Reports/Jan-Mar 2017

Final draft of Conflict of Interest policy published
On 9 January, Wikimedia India Chapter has published its final draft of Conflict of Interest policy and had been opened for the community to review. The CoI policy is intended to permit the Chapter and its EC members, officers, and executives to identify, evaluate, and address any real, potential, or apparent conflicts of interest that might, in fact or in appearance, call into question their duty of undivided loyalty to the Chapter. The different cases of conflicts such as financial conflicts, political situations, voting, self-interested funding, contracting, or hiring, improper influence, misuse of information or property, accepting undue benefits etc. have been included in the policy. Apart from these, procedure for disclosure, actions to be taken for non-disclosure, examples of CoI cases have been included. The policy is expected to be updated as the organization evolves.

Annual General Meeting for 2015
On 29 January, the Fifth Annual General Body meeting of the members of Wikimedia Chapter, Bangalore, had been held at the Chapter’s office located at Koramangala, Bangalore. At the meeting, chapter’s work during the fiscal year of 2014–2015 which includes the approval of the report of the activities of Wikimedia India Chapter, consideration and approval of the audited accounts, consideration and approval of the results of the Executive committee elections conducted in November 2015, were discussed. Draft budget (2015–2016) and appointment of auditors for 2015–2016 took place. Discussion to extend the membership validity from 1 year to 5 years has been also considered during the meeting.

Election Notice for Wikimedia Chapter Executive Committee Elections-2016
The Election Committee appointed by Wikimedia Chapter Executive Committee (EC) for notifying and conducting the Election to Wikimedia Chapter EC election, announced the election to the Wikimedia Chapter EC for the two year term. It was notified that the approved Members who are on the membership roll as of 23 January 2017 are eligible to participate in the Election and contest the Election. The election was scheduled to take place 23 April 2017, but was later postponed to 30 April, in respect of convenience.

First IRC for Wikimedia Chapter Executive Committee Elections-2016
First IRC for Wikimedia Chapter Executive Committee Elections-2016 was conducted on 19 March between 9:00 pm and 10:30 pm. The contestants and members interacted with the Election Committee during the IRC. The chat can be seen here.

Wiki Loves Uniformed services (India) announced
On 27 March, Wiki Loves Uniformed services (India) (WLUS) a public photo competition on Wikimedia Commons for use on Wikipedia and other project websites of the Wikimedia Foundation was announced. 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. For this year, the predominant aim of the project is the improve the quality of images of different uniformed services operating from India. The competition will run from 15 May 2017 to 13 July 2017.

January
Krishna Chaitanya Velaga of Andhra Pradesh is a 19 year old English Wikimedian editing since December 2014. Being an NCC cadet and a defence aspirant, Chaitanya is predominantly interested in military affairs and started editing when he found a factual error in an article and referred to Youtube on how to fix it. Described by fellow Wikimedian and military editor Srikar Kashyap as the leading defence article writer from India, as of January 2017, Chaitanya has 4 Featured and A-class lists (FLs) and five Good Articles (GAs). His major works include Sam Manekshaw, K.M Cariappa and INS Vikrant. Chaitanya is the founder of the Indian military history work group and has won the coveted Military History Newcomer of the Year title for 2016. In addition, Chaitanya is a keen vandalism fighter and regularly reviews Good Article (GA) nominations.

February
Kak Cenjary Ataullah Khan also known as Dr Cenjary has been one of the most active contributors on Urdu Wikipedia. Within two years, he rose to be the fourth most active Urdu Wikipedian. A resident of Kozhikode and coming from the education field with 19 years experience under his belt, he got associated with Wikipedia just because he was curious. Dr Cenjury used to regularly observe that Wikipedia used to always come at the top of any search list on Google. After finding out, about how Wikipedia works, he took on the job of contributing to Wikipedia by editing in Urdu. Dr Cenjury frankly says that he would prefer quality over quantity. He aims to improve all articles in Urdu Wikipedia and make them as informative as possible. He says that this is one way he can return something back to the Society and be part of a movement which is beyond religion, region, border and boundaries.

March
User:SM7, the silent anonymous poster boy for Bhojpuri and Hindi Wikipedia has been working since 2011 with over 59,000 global edits without any recognition. He would have continued to be an unsung hero with his awesome work for the flourishment of Wikipedia for no one knows how long, if we would not have discovered his work recently. He is a sysop on Hindi and Bhojpuri Wikipedia where he is continuously working to bring new contributors and quality contents. User:SM7 is a teacher by profession based somewhere in Uttar Pradesh. Writing on region and geographical features are one of the favourite topics of User:SM7. User:SM7 came to know about Wikipedia while searching something on Google, it was then he noticed that there is a link to Bhojpuri Wikipedia on the sidebar of the article page he was looking at on English Wikipedia. Like others, he was excited when he found Wikipedia on his native language and started contributing to it by creating & improving articles. Although he invests a lot of time for the growth of Wikipedia, he always prefers to stay anonymous, he says, "I wanted to be judged only by my contributions on wiki and the way I take part in discussions etc. NOT by information based on what I do in real life, or where I live, or what my educational qualifications are."

