QRCode as a Souvenir for Socio-Economic Impact around Art, History & Culture
My presentation from WikiConference India 2016
Reaching out to others! Free & Open Source Software, Kannada, L10n, L18n Data Science, Cloud Computing & more…
My presentation from WikiConference India 2016
This gif shows how our team contributed to Internet Archive, Wiki Commons and Kannada Wikisource by uploading out of copyright books from DLI and OUDL libraries effectivly to ensure they are reachable to larger audience round the clock.
GIF contributed by Yogesh C.S.
Problem statement 1:
“Lua error in Module:TimeAgo at line 60: attempt to perform arithmetic on a string value”
The above error was prominent across many Infobox templates used on Kannada wikipedia where the different of date of birth and the current date was supposed to show when did the person was born, or when the organization was started etc.
For example: Here is how I wanted to see the start date of Wikipedia
Sample testcases for {{Template:Time_ago}} found here never showed a single value in the above format.
Problem statement 2:
I remember working with M.G Harish an another Kannada wikipedian and admin on a similar issue last year where the expressions used in templates were unable to parse the Kannada numerals and used to result in an another error given below:
Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character “�”
Since 2013 I have been working on articles falling under “Category:Pages with script errors” and working on resolving them step by step. Finding missing templates, modules etc used to be a work around for many such issues. With the expression parse issue reported here on Phabricator I was sure that we needed to understand the modules and templates or atleast mediawiki internals to fix some of these errors effectively. While we got a response from the developers on resolving the expression related issue, I could successfully use the same information fixing the problem statement 1 I have reported above.
To get a clue on similar template usage, I linked the template page to interwiki and found that many Indian and other language wikis use the similar template with some variations. Nepali wiki had the exact same copy of the template {{Template:Time ago}} but with minimal errors. I started skimming through various interlinked modules and template pages to find that the module {{Module:Time ago}} had a small variation in the line 54 and line 60.
Line: 54
– local noError, inputTime = pcall( lang.formatDate, lang, ‘U’, args[1], true ) (kn:wiki)
+ local noError, inputTime = pcall( lang.formatDate, lang, ‘xnU’, args[1], true ) (ne:wiki)
Line: 60
– local timeDiff = lang:formatDate( ‘U’, nil, true ) – inputTime (kn:wiki)
+ local timeDiff = lang:formatDate( ‘xnU’, nil, true ) – inputTime (ne:wiki)
The lua error on the first line of this article also clearly says that the error is due to a string that is being passed to perform an arithmetic operation. I applied the small change on the module, previewed the testcases to see the magic of errors disappearing from the screen.
It would be great to get some hands on walk through on the templates, modules, lua and other technologies to ensure language wiki’s look neat and the people working around these technical issues are empowered.
Thanks Ravi for forcing me to post this issue on Wikimedia India Technical Desk. Its a good initiative. It revealed that Punjabi wiki also needed a solution for this and I could apply my findings almost immediately to resolve the problem. Satdeep gill – lets keep exchanging issues and solutions to enhance Indic wiki’s.
A late night chat with Shri NAM Ismail (Prajavani) gives me a chance to look at creative commons from Vachana’s point of view. For few of my questions and observations on Creative Commons adoption in India here is what he had to say:
“If you can understand allama then you can understand CC an copy left”
Here is Allama Prabhu’s vachana which he quoted during our chat:
ವೇದವೆಂಬುದು ಓದಿನ ಮಾತು; ಶಾಸ್ತ್ರವೆಂಬುದು ಸಂತೆಯ ಸುದ್ದಿ.
ಪುರಾಣವೆಂಬುದು ಪುಂಡರ ಗೋಷ್ಠಿ ತರ್ಕವೆಂಬುದು ತಗರ ಹೋರಟೆ.
ಭಕ್ತಿ ಎಂಬುದು ತೋರಿ ಉಂಬ ಲಾಭ.
ಗುಹೇಶ್ವರನೆಂಬುದು ಮೀರಿದ ಘನವು
My questions were simple, why we are taking too long to understand Creative Commons? Why we don’t understand “Free Culture” philosophy? Why we just read “Free” as just “Free” anywhere but not as in “Freedom”.
Today 55 books of prominent Kannada Niranjana were released under CC by his daughter and writer Tejaswini Niranjana in Indian Institute of World Culture, Basavanagudi. “Media houses should be encouraged to release some work under Creative Commons” says NAM Ismail.
More about my questions, answers, findings and research in some other blog. Till then spend some time researching what 11th and 12th century vachanakaara’s had thought of veda’s on Vachana Sanchaya.
The Kannada Wikimedia community, in collaboration with CIS-A2K, is glad to share that almost all of the works by Niranjana will be re-licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 on the occasion of Kannada Rajyotsava.
Niranjana (1924-1992) was the pseudonym of Kulkund Shivarao, a prominent Kannada writer of the 20th century and a leading figure in the Progressive Writers’ Movement. His prolific output, across nearly five decades, included novels, short stories, plays, biographies, political commentary, and translations. He was a regular columnist in the Kannada newspapers and magazines. Among his achievements as an editor are Jnana Gangotri, a 7-volume encyclopedia for young people, and a 25-volume compilation of the world’s greatest short stories.
A total of 55 Kannada books by Niranjana will be re-licensed. This could be the single largest and most comprehensive individual collection of a writer to be released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 in any of the Indian languages. We are planning to have a formal event to celebrate this, along with an orientation session on the importance of Creative Commons for growing open knowledge in Kannada and Kannada Wikisource during the first week of November 2014. The exact event details will be communicated shortly. The Kannada Wikimedia community and CIS-A2K would be very happy if you could be present for this event. We would like to acknowledge the great initiative shown by Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana (also Advisor to CIS-A2K) in getting the below works released under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
NOVELS
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
PLAYS
COLLECTION OF ESSAYS
COLLECTION OF INTERVIEWS
COLLECTIONS OF NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
POLITICAL WRITINGS
NIRANJANA READER
LETTERS BY NIRANJANA
Kannada version of this blog post is available here.
ToolServer shows my wiki activity. It’s nice to see that I have done atleast an edit on Kannada wiki through out 2012. It has been very tempting to go and find stuff that is not available on Free Encyclopedia of my Language, and edit whatever I feel is necessary.
Here is a quick view on my wiki edit status grabbed through toolserver.
Username: | Omshivaprakash |
First edit: | Apr 07, 2007 06:41:03 |
Unique pages edited: | 649 |
Average edits per page: | 2.63 |
Live edits: | 1,691 |
Deleted edits: | 17 |
Total edits (including deleted): | 1,708 |
Going further I get to see where I exactly contributed to Wikipedia. 57% of my work has gone into editing articles and 22.83% of my edits are into templates.
The following graph shows my contributions month wise.
Because, I find it necessary to contribute my knowledge.
Because, I enjoy editing.
Because, I want all possible information available in my language to be searched and found at the top of Google Search bar.
Updates for 2013:
There is lot more that can be done @ Kannada Wikipedia.
Join me in this run…
Recent Comments