• The Performing Community: Thanks to many contributors like you, we're proud to share that our community is the third most performing community. It has more than 50 FAs related to India, to its credit, lagging only behing Wikiproject Biography and WikiProject Military History.
  (Courtesy: Ganeshk at Discussion Board).

• Indian Administrators: There are 21 Indian Administrators in Wikipedia at the last count. The recent Wikipedians to be successful at RFA were Lostintherush and Shyam Bihari.
• Featured Articles: West Bengal (nom) and Syed Ahmed Khan (nom) were the last two articles from our WikiProject that were granted FA status.

• Welcome. It has been weeks and months since the idea of newsletter was mooted among the WikiProject India Community. This would be our first full-fledged edition of our Newsletter, and we'd like to start by saying we are very happy to have you among us.

• This is your newsletter, and we want you to be part of it as well. Provide us with news tips here. It can be anything related to the project, from discussions to calls for help, and other interesting stuff within our community. If you have received or given any barnstars recently, do let us know.

• Advertisements for recruitments within your WikiProject sub-groups are also welcome. We'll run special sections, and recurring columns in the coming issues.

• Cartography Department (Shortcut:WP:INMAP): The Department of Cartography within the WikiProject India is a group of wikipedians who work on providing quality maps related to India. Their contributions gain more significance as we try to provide more information on places, districts and states of India. As a thumb rule, maps serve better if they are in SVG format. The location maps by the cartography department has helped us include location information based on latitudes and longitudes for a give place within India. The Indian Roadways map is a featured image, one amongst the few best road maps in the world. Still, there is more work to be done. There are 604 districts in India (see List of districts of India), and each district page needs a map of that district. You can help too. Contact the Cartography Department to learn how you can help in making the best maps in Wikipedia to be India-related!

• Name change of cities in Karnataka: A straw poll was conducted on the proposal to change the name of cities in Karnataka, per the Nov 1, 2006 decision by the Karnataka government to rename them from the current anglicised forms. The result of the poll was to change the names. As controversial as the decision may be in the real world, the article Bangalore in Wikipedia still reflects the old name. You may be interested in knowing why. Dig the archives.

• New Project Noticeboard (Shortcut:WP:INB): WikiProject India now sports a new colourful centralised noticeboard. An effort to make the noticeboard current and dynamic was mooted a few days back, and Ganeshk came up with the new format. The new noticeboard will strive to be the one-stop shop for all project related information. The shortcut is WP:INB.

• Members List: The old members list is being phased out to give way for the new members list. New members are requested to add their names to the new members list. As the newsletter grows, further issues of the Project Newsletter will be delivered to those enlisted in the new list. So dash down now, to check if ur name is in there.

• 

  Featured Content: Three articles (Chalukya Dynasty (nom), History of Tamil Nadu (nom) and Bengali language (nom)), one list (List of Indian ODI cricketers) and one picture (Prayer flag in the Kurgiakh valley in Zanskar contributed by Moumine (pictured)) were featured from our WikiProject recently.

Are you stuck at a point where admin help is needed? There are 22 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 December 2006 edition of our newsletter. Time flies past like matter into the black hole. It is interesting to notice that we are already into the last month for the year of 2006. 2006 saw discussions and development beyond realisation. In the world of Wikipedia where quality counts than quantity, we have come a long way. We've made better than 'nothing', to say the least, and even that is an achievement. I take this opportunity to thank everyone including those who have dotted the i's and crossed the t's.

• 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. If you have received or given any barnstars recently, do let us know. Sponsored content for recruitments within your WikiProject sub-groups are also welcome. We'll be very happy to include them here.

• Before we sign off, Advance New Year Wishes, everyone.

• Assessment Department (Shortcut: WP:IN1): Are you one of those gnomes?? Or do you want to take some time off some brain-frying active editing on Wikipedia?? Then Department of Assessment within the WikiProject India will be your forte. The department consists of a group of wikipedians who work on rating the India related articles to check if they are worthy enough to be included in the CD (or print) version of Wikipedia.

