# விக்கிப்பீடியா:தமிழ் இணையக் கல்விக்கழகம் ஊடாக தமிழ் விக்கிப்பீடியாவுக்கான வளர்ச்சி வாய்ப்புகள்/பு. ஒ/en


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**Memorandum of Understanding**  

This Memorandum of Understanding (“MoU” or “Memorandum”) is entered into on this day of January 2016.  

By and Between:  

Tamil Virtual Academy, Gandhi Mandapam Road, Kottur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600025  

AND  

Wikimedia Chapter, 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore, Karnataka 560071  

Whereas  

**Tamil Virtual Academy** (TVA) is an autonomous institution established by the Government of Tamil Nadu. TVA aims at providing Internet-based resources and opportunities for the Tamil communities living in different parts of the globe as well as others interested in learning Tamil, Science, Technology, Tamil Computing software and acquiring knowledge of the history, art, literature and culture of the Tamils and to identify, establish, maintain and promote the solutions for the Tamil computing requirements of Tamil Diaspora, Government, Educational, Media and Business institutions.  

**Global Tamil Wikimedia Community** (GTWC) consists of contributors and users from around the globe, developing the platform and content of Tamil Wikimedia. Global Tamil Wikimedia Community relies on and collaborates with the the greater Wikimedia community for its functions.  

**Wikimedia India Chapter** (WMIN, also known as Wikimedia India) is an independent and not-for-profit organization registered in Karnataka, India that supports, promotes and educate the general Indian public about the availability and use of free and open educational content, which includes the ability to access, develop and contribute to encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, images, etc. Wikimedia Chapters are independent organizations founded to support and promote Wikimedia projects within a country. While independent, chapters are recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, a top-ten internet property.  

Wikipedia is a free-access and free-content Internet encyclopedia. Wikipedia is ranked among the ten most popular websites and constitutes the Internet's largest and most popular general reference work. Wikipedia has nearly 35 million articles in 288 different languages. It has more than 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month.  

In **India**, Wikipedia is present in 22 Indian languages among which Tamil has 68,000+ articles and ranks second in terms of usage. Every month, Tamil Wikipedia gets more than 5 million page views. Tamil also has more Wikimedia projects like Tamil Wiktionary and Tamil WikiSource.  

Regarding **Tamil**, TVA donated its technical glossaries to Tamil Wiktionary in 2010. This helped to add more than 1,50,000 words to the project and made it the top Wiktionary project in Indian languages and a top 20 project globally. This led to widespread adoption of these technical terms in Tamil Wikipedia articles and thereby resulting in popular usage of such terms among the general public. In 2013, with guidance from TVA, Tamil Valarchi Kazhagam donated 20 volumes of encyclopedia under Creative Commons license allowing usage in Tamil Wikipedia and its sister projects.  

Thus, both TVA and Wikimedia communities and organizations have a successful history of working together for the benefit of Tamil language online which closely aligns with TVA’s stated mission. To take this collaboration further, WMIN proposes to enter into a MoU.  

The parties share a mutual interest in  
: a) Creation and spread of free knowledge (particularly in the fields of Science, Technology, Social Sciences and Medicine) in Tamil through encyclopedias, dictionaries, books and multimedia  
: b ) Documenting Tamil heritage of historical importance  
: c) Development of Free and Open source tools and technologies for Tamil computing.  

This Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) sets the terms and understanding between the **Tamil Virtual Academy** (TVA) and **Wikimedia India** (WMIN) acting on behalf of the **Global Tamil Wikimedia Community** (GTWC) to undertake the following programs and projects.  

With collaboration and direction from the Global Tamil Wikimedia Community, with the support of the volunteers from the Free Software Foundation Tamil Nadu and funded as found appropriate by the Wikimedia Foundation, according to its global norms and practices for its grants program, WMIN on behalf of GTWC will collaborate with or seek support from TVA under various domains including and starting with the following:  

- Policy initiatives for adoption of free content licenses in public institutions
- Infrastructure support
- Capacity building programs
- Digitization of Galleries, Archives, Museums, Libraries in Tamil Nadu
- Access to information for writing Wikipedia articles
- Wikipedia content improvement
- Outreach
- Wikipedia in Education

Under these domains, following will be the set of activities to begin with:  

- International Tamil media contest
- Wikipedia training workshop for various civil society members such as writers, scholars and artists
- Creation of multimedia training materials and resources for outreach
- Creation of articles about all panchayats in Tamil Nadu
- Capacity building programs for Tamil Wikipedia volunteers
- Creation of Centre for Free Knowledge
- Wikipedia training workshops in all districts for teachers and enthusiasts in government service.
- Wikipedia training in Kani Tamil Peravai (Tamil Computer Clubs) in colleges and universities.
- Presenting Tamil Wikipedia through book fairs

These set of domains and activities identified for collaboration may be revised and updated periodically based on standard performance indicators as guided by global metrics identified by the Wikimedia movement. All these activities shall abide by all the core principles and practices of the Wikimedia movement and have due community consultation.  

All hardware, software and other reusable material funded by WMIN shall remain WMIN property and TVA may be the custodian with a responsibility to return them in a usable condition once the partnership period is over or when requested by WMIN.  

The parties hereby agree to license all outputs (text, corpus, media, software code) developed under this partnership under CC-BY-SA 4.0 International and GPLv2+ or a more liberal free content license.  

TVA may provide its infrastructure for Wikipedia activities like conferences, edit-a-thons etc., and may extend similar support throughout the state of Tamil Nadu through its network of government institutions.  

All Wikimedia Foundation trademarks belong to the Wikimedia Foundation, and any use of their trade names, trademarks, service marks, logos, or domain names must be in compliance with their Terms of Use and in compliance with their Trademark Policy as described at https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Trademark_policy .  

This partnership shall attribute Wikimedia India only at an organizational level and not implicate Wikimedia Foundation or their projects directly thereof.  

The present agreement is valid for a period of 5 years from the date of signing. The agreement may be terminated by either party giving an advance notice of one month in writing. Any amendment to this agreement will need mutual agreement in writing.  

In witness whereof, the parties to this agreement/MoU have affixed their signatures in the presence of witness here under:  

Chennai  
Dated: 09 January 2016