Knowledge Unbounded

Updated on: Thursday, February 09, 2012

Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata along with Wikimedia Foundation hosted the first WikiAcademy Conference in Eastern India recently in the college premises.

Wikimedia Foundation operates Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and other sister sites. It was a half-day workshop to sensitise participants about Wikipedia and to help them add to the already vast source of knowledge.

The WikiAcademy workshop was part of the Kolkata Chapter of Wikimedia Foundation with the objective of educating students and enthusiasts about the availability and use of free and open educational content and also to build the capacity to contribute such resources in various Indian languages.

The conference began with a brief history and overview of Wikipedia conducted by Hisham Mundol, consultant, Wikimedia Foundation, followed by an interactive session which brought up interesting insights.

“Wikipedia is the first one-stop address for a wide range of topics and the information available is provided by our passionate editors who regularly contribute articles and even crosscheck others. WikiAcademy is an attempt to encourage others to share their knowledge and also get to know the fifth website in terms of highest page views,” Mundol explained.

A live workshop on editing was conducted by Jayanta Nath, coordinator of Bengali Wikipedia where the participants tried their hands at editing various articles.

For those interested in Indian languages, a session was arranged to enable the setting up of Wikipedia in their preferred languages.

 A student and who tried his hands at editing, Shoubhik Bose shared, “Wikipedia contributors like us can actually free education from cost and language barriers. The fact that my edit will be visible to a million users all over the world motivates me to edit Wikipedia articles. I would love to be a part of more WikiAcademy workshops with the Wikipedia readers and editors.”

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