Shiju Alex, a native of Karimba, Palakkad, has been appointed as the consultant of Wikipedia’s Indian operation, after the Wikimedia Foundation recognised his proficient efforts to improve Malayalam Wiki.
The office opened in South Delhi, named as Wikimedia Foundation India Initiatives, aims at improving Wiki’s operations in Indian vernacular languages. Interestingly, this is Wikipedia’s first ‘non-American’ office.
Mr Alex, 34, has been instrumental in developing Wiki-Malayalam. Wiki had only 500 pages in Malayalam in 2005 when he started volunteering, but, it has more than 20,000 pages now.
“I am really happy to be part of Wiki Foundation officially,” Mr Alex said.
“The most significant project would be Wikipedia’s entry into school curriculum. A project would be developed in association with education departments and students will be asked to create Wikipedia articles as part of the internal tests.”
