Two-day Wikimania event held

Bhubaneswar: Odia Wikimedians organized a two-day regional Wikimania event in the state capital. The event started on August 13.

Wikimania regional event, organized by the Odia Wikimedians User Group, was inaugurated by Manoj Kumar Mishra, IT Secretary of Odisha. Later, he extended his department’s support towards the community for it to expand the work of promoting the language and for digitalization of literature.

Apart from the Wikimedians from Odia and Santali communities, the foundation’s Manavpreet Kaur had also joined in the event. She spoke about affiliate growth and available support. Introducing the community with discussions about husband the movement charter crafting committee’s work, she narrated how such events offer space for communities to meet, interact and share their learning and experiences and in a safe and productive space.

During this event, the community discussed the policies and guidelines of Odia Wikipedia and also designed basic guidelines and criteria for enhancing the overall quality of the content.

Guest attendees appreciated Odia community members’ support towards their fellow Santali speaking Wikimedians. Later, the Santali Wikimedians actively participated in the discussions and learnt ways to ensure the growth of the Santali community.

Founded in 2002, Odia Wikipedia has been one of the oldest South Asian language Wikipedias for 20 years now. It is the largest collection of free- knowledge available in the language available on internet. With the contributions of Odia community members from all walks of life, the number of articles available on the platform has increased from 630 to almost 16,000 in the last ten years.

This apart, the community that has been collaborating with government of Odisha, managed to get data from the state’s Covid Dashboard and continued to upload awareness resources like videos related to Covid-10 on Wikimedia commons for free and east dissemination of the consumers.