Wikipedia seeks Bengali editors through book fair stall

To expand its database in Bengali, Wikipedia has put up a stall at the ongoing Kolkata Book Fair seeking vernacular editors for the world's largest free online encyclopedia available in over 280 languages.
"This is for the first time that Wikipedia is participating in any book fair any where in the world. The stall serves many purposes but the central idea is to motivate net-savvy youngsters to volunteer and contribute Bengali articles," Jayanta Nath, member of the executive committee of Wikimedia India, told PTI.
With a mission to bring free educational content at everyone's fingertips, Wikimedia Foundation runs projects like Wikipedia, an open-source encyclopedia where anyone can contribute, edit and review an article.

It has more than 24 million articles in over 284 languages of which 22 are in Indian languages like Hindi, Nepali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, Urdu, Gujarati, Sanskrit, Pali, etc.
Available at www.Bn.Wikipedia.Org, the Bengali edition has only 28,000 articles while the main English one has more than 45 lakh pieces.
Banglapedia has less than 200 editors of which more than 150 are from Bangladesh, while only ten are from West Bengal.
"We want more editors and reviewers from Kolkata and the book fair is the perfect place to reach out to such people. Anyone who has knowledge about the subject and is net-savvy can be a contributor," said Rangan Datta, one of the Wiki editors.