Request for Pariticipation in Bangla wikipedia

As you may have noticed, Bangla Wikipedia (http://bn.wikipedia.org ), the Open source volunteer-crafted encyclopedia, has grown a lot over the last year. In March 2006, it had only 500 articles, but now, the total entries have grown over 14,000 (including stub and drafts), with about 5000-7000 small-mid-sized articles.

Right now, Bangla wikipedia is the largest Bangla language Website in the whole world. Among 250 languages of Wikipedia, it ranks 43rd in terms of total article count.

Over the last year, we have taken initiatives to draw more contributors to Bangla wikipedia. In December, volunteers of Bangla Wikipedia visited various Mughal-era monuments of Old Dhaka and took more than 300 pictures, all of which were released under a free license ... these photos are completely free and open for all to use, without any restrictions of copyrights. (Some of the photos can be seen at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Dhaka )


But we need more people, and this is where YOU can help.

*Check out a brief intro to Wikipedia at http://www.ragibhasan.com/wikipedia

*Please visit http://bn.wikipedia.org to check out the Wikipedia,

*Sign up for it at http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin and contribute wherever you see useful.

*We also need a lot of photos of monuments and artifacts of the
country. You can upload any such photos (under a free license) at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload (with
[[Category:Bangladesh]] in the description form).

*And join our organization Bangla_Wiki\'s mailing list at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bangla_wiki


Why contribute? The world we live in is becoming digital, and in 50
years, anything not represented digitally will simply be forgotten or
sidelined.

Bangla is our own language, and we need to bring the knowledge of the
whole world to it, so that the children of tomorrow will have a source
to look into. Even more, we need to represent the culture and heritage
of Bangladesh and West Bengal ....

No one from other countries and cultures will come and save our own
history. No foreigner will write in Bangla about the glory of the
Lalbagh fort, or the game "Dariabandha". We need to do this ourselves.

So, this is a call to all Bangla speakers, please join the collective
effort to preserve Bangla language, culture, and heritage at the
Bangla Wikipedia.


Feel free to contact me about any question. Also, you can email the
mailing list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bangla_wiki


Thanks


Ragib
--
Ragib Hasan
PhD Student
Dept of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
201 N Goodwin Avenue
Urbana IL 61801

Website:
http://www.ragibhasan.com
http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/www