West Bengal Wikimedians/Reports/Annual Activities/2023
West Bengal Wikimedians User Group
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 | This page reports the Wikimedia related activities and projects organized and/or supported by West Bengal Wikimedians User Group during the fiscal year from February 17, 2023 to February 16, 2024. |
| To read annual report of 2022-2023, please click here. |
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West Bengal Wikimedians/Reports/Annual Activities/2023#Community Support and Sustainability
Community Support and SustainabilityWest Bengal Wikimedians/Reports/Annual Activities/2023#Community Support and Sustainability
Community Support and Sustainability
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West Bengal Wikimedians/Reports/Annual Activities/2023#Community Support and SustainabilityCommunity Support and SustainabilityWest Bengal Wikimedians/Reports/Annual Activities/2023#Community Support and SustainabilityCommunity Support and Sustainability
Overview
Nature and Environment
Wiki Loves Butterfly - Phase VI
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5th instar catterpiller of Rathinda amor (Fabricius, 1775) - Monkey Puzzle -
Ventral view of Rhaphicera moorei (Butler, 1867) - Small Tawny Wall -
Open wing position of Bhutanitis ludlowi Gabriel, 1942 - Mystical Bhutan Glory -
A Eurema hecabe (Linnaeus, 1758) - Common Grass Yellow butterfly emerges from its pupal stage
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Wiki Loves Butterfly is a field documentation project to identify and digitally conserve live butterfly species in different parts of India, which has been running for the last seven years by a dedicated group of volunteers. This year, the team concluded the sixth phase of the project with the funding from the Wikimedia Foundation for which the final report has been accepted. In this phase, the team conducted 96 field-works in different butterfly hot-spots of Lower Subansiri and West Kameng districts of Arunachal Pradesh; Baksa, Bongaigaon, Chirang, Golaghat, Kamrup Rural, Karbi Anglong, Kokrajhar districts of Assam; Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya; Balasore, Jajpur, Mayurbhanj and Sundargarh districts of Odisha; East Sikkim, Gyalshing, Mangan, Namchi districts of Sikkim; North Tripura district of Tripura and Alipurduar, Bankura, Birbhum, Hooghly, Howrah, Jhargram, Kolkata, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, North 24 Parganas, Paschim Bardhaman, Paschim Medinipur, Purba Bardhaman, Purulia, South 24 Parganas and Uttar Dinajpur districts of West Bengal and uploaded around 4200 photogrpahs of different butterfly species available in these regions. It has also co-organized one national level butterfly meets at Namdapha National Park in Arunachal Pradesh in collaboration with noteworthy butterfly organizations from all over the country and the forest department of the region.
The team has organized a series of five butterfly and nature photo walks in the states of West Bengal, Assam, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh during the month of September, 2023 as part of observance of Big Butterfly Month in the country. An online session named “The Power of People Citizen Science and Big Butterfly Month - India Month Data Insights” was organized during the same month with Rohit George, a Database Analyst & Project Coordinator of Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment-Eastern Himalaya, as speaker and more than 50 participants.
Built heritage
Wiki Loves Monuments 2022 in India
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Chitradurga Fort Temples, Chitradurga Fort, Chitradurga District, Karnataka
Photographer: Basavaraj M -
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The user group organized Wiki Loves Monuments photographic competition in India for the sixth consecutive year during the entire month of September, 2023 to increase the media content of different built heritage structures located in the country. This year, we have brought a new member in the organizing team to take part in the primary sorting of submitted photographs in the national competition. We retained the same jury members from last year's competition. This year, we have gradually expanded and arranged the list of Listeria based tables according to districts and brought back Wikidocumentaries based upload feature as the site resumed its service again.
This year, 189 photographers uploaded 5,754 images in total, out of which 4% of total uploaded images are used on different Wikimedia sites till now. 43% of all the uploaders were new users. The ten winners were selected by the jury members within deadline and were sent for the international competition to compete. Like previous year, this year too, prizes were also declared for the photographer with highest number of uploads and also for the photograph of an monument located in West Bengal which gets into top 10 of the national contest. The user group designed the prizes and sent them to the winners. Wiki Exploration Program 
Wiki Exploration is a program run by the user group for last six years to proactively search and document heritage sites in a cost-effective way by sending small dedicated teams in multiple phases. This year, Amitabha Gupta planned and executed 5 phases covering 5 districts of West Bengal and 8 districts of neighboring state of Bihar. A drone operator was assigned in one such phase to capture aerial videos and images of the monuments. In this year, special focus was given to document collections of different museums located in these places. Wikidata items of most of these built heritage structures have already been created and linked with relevant categories on Wikimedia Commons.
