Hyderabad: Give more content in Indian languages

Hyderabad: Speakers at a symposium organised at IIIT Hyderabad on Saturday urged Wikipedia to create more content in Indian languages so that people can easily get benefit of the information published on the encyclopaedia.

Project Investigator, IndicWiki Prof Vasudeva Varma outlined the activities undertaken by Project Telugu Wiki team like forming four focus groups, organising Wiki workshops at IIIT, Hyderabad on Saturdays, setting up the stall at Hyderabad Book Fair, among others.

Around 800 enthusiasts enrolled to volunteer on project Telugu Wiki, which aims at create 30 lakh Wiki articles in the coming years without compromising on the quality.

Chairman of IIIT-Hyderabad Prof Raj Reddy shared his vision on the Project Telugu Wiki. He suggested that technology and machines can be leveraged to create vernacular content in bulk and the same can be curated later with human intervention.

"Learn to learn and learn to think" is the guiding mantra, said Lok Satta leader Dr Jayaprakash Narayan. He opined that content-rich Wikipedia can be an antidote to several issues in a diverse country like India faces today.

Director IIIT Hyderabad Prof PJ Narayanan stressed on the need to build a community of committed volunteers and subject experts. Wikipedians can bring to light hitherto unknown facts and highlight about a particular place, region or State and cited some examples to back this.

Prof K Nageshwar delved on the topic of challenges associated with content creation. He exhorted the Wikipedia enthusiasts to adopt newer technology platforms for content propagation.

Nageshwar asked the Wikipedians to do thorough research on the topic or base it from reliable sources.