Reports/August 2016

India at Rio Olympics edit-a-thon 2016
Wikimedia India is organizing the India at Rio Olympics edit-a-thon 2016 to celebrate the success of Indian sportsmen at the Olympics. The Event has been in progression all throughout August & many articles were created and improved. Currently more than 600 articles have been created ( stats to be published later). Find the full list of articles to be created & improved here The event intends to end on 18th September when Paralympics Games 2017 end.

Wiki Loves Earth in India 2016
The results for Wiki Loves Earth in India 2016 were announced in August. With over 32,000+ images uploaded for the competition by 6,000+ Contributors, the competition saw a phenomenal response from India.Thanks to all the hardwork put by the Volunteers & the Jury was what that made this competition a success.

Jury
Three Jury from three different diversified fields were invited
 * Ashish Kothari
 * Santosh Shingare
 * Souradeep Ghosh

You can find the Jury Biopic Here

Results
Top 10 images as selected by the Jury
 * File:Nirar Anai.jpg
 * This Picture is taken behind Nirar Dam at Valparai, Tamil nadu overlooking the beautiful Annamalai R.F division (Indra Gandhi Wildlife Reserve) by User:JohnJoelraj


 * File: Grey Horn Bill.jpg
 * Grey horn bill with its favourite fruit by User: Mithan B M


 * File:Can it or not.jpg
 * A green Bee-eater trying to catch a bee by User:ARIJIT MONDAL


 * File:The burning mountain.jpg
 * Mount Kanchenjunga seen from by User:Yoghya


 * File:A Morning in Chandratal.jpg
 * A Morning in Chandratal by User:Mahendra Pal Singh


 * File: Elephas maximus indicusCorbett.jpg
 * An Indian elephant (Elephas maximus indicus) taking a dust bath at the Banks of the Ramganga River in Jim Corbett National park by User:Tanmay Haldar


 * File: Demoiselle cranes in Khichan near Bikaner (Rajasthan).jpg
 * Beautiful Demoiselle cranes migrate from Mongolia to Khichan near Bikaner (Rajasthan) by User:ANKITNARANG297


 * File: Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher (ODKF).jpg
 * Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher at Shiravali by User:P Subramanya C K


 * File:Changu or Tsomgo Lake.jpg
 * Changu or Tsomgo Lake is at located at the east of Sikkim & at a very high altitude by User:Sudhanshu Gupta


 * File:When the big cat turned to my camera!.jpg
 * Bengal Tiger posing for the camera by User:NIKHIL CHAMARTY

Overview
Wiki Loves Monuments is a global photo competition that takes place generally in September. Wikimedia India would officially be organising this competition in India.

The aim of the contest is to ask the general public—readers and users of Wikipedia, photographers, hobbyists, etc.—to take pictures of cultural heritage monuments and upload them to Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia and its other sister projects. 

Call for Volunteers
The Wiki Loves Monument Team invites Wikimedians to be associated in the event as volunteers under different categories Jury Team Cultural Partnership Team Press, Media and Outreach Team Technical Team Heritage Walk Team Volunteer Coordinator

Rapid Grant
Rapid Grant worth INR 1,35,000 was submitted and subsequently approved by the Wikimedia Foundation. 

Planning of Visit of Katherine Maher to India
Wikimedia India was involved in the finalization of Agenda for visit of Katherine Maher & planning of her meetings with media & Organizations for Future Partnerships Post Conference, Katherine made a visit to New Delhi and met few external partners. A synopsis of these meetings has been described below.

Meeting with Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi
On 8th August, 11 AM, Mr Manish Siosdia (Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi) had an interaction with the Wikimedians. The Delhi Government is all ready to roll out education programs in the Delhi region, in fact, to help us resolve our gender gap issues, Delhi Government would help us focus more on women's colleges at the initial stage. The Delhi Government has also expressed its intent to conduct a Wiki-activity in Indian languages on M.K. Gandhi in September month, such that Delhi Government could further facilitate (small souvenirs) the contributors on 2nd October as a part of the M.K. Gandhi's birthday celebration. Delhi Government is also looking at possible interventions where GLAM activities could be undertaken. Incorporating WIkimedia projects under Delhi Government's free-public wifi scheme has also been proposed. The meeting was arranged by Wikimedia India and attended by Katherine Maher along with Wikimedia India EC's (Yohann Thomas, Sanket Oswal, Abhinav Srivastava).

Department of Electronics and Information Technology Meeting
On 8th August,1 PM, Wikimedians met Mr. Rajiv Bansal, Joint Secretary. Government of India, Department of Electronics and Information Technology at this office in Delhi. The talks centered around bringing DIETY newsletter under open license, a collaboration between Government of India and WMIN + CIS-A2K over government's vikaspedia, drawing attention to Indian language content to be released under Creative Commons, Collaboration with the ministry towards making the government websites include better and accurate language content, etc. The meeting was arranged by CIS-A2K and attended by Katherine Maher along with CIS-A2K staff (Tanveer Hasan) and Wikimedia India EC's (Sanket Oswal, Abhinav Srivastava).

