Journalism of Courage
The WikiConference India 2011 to be held between from November 18 in Mumbai this year will see Wikipedia contributors across the nation get together to discuss,enhance and propagate the idea of the online encyclopedia,generated wholly by users. The three-day event will see a part of the conference being dedicated to Marathi Wikipedia,where the issues faced by the Wikipedia will be highlighted.
Sudhanwa Jogalekar,Wikipedian and an information security consultant said,We are planning to present a special track on Marathi Wikipedia. Apart from this,we will discuss the current status and the technical problems that we are facing. Talks are also going to be held on training people to edit in Marathi.
The Marathi Wikipedia project which had begun in May 2003,has completed eight years now. It has around 35,000 articles and stands at number three with respect to the number of articles contributed in regional wikis in India.
Mandar Kulkarni,who has been actively contributing to the movement,said,We want to use this platform to spread the word around about the Marathi Wikipedia. At the conference,we will have brainstorming sessions to improve the content. There is also a issue of Devnagiri font. There are several people who are not conversant with using Devnagiri on the computer. They have knowledge of the language and can be effective contributors. We will discuss how we can make it easier for them.
The movement will receive a boost as the conference will provide a platform for volunteers to interact with other Wikipedians ranging from English volunteers to other language users.
