Four years of Tulu Wikipedia; over 6k pages in the language

Team Udayavani, Aug 8, 2020, 5:13 PM IST

Mangaluru: Wikipedia’s Tulu language version has entered its 5th year on August 5 with a collection of over 1,350 articles in over 6 thousand pages.

A few colleges in coastal Karnataka had in the past years formed teams called Wikipedia Students Association for the purpose of editing articles for Wikipedia in Tulu and other local languages.

With the intent to make quality Tulu language articles available online for Tulu speakers across the country and the world, the team had also been seeking advice from scholars for the articles.

They have already visited scholars such as Professor Amrit Someshwar, Professor Vivek Rai and Professor A V Navda and explained to them about Wikipedia and sought suggestions from them.

Beginning in 2007, Tulu Wikipedia had about 135 articles before March 2014 and reached 750 articles by December of that year. In that same month, the World Tulu Festival was held in Adyar after which the interest in the website increased.

Many writing and editing workshops were held in Mangaluru and Udupi increasing the numbers of articles to 789 by February 2015 and in August 2016 Wikipedia created it as an independent encyclopedia.

Presently, there are more than 1,350 articles on the website.

Works have also begun on the Tulu Wiktionary containing more than 700 words with their meanings and synonyms.

Dr Vishwanath Badikan, President of the Karavali Wikimedians User Group states that currently more than 30 people are contributing regular articles and edits to the Tulu Wikipedia and many more are also interested in writing articles.