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Meeting
On 8th August,5.30 PM. Wikimedians met Dr Ramesh Gaur (Head Libarary- JNU) and Dr Anup Das (Documentation Officer). JNU will be opening up its central repository of thesis (almost 22,000 units, including PhDs, M.Phil and Master's Program) under open access. JNU will be assisting us in providing journal articles to our editors for use on Wikipedia. 'One Lib One Ref" workshop at JNU would also be conducted in JNU shortly (maybe in September). JNU also has shown its intent at digitization Dr B.R. Ambedkar's writing under the Hindi Wikisource. Further collaborations during seminars at JNU on Wikisource projects would also be taken up. The meeting was arranged by Wikimedia India and attended by Katherine Maher along with Wikimedia India EC's (Sanket Oswal, Abhinav Srivastava) and CIS-A2K staff (Tanveer Hasan).

WikiConference India 2016 (WCI 2016)
The WikiConference India 2016 was conducted on August 5,6,7 in Mohali, Punjab. The conference happened after a gap of five years, last conference was held in Mumbai 2011.


 * Wiki Conference India started on an exceptional note with the signing of an MoU between CIS-A2K,Wikimedia India Punjabi Wikimedians User group with the hosts of the Event, Chandigarh Group of Colleges with plans to start an education program there

Conference Schedule
The Conference schedule was made by the Programs team.
 * Bodhisattwa
 * Chinmayi S K
 * Netha Hussain
 * Rohini Lakshané
 * Tito Dutta
 * User:Shyamal

The Programs Schedule was made by first inviting submissions from the community.Then they were shortlisted by the Programs team & the final list of speakers were informed on their talk page.

Chandigarh Hackathon
The Hackathon at the WikiConference India was organized by Santosh Shingare. The Hackathon organized in parallel track with other programs of the Conference. It closed with 7 applications, which are all useful to the community.
 * WikiSpeak : (Web Application + Android Mobile application).WikiSpeak lets you search text on Wikipedia at just one click and reads aloud that text for you. Source code Link (Web Application) : Github :https://github.com/ashjal/WikiSpeak Source code Link (Android Application) : Github :https://github.com/sandarumk/WikiSpeak
 * Edit Tamil Wiktionary (Tamil community request) : - (Android application) This is a utility application for any wikipedian who has title of the page and its content in a spreadsheet or document. The user will have to convert that document to .tsv which can easily be done using any Office suite.Source code link: https://bitbucket.org/Shailumani/wiki-tsv/src
 * Audio file upload to WikiData (Punjabi community request) : Wikipedia articles on google map : This is a web application to annotate Google Maps with location rich data.Source code link (web application) : Github : https://github.com/Shailumani/map_annotate_wiki.git (Android application) Github: https://github.com/Atul22/wikiAudio.
 * Communication platform (WebRTC) : Community can use this to talk or conference (Audio/video web conferencing application)Github : https://github.com/cherishsantosh/Communication-Platform
 * Notification (Event based) : showing popup on event eg (If recent changes happen, It will show popup which article was updated) - The extension which is in its inital phase at Github:DesktopNotifications collects in live edit history from http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/RCStream and shows up desktop notifications on edit for users

Edit-a-thon
Lists of edit-a-thons which were planned for the event
 * Punjab Edit-a-thon
 * Edit-a-thon : Rio Olympics 2016
 * Maithili Wikipedia Edit-a-thon and Discussion
 * Malayalam Wikipedia Edit-a-thon and Discussion
 * Organic & Inorganic Growth of Wikipedias of South Asian Languages
 * Workshop and Edit-a-thon: Forensic Science

Programs, Sessions & activities conducted by Wikimedia India at WikiConference India

 * Panel Discussion: Whither Wikimedia movement in India? Aims, activities, organizational dynamics and the Wikimedia movement in India - Discussion panel chaired by Ravishankar Ayyakkannu
 * Creative Program Design: create the programs you need for your local community
 * Session: Wiki Loves Earth in India 2016
 * Tak: How Projects can unite & shape communities
 * Edit-a-thon: India at Rio Olympics 2016

Membership drive by Wikimedia India at WikiConference India 2016
Wikimedia India had a special booth at the conference where attendees were coming & registering for membership. Close to 100 attendees signed up to become member of Wikimedia India

