#Bangladesh - Ananta Bijoy Das

When people are lynched because they express their point of view, it is murder pure and simple. It is the denial of basic human rights. When multiple people die for the same reason, people who are all connected to the same blog, it is obvious that some organisation, some planning is behind it.

When no action is taken, it is an afront to the rule of law. It is an indication that law enforcement is not functional. The law should be applied equally and there is no opinion that has the power to lift itself above the law. In the final analysis, even the law should support what a country has acknowledged to be universal and consequently law enforcement should apply itself.

Mr Ananta Bijoy Das is only one of several bloggers lynched by a small group of people in Bangladesh. There is a Wikidata item for him. There is no Wikipedia article yet. He is as relevant as so many other people that get killed for the wrong reasons, by people with wrong attitudes.
Thanks,
     GerardM

#Wikidata - #Bangladesh #University of #Engineering and Technology

The Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology currently knows 16 people who studied there. Two of them were in a category that had not yet been created.  In theory 16 articles are waiting for them to be added to this category. In addition, someone may want to categorise the category..

The good news in all this:

• Wikidata can be used to populate Wikipedia categories
• people are actively adding information in Wikidata first
• by adding students and faculty in Wikidata, people are connected and consequently the universities and colleges get exposure
• Maybe, my call to the college boys and girls is heard by some of them

Thanks,

      GerardM

Manna Dey, a #singer from #India

Today Manna Dey died. He was really famous in India and #Bangladesh. When you want to know about Mr Dey, you will not find anything about him on Wikipedia when there is no article about him.

Realistically, you would not expect an article about him in the Occitan Wikipedia. Sadly, the Occitan Wikipedia cannot share the sum of all knowledge. To demonstrate that it could provide information after all, the following template was added:

{{Infobox Musica (artista)}}

It resulted in an infobox with several missing labels in Occitan. They were added and the result is relevant information about Mr Dey on the Occitan Wikipedia. As you can see, they are red links for the Occitan Wikipedia.

What if the result of a "not found" was nicely formatted data from Wikidata?
Thanks,
      GerardM

Another use for a #font

The Bengali script is not only used for the Bengali language. The Bishnupria Manipuri language is as far as we know written exclusively in this script.

The best way to explain what the Localisation team can do for a language community is to implement known solutions. Adding the support for the Lohit Bengali font for Bishnupria Manipuri is easy and obvious.

We do not know if there is a need for an input method that is specific for Bishnupria Manipuri. For that we need to be advised by people who know the language. When they work together in a language support team, we can build the framework that they can implement solutions for their language on.
Thanks,
    GerardM

The #Dutch in #Bangladesh

When you study the history of Bangladesh, sources can be found as far afield as the Netherlands. With source texts in Dutch, handwritten and in old Dutch at that it is hard to piece together the background of historical artefacts as the old silk factory in Boro Kuthi.

Historical Boro Kuthi, former Dutch Silk Factory

Boro Kuthi will become a heritage site and the Rajshahi City Cooperation asked its people to provide information documents of the sites historic importance. As many of the documents can be found it the Netherlands, there is a call for volunteers to transcribe and translate the original documents.

It is quite an interesting project: Dutch archivists are volunteering their time and they seek people to transcribe the old Dutch and modernise it, translate it into English and even Bangla. This is the kind of project that would make sense as a Wikimedia GLAM project as well.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Reporting on the 10th #Wikipedia anniversary

Our celebration is news in many periodicals and websites in many languages. I love this news item on the German Deutsche Welle in the Bengali language. I cannot make head or tail out of it.

The logo depicted in the article is the logo of the English Wikipedia. Obvious really because it started this whole Wikipedia ten years ago.

Recently the input methods for Bengali have been much improved; there are three input methods available; Avro InScript and NKB. This makes it easier for people to edit in Bengali.

This improvement is currently only available on the Bengali projects and consequently it is not a MediaWiki improvement. Commons would benefit from the same improvements and so would any other project where people edit in Bengali.

I hope that such usability improvements will find their way in the core MediaWiki product because it is essential for the usability of the Bengali localisation.
Thanks,
        GerardM