Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Outreach/Newsletter/March 2007

• Plagiarism by the Times of India: Recently it was noticed that the Times of India, the world's largest distribution daily had systematically plagiarised many of Wikipedia's biographies on members of the Indian cricket team among other cricketers on its website, sometimes with errors propagated (details). After discussion and discovery of further plagiarisms in other fields, the issue reached the admin noticeboard archived here.

• Jimbo's visit to India and the WikiCamp in Chennai: Jimbo recently visited India in late February and early March on wiki work. This included a trip to a WikiCamp in Chennai. The one day conference attracted 300 participants from across India and beyond dealt with issues facing wikis ([1]). It was widely covered by the press, eg The Hindu( [2]), which cited the efforts of Bhadani (edit count), Sundar (leadership on Tamil Wikipedia) and Ganeshk (Creation of Ganeshbot to create articles on Indian towns from census figures). Ganeshk himself travelled from California to attend the conference.

• Wikipedia Weekly 15: Wikipedia Weekly, a informal Wikipedians' program that purports to give "A weekly audio roundup of Wikipedia happenings with news, interviews and roundtable discussions" recently interviewed two prominent editors Rama's Arrow and Ragib(listen). The entire 34 minute interview was entirely about the world of Indian subcontinent wiki-happenings, and was the first episode which was not entirely dominated by discussion of wiki-politics and wiki-bureaucracy, with the host Witty lama praising the efficiency of the project and its proliferation of featured content. Rama's Arrow cited the team spirit, friendship and respect among project members in discussing its success and FA productivity, as well as discussing subcontinental wiki-conflict. Ragib talked also of his public campaign to raise awareness of the Bengali Wikipedia in his native Bangladesh, which has seen a 30-fold increase in article count over the past year.

• Arbitration: Three cases are either in progress or have recently ended.
  • Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan regarding the activities of various Indian and Pakistani editors on pages related to Indian subcontinent history topics, the national status of various pre-Partition figures, and edit-warring over Indic scripts and WikiProject tags was held and concluded in late February- early March. As a result of this, four Pakistani users, Siddiqui, Szhaider, Nadirali and Unre4L were all banned for one year for disruption via edit-warring and confrontationalism.
  • Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sathya Sai Baba 2 regarding a dispute over the article of the religious teacher closed in early March with four users indefinitely banned from the article.
  • Currently, Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Freedom_skies is in the evidence phase. It is concerned with the editing of Freedom_skies, who edits articles on ancient Indian history, primarily civilisation articles such as Indian mathematics and related articles, as well as Buddhism articles such as Pusyamitra Sunga, as well as those pertaining to the propagation of Mahayana Buddhism to China such as Bodhidharma and Zen.

• 
  Featured and Good Content: Eight articles: Vijayanagara Empire (nom), Delhi (nom), Pashtun people (nom), Nathu La (nom), Harbhajan Singh (nom), Hoysala architecture (nom), Harbhajan Singh (nom), Technopark, Kerala (nom) and Western Chalukya Empire (nom) were featured from our WikiProject recently, since our last edition. 'Dineshkannambadi has been a phenomenal force in the production of FAs recently, being responsible for three of these eight articles. He has totalled five FAs, all relating to Kannada history.

• Three portals: Portal:Hinduism (nom), Portal:West Bengal (nom) and Portal:Kerala (nom) were also featured.
• There were two additional GAs, Murali Kartik and Bhagat Singh.

Are you stuck at a point where admin help is needed? There are 21 Indian Administrators in Wikipedia at the last count. If you need some help with anything related to WikiProject India, they are just a couple of clicks away!

• Welcome to the March 2007 edition of our newsletter.
• Congratulations to one of our most respected writers, bureaucrats and administrators, Nichalp, who is now entrusted with the oversight permission. In addition Riana has joined the administrative ranks after a successful RfA.
• On a sad note, Nobleeagle, who was responsible for the creation of the Punjab WikiProject, and was largely responsible for Indian cricket team, Bhagat Singh and Lage Raho Munna Bhai becoming GAs, as well as working heavily in Indian religious and cricket work, has left the project after having his identity revealed.
• More generally, certain Indian users have recently been subject to real life harassment by banned users, etc. If this is affecting you in real life, please do not hesitate to contact Wikimedia board members for assistance, or ask a senior Wikipedian to solicit help on your behalf if required.
• Nishkid64, a prolific contributor and administrator, is currently undergoing surgery to fix a congenital heart defect. You can wish him well here.
• Weekly Collaboration (Shortcut:WP:INCOTW): Collaboration of the Week has fallen from its once high feats. Please drop by and help rejuvenate it.
• As before, we'd like to stress, this is your newsletter, and we want you to be part of it as well. Provide us with news tips. It can be anything related to the project, from discussions to calls for help, and other interesting stuff within our community. Sponsored content for recruitments within your WikiProject sub-groups are also welcome, including requests for copyediting, photographic work, peer review, etc. We'll be very happy to include them here.

• Translation Department: Can you read and write any languages of India? Do you know multiple languages and are looking to keep your skills at a high level or improve them? If so, the Translation Depeartment may be for you!

The translation department of the India WikiProject aims to utilize high-quality non-English material related to India for the goals of the project. This includes both translating articles from and to other-language Wikipedias as well as assisting contributors with non-English sources. The department aims to provide services in transliteration, formulating scripts for various languages, as well as translating articles from one language to another and validating sources in other languages to that of the encyclopedia article. If you are looking for a friendly translator here is your go-to point. Currently, we are still seeking representation for Kashmiri, Nepali, Oriya, Sindhi and Tulu, as well as reinforcements in all other languages.

If you run a covert newsroom operation, provide us with ur news tips here.