the goan I network
PANAJI
Goa will witness its first mini ‘edit-a-thon’ on Saturday, October 13, organised by the Goa Wikipedia Group, with the aim to flesh out existing Konkani Wikipedia content, and add to the database of the Konkani Wikipedia.
The edit-a-thon will take place at the Goa State Central Library from 1 pm to 5 pm. Creator of the Goa Wikipedia Group, Frederick Noronha explained that the intention of the edit-a-thon is to promote more Goa-related content on Wikipedia, to promote Konkani content and translations on the Konkani Wikipedia, and to build a close knit networking community of Wikipedia contributors, editors and supporters in Goa.
The Goa Wikipedia Group encourages participation from people who are interested in building the Konkani Wikipedia, as well as those who would like to contribute Goa-related content in all languages, including, but not restricted to English, Konkani, Hindi, Portuguese, and French.
Speaking to The Goan, Noronha explained that the intention of the edit-a-thon is to rope in more volunteers willing to contribute, and get them to start contributing right away.
“So many young people have multilingual skills. Rather than holding training workshops, which could lead to wasted efforts, we might be better off with Wikipedia edit-a-thons that actually throw volunteers into the water and force them to swim, i.e.edit straight away,” said Noronha.
He also explained that what the group aims to do would be easier now than a decade ago, since typing in devanagari online has become much easier, even on mobiles.
Those interested in joining in the edit-a-thon can bring along pictures of Goa on a pen-drive which can then be shared on Wikipedia, as well as think of Goa-related topics that they would like to work on, or add to.
The Konkani Wikipedia, which was started some years ago, has a couple of articles written in both Romi Konkani and Devanagiri. It was Noronha who first proposed starting the Konkani Wikipedia over a decade ago, while Denzil Simoes, and Darshan Kandolkar have been consistently contributing to it over the past couple of years.
Fr Luis Xavier Gomes, from the Konkani Department of St Xavier’s College Mapusa is the admin of the Konkani Wikipedia.
