Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Press] : The Hindu : Malayalam Wiki activists, online users make the language lively: Ekbal
Great story indeed. In fact Shiju and Ramesh have showed the WikiSource Offline CD. Great job Santhosh, Junaid, Shiju and all other Malayalam Wikipedians. On 13 June 2011 11:59, CherianTinu Abraham tinucher...@gmail.com wrote: *The Hindu : Malayalam Wiki activists, online users make the language lively: Ekbal* http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/kerala/article2096471.ece *Public health activist and the former Kerala University Vice-Chancellor B. Ekbal has said that Malayalam Wiki activists and online Malayalam writers are rendering yeomen service to the Malayalam language by making it lively. * * * *Inaugurating the fourth annual meeting of Malayalam Wikimedia activists at the District Library Council Hall here on Saturday, Dr. Ekbal said though many mainstream Malayalam writers treated online Malayalam as no alternative to written Malayalam, the online writers and Wikipedia activists were in fact re-inventing the beauty of the language.* * * *These activists were also developing fonts for Malayalam scripts, including the old ones, he said, adding that these software were developed by developers who had not studied Malayalam in their schools. It was wrong to presume that the online Malayalam users and Wikipedia activists had no passion for their mother tongue.* * * *Dr. Ekbal said there was a society of young online Malayalam users and Wikipedia activists who were voluntarily developing Malayalam fonts and software. Wikipedia activists involved in sharing knowledge and information were participating in a great revolution, he added.* * * *The day-long session was attended by Malayalam Wiki contributors and administrators.* * * *Wikipedia Foundation representatives Tory Read, Bisakha Dutta, and Hisham Mundol were among those who participated in the session organised in collaboration with the Kannur District Library Council and the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad.* * * *The organisers of the event said the representatives of the Wikipedia Foundation interacted with the Malayalam Wikipedia activists as part of their initiative to see the activities in the Malayalam Wikipedia.* * * *The foundation representatives underlined the need for more Wikipedia activists in a country like India to ensure more information and knowledge to a larger number of people.* * * *The organisers said the Malayalam Wikipedia had over 18,000 articles on different disciplines. A compact disc containing contents from the Malayalam Wikipedia and digital archives of works of Kumaranasan, Sree Narayana Guru, Kunjan Nambiar as well as the Communist Manifesto, the Bible, and the Koran, among others, were released at the function.* * * *The session also included presentation on ‘Narayam' software developed by Junaid. The software was presented as the built-in Malayalam typing solution integrated to Wikis. Santhosh Kottungal made a presentation on Web fonts.* Regards Tinu Cherian http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news#June_2011 ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- * ସୁଭପାSubhashishPanigrahi ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ ___ Wikipedia Odia (Oriya) mailing list wikipedia...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-or facebook.com/OdiaWiki Tweet @OdiaWiki * ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Foundation-l] Announcement: Selected Books from Malayalam Wikisource on CD released
Hi, On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 10:31 PM, Jyothis E jyothi...@gmail.com wrote: Dear fellow Wikimedians, With great pleasure, Malayalam Wikimedia Community announced its 2011 CD project Selected Books from Malayalam Wikisource on CD - 1.0 at the 4th annual Wiki Meetup in Kannur, Kerala. --cut-- Congratulations! I am happy at the level of engagement in Malayalam community, which contributes to these kind of firsts in off-line access year after year. Best wishes Arjun ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-IN-PUN] [Wikimedia-in-mum] Community-Chapter Relations
Dear Arjuna, It is so good to get your whole-hearted support and clarifications :) . We support the chapter in every way and are glad that the chapter is fully supporting the community. The clarifications therein have put to rest the concerns of the community. These, imho, have arisen from a lack of communication and we request that such a situation should not rise again and frank and fair communication be resorted to by all parties concerned. We look forward to your mature guidance to the OC and active and useful participation from Gautam Arun in the committee. With the chapter's support, I'm sure the event will be a great success. Further, with the full support of the chapter, the community's accomplishments will be such that national chapter India can raise their heads high in the annual chapter meetup next year and in the years to come. Let's go forth and organise :-) ! Warm regards, Ashwin Baindur -- On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 9:46 AM, Arjuna Rao Chavala arjunar...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi Wikimedians We wholeheartedly supported the Mumbai-Pune bid for organising the conference. It has received widespread community support from Wikipedians across the country on the mailing list. We also take note of the fact that there is no visible active intent to make a bid to host the event from other cities. The previous note from Executive Committee (EC) clearly indicates the intent and commitment to run an annual event, year on year, with the support of other stakeholders in the movement. To that end we request that the organising team of this year's event keep this an important objective. EC had previously made a proposal for such an event many in early 2011 but it was then deferred to September due to other procedural hurdles in getting all aspects of a formal entity up and running - A bank account being a prerequisite to execute the plan. EC regrets the communication gaps and discomfort caused in some quarters due to misunderstandings of intent which our earlier email clearly and directly addresses. The Wikimedia movement is community driven and we reiterate that involving the community is and will be a key priority for your Chapter and Executive Committee. We request everyone's support for the Mumbai-Pune efforts to organise the 2011 WikiConference. Please consider this note a full and complete support of the India Chapter for the event. We thank the Mumbai and Pune Wikimedians again for the passion and leadership in working towards organising the first edition of this event. We will engage and work with the Mumbai team and other Wikipedians on the specific aspects of the frame work. As indicated in the earlier email, it was meant to be a draft seeking comments from other stakeholders. There were a few other aspects that were highlighted to which we would like to provide the following: *Feedback #1: Treat us like equals and stakeholders. Amongst us, chapter will then be first among equals.