West Bengal Wikimedians/Reports/Annual Activities/2021
West Bengal Wikimedians User Group
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This page reports the Wikimedia related activities and projects organized and/or supported by West Bengal Wikimedians User Group during the fiscal year from February 17, 2021 to February 16, 2022. |
To read annual report of 2020-2021, please click here. |
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West Bengal Wikimedians/Reports/Annual Activities/2021#Nature and Environment
Nature and Environment -
West Bengal Wikimedians/Reports/Annual Activities/2021#Community Support and Sustainability
Community Support and Sustainability
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Overview
The West Bengal Wikimedians User Group has now completed 5 years since its recognition in February 2017.
2020 saw an unprecedented situation in the form of health-related catastrophe, global lock-down, economic shutdown, and restriction of movements due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2021 was even worse. Delta variant of coronavirus stormed in a much aggressive way than the first wave and claimed huge amount of precious lives. Many Wikimedians from all around the world lost their families and dear friends. Members of the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group were no exception. Like almost every sectors from all around the world, the second wave took a deep toll on the volunteer workforce of the affiliate as it was extremely important to bring stability in real life from the catastrophe it endured. In spite of the difficult times, the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group saw more action than previous years.
The user group focused mainly on Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource and their comprehensive inter-connections just like previous years. Last year, due to the onset of pandemic, all the user group offline programs had to be stopped. But this year, some of the on-field documentation programs like Wiki Loves Butterfly and Wiki Exploration Program returned utilizing the window of opportunity while the COVID-19 waves subsided. This year, the user group also partnered with the Two Century of the Indian Print project of the prestigious British Library and ran Wikisource proofread competitions with them. The user group also continued to conduct national level Wiki Loves Monuments photo-competition on Wikimedia Commons and proofread competitions on Bengali Wikisource like it has been doing for last few years and reintroduced Wiki Loves Food photo-competition again. The user group has also held hands with affiliates and organizations from around the world to not only to collaborate for its projects, but also to run projects in an environment-friendly way.
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Footprints of Wiki Loves Butterfly in 2021 -
Footprints of Wiki Exploration Program in 2021
Nature and Environment
Wiki Loves Butterfly - Phase V (first half)
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Ventral position of Delias agostina agostina -
Ventral position of Cupitha purreea -
Ventral position of Colias fieldii fieldii -
Ventral position of Amathuxidia amythaon amythaon -
Ventral position of Neope bhadra
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Wiki Loves Butterfly (WLB), a digital conservation and field documentation project, was run for fifth consecutive years by a dedicated group of volunteers passionate about butterflies. The fifth phase of the WLB project got funded by the Wikimedia Foundation under the coverage of Project Grants, for which the mid-point grant report was duly submitted and got accepted.
During the first half of the fifth phase, the WLB team has performed vivid documentation of the available butterfly species and subspecies at different hotspots in Birbhum, Alipurduar, Paschim Bardhaman, Purba Bardhaman, Howrah, Jhargram, Nadia, North 24 Parganas and Hooghly districts of West Bengal; Barpeta, Bongaigaon, Jorhat, Kokrajhar and Kamrup districts of Assam; Dimpaur and Kohima districts of Nagaland and North Sikkim district of Sikkim and uploaded 1725 photographs on Wikimedia commons, created and upgraded 66 articles on butterfly. WLB has also started to expand the butterfly database on Wikidata, which is getting used to maintain its tables of butterfly species and sub-species with different stages of their life cycles like egg, caterpillar, pupa and adult stagescovered under this project.
In spite of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in movement and difficulty to access different places of North East Indian states and West Bengal, the field documentation planning of the WLB team, strong informative network and collaborative approach with the local bodies and authorities has succeeded the team to get the prompt news of the slackening of restrictions in some places and quickly sent teams thereon to carry on field-documentations. During travel restrictions, the team continued to document in the local areas and even in home backyards. The team also co-organized a national level butterfly meet at Namdapha National Park at the Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh. Unlike previous years, 2-3 teams were sent to different places in the same time to cover as much as places and utilize as much time as possible during the butterfly season.
This year, thanks to the project grant, the team has upgraded its photographic gear. A Canon EOS 90D camera body, a Sigma APO MACRO 150mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM Lens, a Canon 470EX-AI Speedlite and a 34 Liter ANDBON AD-30S Dry Cabinet were the major purchase among others. The photographic equipments are assigned to different core team members when they are sent for field-documentation.
