CIS-A2K/Events/Wikidata India Marathon

A2K: Access To Knowledge Programme

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Wikidata India Marathon

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Background to the Access to Knowledge Programme

The Wikimedia Foundation approved a grant to support the growth of Indian language Wikimedia communities to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) to expand their Access to Knowledge program (A2K) in India. The grant enabled CIS to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand upon Wikimedia’s Indic language free knowledge projects, including Wikipedia in Indic languages. Further, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects and wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge within India.

Wikidata India Marathon is a month long travelling event (or a set of events) across India. The primary objective of this marathon is to introduce Wikidata to various Indic wikimedia communities and show how it can be used and what benefits it has. The marathon will be led by TBA

Overview of the Program

TBA will travel to various places in India to introduce and evangelise Wikidata and explain aspects like

• searching for images by seven eight year old children across Indian languages.
• extending Wikipedia search with Wikidata.
• demonstrating how easy and effective it is to add labels in Wikidata.
• demonstrating how easy and effective it is to add statements in Wikidata.
• how it affects disambiguation.
• how it could help languages that do not already have a Wikipedia to access the world of open knowledge.
• enabling Wikidata search on every Indian language Wikipedia.

As part of this marathon TBA will present about the subject, run label-a-thons or more general Wikidata workshops and do demonstrations on some of the functionality that performs as a query. TBA will also demonstrate strategies that are effective in growing effective content using Wikidata. Discussions will be held with Indic communities across India on how Wikidata is useful on its own and how it is a step into Wikipedia editing. Efforts will also be put to build connections with communities that are interested in Open Data and Big Data.

Possible Presentations

General presentation on Wikidata

• what is it and how does it relate to Wikipedia
• interwiki links and harvesting of template info
• present data in info-boxes and allows for updates with new / improved data
• show what Wikidata looks like
• ask people to set up their Wikidata profile with a #Babel template
• present the same data in the Reasonator
• demonstrate search / demonstrate multi language use
• show how to use Reasonator in different languages.
• show the network effect of adding labels in Wikidata

Presentation for people who know semantic web and database resources

• origin of Wikidata - OmegaWiki
• it is being used by WMF projects
• does have an abstraction in its code - data is separated
• informal method of adding properties
• many links to external resources - viaf freebase ...
• future extension of other projects
• Commons
• Wiktionary
• presentation of Reasonator
• multi lingual support of Wikidata / Reasonator

Presentation for people who want language support for their language

• explain what Wikidata is
• Show what kind of information Wikidata has and that its rich information can stand on its own . This is demonstrated with the Reasonator
• particular relevance is given to Commons / Wikisource ...
• Show it for an existing WMF language like Kannada, Hindi, Telugu (does not matter which one)
• Point out the red lines and demonstrate adding a label .. show how many links it has
• Policy of the language committee... that Wikidata / Reasonator does not have many prerequisites - Just ISO 639-3 and / or Language committee nod
• demonstrate adding statements, demonstrate its effect in another language

Presentation for people interested in Media (movies - books)

• explain what Wikidata is
• Show what kind of information Wikidata has and that its rich information can stand on its own . This is demonstrated with the Reasonator
• particular relevance is given to Commons / Wikisource ...
• Show it for an existing WMF language like Kannada, Hindi, Telugu (does not matter which one)
• Point out the red lines and demonstrate adding a label .. show how many links it has
• Use Pinocchio as an example of the kind of rich data we can have
• explain about the license of Wikidata (cc-0)

Event Locations

Efforts are being put to best reach out to all the Indic wikimedia communities as part of this Marathon. The following are the possible locations to which TBA will travel as part of the marathon. The following are the suggested typical events that could be organized by the local Wikimedian anchor/s. However, the Wikimedian anchor/s are free to decide in consultation with the community how best to utilize TBA time and experience. Suggestions could be given in the Discussion page.

1. Demonstration of Wikidata with particular reference to your language or set of themes (
2. Talk (this would be ideal if majority of the audience are not Wikimedia contributors but would like to know about wikidata)
3. Label-a-thon (the majority of the audience should be Wikimedians. Venue should have lab and internet facility. See Requirements below).
4. Community Meet-ups (preferably in the evenings. TBA likes to interact with as many Wikimedians as possible.

