Template:WikiPatrika/2011-11/Community News/or

1st Balasore Odia Wiki Workshop (26 June 2011)
This was the 5th Odia Wiki  Workshop, conducted at Balasore and attended by 46 Wikipedians, led by Odia Wikipedian Ansumang Giri.

The 1st Odia Wikipedia Workshop in Balewswar has been organized on 26th of June 2011 at Orissa Academy of Social science & Integrated Studies(OASIS). The workshop was led by Odia Wikipedian Ansumang Giri and supported by Laxmikanta Tripathy, Kesu Das and Odia Bhasa Bikash Aandolon (OBBA). Participants from the nearby management colleges, engineering students, senior fellows working for language development activities participated in this academy. Brajanath Ratha, an Odia poet formally inaugurated this event enlightening about Odia language and his catching on Odia wikipedia. A FAQ Booket (ver. 1.1) was released by and distributed among the participants. Ansuman demonstrated the basics of Wikipedia, Current status, Sign up process, How to Edit Odia Wikipedia, Searching Existing Articles, Creating new articles, How to Upload picture and adding that to article and their alignment along with basic introduction of syntax for the new users. This was an interactive session where the participants interacted with each other and several discussions went on about Odia wikipedia. They came up with several suggestions such as :
 * To add Purnachandra Bhasakosa (Odia Lexicon) link on Odia wikipedia article pages.
 * Important pages should be protected so only active users/admins can edit to avoid vandalism.
 * To build a Community Center where members can work on various fields/Categories to improve Odia wikipedia.
 * As most users are used to Windows XP and not ready to the other availability of Operating System the issues with XP for Odia Language should be fixed and people should be educated.



2nd Cuttack Odia Wiki Workshop (09 Oct 2011)
This was the 6th Odia  Wiki  Workshop, conducted at Cuttack and attended by 16 Wikipedians,  led by Odia Wikipedians Subhashish Panigrahi and Srikant Kedia.

7th event of Odia Wiki community and 2nd Odia Wiki Academy in the city of Cuttack was organized on 9 Oct 2011 and held at Image Institute of Technology & Management. Odia linguist Natabar Satpathy, Dhanada Mishra, Founder, HRD School ogf Management and Subrat Prusty, Director, Odia Biswabidyalaya formally inagurated the event. A FAQ booklet was distributed among the attendees. In the first session Odia Wikimedian Subha introduced about the Wikiprojects (Currently Wikipedia and Wiktionary are enabled in Odia language), goal of Wikipedia dollowed by an editing session with live account opening, typing in Odia using Transliteration and Inscipt tools.

The second session new attendees discussed they have been they are facing and issues with Windows XP and Odia rending. Wiktionary, a project which was closed earlier and recently opened was formally inaugurated and introduced to the audience. Wikimedians also discussed how individual and organizational efforts could be inculcated to start projects like WikiQuote (currently an Incubation project), WikiSource and WikiBooks with a set of active Wikimedians in the community.

WikiFotoWalk Bhubaneswar| ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱର ପାଇଁ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ
WikiFotoWalk Bhubaneswar, is an awareness PhotoWalk event organized by Odia Wiki Community on 2 October 2011 in Bhubaneswar. It was intended to bring awareness about protecting ancient monuments in the temple city, Bhubaneswar and documenting details of them. This event was attended by 13 young photographers, 2 of them being active Odia Wikimedians which started from the foothills of Dhauli hills. Odia Wikimedian Subha formally introduced and briefed about the event to the photo enthusiasts about the event. The gathering started clicking shots in Asoka's insciptions, a protected monuments which contains ancient Brahmi script inscriptions, Dhauli, a Buddhist peace pagoda, Daya river, alongside which the infamous Kalinga war took place. Then 3 teams split up to cover up different monuments and shot in places Sisupalgarh, Muktesvara deula, Ananta Basudeba Temple, Baitala Deula, Lingaraja Temple. The 2 hours session was a start up to initiate bring out professional photographers and photo enthusiasts to donate Copyright free pictures to Commons. The photos can be found at Commons category.

Approval of Odia Wiktionary
Odia Wiktionary is the first project of the Wikimedia Foundation to get re-approved after a closure due to lack of community activism.

Translation completion in translatewiki.net
Translation of MediaWiki extension and majority of MediaWiki messages have been completed in translatewiki.net.

Drafting of Odia Wikiquote
A request has been made for approval of Odia Wikiquote which currently has an active participation and 30 page submissions in Wikimedia Incubator.

Narayam enabled for Odia Wikiprojects
Narayam is a typing tool for Wikimedia projects for Indian languages which was recently enabled for Odia. Presently it supports both Transliteration and InScript typing format.