Reports/Apr-Jun 2017

WLM 2016 Photo exhibition
With the left over fund of INR 55,000 from Wiki Loves Monuments 2016, organizing team conducted a photo exhibition - cum fund raising campaign. Considering, Wikimedia India still deals with challenges of resolving FCRA issues, this was an attempt to raise domestic money. The winning top ten images were displayed along with posters on Wikimedia India, its vision & mission. It was hosted at Dilli Haat, New Delhi on April 16. Post exhibition images would be considered as a stock of Wikimedia India. Subsequently the images may used be to conduct photo exhibition across India for the same vision.

Wikimedia India Elections
The elections to Wikimedia India Chapter for year 2016 were held on 30 April along with Annual General Meeting for year 2016. Out of 22 nominations 18 made it into the final slate of candidates. Before the election, two IRC/Q&A sessions were held on April 9 and March 19 with the candidates. Members of the Wikimedia India elected Seven candidates to a two-year term which will expire in 2018. The seven elected members are:
 * Yohann Thomas
 * Sanket Oswal
 * Rahul Deshmukh
 * Viswa Prabha
 * Suyash Dwivedi
 * Santosh Shingare
 * Krishna Chaitanya Velaga

6th Annual General Meeting
The Sixth Annual General Body meeting of the members of Wikimedia Chapter, Bangalore, was held on 23 April at the Chapter’s new office located at Work Adda, No.98/1, MMR Plaza, 1st Floor, Above DCB Bank, Sarjapur Main Road, Jakkasandra, Koramangala 1st Block, Bangalore - 560034 at 2:00 PM on 30 April. Though the meeting was initially planned to be held on 23 April 2017, it was postponed 30 April in the view of administrative convenience. The meeting's agenda included the following:
 * Approval of the report of the activities of Wikimedia Chapter, Bangalore for 2015–2016
 * Consideration and approval of the audited accounts and the report of the auditors thereon for the year ended 31 March 2016
 * Consideration and approval of the results of Wikimedia Chapter Executive Committee Elections for 2016–2017
 * Draft budget for 2016–2017
 * Appointment of Auditors for 2016–2017
 * Extension of Membership validity from 1 year to 5 years

Wiki Loves Uniformed services (India)
Wiki Loves Uniformed services (India) (WLUS) is a public photo competition on Wikimedia Commons for use in the project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation. With the support from Wikimedia India Chapter, and the inspiration drawn from Wiki Loves Monuments (WLM) and Wiki Loves Food (WLF), this is the first iteration of its kind in 2017. This year, the predominant aim of the project is to increase the count of good images of various uniformed services operating in India. Apart from the primary goal, as mentioned above, the project also envisions to foster the idea of donating images to Commons and to pool in more contributors into the movement on a national scale. The contest is expected to conclude on 30 August.

Wiki Loves Earth
Wiki Loves Earth (WLE) is an annual international photographic competition held during the month of May, organised worldwide by the Wikipedia community members with the help of local Wikimedia affiliates across the globe. Participants take pictures of local natural heritage and scenic landscape in their countries. India participated in such a photography contest for the first time in 2014. The contest in India will run through June.

WMIN Induction Meet
The induction meeting of the Chapter's newly elected executive committee from elections 2016 took place at IIT Bombay on 30 June – 1 July. The induction meet has been driven by Yohann Thomas, Viswanathan Prabhakaran, and Sanket Oswal, who were at one point or other were members of the committee. The first elects Rahul Deshmukh, Suyash Dwivedi, and Krishna Chaitanya Velaga, were introduced to the various policies and working procedures in regard to the Chapter. Due to professional constraints Santosh Shingare was unable to attend the meet, but however he was available online whenever possible. The EC was congratulated and mentored by a veteran editor Col. Ashwin Baindur (retd.) on a video call, and visited by the Program Director from CIS-A2K Tanveer Haasan on the later day.

Several decisions on implementing new strategies such as reactivating SIGs, support the incubation of user groups, formation of various sub-committees to improve the members involvement in the Chapter's working, getting FCRA license from MHA etc. were taken.

