Wikipedia office in India | Wikimedia to establish its office in Banglore ,India

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wikipedia office in india | wikimedia to establish its office in banglore ,india

Mumbai: with a view to furthering the growth of content in indian languages, the wikimedia foundation (wmf) will setup an office in the country within six months. The office will assist the existent bangalore-based india chapter of the free online resource web site.

“we are discussing an office of three or four persons. It’s not a huge investment. One of the gains of an office in india is it would facilitate communication with local communities,” wikipedia co-founder jimmy wales said on sunday.

Much of the content generation and “excitement” depended on “energised local communities,” he said in a public talk here on ‘wikipedia in india: the future. ‘ the foundation was viewing top 10 indian languages having mature content by 2015.

So far hindi had generated 57,823 articles, telugu 45,963, marathi 31,400, tamil 25,263, gujarati 17,142 and malayalam 14,830. It was this furthering scenario, coupled with other ongoing projects on regional language, that made wikipedia turn to india, mr. Wales said.

“india is a perfect case because we have existent communities and a good deal of persons visiting the web site. ”

While 81 per cent of the edits obtained by wikipedia from india were in english, those from local languages were increasing.

Offline access

The wmf purposed at becoming in the next five years 100 million unique visitants a month to the web site. This would depend on internet access in india. Mr. Wales in addition stressed “offline access” to the web site, specially in schools. The wmf purposed at providing access to wikipedia and wikitionary in 75 per cent of the schools in the next five years.

To a question on accessibility of content to schoolchildren, mr. Wales said it was essential to “adjust the level of every entry to the topic and its likely readers” in terms of language and the info provided. “complexity and depth of the material must depend on the context. ”

Credibility concern

Addressing a concern over wikipedia’s credibility, he said: “we have a wealthy community and the articles are monitored. From time to time there are mistakes. Whether or not roots are not noted, [it's probably not good]. I think persons had better be heedful with regards to using wikipedia. It’s a good starting point, but not a good ending point. ”

Bishakha dutta, from the wmf, said the idea behind wikipedia’s efforts in india was “to grow the languages in quality and amount. ”

Arun ramarathnam, president of wikipedia’s india chapter, underlined the demand for government involvement. He said the tamil nadu government, for the duration of the recent earth tamil group discussion in coimbatore, had given prizes to contributors of tamil articles to wikipedia. The kerala government had come up with an offline series. He urged governments to release content in the public domain name.

The wmf was more than willing to provide logistics, technical and financial assist towards initiatives of developing communities of contributors to the language internet sites.

Source: hindu