• The rating process gains more significance as we try to sort out which articles and which topics need more attention to balance the India related systemic bias within wikipedia. As a thumb rule, anyone can rate any article based on the related criteria, within the Stub/Start/B/A levels. However, ratings for Good Article Status and Featured Article status go through the nomination processes.

• How to?: The "how to" part of assessment is very simple. Just head on to the talk page of any India related page and you'll find the ((WP India)) template. Simply classify the article based on the content and the criteria mentioned here. You can find the detailed instructions here. If you think it may qualify for GA/FA status, first consider submitting the article for peer review.

• Usage of Vernacular scripts: Following extensive description at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) archived here regarding inclusion criteria for vernacular scripts in Indian biographies, Wikipedia:Vernacular scripts was set up to formulate usage guidelines. However, discussion appears to have dissipated without a conclusive result.

• Project tagging:After a brief edit war over the addition of ((WP India)) to ancient archaeological sites now located in Pakistan, a "pre" parameter was introduced to remove the ROI flag from the template for pre-1947 articles, following discussion. After another large discussion on ANI alleging that the automated tagging by Ganeshbot and LostBot was "nationalistic", Ganeshbot was briefly blocked. Currently, the bots are again in action.

• What is India?:Recently, there have been ongoing discussions here which discuss the stated issue of "India" the historical region is different from the Republic of India. It consisted also of modern Pakistan and Bangladesh, but a search for "India" automatically redirects to the Republic of India. Should there not be a clarification? . This comes in light of clashes on articles such as Panini, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, regarding the status of the individuals.

• Swastika on Hinduism templates:Recently, an extremely large and at times emotional debate broke out regarding the use of the swastika on Hinduism templates, given its association with Nazism. As a result, ((Hindu Links)) now contains an educational message about the use of the swastika, as discussion on a more permanent resolution continues.

• Arbitration: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Hkelkar regarding the activities of various editors on pages related to Indian religion topics closed recently, with Hkelkar, BhaiSaab and TerryJ-Ho all banned for one year. Currently, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sathya Sai Baba 2 regarding a dispute over the article of the religious teacher is in the voting phase.

• 

  Featured and Good Content: Two articles (Indian Standard Time (nom)) and (Hoysala Empire (nom)), were featured from our WikiProject recently, since our last edition. Irfan Pathan, Hinduism, Dinesh Karthik, Lage Raho Munna Bhai were promoted to Good article status.

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 January 2007 edition of our newsletter. Time flies past like matter into the black hole. A Happy New Year to all.
• Congratulations to one of our administrators, Shanel, who was appointed with 98% approval to the office of Steward across the Wikimedia Project.

• 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.

• Before we sign off, Happy New Year, everyone.

• 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.

• 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.

WP:IND Newsletter is back! It's been nearly a year since the last edition, but we hope to bring out issues on a more regular basis now. The India Wikiproject was set up to increasing coverage of India-related topics on Wikipedia, and over the past few months the focus has been on improving article quality. A number of the project's featured articles underwent featured article reviews over the past year. Of these, Darjeeling and Flag of India survived the review process, while the rest were demoted. During the same period, Gangtok, Harbhajan Singh, Darjeeling and Mysore were featured on the main page respectively on August 20, September 17, November 6 and December 29, 2009. Meanwhile, articles on topics as diverse as Political history of Mysore and Coorg (1565–1760), Marwari horse and Iravan were promoted as featured articles, and respectively appeared on the main page on March 25, May 17 and May 28, 2010. Consequently, the number of FA-class articles under the project's scope dropped from 67 in August 2009 to 63 in June 2010. The number of good articles, however, saw a more than 40% increase, from 91 to 130 during the same period, while the number of featured lists saw a 33% increase from 12 to 16.