During Wikimania 2021, Ananya Mondal was awarded Wikimedian of the Year, 2021 under the new category "Rich media" for her leadership on Wiki Loves Butterfly project.“Through Wiki Loves Butterflies, Ananya has not only exponentially grown the number of images of her favorite animal in the public domain, but she has created a fun and accessible way to welcome new people, especially students, into the movement. Her project has taken flight and become a symbol of the incredible potential of rich media collaborations within our movement.” — Jimmy Wales
Wikimedia Affiliates Environmental Sustainability Covenant
In response to the climate crisis, the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group has joined hands with other affiliates from around the world and committed to a cross-affiliate initiative to reduce the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement. The initiative can be looked at as one of the first steps to implement Movement Strategy Recommendation #1.8- “While we grow and become more sustainable as a Movement, we will also align our practices to support the environmental sustainability of our planet.” The user group took part in drafting a document which is now called as Wikimedia Affiliates Environmental Sustainability Covenant and became one of the first signatories of the agreement along with other affiliates. These affiliates committed together to reduce their carbon footprint through a variety of measures like adopting travel policies that discourage kerosene-based flights taken by affiliate staff and representatives and community members over other means of transport and encourage use of public transport, switching to renewable energy for electricity consumption, supporting initiatives to improve coverage of the climate crisis on Wikimedia projects etc. As an affiliate with very limited capacity and resources and coming from a developing nation, the user group will have technical and infrastructural limitations implementing many of the clauses, but as before and with agreement with the covenant, the UG will keep committing to actively promote remote virtual events including conferences, workshops, meetups whenever a physical event can be avoided or deemed unnecessary. The UG will also continue to support projects which focus on digital conservation of nature like Wiki Loves Butterfly etc. There might be some more plans which can come up gradually as per commitment to the agreement. Thanks to the initiation and consistent push from Gnom without whom this covenant could not be materialised.
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Current signatories of the covenant
Workshop for biodiversity photographers
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Halcyon smyrnensis
Photographer: Kunalchak14 -
Terpsiphone paradisi
Photographer: Kunalchak14 -
Bubulcus coromandus
Photographer: Kunalchak14 -
Pteropus giganteus
Photographer: Ranjandas5 -
Albizzia lebbeck flower
Photographer: Demukher2408
Built heritage
Wiki Exploration Program
Wiki Exploration Program is an initiative taken by the user group to document archaeological and heritage sites in different parts including remote areas of the state of West Bengal, India in a cost-effective way in multiple phases. For last four years, the user group has sent teams to remote parts of West Bengal with limited accessibility and documented many built heritages, which were not documented digitally anywhere on the web or were in the verge of collapse due to lack of maintenance. It is feared and might be very true that that the user group Wiki Exploration documentation of some of the monuments might be the last documentation of the built structure, as they might be destroyed completely or reconstructed to something completely new in future. Last year, COVID-19 pandemic compelled to cancel all exploration activities because of complete lockdown of movements, but considering the extreme importance of the project, we had no choice but to resume the program again as soon as the pandemic wave started to subside. This year, the project lead Amitabha Gupta was asked to request for a separate rapid grants specifically for this project so that he can run it in a more effective way than before. Thankfully the grant request was accepted. In this grants period, Amitabha Gupta has explored several historical places in the districts of Nadia, Howrah, Dakshin Dinajpur, Uttar Dinajpur, Bankura, Paschim Medinipur, Purba Medinipur, Purba Bardhaman and Balasore which have been discussed separately below. He has also presented about how he runs this project during Wikimania 2021
Wiki Explores Nadia - Phase I
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A terracotta temple engulfed by a banyan tree at Kamalpur. -
An abandoned temple engulfed by a banyan tree at Aishmali. -
A ruined palace at Jamserpur. -
A terracotta relief on a temple at Dignagar. -
Gargoyle shaped stone built water outlet at Ballaldhipi archeological site.
Wiki Explores Howrah - Phase I
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A Pancharatna temple at Singti which was never documented before. -
Base panel of Bhubaneshwari temple at Mahishamuri. -
Stucco work on pillars of Biswanath Shiva temple at Jadabbati. -
An erotic scene depicted on a terracotta relief of Shridhar temple at Ashanda. -
An at-chala temple engulfed by trees at Bankul.
Wiki Explores Dakshin Dinajpur - Phase I
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A forgotten Jain temple engulfed by banyan tree at Nitpur. -
A ruined Pancharatna temple at Mahurkismat. -
Gambhira dance masks crafted at Hariharpur. -
Aerial view of Bangarh archeological site.
Wiki Explores Bankura - Phase III
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Sculpture of a jumping lion on the wall of a temple at Ghutgoria. -
Terracotta relief of a temple at Kadasol depicting Krishna and Radha. -
Fresco at inner sanctum in a temple at Rautkhanda. -
Foundation inscription of a temple at Bikrampur.
Wiki Explores Paschim Medinipur - Phase II
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A man sitting idly in front of a temple at Chaurigram. -
An erotic terracotta motif on a wall of a temple at Amadpur. -
A temple inside a fort ruin at Karnagarh. -
Broken sculptures scattered openly at Kakrajit.
