Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Outreach/Newsletter/November 2010

After a missed issue, the WP:IND newsletter is back on track to being a regular bimonthly feature. The Indian WikiProject has seen plenty of online and off-line action, both in English as well as other Indian languages, and we now have a bigger, better format that intends to feature content and news from the English as well as other Indian language Wikipedias.

Reaching out to Indians has been the theme of the Indian Wikiproject over the past couple of months, aiming to involve a greater number of Indians in editing both the English and Indian language Wikipedias. To this end, efforts to set up the Indian chapter of Wikimedia have moved into their final stages, and registration of the society is currently pending. An effort is underway to push for "WikiMarathons" at meetups, where attendees will be encouraged to edit the English and/or Indian language Wikipedias. This is intended to popularise Wikipedia editing among the general public. In addition, a bot to post DYK's from the Indian Wikiproject to Twitter was created and launched by User:Logicwiki.

Regrettably, the number of Featured Articles has dropped from 63 in June to 58 at the end of October 2010. Several FAs came up for review and were delisted, while Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles and Fundamental Duties of India was saved. Meanwhile, Chalukya Dynasty appeared on the main page on July 9, 2010. Hearteningly, the number of Good Articles increased from 130 to 136 during the same period, while the number of Featured Lists remained constant at 16.

The source code for the Article Alert Bot is now available and the bot itself is expected to be up and running very shortly. This means that article alerts for the Indian Wikiproject will again be available, enabling editors to easily keep track of developments in respect of reviews, nominations, deletions etc.

The date change vandal mentioned briefly in the previous issue made a reappearance when the range block on his IP range expired in September. Consequently the block was extended till September 2011.

In October there was a heated discussion in the India project noticeboard regarding the copyright status of the Indian party symbols. The discussion was triggered by the deletion of Wiki San Roze's party symbol images by Hammersoft as copyright violations. No resolution was reached, partly because of our inability to explain to Hammersoft how election symbols in India differ from party logos. Comments are requested from anyone with a background in Indian copyright law to clarify this issue.

• The Bengali Wikisource, which contains the literary works of many prominent writers of Bengali language including Rabindranath Tagore, has crossed the 5,000 pages milestone. According to List of Wikisource page, Bengali Wikisource is now at rank 21 among 56 Wikisource based on number of content pages.

• The uploading of Tamil technical words donated by Tamil Virtual University to the Tamil Wiktionary was completed in October. The words were donated by the Government of Tamil Nadu due to lobbying efforts by Tamil Wikipedians during the runup to the World Classical Tamil Conference 2010 (WCTC) in June. Nearly 70,000 words were uploaded increasing the word count in Tamil Wiktionary from 1,20,000+ to 1,90,000+. This has brought Tamil to the 10th place (from 17) in the list of largest wiktionaries and has earned it a place in the Wiktionary front page logo. In addition, Tamil Wikipedians set up a stall at the WCTC and introduced Tamil Wiki projects to people from all walks of life.

• The Hindi Wikipedia and its sister wiki projects migrated to the new vector interface on September 1, 2010. In addition, Hindi is the first (and so far the only) Indian language to be incorporated into the WikiBhasha translation and contribution toolkit developed by Microsoft Research.

• Malayalam wikimedian Santhosh Thottingal has developed a software (Wiki2CD) for the creation of the , which was launched in 2010. In addition, Santosh, along with fellow Malayalam wikimedian Shiju Alex coordinated a panel discussion at Wikimania 2010 on creation of offline Wiki content.

Mumbai and Delhi held their first meetups in September, where Wikimedia Board members Barry Newstead and Bishakha Datta met up with Wikipedians and other interested members of the public in these cities. A month later, Hyderabad also held its first meetup.

Wikipedians in Bangalore continued their tradition of meeting up regularly at the Centre for Internet and Society, with the nineteenth meetup in September featuring Barry and Bishaka as attendees, and marking the release of the community newsletter. Along with Delhi and Mumbai, Bangalore is reported to be one of the three cities in contention for the Indian office of the Wikipedia Foundation.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had an interaction with Wikipedians followed by a presentation to members of the public at the third Wikipedia meetup in Mumbai on October 31, 2010.

The first Wikimarathon, where Wikipedians and members of the public were encouraged to contribute to Wikimedia projects onsite, was held simultaneously at the meetups in Bangalore and Chennai on November 14, 2010. Wikipedians in Delhi also held a meetup the same day.

The Malayalam Wikipedia held several academies in different parts of Kerala over the past few months.

Wikimedia Foundation board member Bishakha Datta and Indian Wikipedian Srinivas Gunta co-authored a panel presentation at Wikimania 2010 on the Wikimedia Asia Project.

• Please add Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics to your watchlist in order to stay updated with the latest discussions regarding various aspects of the project.

• Two current featured articles, 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings and Economy of India have been nominated for reviews here and here respectively. Contribute and help prevent these articles from being delisted!

• This interesting discussion on the quality of editing in India-related articles has been underway for on the noticeboard a few days. Feel free to join in and express your opinion.

• A series of discussions are underway on the neutrality of the Famine in India article. Please comment and help resolve the disputes.

• Join the Wikimedia India mailing list and the IRC channel for regular updates and discussions. Links to language-specific forums are available here.

If you've just joined, add your name to the Members section of Wikipedia:WikiProject India. You'll get a mention in the next issue of the Newsletter and get it delivered as desired. Also, please include your own promotions and awards in future issues. Don't be shy!

Lastly, this is your newsletter and you can be involved in the creation of the next issue. Any and all contributions are welcome. Simply let yourself be known to any of the undersigned, or just start editing!

This newsletter incorporates content from the WikiMedia India Community Newsletter, September 2010.