About eight years after the launch of Tulu Wikipedia, which is still to go live, an exercise to correct the articles uploaded in it has begun here. Simultaneously, some writers are also correcting the articles in Kannada Wikipedia, launched in 2003, which is live.
The exercise launched on Tuesday will go on till Saturday at the Ramakrishna Pre-University College here which has provided its computer laboratory for free for the purpose.
U.B. Pavanaja, programme officer at Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society and a Wikipedia representative, who is leading the exercise, told The Hindu that more than 20 writers, including students, were involved in the exercise. Tulu Wikipedia, launched in 2007, which is in incubator, has over 1,000 articles now.
Kannada Wikipedia has more than 21,000 articles.
Referring to the need for correction, he said that many articles uploaded now were not up to the quality prescribed by Wikipedia. “Wikipedia has mentioned about the criteria for a good article,” he said.
An article should have at least 2,000 bytes or 500 words to 600 words providing comprehensive information. For example, an article on a personality should have details regarding his or her birth, childhood, education, achievements, awards if any won and the like.
It should also provide “inter-wiki link” to the reference material. The article should go with an image of the personality.
A live Tulu Wikipedia would help bring pressure on the government include Tulu in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. If Tulu Wikipedia was to be active, between five and 10 articles would have to be uploaded to it every month and at least 15 editors would have to edit it every month, Mr. Pavanaja said.
Principal of the college Kishore Kumar Rai Sheni said that about 15 writers were involved in correcting the articles in Tulu and eight writers are correcting articles in Kannada Wikipedia.
Tulu articles have been written in Tulu using Kannada script. Some writers were correcting it at their homes.
He said that Wikipedia entries in Tulu language can be made under the URLhttp://bitly.com/tuluwikiand register. One can write, edit or read articles in Tulu.
About 290 langauges across the world, including 20 Indian languages, had Wikipedia pages.