Due to the recent policy changes regarding unreferenced Biographies of Living People (BLPs), an effort was started in January 2010 to source all unreferenced BLPs coming under Wikiproject India. 1200 such articles were identified initially and more were added to the list later. Due to the sourcing effort, the number of Indian unreferenced BLPs is down to 565 currently. During February-April 2010, There was a large scale disruption of Kerala related articles by a Thrissur based IP vandal. Editing from a dynamic IP BSNL connection, the vandal changed dates of birth, death and ages of a number of Malayalam and Tamil film actors. Later he added a few international biographies to his list. He also marked some living people like Arvind Swamy as dead. A month long range block was imposed on his IP range two times and each time he came back to vandalise dates once the block expired. Currently the range has been blocked for three months till September 11, 2010.

• Three members of the project, Abecedare, Tinu Cherian and SpacemanSpiff received their sysop mops in October-December 2009. Congratulations!

• 

• Wikipedians in Bangalore have been organising periodic meetups over the past year, in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society. The next meetup is scheduled for July 18, 2010. Indian and other Wikipedians from all Wikipedias in various languages are welcome to attend.

• Please add Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics to your watchlist in order to stay updated with the latest discussions regarding various aspects of the project.

• A discussion is underway here to reach a consensus regarding the use of Indian number names (lakh, crore etc.) in Wikipedia articles. Please participate and add your comments.

• Join the effort to source and save unreferenced Indian BLPs.

• Some unintended vandalism is going on at the Assamese Wikipedia by the sole active editor. This is a request for Assamese-conversant Wikipedians to help resolve the issue.

• A discussion is in progress here in order to determine whether non-Western (including Indian) forms of classical music should be referred to by the nomenclature of art music instead of classical music. Please participate and add your comments.

• Watchlist the Articles for Deletions page for India related discussions. Opinions from more Indian Wikipedians are required in many of the discussions.

• The World Classical Tamil Conference 2010 is at present underway in Coimbatore, and the Tamil Wikipedia is actively involved at the event. A detailed report will follow in the next issue.

• Wikimania 2010 is happening in Poland from July 7-11. Indian Wikipedians attending include Gurubrahma, Shiju Alex, Ravidreams , Santhosh Thottingal, Tinu Cherian, WMF Board member Bishakha Datta and Advisory Board member Achal Prabala. We wish them all the best! More on their experiences in the next issue.

If you've just joined, add your name to the Members section of WikiProject India. You'll get a mention in the next issue of the Newsletter and get it delivered as desired. Also, please include your own promotions and awards in future issues. Don't be shy!

Lastly, this is your newsletter and you can be involved in the creation of the next issue (Issue 2 – (July 2010)). Any and all contributions are welcome. Simply let yourself be known to any of the undersigned, or just start editing!

After a missed issue, the WP:IND newsletter is back on track to being a regular bimonthly feature. The Indian WikiProject has seen plenty of online and off-line action, both in English as well as other Indian languages, and we now have a bigger, better format that intends to feature content and news from the English as well as other Indian language Wikipedias.

Reaching out to Indians has been the theme of the Indian Wikiproject over the past couple of months, aiming to involve a greater number of Indians in editing both the English and Indian language Wikipedias. To this end, efforts to set up the Indian chapter of Wikimedia have moved into their final stages, and registration of the society is currently pending. An effort is underway to push for "WikiMarathons" at meetups, where attendees will be encouraged to edit the English and/or Indian language Wikipedias. This is intended to popularise Wikipedia editing among the general public. In addition, a bot to post DYK's from the Indian Wikiproject to Twitter was created and launched by User:Logicwiki.

Regrettably, the number of Featured Articles has dropped from 63 in June to 58 at the end of October 2010. Several FAs came up for review and were delisted, while Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles and Fundamental Duties of India was saved. Meanwhile, Chalukya Dynasty appeared on the main page on July 9, 2010. Hearteningly, the number of Good Articles increased from 130 to 136 during the same period, while the number of Featured Lists remained constant at 16.

The source code for the Article Alert Bot is now available and the bot itself is expected to be up and running very shortly. This means that article alerts for the Indian Wikiproject will again be available, enabling editors to easily keep track of developments in respect of reviews, nominations, deletions etc.

The date change vandal mentioned briefly in the previous issue made a reappearance when the range block on his IP range expired in September. Consequently the block was extended till September 2011.

