Thaindian News

Mumbai, Nov 9 (IANS) Aiming to tap the Indian community, the first WikiConference by the Wikimedia Foundation in this country will be hosted in Mumbai Nov 18, an official said.

The three-day conference, hosted by the Mumbai Wikipedia Community and the Wikimedia Chapter, India, will see founder Jimmy Wales opening the conference that will have a a distinct Indian flavour and deal primarily with issues relating to India on Wikipedia.

The Nov18-20 conference will be held at the Mumbai University Campus in the Fort area of south Mumbai.

“We look forward to organising the conference on an annual basis to bring together Indian Wikipedians from over 20 Indian language projects,” said Pranav Curumsey, chariperson of the organising committee.

“Aimed to share learnings and best practices, the event will help bring together contributors in building Knowledge Society through free and open education projects,” said Hisham Mundol, National programmes consultant the for Wikimedia Foundation.

Thousands of Wikipedians from all over the country will pour in for sessions on topics such as “Usage of Ajax and Jquery in Wiki”, “WikiBhasha: Our Experiences with Multilingual Content”, “WikiWomenWeb: Bridging the Gender Gap” and “Legal Aspects of Wiki Culture”.

A live “Editathon” session and a “Hackathon” where aspects of editing a Wikipedia article will be taught will be an added feature of the conference.

The conference will serve as platform for all Indian Wikipedians to meet and share their views, discuss challenges and exchange useful tips and best practices. The foundation has received over 7,000 requests for scholarships and participations and over 550 papers have been submitted to be presented at the conference.

Part of the conference will be dedicated to Marathi Wikipedia, where the issues faced by users will be highlighted.