Vijayawada - February 15 & 16, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Telugu
Activities: Wikidata Demonstration; 3-4 Label-a-thons over 2 days; Talk; Community Meet-up

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Bangalore - February 17, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Bangalore based Wikimedias, which includes Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese and Indian English language communities
Activities: Meet-up in Bangalore with Wikimedians; Talk; Demo; Label-a-thon

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Chennai - February 19, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Tamil
Activities: Wikidata Demonstration; Label-a-thon; Talk; Community Meet-up

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Trivandrum - February 20, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Tamil
Activities: Wikidata Demonstration; Label-a-thon; Talk; Community Meet-up

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Thrissur Kerala - February 21, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Malayalam
Activities: Wikidata Demonstration; Label-a-thon; Talk; Community Meet-up

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Bangalore - February 22, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Bangalore based Wikimedias, which includes Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi, Bengali, Assamese and Indian English language communities
Activities: Label-a-thon

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Mumbai - February 23, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Marathi
Activities: Demo; Label-a-thon; Talk

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Pune - February 24–25, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Marathi
Activities: Demo; Label-a-thon; Talk & Meetings

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Delhi - February 26, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Hindi
Activities: Demo and a Talk

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Kolkota - February 27, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Bengali
Activities: Demo; Label-a-thon; Talk

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Bangladesh - February 28, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Bengali
Activities: Demo; Label-a-thon; Talk

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Bhubaneswar - March 02, 2014

Status: Tentative
Primary language community: Odia
Activities: Demo; Label-a-thon

Wikimedia Anchor/s for the event

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

I am Attending

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

Interested but unsure

Sign up using " # ~~~ " if you have an account or else add "# Your Name", under the appropriate section.

FAQs

What is Wikidata?

Wikidata is a free knowledge base that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike. It is for data what Wikimedia Commons is for media files: it centralizes access to and management of structured data, such as interwiki references and statistical information. Wikidata contains data in every language supported by the MediaWiki software. You can read the introduction to learn more about Wikidata.

Why is CIS-A2K organising this marathon?

CIS-A2K believes that a project like Wikidata can be extremely beneficial for Indian langauge Wikipedias. Wikidata can support Indian language Wikipedias with more easily maintainable language links and infoboxes. Improvements or updates in one language are available in all other languages, thereby reducing the workload of the language community and increasing the quality of their Wikipedia projects.

To help language Wikipedia communities make optimum use of this brilliant project, CIS-A2K wants to invite global experts to India who can organise Wikidata Marathon across Indian cities. Global experts will aim to visit at least 10-12 cities to organise community meet ups, Wikidata demonstrations, label-a-thons, talks etc. Handful of Wikipedians from India can make it to Wikimania in a year; CIS-A2K wants to create an opportunity where field experts come to your home city and help you build your language communities.

It's entirely up to the language community how they best want to leverage this opportunity and utilise time of field experts made available to them. CIS-A2K in consultation with language communities we'll try to finalise the dates and the kind of activities they'd like to organise in their respective cities.

How can the community be involved in this marathon?

Language communities can decide what kind of activities they'd like to organise, what dates suits them the most, how would they like to market the event amongst Wikimedians and non-Wikimedians alike etc. All Wikimedia community members are invited to leave comments, requests and questions under the relevant section heads on the discussion page.

Who will sponsor this marathon?

CIS-A2K will use its international travel budget to sponsor this marathon. CIS-A2K believes that this budget can be more efficiently utilized if a global expert can be brought down to India who could travel across cities thereby reaching out to minimum of 100-150 community members; as against sponsoring one person to attend Wikimania or any other international event which relatively might have limited impact.

By saying this, CIS-A2K does not mean to undermine the importance of Wikimania or other international events. CIS-A2K sees this as an opportunity to bring global expertise to India that could result in high level outreach and awareness program that too at a lower cost.

How can non-Wikimedians get involved?

The data in Wikidata is entered and maintained by Wikidata editors, who decide on the rules of content creation and management in Wikidata. Wiki data can be introduced to anyone who likes to collect data in a structured form. Bots do also enter data in Wikidata.

What will be the impact or outcome of this marathon?

• Improve quality of language Wikipedia projects - Wikidata will make it possible to collect and curate data, to be used within all language Wikipedia projects. One example: Wikidata contains the birth date of Mahatma Gandhi or population of Mumbai. This will only need to be maintained in one place, but can then be used in all language Wikipedias.
• Start new projects - Once the Indian community understands the usage and effectiveness of Wikidata they could start any multilingual project of common interest. Some of these that have already been discussed are Lilavati's daughters, Indian calendars, Members of the Indian Parliament etc.
• Decrease maintenance burden and help smaller Wikipedias - Decreased maintenance will come in at least two forms: first, data that is reused in multiple articles will need to be maintained in only one place; second, automatic list creation will remove the need to create and update lists by hand. We also hope Wikidata will also help smaller Wikipedias by starting up some types of articles.

Requirements for Label-a-thons

• Every participant has a Wikimedia account. Everybody should have language labels #babel info.
• Lab with Internet for about 40 participants
• Projection facility
• Typing hand-out is helpful (transliteration layout or any other input tool in respective Indic languages)
• Local language Wikimedian assistants no. 1-2