In October there was a heated discussion in the India project noticeboard regarding the copyright status of the Indian party symbols. The discussion was triggered by the deletion of Wiki San Roze's party symbol images by Hammersoft as copyright violations. No resolution was reached, partly because of our inability to explain to Hammersoft how election symbols in India differ from party logos. Comments are requested from anyone with a background in Indian copyright law to clarify this issue.

• The Bengali Wikisource, which contains the literary works of many prominent writers of Bengali language including Rabindranath Tagore, has crossed the 5,000 pages milestone. According to List of Wikisource page, Bengali Wikisource is now at rank 21 among 56 Wikisource based on number of content pages.

• The uploading of Tamil technical words donated by Tamil Virtual University to the Tamil Wiktionary was completed in October. The words were donated by the Government of Tamil Nadu due to lobbying efforts by Tamil Wikipedians during the runup to the World Classical Tamil Conference 2010 (WCTC) in June. Nearly 70,000 words were uploaded increasing the word count in Tamil Wiktionary from 1,20,000+ to 1,90,000+. This has brought Tamil to the 10th place (from 17) in the list of largest wiktionaries and has earned it a place in the Wiktionary front page logo. In addition, Tamil Wikipedians set up a stall at the WCTC and introduced Tamil Wiki projects to people from all walks of life.

• The Hindi Wikipedia and its sister wiki projects migrated to the new vector interface on September 1, 2010. In addition, Hindi is the first (and so far the only) Indian language to be incorporated into the WikiBhasha translation and contribution toolkit developed by Microsoft Research.

• Malayalam wikimedian Santhosh Thottingal has developed a software (Wiki2CD) for the creation of the Malayalam Wikipedia CD, which was launched in 2010. In addition, Santosh, along with fellow Malayalam wikimedian Shiju Alex coordinated a panel discussion at Wikimania 2010 on creation of offline Wiki content.

Mumbai and Delhi held their first meetups in September, where Wikimedia Board members Barry Newstead and Bishakha Datta met up with Wikipedians and other interested members of the public in these cities. A month later, Hyderabad also held its first meetup.

Wikipedians in Bangalore continued their tradition of meeting up regularly at the Centre for Internet and Society, with the nineteenth meetup in September featuring Barry and Bishaka as attendees, and marking the release of the community newsletter. Along with Delhi and Mumbai, Bangalore is reported to be one of the three cities in contention for the Indian office of the Wikipedia Foundation.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had an interaction with Wikipedians followed by a presentation to members of the public at the third Wikipedia meetup in Mumbai on October 31, 2010.

The first Wikimarathon, where Wikipedians and members of the public were encouraged to contribute to Wikimedia projects onsite, was held simultaneously at the meetups in Bangalore and Chennai on November 14, 2010. Wikipedians in Delhi also held a meetup the same day.

The Malayalam Wikipedia held several academies in different parts of Kerala over the past few months.

Wikimedia Foundation board member Bishakha Datta and Indian Wikipedian Srinivas Gunta co-authored a panel presentation at Wikimania 2010 on the Wikimedia Asia Project.

• Please add Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics to your watchlist in order to stay updated with the latest discussions regarding various aspects of the project.

• Two current featured articles, 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings and Economy of India have been nominated for reviews here and here respectively. Contribute and help prevent these articles from being delisted!

• This interesting discussion on the quality of editing in India-related articles has been underway for on the noticeboard a few days. Feel free to join in and express your opinion.

• A series of discussions are underway on the neutrality of the Famine in India article. Please comment and help resolve the disputes.

• Join the Wikimedia India mailing list and the IRC channel for regular updates and discussions. Links to language-specific forums are available here.

If you've just joined, add your name to the Members section of Wikipedia:WikiProject India. You'll get a mention in the next issue of the Newsletter and get it delivered as desired. Also, please include your own promotions and awards in future issues. Don't be shy!

Lastly, this is your newsletter and you can be involved in the creation of the next issue. Any and all contributions are welcome. Simply let yourself be known to any of the undersigned, or just start editing!

This newsletter incorporates content from the WikiMedia India Community Newsletter, September 2010.