State's presence on Wikipedia negligible, IITians step up to bring change
Bhanu P Lohumi
Tribune News Service
Shimla, July 16
With over 20,000 villages, numerous rivers, mountains, institutions and industry, the presence of Himachal on Wikipedia is negligible (about 0.75 per cent).
A study by the founder and former director of IIT-Mandi Prof Timothy A Gonsalves revealed that there were only 13 articles on Himachal villages in Wikipedia in August 2020, which was increased to 152 in July 2021 by the IIT-Mandi Wikimedians — a group of faculty, students and alumni of the institute.
A comparative study revealed that all 534 villages of New York (US) were covered in Wikipedia and so were 100 per cent villages of Kerala while only 152 of over 20,000 villages of Himachal were covered and 13 out of 3,338 villages in Mandi district figured.
However, after the initiative of Wikimedians, new articles on IIT-Mandi, EWOK, Kamand village, Khanahr (Salgi) village, Losar Khas village and other gram panchayats in Himachal were created for Wikipedia and Wikipedia Commons, besides improving the already existing articles, Gonsalves told The Tribune.
Photographs and articles on Spiti river, Black Kite, Kuthachi village in Mandi, Jagannathi Temple in Kullu, waterfall at Marhi in Manali, Prashar Lake were also uploaded, he said adding that IIT uses Wikipedia for technical and non-technical information and once looking for villages, we found nothing and decided to contribute.
Wikipedia is an encycleopedia that is widely used and trusted by people around the world. Wikimedia Commons is a related repository of photographs and other media that are free for use by anyone. Many of the images used to illustrate Wikipedia articles are from common people.
Wikipedia, in principle, could have an article on every legally recognised village, every river, mountain and institution of public importance but strangely Himachal has little presence on it, he said.
“The state has vast scope to project itself on the platform and we have added details on Himachal on Bengali, Punjabi and Tamil Wikipedias,” he said.
Besides articles, two photographs have figured in feature pictures, six in ‘picture of the day’ and valued and quality images have increased from one and 12 to 11 and 88, respectively, in one year on Wikipedia Commons.
