User talk:Enlighting

WP:IND Newsletter is back! It's been nearly a year since the last edition, but we hope to bring out issues on a more regular basis now. The India Wikiproject was set up to increasing coverage of India-related topics on Wikipedia, and over the past few months the focus has been on improving

Due to the recent policy changes regarding unreferenced

• Three members of the project, Abecedare, Tinu Cherian and SpacemanSpiff received their sysop mops in October-December 2009. Congratulations!

• 

• Wikipedians in Bangalore have been organising
  periodic meetups over the past year, in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society. The next meetup
  is scheduled for July 18, 2010. Indian and other Wikipedians from all Wikipedias in various languages are welcome to attend.

• Please add Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics to your watchlist in order to stay updated with the latest discussions regarding various aspects of the project.

• A discussion is underway
  here
  to reach a consensus regarding the use of Indian number names (lakh, crore etc.) in Wikipedia articles. Please participate and add your comments.

• Join the effort to source and save unreferenced Indian BLPs.

• Some unintended vandalism is going on at the Assamese Wikipedia by the sole active editor. This is a request for Assamese-conversant Wikipedians to help resolve the issue.

• A discussion is in progress
  here
  in order to determine whether non-Western (including Indian) forms of classical music should be referred to by the nomenclature of art music instead of classical music. Please participate and add your comments.

• Watchlist the Articles for Deletions page for India related discussions. Opinions from more Indian Wikipedians are required in many of the discussions.

• The World Classical Tamil Conference 2010 is at present underway in Coimbatore, and the Tamil Wikipedia is actively involved at the event. A detailed report will follow in the next issue.

• Wikimania 2010 is happening in Poland from July 7-11. Indian Wikipedians attending include Gurubrahma, Shiju Alex, Ravidreams , Santhosh Thottingal, Tinu Cherian, WMF Board member Bishakha Datta and Advisory Board member Achal Prabala. We wish them all the best! More on their experiences in the next issue.

If you've just joined, add your name to the Members section of WikiProject India. You'll get a mention in the next issue of the Newsletter and get it delivered as desired. Also, please include your own promotions and awards in future issues. Don't be shy!

Lastly, this is your newsletter and you can be involved in the creation of the next issue (Issue 2 – (July 2010)). Any and all contributions are welcome. Simply let yourself be known to any of the undersigned, or just start editing!

After a missed issue, the WP:IND newsletter is back on track to being a regular bimonthly feature. The Indian WikiProject has seen plenty of online and off-line action, both in English as well as other Indian languages, and we now have a bigger, better format that intends to feature content and news from the English as well as other Indian language Wikipedias.

Reaching out to Indians has been the theme of the Indian Wikiproject over the past couple of months, aiming to involve a greater number of Indians in editing both the English and Indian language Wikipedias. To this end, efforts to set up the Indian chapter of Wikimedia have moved into their final stages, and registration of the society is currently pending. An effort is underway to push for "WikiMarathons" at meetups, where attendees will be encouraged to edit the English and/or Indian language Wikipedias. This is intended to popularise Wikipedia editing among the general public. In addition, a bot to post DYK's from the Indian Wikiproject to Twitter was created and launched by User:Logicwiki.

Regrettably, the number of Featured Articles has dropped from 63 in June to 58 at the end of October 2010. Several FAs came up for review and were delisted, while

The

The date change vandal mentioned briefly in the previous issue made a reappearance when the range block on his IP range expired in September. Consequently the block was extended till September 2011.

In October there was a heated discussion in the India project noticeboard regarding the copyright status of the Indian party symbols. The discussion was triggered by the deletion of Wiki San Roze's party symbol images by Hammersoft as copyright violations. No resolution was reached, partly because of our inability to explain to Hammersoft how election symbols in India differ from party logos. Comments are requested from anyone with a background in Indian copyright law to clarify this issue.

• The Bengali Wikisource, which contains the literary works of many prominent writers of Bengali language including Rabindranath Tagore, has crossed the 5,000 pages milestone. According to List of Wikisource page, Bengali Wikisource is now at rank 21 among 56 Wikisource based on number of content pages.

• The uploading of Tamil technical words donated by
  Tamil Virtual University to the Tamil Wiktionary was completed in October. The words were donated by the Government of Tamil Nadu due to lobbying efforts by Tamil Wikipedians during the runup to the World Classical Tamil Conference 2010 (WCTC) in June. Nearly 70,000 words were uploaded increasing the word count in Tamil Wiktionary from 1,20,000+ to 1,90,000+. This has brought Tamil to the 10th place (from 17) in the list of largest wiktionaries and has earned it a place in the Wiktionary front page logo
  . In addition, Tamil Wikipedians set up a stall at the WCTC and introduced Tamil Wiki projects to people from all walks of life.

• The Hindi Wikipedia and its sister wiki projects migrated to the new vector interface on September 1, 2010. In addition, Hindi is the first (and so far the only) Indian language to be incorporated into the WikiBhasha translation and contribution toolkit developed by Microsoft Research.

• Malayalam wikimedian Santhosh Thottingal has developed a software (Wiki2CD) for the creation of the Malayalam Wikipedia CD, which was launched in 2010. In addition, Santosh, along with fellow Malayalam wikimedian Shiju Alex coordinated a panel discussion at Wikimania 2010 on creation of offline Wiki content.

Wikipedians in Bangalore continued their tradition of meeting up regularly at the Centre for Internet and Society, with the

Wikipedia founder

The first

Wikimedia Foundation board member Bishakha Datta and Indian Wikipedian Srinivas Gunta co-authored a panel presentation at Wikimania 2010 on the Wikimedia Asia Project.

• Please add Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics to your watchlist in order to stay updated with the latest discussions regarding various aspects of the project.

• Two current
  featured articles, 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings and Economy of India have been nominated for reviews here and here
  respectively. Contribute and help prevent these articles from being delisted!

• This interesting discussion on the quality of editing in India-related articles has been underway for on the noticeboard a few days. Feel free to join in and express your opinion.

• A
  neutrality of the Famine in India
  article. Please comment and help resolve the disputes.

• Join the Wikimedia India mailing list and the IRC channel for regular updates and discussions. Links to language-specific forums are available here.

If you've just joined, add your name to the Members section of Wikipedia:WikiProject India. You'll get a mention in the next issue of the Newsletter and get it delivered as desired. Also, please include your own promotions and awards in future issues. Don't be shy!

Lastly, this is your newsletter and you can be involved in the creation of the next issue. Any and all contributions are welcome. Simply let yourself be known to any of the undersigned, or just start editing!

This newsletter incorporates content from the WikiMedia India Community Newsletter, September 2010.