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Wikipedia turns to India, ask Indians to be more active
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 02 November 2010, 15:26 IST |
6 Comments
Mumbai: With an aim to expand the content in Indian languages, the Wikimedia Foundation is set to launch its first office in the country within six months. The office, which would be its second office in the world after San Francisco, will support the existing Bangalore-based India chapter of the popular online encyclopedia, reports Neeti Sharma from Hindustan Times.
"As a media project, for me India was the perfect place because we wish to work with a variety of people and India has a lot of communities. The community in India should lead and Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) will follow them," the report cited Jimmy Wales, Co-Founder of the free online resource, as saying. For him, India is a perfect case because they have existing communities and a lot of people visiting the site. One of the benefits of an office in India is it would facilitate communication with local communities, he added.
'Goal 2015', the company's current focus, aims to have strong and healthy India based projects. The India project aspires to extend Wikipedia's reach to 80 percent of the Indian population, using top 10 Indian languages. The project hopes to have 100 million unique Indian visitors to Wikipedia ventures per month, which would include the involvement of 75 percent schools in India either offline or via the Internet. Wales said he approved of providing increased access of Wikipedia to school-going children as a part of amplifying their knowledge base.
The aim of the project would be pan-India growth of Wikipedia across Indian languages. Presently, the English Wikipedia gets higher page views than the options in 12 Indian languages. This trend is observed only in India, said Wales and is most other countries people view Wikipedia in their own language.
The WMF wants more Indians to contribute articles and participate in active editing. "The local language edits (not just English) at Wikipedia across India are rising each year, and we want to promote high activity at this level," Wales added.