CIS-A2K/Reports/Newsletter/October 2016

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CIS-A2K Newsletter, October 2016

Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November The second iteration of Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM), a month-long edit-a-thon to create and improve Asia-related articles on Wikipedia, is going to start on November 1. In this blog post CIS-A2K's Tito Dutta has revisited the statistics of the 2015 iteration of the event. We also spoke to Addis Wang, an organizer of WAM, to know more about their progress and preparation of the event. . . . Read more on Blog

Program reports Outreach, education programme and community engagement programme reports: Impact Report form for the Annual Program Grant CIS-A2K published the impact report form for receiving the Annual Plan Grant from Wikimedia Foundation. The time period of this report is the first six months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year) Subray, Ananth. "Kannada Wikipedia Education Program at Christ university: Work so far" (October 30, 2016) 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.

Articles/blogs Articles, opinion pieces, analysis pieces: Panigrahi, Subhashish. "What Indian Language Wikipedias can do for Greater Open Access in India". Your Story (October 20, 2016) It’s been almost a decade since most largely spoken Indian languages started having a Wikipedia project of their own. With the Open Access Week—a week dedicated for promoting Open Access globally—around the corner with “Open in Action” as the theme of the year, there is no better time for anyone who can read and write in their native Indian language.. Panigrahi, Subhashish. "Open Access Content helps Fuel Growth in Indian-language Wikipedias". Opensource.com (October 24, 2016) Mobile Internet connectivity is growing rapidly in rural India, and because most Internet users are more comfortable in their native languages, websites producing content in Indian languages are going to drive this growth. In a country like India in which only a handful of journals are available in Indian languages, open access to research and educational resources is hugely important for populating content for the various Indian language Wikipedias. Pavanaja, U.B. "UTF-8, Indic and Stub Length Article in Wikipedia" (October 20, 2016) Pavanaja, U.B. "Querying Wikipedia Data" (October 21, 2016) Dutta, Tito. "Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November" (October 30, 2016)

Media coverage In this month we have organised or participated in this event: Sharma, Mayank. "Indian language localization community meets in New Delhi". Opensource.com (October 3, 2016) Bagchi, Shrabonti. "Changing Wikipedia’s (and society’s) male bias is work in progress". Factor Daily (October 5, 2016) Rao, Madanmohan. "‘Entrepreneurship will become a common, respectable profession’ – 25 quotes from Indian startup journeys". YourStory.com (October 23, 2016)

Celebrations and upcoming events Odia Wikisource turned 2! The Odia-language Wikisource that became live on October 20, 2014, has come an eventful journey of two years. The project, that currently has six active editors and is viewed by 10,533 unique visitors every month, houses 460 volumes of Odia text. The community and CIS-A2K together have managed to relicense more than 309 books from "All Rights Reserved" to Creative Commons Share-Alike licenses.

Team updates Our Programme Manager Dr. U.B. Pavanaja has left the team recently, and our Programme Officer Subhashish Panigrahi is leaving soon to continue with their other personal/professional commitments. We thank both of them for their association and support both to the team and to the community. We wish them success in their forthcoming endeavours, and hope that they will keep contributing to the Wikimedia movement in their volunteer capacity.

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