ক্রমবর্ধমান তথ্যপ্রযুক্তির এই বিশ্বে ইন্টারনেট আমাদের জীবনের একটি অবিচ্ছেদ্য অংশে পরিণত হয়েছে যেখানে মানুষ তথ্যের জন্য মাত্র কয়েক ক্লিক দূরে ওয়েবের দারস্থ হচ্ছে। অধিকাংশ ক্ষেত্রেই ওয়েব সার্চের ফলাফল আপনাকে উইকিপিডিয়ার লিংকে নিয়ে যাচ্ছে; তাই এটি একটি দুঃখের বিষয় যদি আপনার অনুসন্ধানকৃত তথ্যটি উইকিপিডিয়ার পৃষ্ঠায় না পাওয়া যায়, অথবা যদি এটি ভুল ও দুর্বলভাবে উপস্থাপন করা হয় - এতে আপনি হতাশ বা মন:ক্ষুণ্ণও হতে পারেন।
উইকিপিডিয়া, যদিও অধিকাংশ লোকই জানেন, এটি একটি উন্মুক্ত অনলাইন বিশ্বকোষ যা বর্তমানে ২৯১টি ভাষায় চালু রয়েছে - এবং এটি এমন একটি বিশ্বকোষ যা আপনার এই মহুর্তে মনে পড়ছে এরকম প্রায় সব বিষয়ই কাভার করেছে। উইকিপিডিয়া, বিশ্বের সর্ববৃহৎ বিশ্বকোষ যার মুখ্য উদ্দেশ্য হল, মানুষকে এমন একটি গ্রহ উপহার দেওয়া যেখানে সমস্ত জ্ঞান সব মানুষ তাদের নিজস্ব ভষায় শেয়ার করতে পারবেন এবং যেখানে সব মানুষের থাকবে সমান প্রবেশাধিকার।
Wikimedia Bangladesh (WMBD) is conducting 'Secondary level school programs' in different schools in Bangladesh named "Wikipedia awareness program". These programs are specially designed more to encourage students to effectively use Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects for their benefit than to contribute to it. As part of Bangla Wikipedia 10th anniversary celebration, it is the first time in the country that a Wikipedia-related events are taking place in school levels.
উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশ অবশেষে তার যাত্রা শুরু করলো! উইকিমিডিয়া ফাউন্ডেশন জনপ্রিয় মুক্ত অনলাইন বিশ্বকোষ উইকিপিডিয়াসহ ইন্টারনেট-ভিত্তিক বিভিন্ন মুক্ত প্রকল্প পরিচালনা করে আসছে। এ কাজে সহযোগীতার জন্য সারা পৃথিবীতে উইকিমিডিয়া ফাউন্ডেশনের ৪১টি স্বীকৃত চ্যাপ্টার রয়েছে যার মধ্যে উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশ একটি। এর মাধ্যমে উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশ দক্ষিণ এশিয়ার দ্বিতীয় চ্যাপ্টার হিসেবে উইকিমিডিয়া ফাউন্ডেশনের অনুমোদন লাভ করলো।
উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশ উইকিমিডিয়া ফাউন্ডেশনের বিভিন্ন শিক্ষামূলক মুক্ত প্রকল্পের প্রচার এবং প্রসারের লক্ষ্যে সমগ্র বাংলাদেশ জুড়ে কাজ করবে। ভাষাগত দিক থেকে বাংলা প্রকল্পগুলো উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশের মূল ফোকাস হলেও, বাংলার পাশাপাশি অন্যান্য আঞ্চলিক ভাষার প্রকল্প ও ইংরেজি প্রকল্পগুলোর প্রচারণাতেও উইকিমিডিয়া বাংলাদেশ কাজ করবে। উইকিমিডিয়া ফাউন্ডেশনের একটি প্রকল্প হিসাবে ২০০৪ সালে প্রথম বাংলা অনলাইন বিশ্বকোষ বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়া আত্মপ্রকাশ করে – কালক্রমে তা আজ অনলাইনে সবচেয়ে বড় বাংলা বিশ্বকোষ। সেই থেকে স্বপ্নের পথচলা শুরু।
Wikimedia Bangladesh finally completed the exhaustingly long bureaucratic process of local registration when treasurer Ali Haidar Khan collected the registration certificate from the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies & Firms office. This marked another big step towards the creation of a Wikimedia Chapter in Bangladesh. The formal public launching of the chapter is the last task, which we will be doing very shortly.
The idea of having a Bangladesh chapter began in 2009. Since then, Bangladeshi Wikimedians have been hosting regular offline activities for the purposes of realizing this goal. We formally submitted our bylaws to the Chapters Committee (now AffCom) in April 2011. Final approval from the Wikimedia Board of trustees came a few months later on October 3, 2011. We were the 39th chapter to be approved by the Wikimedia Foundation board.
The tenth anniversary of the Bangla Wikipedia was marked by Wikimedia Bangladesh (WMBD) with a series of events across the country. Through the first ever nationwide event, over the course of seven months, we endeavored to engage and train as many volunteers and Wikipedians as possible to organize events and increase outreach in every division of Bangladesh.
Jimmy Wales attended the Gala Event in February 2015 to mark the anniversary. The State Minister for ICT Divisions, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, attended the 10th Anniversary Conference as the chief guest, where over 300 old and new Wikipedians from Bangladesh and India took part. Bangla Wikipedia was launched in January 2004, and the site now boasts more than 36,000 articles edited by over 100 active Wikipedians. The 10th anniversary programs were originally scheduled for 2014, but a national parliamentary election and subsequent political instability meant events were postponed to the first half of 2015.
