WikiPatrika/2011-06/Community News/bn

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Group photo first Kolkata meetup

Rimi B. Chatterjee, Bishakha Datta, Jayanta, and Arnab in Wikipedia's 10th birthday celebration

Participants in Wikipedia workshops for Bengali bloggers in 7 January, 2011 at Dhaka

Sample of booklets is being used to let people know about Wikipedia and how to contribute to Wikipedia in several Bangladeshi events

Meetup at IIFT Kolkata

First Kolkata Meetup: The Bengali Wikipedia community of West Bengal conducted their first Wikipedia workshop under the auspices of the Kolkata chapter of Computer Society Of India in Kolkata on 11 December 2010. This was the first Bengali workshop in Kolkata, and it was initiated/conducted/led by Shiju Alex, Tinu Cherian and Jayanta Nath. About 20 participants attended, and the meeting is hopefully a stepping stone in the revival of Bengali Wikipedia after a gap of about 8 years.
On 15 January 2011, Bengali Wikimedians celebrated "10th Anniversary of Wikipedia" in two big cities (Kolkata and Dhaka) across India and Bangladesh. In Kolkata, the event was organized with the support of Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre and Sanhita, an NGO In India that is working for human rights, training, women issues, among other things. The celebration was inaugurated by Bishakha Datta, a member of the Board of Trustrees of the Wikimedia Foundation. Afterwards, novelist Rimi B. Chatterjee gave a speech to cap the celebration.
11 Bengali wiki workshops and 5 outreach events were arranged during the period 2010 October to 2011 May. Four workshops in Kolkata, 5 workshops and 4 events in Dhaka, 1 workshop and 1 event in Chittagong, and 1 workshop in Rajshahi.
The Bengali Wikipedia community of Dhaka arranged workshops for Bengali bloggers on 7 January, 2011, in order to encourage them to use their skills on Wikipedia.
The Bangladeshi Wikipedia community also arranged around 5 outreach events: 2 photo-walks in the Dhaka metropolitan area,a public gathering at Ekushey Book Fair on 21 February (International Mother Language Day), and on 14 April (the first day of Bengali new year). Both of the events were arranged by Bangladesh Open Source Network.
Though Dhaka has been the major outreach target in Bangladesh in past years, very recently the Chittagong Wikimedian community of Bangladesh has taken up the initiative to arrange a wiki fest in that city. Students from around 7 universities from Chittagong joined in the fest, and the number of participants was around 500. The Chief Editor of Daily Azad (a local newspaper) inaugurated the fest. The fest featured a panel consisting of the mayor of Chittagong, C. Hasan Mahmud, professor of Chittagong University S. A. A. Parvez, and other notable persons.
Wikimedians in Kolkata took up the initiative to reduce the gender gap in Wikipedia and organized the Women's Wiki Workshop (WWW) with the support of Indian NGO Sanhita. The wiki meetup and workshop for women was specially arranged for Bengali Wikimedians on 18 March 2011 at Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre.

Typing tool Integragion

On 18 December 2010, an external Bengali typing tool written by Junaid P.V. was integrated into Bengali Wikipedia. The tool has Avro, Inscript and Bangladesh Jatiyo Keyboard Layout. A guide to typing in Bengali was also provided, along with a central notice to help and inform new Wikipedians. This tool has also been integrated in two other Bengali Wikimedia projects (Bengali Wikibooks, and Bengali Wiktionary).

FAQ Booklet & Typing Help in PDF

A Wikipedia FAQ, Display & Typing Help 1.0 manual was created to provide support for frequently asked questions on Bengali Wikipedia, and to resolve display issues and provide support for the typing tool - borrowing from the FAQ created for Malayalam Wikipedia.

Bengali Wikipedia

To date, among Bengali Wikimedia projects, Bengali Wikipedia is the most active project. Bengali Wikipedia has 22,000+ articles as of 2011 May.
Bengali Wikipedia reached the milestone of 1 million edits on 21 May 2011. Bengali is the 3rd Indic language Wikipedia (after Hindi and Malayalam) to reach this milestone. This milestone was covered in Bangladeshi news media.
Bengali Wikipedia has implemented some technical facilities to guide its edits - most notably, the Flagged revision extension to monitor highly vandalized and BLP articles.

Bengali Wikisource

Bengali Wikisource is among the most enriched indic Wikisources. There are 6 active users of this project, and it has 5300+ content pages. It is also the second most active Bengali Wikimedia project in terms of content.

Bengali Wiktionary

Bengali Wiktionary is not as active as other Bengali projects. Bengali Wiktionary has 670 entries as of 2011 May, and the present number of active users is 4.