each day, a group of twenty students uses the lab facility provided by the college after regular classes to make necessary formatting changes and fix spelling mistakes in the folios of books available in Telugu Wikisource. Till date, the student Wikipedians have proofread eight books.
December
  • Marathi Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Kolhapur A Marathi Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted at Shivaji University in Kolhapur on 15 December 2016. The goal of the Wikipedia edit-a-thon was to build resources in the field of Political Science on Marathi Wikipedia and equip its participants with the process of contributing to Wikipedia and to introduce the basic concepts of Wikipedia.
  • Kannada Wikipedia Education Program at Christ university: Work so far: As you know we are working closely with Christ university in Bengaluru for the Education Programs in Kannada Wikipedia and Kannada Wikisource, we worked on redesigning the programme for this academic year 2016-17 based on the lessons learned from the earlier intervention.
  • Mini Workshop on Tools: Wikipedia Monthly Meetup, Hyderabad Telugu Wikipedia community held its monthly meet-up in Hyderabad on 28 August 2016. The event was marked by a presentation on quick tools by Pavan Santhosh, Community Advocate and long time member of the Telugu Wikipedia community.
  • Mini TTT and MWT conducted in Hyderabad, India: Mini Train-the-Trainer and MediaWiki Training program was conducted on 10 and 11 December 2016 in Hyderabad. 15 Wikipedians from 4 cities of Andhra pradesh and Telangana 2 Indic Wikimedia communities participated in the event.


Articles/ blogs/ opinions
Articles, opinion/analysis pieces and event talk submissions:

  • Freedom in Feb — an awareness increasing campaign, Freedom in Feb (FiF, hashtag #freedominfeb) is a campaign to be conducted in the month of February. The objective of the initiative is to increase awareness of free content and free licenses. The name of this campaign “Freedom in Feb” was coined by Sunil Abraham, the Executive Director of The Centre for Internet and Society, India.
  • 100wikidays: the journey so far, In this article CIS-A2K talked to Bulgarian Wikipedian Vassia Atanassova (User:Spiritia) on the journey of 100wikidays so far, initial difficulties, and participation of Indian Wikipedia communities in the challenge.

Media coverage

These are the media coverage for this month


Team updates
Manasa Rao and Subodh Kulkarni are the newest members of the CIS-A2K team. Manasa is our new Program Officer for Communications and Subodh is our Marathi Community Advocate. We welcome them both on board and wish them success in their endeavours.

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