Our strategic priorities included increasing the Bangla Wikipedia’s reach in the country, as well as training existing and new Wikipedians to make quality contributions. We hosted and kindled several initiatives and events, including Wikipedia workshops, rewards for the best Wikipedians, a photography contest, photowalks, school programs, a gala event, and a tenth anniversary conference. Telecommunication service provider Grameenphone provided financial and logistic support to organize the divisional workshops and a tenth anniversary press-conference. The rest of the events were organized by WMBD with funds from the Wikimedia Foundation.
The seven month-long tenth anniversary celebration included a wide variety of events: The celebration began with a press conference held in November 2014, which was attended by many of the prominent news sources in Bangladesh. The newsmen were briefed about the event outline, the growth of the Bangla Wikipedia over the past decade, and our goals for the events. The “Bangla Wikipedia Photography Contest” began on September 1, 2014 and lasted until December 31. The theme of the contest was landscape and heritage of Bangladesh. Participants were asked to upload photos onto Wikimedia Commons, and more than 4,600 were submitted. The first of the seven divisional workshops was held on November 29, 2014 in Chittagong. Grameenphone sponsored seven workshops, which were held in all seven divisions of Bangladesh. Separate from these, a number of Wikipedia workshops were organized by WMBD in partnership with universities in Dhaka and Rajshahi. The workshops provided hands-on training to the participants on contributing and editing Bangla Wikipedia, and were attended by university students and new Wikipedians. The best three participants of each workshops, based on their contributions (over a time period of two months) to Bangla Wikipedia, were then invited to the Gala Event.
The Gala Event was held in February 2015 in Dhaka with Jimmy Wales in attendance as the chief guest. The event was attended by around 300 invited participants, including Wikimedians, other guests from different universities, and from the government. A panel discussion was held with Jimmy Wales, Munir Hasan (President of WMBD), representatives from Telecom operators partnered with Wikipedia Zero, and education activists. They discussed ways for fostering free availability of knowledge and information through Wikimedia projects in Bangladesh. Eight photowalks were held in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Rajshahi and Rangpur, aiming to engage and encourage photographers to contribute photos to Wikimedia Commons. A second goal was to collect photographs of architectural, historical, and archaeological sites in Bangladesh. An average of ten to fifteen photographers attended each photowalk, which covered Old Dhaka, the National Botanical Garden, Chittagong University, Puthia Temple Complex, and Sylhet city.
The main program in the series was the Bangla Wikipedia 10th Anniversary Conference, held on May 30, 2015 at Daffodil International University. The conference acted as the biggest gathering of Bangla Wikipedia contributors from both Bangladesh and India. There were a number of workshops and sessions at the program, including Collaboration between the Bangladeshi and Indian Bengali Wikipedians and Increasing women contributors in the growth of Bangla Wikipedia, with many concentrating on creating quality articles and contributing to Wikimedia Commons. There were over 320 participants, and the best Bangladeshi contributors over the last decade were recognized alongside the best three photographers of the photography contest. Eminent writer and journalist Anisul Hoque inspired the attendance by describing how useful Wikipedia is to him. The conference received substantial press coverage.
The Wikipedia School Programs were designed more to encourage students to effectively use Wikipedia for their benefit than to contribute to it. It was held on June 16, 2015 at Shaheed Police Smrity School & College in Dhaka; about 80 students from 9th to 12th grade were present, including five teachers. Students were provided with leaflets that contained brief instructions about using and contributing to the Bangla Wikipedia. It was the first time in the country that a Wikipedia-related event was held in a school.
Instead of holding one program to mark the anniversary, this series of events allowed us to conduct extensive outreach programs across Bangladesh that increased reach and included hands-on training for Wikipedians. One of our key purposes in organizing this series of events was to involve the new volunteers with the old ones and enhance organizing capacity through volunteer engagement.
This also provided advantage in terms of organizational effectiveness, as local volunteers in cities where no Wikipedia related activities had ever been held could organize programs by themselves—of the many Bangla Wikipedia events held in the past, almost all were in Dhaka and Chittagong. A few Wikipedians hailed from other areas of the country.
Our events covered all seven divisional cities, thus paving the way for growing Wikipedia communities in those areas of the country. It is imperative for Wikimedia affiliates to involve people from different places and backgrounds to disseminate the Wikimedia movement in a wider context, and to increase editor diversity in the Wikimedia community.
Writer Tanweer Morshed Executive Committee Member Wikimedia Bangladesh
* Originally published on Wikimedia Blog - July 29th, 2015
Bangla Wikipedia Photography Contest 2014 is a photography contest and crowd-sourcing event in which participants from Bangladesh photograph and upload images of historical monuments and heritage sites throughout Bangladesh to Wikimedia Commons. This event is supported by Wikimedia Bangladesh and organized locally by the Bangla Wikipedia community members.
The aim of the contest is to collect pictures of natural heritage sites and gardens, such as nature reserves, nature / landscape conservation areas, natural parks, scenic / landscape areas, remarkable gardens, etc. of Bangladesh to illustrate articles in the worldwide free Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. The focus is not only on sites of national importance, but also on those protected at the regional level, and variety of natural and historic sites possible: forests, parks, gardens, rocks, caves and whatever is protected in your region. This means that most users will be able to find several natural heritage sites / historical monuments close to them. Everyone is welcome to get involved, whether as a participant (photographer), organizational volunteer, or both. The competition has started from 1st September and the final deadline is December 31, 2014.
