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Bangla Wiki

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is now the largest encyclopedia in the world. The Bangla version of the wikipedia is evolving slowly since its inception in January 2006. BdOSN take this open content based encyclopedia to build the Bangla Encyclopedia. In Bangladesh, the main thrust sector in Open Content Development has been the development of the Bangla Wikipedia and the thrust was Bangla Wiki. The project aims at developing a free, open access encyclopedia in Bangla language.

The Bangla Wiki project is loosely organized using Internet based mailing lists and informal "Wiki Adda" at BdOSN office. Most of the participants are students in Bangladesh and West Bengal, or expatriates living in North America, Europe, and Japan. We are actively promoting Wikipedia and open content development activities in Bangladesh. Bangla Wiki has conducted several workshops to familiarize the new users with techniques and skills related to the project. To promote public awareness, Bangla Wiki organized rallies during the Bangla New Year, and also observed August 2006 as the "Bangla Wiki Month".

Bangla Wiki will set up an office in conjunction with BDOSN for people with limited Internet connectivity. Also, people from other regions of the country can send articles via postal mail, which is later added to Bangla Wikipedia by Bangla Wiki volunteers.

Besides articles, Bangla Wiki has also focused on creating a free repository of images and other multimedia content. As of October, 2006, more than 400 images on various topics have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons or GNU Free Documentation licenses.

Since its launch in late March, 2006, the Bangla Wiki project has been extremely successful. Although the Bangla Wikipedia was initiated in 2004, it only had 540 articles till March 2006, with very little actual content. Initially, a target of 10,000 articles in one year was set. The project has been able to attract a large number of editors. As of October, 2005, the total registered editor count is 865. The number of articles in the Bangla Wikipedia has grown initially at a rate of 800 articles per month, with occasional burst of activity raising the rate beyond that. As a result of these activities, the Bangla language Wikipedia crossed the 10,000 article mark in September 2006, becoming the 50th Wikipedia, and the 2nd language from South Asia to achieve this.

The project has also gained a lot of media coverage. Bangla language newspapers such as the Daily Prothom-Alo, Ittefaq, and Jai Jai Din have published articles focusing on the Bangla Wikipedia. BBC Bangla World Service broadcasted an interview of one of the organizers of the Bangla Wiki project on May 2. Yahoo! news and many other news organizations covered the 10,000 article milestone of Bangla Wikipedia.

• Have a look at Bangla Wikipedia
• Tutorial for editing in Bangla wikipedia
• To join Bangla Wiki Group: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/bangla_wiki/