* The Chapter is only a part of the Community and should be reflective of it. If the impression was otherwise, we apologise and reiterate our commitment to an equitable relationship with the Community. That said, please do understand that your Chapter has very clearly said that we will organise an event even in instances where there are no city bids - this is a fairly large undertaking for the Chapter and the Executive Committee as well. *Feedback #2: The second request is always ask our opinion before issuing policy, especially for a thing like WikiConference which has not been conducted before.* The framework was intended for discussion and for feedback - it isn't final and will not be final till there has been discussion and feedback on it. If the language indicated otherwise, we sincerely regret it. *Feedback #3: Lastly, this present framework will not do. We need a framework which gives autonomy to the Organising Committee to successfully pull off an event of this scale and nature. While organising this Wikiconference, the community is willing to develop a sensible, practical framework which can be debated and finalised after the event is over. In this manner best practices and lessons learnt will be incorporated.* We understand this. The idea behind the framework is to give us a road-map of how to prepare, execute and wrap up an event of this magnitude - given that this year will be the first, we are open to working together on such a framework and to better it as it goes along with the host communities. However, we must all agree that a framework is important to ensure that the annual event is sustainable and successful. The exact nature of the framework is something we can jointly define and we must all agree that at the end of the event, that we must all jointly draft this framework that can be reused for future events and years as a priority. Gautam K John and Arun Ramarathnam
[Wikimediaindia-l] Event Organising Committee
Dear All, *Cross posted on India/Mumbai/Pune Mailing lists to reach everyone. Recipients from other cities are requested to forward this email to their respective city list as well.* Welcome to Mumbai for the First Annual WikiConference India scheduled to take place 18-19-20 November 2011 and is co-hosted by Mumbai and Pune Communities along with Wikimedia Chapter (India). The first Organising Committee meeting shall take place this Saturday, 18 June 2011 in Mumbai. The first ever GLAM event event in Asia which will be hosted by Mumbai will take place at National College in Bandra from 5pm-8pm the same day. The Event Organising Committee (OC) consists of (Random Order): 1. Bishakha Dutta (Wikimedia Foundation Trustee) 2. Hisham Mundol (Consultant, India Programs) 3. Achal Prabhala (Member, Global Advisory Board) 4. Gautam K. John (Secretary, Wikimedia Chapter (India)) 5. Arun Ramarathnam (Member, Wikimedia Chapter (India) Executive Committee - Former President) 6. Salman Haroon (Delhi) 7. Jayanth Nath (Kolkata) 8. Ashwin Baindur (Pune) 9. Sudhanwa Joglekar (Pune) 10. Srikeit Tadepalli (Pune) 11. Mandar Kulkarni (Pune) 12. Kundan Amitabh (Mumbai) 13. Moksh Juneja (Mumbai) 14. Prof. Nagarjuna (Mumbai) 15. Vickram Crishna (Mumbai) 16. Pradeep Mohandas (Mumbai) 17. Pranav Curumsey (Mumbai) 18. Tinu Cherian Abaraham (Bangalore) 19. Shiju Alex (Bangalore) Wikimedia Chapter (India) President, Arjuna Rao Chavala has kindly agreed to support the event as an Advisor. He is invited to attend all OC meetings as Advisor. Once again, thanking the entire Indian Community for all their support and requesting continued support during the planning and execution of this event. If anyone has any suggestions, do write to any of the above or on this mailing list. Kind Regards, User:AroundTheGlobe ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Global Fund raising Support to Indian Currency
Aww, bureaucracy! I think 80G is nice to have, but shouldnt stop us. Also we are not probably looking at large scale(We would love if they come), but typically my equivalents to 5 10 20 dollors would 250 500 1000 INR for which most would not take trouble of getting receipts and eventually getting the benefit(Atleast the folks who do online donations) since the tax benefit would be negligible. So my next question is without which are we eligible to collect donations online, would just like to know the bureaucracy around it? I now know the chapter can receive donations through NEFT[1].If we are good to go then the next thing to work out would be a payment gateway / payments partner helping us in giving options to various bank netbanking / credit/debit cards, ofcourse a decent API. The more the merrier. Also if we could get some sponsorship/deal from them in terms of the cut they take for transaction cost. People who have experience with online payment solutions can add their inputs. [1] http://wiki.wikimedia.in/images/9/92/Wikimedia_Donation_Form.pdf Regards Srikanth.L http://srik.me On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 22:21, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: Hey Srikanth: Timely reminder - but as always, bureaucracy is a stumbling block. 80G registration takes a long time - we can only apply around 6 months after registration and so this is going to take a while longer. =( Thank you. Best, Gautam http://social.prathambooks.org/ On 13 June 2011 21:28, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I am writing this mail to ask Chapter folks / Wikimedians experienced in Global Fundraising as to get some information on our preparedness to support INR currency in the Global Fundraising initiative which would be up later this year. I am under impression, Chapter is one of the pre-requisite. Now that we have a Chapter and that it has a bank account, I would like to know what else would it take to support INR this year. I would appreciate if Chapter takes this up as a key project(I dont see this listed currently) and helps in this since it is largely in legal / administration thing. I hope the community would always do its part, be it translating the banners, things which can be done by individual contributors. * Providing support to donations in INR is 1st priority * Optionally providing tax rebate under donations, would attract more donors. Regards Srikanth.L ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Global Fund raising Support to Indian Currency
And http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011/Chapter_Fundraising_Agreement also needs to be looked at in detail. Regards Srikanth.L On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 22:21, Gautam John gau...@prathambooks.org wrote: Hey Srikanth: Timely reminder - but as always, bureaucracy is a stumbling block. 80G registration takes a long time - we can only apply around 6 months after registration and so this is going to take a while longer. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