May
J.M. Garg is a Wikimedian who contributes on Wikimedia Commons. He is a nature photographer largely working on Indian flora and has more than 20,000 edits on Wikimedia Commons. Thousands of his images are used in Wikimedia projects and can be seen on Wikipedia and Wikispecies. He is the owner of Efloraofindia, largest Google e-group in this field and also the largest nature related group in India devoted to creating awareness, helping in identification etc. along with discussion & documentation of Indian Flora. More than 11,000 species' pages of seed plants, alphabetically sized- Seed plants etc., ferns, fungi & others are available with details for those species which have already been discussed in effloraofindia e-group. It has the largest database on net on Indian Flora.He is also the author of 'A Photo guide to the birds of Kolkata & Common birds of India'. He has also worked on 'Wikiproject Lepidoptera' & 'WikiProject Birds' & contributing to 'Tree of Life Wikiproject' of Wikipedia.

June
Satpal Singh is a wikimedian who largely edits on Punjabi Wikimedia projects with the user name Sony dandiwal. He has started editing since July 2015 at the age of 16 and is the second youngest pubjabi wikimedian. He has more than 8,000 edit counts on punjabi wikipedia and he also holds the rights of administrator, patroller and autopatroller on the punjabi wikipedia. His main areas of interest on wikipedia are cricket in sports, history in academics and biographies as inspiration. Satpal belongs to a village Chotian in Mansa district of Punjab and edits on wikipedia through his mobile phone, having no access to a personal computer. Besides that, Satpal has made significant achievements, being ranked first on Article Improvement Edit-a-thon 2016 in April, having started Wikiproject Women and Wikiproject Cricket on punjabi wikipedia. He is also the Wikipedia Asian Month Ambassador.

Key statistics of Indic language Wikipedias

 * As of 30 April, Bengali Wikipedia reached 50,000 articles.
 * As of 2 May, Malayalam Wikipedia reached 50,000 articles.
 * As of 8 May, Tamil Wikipedia reached 100,000 articles.

Odia to International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and Roman/Latin converter (beta) is ready
A converter to convert Odia to the International Phonetic Alphabet and Roman alphabet is live at https://or.wikipedia.org/s/14jk. The converter can be used for any purpose—transliterating a piece of text for no-native speakers or some other publication, linguistic research, and beyond. Contributors include Subhashish Panigrahi, Prateek Pattanaik, Jnanaranjan Sahu, Shitikantha Dash and Manoj Sahukar.

Tamil Wikipedian T. Shrinivasan wins Tamil	Computing award
T. Shrinivasan , a Tamil Wikipedian, wins 2016 Sundara Ramaswamy award for Tamil Computing for his contributions to Free Tamil Ebooks and Indian language Wikisource projects.

Wiki Loves Butterfly Part-II
With the inspiration drawn from the good results of Wiki Loves Butterfly Part I, the global WLB team started the second iteration of the project on 1 June.

Results of Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) election certified
The results of the 2017 Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) election for FDC members and FDC Ombudsperson have been certified by the committee, Wikimedia Foundation's legal department, and the Board of Trustees. There were 1028 votes cast, with 952 valid votes being cast. Of the votes cast, 76 were thrown away as the voter voted again, and 2 votes were struck. The elected members are Michał Buczyński – User:Aegis Maelstrom, Lorenzo Losa – User:Laurentius, Liam Wyatt – User:Wittylama, Osmar Valdebenito – User:B1mbo, Katherine Bavage – User:Leela0808, and Kirill Lokshin – User:Kirill Lokshin as FDC Ombudsperson.

Results of Board of Trustees election certified
The results of the 2017 Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election for 3 vacant positions have been certified by the elections committee, the Wikimedia Foundation staff advisors to the committee, and the Board of Trustees. There were 5581 votes cast, with 5120 of those being valid. The 461-vote difference comes from recast ballots, where eligible voters recast ballots to change their votes, and struck votes, of which there were 34. (Some of the recast votes were also struck.) The elected members are María Sefidari – User:Raystorm, Dariusz Jemielniak – User:Pundit, and James Heilman – User:Doc James.