CIS-A2K/Reports/CIS-A2K Quarterly Report 2/Konkani

Overview

During this quarter, CIS-A2K was able to build closer ties with Dalgado Konknni Akademy and Nirmala Institute of Education to forward the work done in Roman and Devanagari script. In addition to this, CIS-A2K spoke with Konkani Wikipedians, Konkani linguists, professors from Konkani Department at Goa University, cultural and Sociology experts to propose a solution for Konkani Wikipedia that faces a problem of usage of multiple scripts. To a great extent we have got consensus from different field experts that we should strive to create separate Wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active. CIS-A2K also organised translation sprint to help translate Media Wiki interface messages. We achieved translating 79% of these messages in Konkani Devanagari while all 100% messages have already been translated in Roman script.

Key Highlights

Translated Media Wiki messages - CIS-A2K organised translation sprint to help translate Media Wiki interface messages. Students and faculty from Konkani Department Goa University; and Konkani linguists took part in the sprint. We achieved translating 79% of system messages in Konkani Devanagari.
Initiated & Completed 30% of Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project - Goa University in collaboration with the CIS-A2K is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. 37 participants are enrolled in this project who are working to digitize the encyclopedia in a time bound manner. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized. The program started on 19th October and in just about 2 months 30% of the encyclopedia had already been digitized. You can monitor the progress of this project on Wikisource. Here are the links for Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 and Volume 4 on Wikisource. Please note that some of the participants firstly digitize the encylopedia either in their Sandbox or offline and then move it to Wikisource. To know more about the project click here.
Built closer ties with Nirmala Institute of Education - Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE) is a premier teacher's training institute in Goa. Both, NIE and CIS-A2K got into an informal partnership to work towards conserving and developing knowledge and disseminating the same free of cost in Goa’s official language - Konkani. The two organisations plan to work together to foster usage of Konkani language and enhance digital literacy in Konkani.
Built closer ties with Dalgado Konknni Akademi - Dalgado Konknni Akademi is an organisation that works for the development and promotion of Konkani in the Roman script. Dalgado Konknni Akademi and CIS-A2K built stronger ties to promote Konkani language in Roman script.
Got consensus from field experts - During this quarter CIS-A2K spoke with several Konkani Wikipedians (such as Frederick Noronha, Deepak D'Souza, Seby Fernandes) Konkani linguists (such as Fr. Pratap), professors from Konkani Department at Goa University (Dr. Madhavi Sardesai and Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar), cultural experts (such as Prof. Alito Siqueira and Harriet Vidyasagar) and other experts to propose a solution for Konkani Wikipedia that faces a problem of usage of multiple scripts. To a great extent we have got consensus from different field experts that we should strive to create separate Wikis for each script, at least those which prove to be active. An on-going discussion can be followed here.
Wikipedians Speak - One of the projects CIS-A2K is 'Wikipedians Speak' which are small videos of Wikipedians that captures their expereinces, learnings and challenges. As a part of this project CIS-A2K published several videos of Konkani Wikipedians.

Konkani Wikipedia Editor, Darshan Kandolkar, talks about his experience with Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process and Konkani translation sprint.
Konkani Wikipedia Editor, Varsha Kavlekar, talks about her experience with Konkani Wikipedia Incubator.
Konkani Wikipedia Editor, Darshana Mandrekar, speaks about her inspiration to edit Konkani Wikipedia.
Participant of Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project, Pooja Tople, talks about her experiences with Wikimedia Projects.
Konkani Wikipedian, Rusita Paryekar, speaks about her first meeting with Konkani Wikipedia and her experience as a contributor.
Konkani Wikipedian, Frania Pereira, speaks about her experience as a contributor on Konkani Wikipedia.

10 outreach session, 3 months - About 10 outreach sessions were organised during this quarter across institutes such as Yuva Konkani Sahitya Samelan at Goa University, Shree Mallikarjun College, Nirmala Institute of Education, Dalgado Konknni Akademi and more.

Active Editors

In Sep-Oct 2013, CIS-A2K started with Konknai Vishwakosh Digitization Project on Wikisource. A lot of editors who were earlier contributing to Konkani Wikipedia had now started contributing to Konkani Wikisource. It's mainly because of this shift from Wikipedia to Wikisource that we see less number of active editors in Oct 2013. Level of editing activity again dropped in Dec 2013 and this was primarily due to year end festive season.

Edits Per Month & Bytes Added Per Month

Edits Per Month & Bytes Added Per Month have shown a consistent upward trend in this quarter which shows the higher level of confidence with which editors are contributing to Konkani Wikipedia. With each edit higher amount of bytes were added.

Total Number of Articles

The number of articles increased drastically in the month of Oct-Nov 2013 with an average of 30%. Though there was an incline in Dec 2013 too, but the increment was relatively low with an 8% increase. Once again, this marginal growth was due to seasonal editing and year end festivities in Goa.