Wiki Explores Darjeeling - Phase I
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Dipamkara stupa at Fagu -
The heritage steam powered toy train at the Gum Railway Station of DHR -
Tibetan Currency Note at the Himalayan Tibet Museum -
Buddha Purnima celebration at the Karma Dorjee Chyoling monastery in Darjeeling
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The user group conducted its first exploration project in Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts to document built heritage structures from 4th May 2023 to 15th May 2023. In this phase, we covered Sukna, Kurseong, Ghum, Alubari, Lamahatta, Lava, Takling Khasmahal, Dalingma Khasmahal, Mangpu, Takdah, and Dansong Forest along with the municipal cities of Darjeeling and Kalimpong and photo and video documented the heritage structures there. 4343 photographs and videos were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
GLAM was one of the main focus of this phase. While museums were documented in earlier phases, this time, we dedicated more time and documented ten museums located in the two districts. They are:
- Darjeeling Himalayan Railways Museum, Sukna
- Darjeeling Himalayan Railways Museum, Ghum
- Himalayan Tibet Museum, Darjeeling
- Himalayan Mountaineering Institue Museum, Darjeeling
- Roy Villa, Darjeeling
- Tibetan Refugee Self-Help Centre Museum, Darjeeling
- Rabindra Museum, Mangpu
- Lepcha Bong Gumpa Museum, Kalimpong
- Gouripur House, Kalimpong
- Geden Tharpa Choling Monastery Museum
Wiki Explores South 24 Parganas - Phase I
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Exquisite woodwork on a temple pillar at Maheshpur -
An Aat-chala temple at Kamarpol -
An Aat-chala temple at Sarisha -
An Aat-chala temple at Sarisha
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Wiki Explores Birbhum - Phase II
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Cluster of charchala temples at Gonpur -
Terracotta panels on a temple at Ghurisha -
Terracotta panels on a temple at Illambazar -
Interiors of the mansion of Landlord Abinash Chandra Banerjee at Abinashpur
Wiki Explores Bihar - Phase I
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Semaphore tower at Babhani -
Interiors of Tomb of Hasan Khan Suri at Sasaram -
Structures within the palace complex inside Rohtas Fort -
Tomb of Sher Shah Suri
Wiki Explores Bihar - Phase II
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Buddhist Stupa at Kesariya -
Buddha in Bhumisparsa Mudra at Bodh Gaya ASI Museum -
Vaishali Stupa with Asokan Pillar -
Nagarjuni Caves
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The user group conducted its second Bihar exploration project in the Gaya, Jehanabad, Nalanda, Patna, Vaishali, and East Champaran districts to document built heritage structures from 4th October 2023 to 14th October 2023. In this phase, we covered Bodh Gaya, Kurisarai, Barabar & Nagarjuni Hills, Rajgir, Nalanda, Pawapuri, Kundalpur, Bihar Sharif, Patna, Maner Sharif, Vaishali, and Kesaria. We also video-documented all the places covered. 4223 photographs and videos were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons till now.
GLAM was one of the main focuses of this phase. Six museums from the Gaya, Nalanda and Patna districts were documented. They are:
Sumitsurai, Argha Guha, HerpKing and Indianvagabond for execution of the project
Intangible heritage
Living Heritage of Bengal proofread-a-thon 
Nettime Sujata and Integrity2020 for their quality edits.
Wiki Loves Bangla 2024
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Science
Science edit-a-thon
History and Legacy
Bengalee Association Bihar GLAM
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An advertisement about a hair-oil from 1920 -
News about Mahatma Gandhi's fast in 1943 -
Rabindranath Tagore's birth centinenary edition published in 1960 -
News about the President of India receiving the Vice-president of USA in 1961
Bangladesh Liberation War proofread-a-thon
Retrieval of Samachar Darpan: 1836
Community Support and Sustainability
Infrastructure support
Governance
The user group received multiple proactive mails from Affiliations Committee, which deducted that the bylaws of the user group was restrictive in nature for new users and needs to be perked aside to operate. While the user group representatives had major disagreements with such conclusions, they failed to convince the committee about the reasoning behind framing the bylaws. It was decided to approach the WMF board liaisons to AffCom to explain the frustrating situation and to see if any negotiation can be reached before the final option to de-affiliate the user group from our side and operate independently. The conversation with the liaisons were productive and it was decided to look back into the bylaws. The bylaws were then revised based on the feedback taken from members and advisors of the user group and passed during the annual general meeting on 7th January, 2024. According to the new amendments, we have;
- secured representative membership for people of West Bengal who are native speakers of any indigenous languages of the state. Previously it was open for all Indians but as we are not a national affiliate, this part was modified,
- reduced the edit count thresholds by 30% for representative memberships and committee. This is the maximum limit which we have agreed to compromise to maintain the quality of the decision making process;
- given the option to either fulfil the criteria for recent online/offline contributions in the last 1 year or the criteria for overall online edit threshold for representative membership. This allows the members who do not have an overall edit threshold but still have taken lead in our offline projects, activities and administrative works in the last year, can represent the user group;
- incorporated a clause to have quality editors as representative members whose contributions may or may not be measured by any tool;
- added an option for a mentorship program for newcomers and members who are not eligible for representative membership, so that they can be forged as future leaders for the group;
- clarified the scope of honorary membership, which was just implied before. We tend to invite more offline experts under this membership to advise us on regular intervals;
- added necessary footnotes to explain the clauses for future references and conversations.
Ijon for feedback, moral support and guidance
NTymkiv (WMF) and Laurentius as WMF board of liaisons for patiently listening to us and kind support.
Supporters and Partners
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| List of butterflies |
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