Ravishankar Ayyakkannu appointed as Manager, Strategic Partnerships - Asia
In January, Ravishankar Ayyakkannu, the former Program Director of Wikimedia India Chapter, has joined the Global Reach team as a Partnerships Manager Contractor for Asia for the Wikimedia Foundation. Ravi played a key role in organizing WikiConference India 20116 and in Government of Tamil Nadu's issuing an order releasing all its content in CC-BY-SA license. The Global Reach team will focus on growing Wikimedia projects along themes of awareness, affordability and offline solutions in the Indian region. Working closely with Smriti Gupta who leads our work in the region, Ravi will strive to build strategic partnerships with government, non-profit, educational and private institutions to achieve this goal.

Workshop held for biologists/photographers for uploading photos to Commons
On 30 January, the Wikiproject on Nature and Conservation in India from Wikimedia Commons, conducted a workshop or biologists/nature photographers for identifying their photos suitable for wider sharing through Wikimedia Commons. The event was conducted from 3 pm to 5 pm in North Bangalore.

National Science Month Edit-a-thon
In respect of National Science Day, celebrated on February 28 every to mark the discovery of the Raman effect by Sir C. V. Raman, a month-long edit-a-thon was conducted throughout various Indic language Wikimedia projects. As a part of this event, Kannada and Tulu Wikimedia communities have also organized offline edit-a-thons events which received considerable response.

First anniversary of Bhubaneswar WikiTungi
On 9 February, Wikipedians in Bhubaneswar celebrated the first anniversary of Bhubaneswar WikiTungi. WikiTungi is a city based Wikipedia community formed to help the Wikipedians in the city to meet, share and learn. The term Tungi was coined from an ancient Odia culture of Bhagabata Tungi. During the first anniversary meeting of the Bhubaneswar WikiTungi, the community members came up with few ideas to implement it as a best practice in the Wikipedia movement.

Marathi Bhasha Din celebrated
As every year, the Marathi Bhasha Din was celebrated on 27 February. This year also it was celebrated across Maharashtra and also within the Marathi community across the world. Maharashtra Government took a great initiative this year to promote Marathi Wikipedia. Government published many advertisements featuring various celebrities who were asking to edit Marathi Wikipedia on the occasion of "Marathi Bhasha Din" This is a major boost for raising awareness of Marathi Wikipedia among the "Aam Janata". Marathi Wikipedia community is expecting a considerable contribution to mr WP because of the Government support.

New members appointed to the Affiliations Committee
Camelia Boban (User:Camelia.boban), Kirill Lokshin (User:Kirill Lokshin) (re-elected) and Satdeep Gill (User:Satdeep Gill) were appointed to the Affiliations Committee in January for a two year term of 2017–2019.

Indic WikiSource update
After the implementation of the Google OCR script to all the Indic Wikisource projects, there is an accelerated increase in the statitics. The Wikisource community has published the following updates for Indic Wikisource.
 * January
 * February

New members in CIS-A2K
CIS-A2K (Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge), which closely associated with Wikimedia India in promoting the movement, is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. The team of CIS-A2K was expanded with the induction of two new members namely, Manasa Rao and Subodh Kulkarni. Manasa has been appointed as Program Officer in charge of communication. Subodh, a Marathi Wikimedia, has been appointed as Marathi Wikipedia Community Advocate.

Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2017
Scholarship applications for Wikimania 2017 which is being held in Montréal, Canada on August 9–13, 2017, have been accepted from 6 January and the process was concluded on 20 February. After two phases of scrutiny the final list of recipients is to be announced in May 2017.

Hardware donation program announced
In March, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a small new program called the Hardware Donation Program. In a word, it is a program designed to donate depreciated (but fully working) hardware from the WMF office to community members who would put it to good use. It's said that 20 laptops are ready to be donated. Applicant(s) with a good record of contributions to Wikimedia projects of no less than 1 year and no less than 1000 contributions across all projects may apply.

Sambad's 100 Women edit-a-thon
Inspired by BBC's 100 Women Edit-a-thon, the Odia Wikipedia community organized an "100 Women Editathon" in collaboration with the Sambad-newspaper. Sambad is one of the largest circulated newspaper in Odisha and its Eastern Media Ltd. is a popular media house. The event was organized in Sambad Bhavan on 18 and 19 March.

Recognition of User Groups
In March, the Affiliations Committee has recognized two user groups as Wikimedia User Groups.

West Bengal Wikimedians User Group
The group aims to build a strong and diverse volunteer community base throughout West Bengal by increasing interaction among community members, encouraging them to develop content in different Wikimedia projects and organizing various online and offline activities.

Karavali Wikimedians User Group
The group is dedicated to working on the Wikimedia projects in the Indian languages used in coastal Karnataka and the northern part of Kerala State in India, including the Tulu, Kannada, and Konkani language Wikipedias.

Picture of the Year 2016
Round 1 of Picture of the Year 2016 competition has been open through the month of March and was concluded on 30 March. Hundreds of images that have been rated Featured Pictures by the international Wikimedia Commons community were considered as entries. The first round category winners and the top ten overall made it to the final.