WikiPatrika:WikiPatrika/2011-06-06/In the news


 *  DNA / Dainik Bhaskar : "Become Wikipedia's campus  ambassador" - May  29, 2011 :   DNA interviewes Hisham Mundol, Wikimedia Foundation India Programs  on  Wikipedia Campus Ambassador pilot programme started in Pune, first  of a  kind in India. He explains, "We understand that information about  India  and contributed by people from India are sorely missing from  Wikipedia,  and we want to change that. The programme is our way of  piloting ways  to change this."
 *  MyBangalore.com : "Wikipedia aims for World  Heritage Site status"  -  May 28 2011 :   MyBangalore.com reports that Wikipedia is applying to UNESCO to earn a   spot on one of the world heritage lists and would be the outfit's  first  digital entity.
 *  The Times of India : "Wiki league" - May  25, 2011 : TOI reports   fourth Wikimeetup in Hyderabad. Wikipedian Srikanth Lakshmanan  says,  “I started by editing a page on my college and went on to write  50  articles on Indian roads. If you spare time to write accurate info  about  something you like, it becomes a point of reference for the  world.”
 * The Indian Express : "2,155 images uploaded in  record 23 days"  - May  10, 2011 : The Indian Express documents  Malayalam WikiProject   ‘Malayalam Loves Wikimedia’ event organised as  part of improving the  database as well as to attract more Malayalam  speaking users to the  Wikimedia movement is a big hit. As many as 2,155  copyright-free  licensed images have been contributed to Wikimedia  Commons within a  short period of 23 days.
 * The Pune Mirror : "Campus  Ambassadors" pilot in India - April 19, 2011 : In The Pune  Mirror    ("Now, you can be a Wikipedia ambassador!"),Hisham Mundol, Wikimedia   India Programs, explained that "Pune is India’s education capital and   the city has more than two lakh [200,000] students, ... which is why   Wikipedia will be starting the programme from here." (The article's   positive tone was contrasted by an article in the same paper a few days   later that used Wikipedia as an example for the downsides of   "crowdsourcing" to ask   "Will Google Maps lead people astray, the Wikipedia way?".)
 * The Hindu : "Now, copyright-free maps of States, districts,  panchayats" - April 15, 2011 : An   article in The Hindu reported about successes of the "Malayalam   loves Wikimedia" project which aimed to enrich the Malayalam Wikipedia   with free photos and maps.
 * The Hindu : "Wikimedia Commons set  to reach a milestone"  - April 14, 2011 : The Hindu   reports that Wikimedia Commons, the multilingual free-content media   repository, is poised to reach a of 10 million uploaded files  milestone,  in which Indian contributors have played a role.
 * The Hindu : Attempts on to revive Odia Wikipedia - April 09, 2011  : The  newspaper   reports that some people who edit the Odia Wikipedia say that getting   a Wikipedia in the language is an important tool to keep the language   alive.The attempt is on to revive Odia Wikipedia (or.wikipedia.org),  one  of the earliest Indian language Wikipedias to be created. This  article  was featured on the back cover page, which meant maximum  readership.


 * The New Indian Express: "Odia Wiki caught in a time warp" - April 04, 2011: The New Indian Express  reports that Wikimedia  Foundation’s Indian chapter started Odia  Wiki in 2002 but it has just 10  contributors. Odia Wiki, one of the  first in regional languages in  India, started with a repository of just  200 articles but the number has  not changed much in the last nine  years. In order to take the Wikipedia project forward, Odia Wiki  activists are  now looking for support and explore initiatives in the  State. To get  more contributors to Odia Wiki, they are holding  workshops and meetings  in many districts. This article was featured in  the state special page of New Indian Express.


 * India Joins Top Donors Club: The Economic Times (Mar 18, 2011) and  The Hindustan Times (March 20, 2011) report that India has become  the sixth largest donor to the Wikimedia Foundation in 2010–2011.  $193,657 was given to the Wikimedia Foundation by just under 11,000  Indians. Indians donated just under 2% of what the US donated, and made  up just over 1% of global donations to the Wikimedia Foundation. The 5  countries donating more than India were the US, Canada, Japan, Spain and  the UK, with the US giving over  $10m.The Hindu (March 19, 2011) reported that donations in India leapt  from the 16th position, contributing $52,156 from 2956 donors in  2009–2010. These amounts do not include donations made by the country  chapters of Wikimedia, which also help in local fund-raising.
 * The  Hindu : " An empire without kings " - February 12, 2011: A comment   in The Hindu   ("An empire   without kings") praised Wikipedia as "today's de facto standard for   fast and fairly reliable information on the Internet", and compared it   to the fictional supercomputer Multivac that answers mankind's questions   in Isaac Asimov's science fiction stories.
 * Bangalore Mirror :  Bangalore’s the place for Wiki - January 23, 2011: The   Bangalore Mirror interviewed English Wikipedia administrator   Tinucherian ; including a look back at 2010, which   Tinucherian said "was quite a year for Wikimedia in India".
 *   NDTV : How Wikipedia wooed and won the world - January 12, 2011 -   Indian news channel   NDTV explained using a short summary of its early history and quotes   from German sociologist Christian Stegbauer.