SAARC Regional Wikimedian meeting
This meeting was in continuation with the past meetup done by Wikimedian from the countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal & Pakistan in past WikiConferences conducted by WMF in Berlin in 2015 & Wikimania Mexico. This meetup consisted of members from members of Wikimedia Bangladesh, Wikimedia India, Representatives of Wikimedia Nepal & Wikimedia Pakistan represented by editors of Urdu Wikipedia Community. One of the ideas presented by the attendees was to conduct a SAARC regional conference for Wikimedians. To reach this goal, it was agreed to take a first step by setting up a Mailing list amongst the chapters of the 4 countries

Other News

 * Tulu-language Wikipedia goes live
 * Tulu Wikipedia  has finally gone live after being in the Incubator for nine long years. Tulu is spoken by nearly 2 million speakers in the Mangaluru, Udupi and other South West regions of the Indian state of Karnataka and in some places in the state of Kerala. 198 editors have contributed so far to make this happen. The project has started seeing more activity since 2014 when the first ever community meetup was organised in April, 2014. St. Aloysius College and St. Agnes College, two educational institutions in Mangaluru, India have done a commendable job in institutionalizing education programs and several outreach programs for their students. Wikimedia India congratulates everyone who have helped grow this project, the language committee and other friends in the global communities who have supported and guided in working towards the approval of the project.


 * Bangalore Meetup
 * A Bangalore Meetup was organized on 21st August 2016 at the CIS office,Domlur.
 * The Agenda for the conference included Wikiconference India 2016 experiences and learnings sharing, planning for Bangalore-based Wiki activities & discussion on the India at Rio Olympics Edit-a-Thon organized by Wikimedia India


 * Government of Tamil Nadu orders its departments and institutions to release content under CC-BY-SA
 * Tamil Development and Information Department of Government of Tamil Nadu has issued a Government Order (Number: 105, Date: 01. 07. 2016) to Tamil University, Thanjavur and all other government departments and institutions to release all their publications, archives and collections under Creative Commons by Share-Alike license.
 * This Government Order has got the approval from the TN Government's Legal Department and issued by the order of Governor of Tamil Nadu. The order can be seen here. An English copy will be available soon.
 * This order comes as part of the public policy initiatives undertaken through the collaboration between Global Tamil Wikimedia Community and Tamil Virtual Academy (TVA).The community recognizes this as a significant milestone in spreading free knowledge for the benefit of Tamils. :Wikimedia India hopes that this sets a good precedent for all government institutions across the country.


 * OpenCon 2015 Ranchi
 * OpenCon is a platform for the next generation to learn about Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, develop critical skills, and catalyze action toward a more open system of research and education. OpenCon 2016 will be held in Washington DC on November 12-14, with satellite events around the world.
 * OpenCon satellite events held in partnership with the main conference can be of any size, in any place, at any time and are open to anyone. OpenCon 2016 Ranchi is a satellite event which is organized by Sridar Gautam on 12th November 2016


 * Kolkata meetup-13th August
 * Kolkata meetup was held on 13th August

=Wikimedia India Blog=
 * The World’s Largest Democracy Meets The World’s Largest Encyclopedia-Wiki Loves Monuments 2016 India By Abhinav Srivastava Dated 27th Aug 16

=In the Media=


 * Carpenter crafts cyber content using ancient mobile. Business Standard. Free Press Journal. The Jodhpur Gazette. NewsKerala.com. ProKerala.com. SocialNews.xyz. The Statesman. DaijiWorld.com WindowToNews.com. Business Standard. Eastern Mirror, Nagaland. Aug 10, 2016.
 * How (not) to get started on Wikipedia, an 18-year-old's story. Business Standard. Financial Express. NewKerala.com. LeadersSpeak.in. Aug 8, 2016.
 * Wikipedia takes a bite… at Indian food and forts. Indian Express. Millennium Post. DailyPost.in. IndiaEveryDay.in. Gizmodo.in.KollyTalk.com. New Indian Express. PunjabTribune.com. SocialNews.xyz. VishwaGujarat.com. IndRead.com. BFirst.in. The Free Press Journal. W3LiveNews.com (excerpt). Aug 8, 2016
 * Wikipedia gets 'taste of Indian food'. Indian Express, Aug 8, 2016.
 * India’s 23rd regional Wikipedia, in Tulu, goes live The Indian Express, DailyWorld.in, HuffingtonPost.in, The News Minute.com, DailyHunt.in, The Hindu, Debate on Reddit.com, ReadBing.in (excerpt), WikipediaReview.com, W3LiveNews.com (excerpt), IndiaEveryday.in, ViralShots.com, in.shagaqna.com (excerpt), TodayIndya.com, latestnews360.com (excerpt), electropneumaticpositioner.com (excerpt), ccm.net, makemefeed.com -- headline only, Bangladesh Sun, Aug 6, 2016
 * Wikiconference India 2016: Wikipedia’s plans for growth in India are unclear Newsthrive Huntnews

WikiConference India-In the Media
All Press & Media links are available here