CIS-A2K/Reports/CIS-A2K Quarterly Report 3/Kannada

Overview

During this quarter, CIS-A2K signed a MoU with University of Mysore for digitizing and re-releasing first 6 volumes of the Kannada Vishwakosha (encyclopaedia) published by the institute. Partnership with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara (SDM) College, Ujire, was initiated to foster the growth of Kannada Wikipedia. As a part of this partnership students of Master of Communication and Journalism will write articles on Kannada Wikipedia. Partnership with English Department, Tumkur University was also initiated during this quarter; where MA students will add articles to Kannada Wikipedia under three broad category of topics. In addition to these tie ups, 6 outreach sessions were conducted during this period to instill growth in Kannada Wikipedia. Partnership with Christ University resulted in creation of many new articles and created new editors during this period.

Key Highlights

MoU with University of Mysore - a MoU was signed with University of Mysore on Feb 22, 2014. As per this MoU, CIS-A2K will partner with University of Mysore towards re-releasing first 6 volumes of the Kannada Vishwakosha published by them under CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. The project also includes digitization as well as extration and converting the text from legacy encoding to Unicode. The content so generated will be made available to everyone through Wikisource and Wikipedia.
Christ University Partnership - the partnership with Christ University, Bangalore, to run the Wikipedia Education Program for UG students which started in the previous quarter continued in this quarter. 478 students wrote 372 articles on Kannada Wikipedia. Out of these about 20% articles can be considered as good contribution to Kannada Wikipedia. Another 25% can be considered as average or slightly above average articles.
Partnership with SDM College, Ujire - a Wikipedia in education program has been initiated at SDM College, Ujire. As per this program, students of Master of Communication and Journalism (MCJ) will write articles on Kannada Wikipedia. Workshop was conducted at SDM College, Ujire and additional support was provided to the students. Faculty were oriented towards evaluating the articles on Wikipedia.
Partnership with English Department, Tumkur University - a Wikipedia in education program has been initiated here. Students of MA in English are writing articles in Kannada Wikipedia on subjects divided into 3 major categories - modern history of India, British Literature and Linguistics. A workshop was conducted to train the students on editing Wikipedia and using some of the advance features.
Edit-a-thon at Sagara - Sagara is a small town in Shimoga district of Karnataka. An edit-a-thon was held there on March 2, 2014 to add content to Kannada Wikipedia. A workshop was conducted on March 1, 2014 to train the participants on editing Kannada Wikipedia. 28 articles were added to Kannada Wikipedia during this edit-a-thon.
Outreach programs - a total of 6 outreach programs conducted during this period. The total number of participants in these programs is about 225. The programs were conducted at Sagara, Moodabidre, Mangalore, Shimoga, Ujire and Tumkur.

Statistical analysis

Note: Please note that the statistics for Mar 2014 have not been published yet. For the purpose of creating these charts data points of the previous month (Feb 2014) were used for Mar 2014 too. Charts along with descriptions will be updated as soon as new data is published.

Total Editors

Total number of editors for Kannada Wikipedia saw a sudden increase in this period. This is due to the Christ University partnership. The number went up from 442 as on December 31, 2013 to 580 (end of February 2014).

New Editors

Number of new editors during January 2014 was 116. This is the period when most students registered in Kannada Wikipedia. The number of new editors for February 2014 was 23.

Active Editors

The number of active editors went up from 56 as on December 31, 2013 to 226 at the end of January 2014. It came down to 87 by end of February 2014. This behavior is again to be attributed to the Christ University partnership.

Very Active Editors

The number of very active editors is not affected by the Christ University partnership. It was 5 for January 2014 and 8 for February 2014. The numbers were 2 and 4 respectively for the same period during last year (2013).

No. of Articles

The total number of articles went up from 16120 as on December 31, 2013 to 17493 at the end of February 2014. This amounts to an increase of 1373 articles. If we remove the 378 articles created by Christ University students, the increase in the total number of articles amounts to 995. This is a good number for Kannada Wikipedia. For comparison, the increase in the total number of articles during the last quarter was 497.