Wiki Explores Purba Bardhaman - Phase III
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A breastfeeding mother depicted on a terracotta relief of a temple at Lowa. -
Ramayana war depicted on a terracotta relief of a temple at Sitahati. -
Rich terracotta relief of a temple at Orgram. -
Terracotta relief of Mahishasurmardini of a temple at Takipur. -
Black stone relief on a temple at Jagadanandapur.
Wiki Loves Monuments 2021 in India
Apart from field documentation to digitally preserve under-represented heritage and culture of the state, the user group also have tried to increase the media content of the national heritage and culture by arranging crowd-sourced competitions which run for the entire country well beyond the borders of the state of West Bengal. The user group continued to organize Wiki Loves Monuments in India photographic competition during the month of September 2021 for the fourth consecutive year in a row. There are two new updates for the competition this year.
- This year a significant change was made to the event page, colorful boxes with short instructions were placed instead of long texts which were there in previous years. The page used to navigate through the list of monuments were also changed significantly. Instead of navbox based lists used in previous years, which sometimes felt over-crowded and difficult to navigate, were changed to static map based navigation. Thanks to KCVelaga from the Wiki_Loves Monuments international team, who has created maroon colored maps of country and states in svg format which were used in the navigation.
- Thanks to Lokal_Profil, The Monuments database has included the lists of Indian monuments from Wikimedia Commons this year, which will help a bot to crawl more Indian monuments than before to do regular maintenance works. There are still some bugs to resolve though.
Culture
Wiki Loves Food 2021 in India
GLAM Partnerships
Two Centuries of Indian Print project of the British Library 
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A guide to railway passengers by Akshay Kumar Dutta -
Tales of William Shakespeare translated by Muktaram Vidyabagish -
Gautam Buddha's sayings or Dhammpada translated by Satish Chandra Mitra -
A bilingual book on the history of the world by John Clarke Marshman -
Biography of Mary Carpenter by Kumudini Mitra
The Two Centuries of Indian Print (2CIP) project of the British Library (BL) digitizes rare books from its South Asian printed books collection. Months of collaborative talks led them to upload high quality scans of those books on Wikimedia Commons. The user group worked on the next steps like renaming files, indexing, metadata related work on Wikidata, linking WIkidata items with corresponding files and index pages etc. and organized two proofread competitions on Bengali Wikisource focusing on these books. A python script was developed by Mahir256 to easily download books scanned by 2CIP which were stored on the BL website as IIIF manifest and convert them to PDF files. The detailed on-wiki documentation of the GLAM collaboration can be found here.
March-April proofread competition
West Bengal Wikimedians User Group proposed to run a proofread competition based on the uploaded books, which 2CIP officials readily agreed. Based on the collaboration, the user group organized a month long proofreading contest on Bengali Wikisource from 15th March 2021 to 14th April 2021. Tderrick, the Digital Curator for the 2CIP project wrote an introductory blog post on the British Library website. 27 books uploaded by Tderrick were selected for the participants to proofread. 17 people enrolled and 16 people actually participated in the contest proofreading 2621 pages in total. After the competition ended, necessary information to distribute the prizes from the top 5 contributors was collected. 2CIP officials sent digital certificates to all of them with logos of British Library, the user group and Bengali Wikisource. The user group sent t-shirts, books, germ protection kits, coffee mugs to respective winners residing in India.
September-November proofread competition
Wikidocumentaries
Wikidocumentaries is a project by Open Knowledge Finland, which combines different aspects of a topic from different platforms including Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, FlickR, Europeana, OSM etc. into one place and provides a comprehensive display of knowledge to the readers. The West Bengal Wikimedians User Group has engaged with the Wikidocumentaries project for more than 2 years now in following ways.
- The tables listing monuments in Wiki Loves Monuments in India competition have been providing a Wikidocumentaries links for each monuments for the last 2 years, using which photographers can upload photographs directly from Wikidocumentaries into the competition.
- Bengali Wikisource has also provided Wikidocumentaries links in different namespaces for more than a year now. See an index namespce or a a publisher namespace for example.
- Wiki Loves Butterfly has started to provide Wikidocumentaries links too in their tables of butterflies.
History and Legacy
Rabimas proofread competition
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Indic Wikisource Proofreadathon - Bengali Wikisource version
Subhas Chandra Bose 125th birth anniversary campaign
Book scanning program
Community Support and Sustainability
Infrastructure support
10,000 from the rapid grants for infrastructure support to volunteers which were to be spent upon request from community volunteers. Two volunteers requested for setting up high speed internet connection in their home by purchasing wireless internet router and two volunteers asked for internet recharge, which were readily approved seeing their significant online contribution. The routers will be handed over back to the user group if the volunteers do not need them in future and will be re-allocated to someone from the community in need. The user group also maintains different other equipments which is being used on different projects by several volunteers.
Bangla WikiMaitree
Affiliate governance