Bishakha Datta, who recently joined the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation as member, is upbeat about the immense potential the free online encyclopaedia has to chronicle the country's pluralistic culture.
She was speaking to the Wikipedians of Bangalore at the `Wiki Meetup' on Sunday. She stressed on the need for greater awareness about the medium, and increased involvement by Wikipedians in local languages.
Elaborating on how she got interested, Datta, the first Indian to be on the board, said with advent of technology, the paradigm of knowledge generation has changed. "Once, the ultimate knowledge point was Encyclopaedia Britannica. We now have an entirely new style of knowledge being created and accessed. I am impressed that Wikipedia, among the top five websites in the world, is a non-profit initiative."
Datta, a documentary filmmaker and writer, who runs the Mumbai-based non-profit Points of View, said Wikipedia packs a lot of ideas that can bring about positive changes and drive the world forward.
Wikimedia Foundation advisory board member Achal Prabhala -- a Bangalore-based researcher and writer who works on intellectual property rights -- said contributions to the free online resource reflect the culture of the region. "For example, in English Wikipedia, there are certain standards like citation; but that's not necessarily the case in other cultures. The Japanese Wikipedia is different from the English one."
Pointing out that editorship and readership of Wikipedia are far lower in India compared to the US, Prabhala said there are many reasons for it. "For example, even people who read a local language newspaper would prefer to read the English version of Wikipedia rather than the vernacular one."
Monday, April 12, 2010
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