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MANGALORE: Some people whoedit the Odia Wikipedia saythat getting a Wikipedia inthe language is an importanttool to keep the languagealive. At present, an attemptis on to revive Odia Wikipedia(or.wikipedia.org), one of the

earliest Indian language Wi-kipedias to be created.Interestingly, the guidance

to stoke the Odia Wikipedia isled by Bangalorean ShijuAlex, who edits the Malaya-lam Wikipedia, while anotherBangalorean, Subhashish Pa-nigrahi, translates and cre-ates templates for thelanguage.

While Mr. Panigrahi hasspoken about the Odia Wiki-pedia to 6,000 studentsacross six schools in Bhuba-neswar, Mr. Alex, who is pas-sionate about growing Indianlanguage Wikipedia andwrites for the Malayalam Wi-kipedia, noticed the low con-tent in Odia Wikipedia. Hescouted for Odia editors in

Bangalore and finding no re-sponse initially, he took theinitiative to Orissa. On April3, he helped organise the sec-ond Odia Wikipedia Academyin Bhubaneswar, to bring anawareness of the Odia Wiki-pedia among people.

The Odia Wikipedia wasone of the first few Indian lan-guage Wikipedias to be cre-

ated Although started in

2002, along with Wikipediasin Assamese, Punjabi, Nepali,Oriya and Malayalam, prioreven to the Hindi Wikipediain 2003 July, the Odia Wiki-pedia never grew. It has, todate, only 700 articles.

We have to save Odiya. Wehave to take the movementonline and Odiya Wikipedia is

a vital part of it, says Sam-bidhan Mohanty, a Cuttack-based businessman from afamily of Odiya writers whostudied in Bangalore.

Mr. Mohanty says he ap-preciates Shiju and Subhash-ish as they got Odia speakersinvolved in Odia. We cametogether because of them, hesays.

Mr Mohanty says the main

aim is to get people attractedto Odia Wikipedia, to getmore people to speak the lan-guage and write in it. Next isto get the State Governmentsattention so that Odiya Wiki-pedia can be made part ofschool curricula.

A big challenge he sees isthe number of Odia dialects.

Although the language has ascript, it has six dialects, in-cluding Sambalpuri (or Kosa-li), Kalahandia andBerhampuri. So even within asmall group of editors, thereis a difference of opinion ofhow a word should be written(for example, dharm ordharma).

Mr. Alex says the reasons

for the low interest in Odia

Wikipedia might be many in-cluding the number of peoplewho speak the language, thenumber of people with accessto a computer, availability ofrequired fonts and browsers.

A major challenge was theinability, till now, to type inOdiya within Wikipedia, andthe large dependence upon an

external tool to add content.However, now a typing solu-tion has been developed forOdia so that problem hasbeen resolved to some extent.

Mr. Alex says lack of a typ-ing solution within Wikipediawas a problem that assailedcontent creation across all In-dian languages (using a nonLatin script) on Wikipedia. A

big help has been the typing

solution for Malayalam with-in Wikipedia, which was de-veloped in 2007. The solutionhas a base, which can be ex-tended to other Indian lan-guages and was used forcreating typing solutions inTamil, Kannada, Marathi,Hindi and Bengali WIkipe-dias through 2010. Other lan-

guages are going on.Srikant Kedia has intro-duced the Wikipedia to atleast 35 people.

Now, we need supportfrom the Odia community totest the language. Now that ithas a mature community, Ican move on, says Mr. Alex,who has given demos of editsin Odia Wikipedia in Banga-

lore and Bhubaneswar

Attempts on to revive Odia WikipediaRenuka Phadnis

Odia Wikipedia Workshop held in Bhubaneswar on Sunday, April 3.

The Hindu, 9th April 2011, Page 22, Hyderabad