Report by Pravuprasad Routray, Bhubaneswar: OdishaDiary (Orissadiary.com) conferred the prestigious Odisha Youth Inspiration Award 2012 to the team of contributors of Odia Wikipedia. Health Minister Dr. Damodar Rout, Revenue Minister Surjya Narayan Patro and Energy and IPR Minister Arun Sahoo presented this award to the the Odia Wikipedians in a function in Jayadev Bhawan, Bhubaneswar.

Odia Wikipedia (http://or.wikipedia.org) is a web based free encyclopedia in Odia language. Odia Wikipedia is flagship project of Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization based in the US. The content of Wikipedia are crowd sourced from the voluntary contributors across the world. English Wikipedia being the 5th popular website on internet Odia Wikipedia is the most visited website with more than 4.7 lakh unique visitors every month and the largest website in Odia language with more than 3100 articles. Currently more than 25 editors are contributing in this project. 

Odia Wikipedia aims to provide free encyclopedic content in Odia language which could be accessed online and used for academic, research and expanding someone's own knowledge base. The interesting part of wikipedia is the openness for giving the freedom to users to edit and enhance an article. Most of the articles on Wikipedia start from scratch, small articles. 

Over the period of time many readers find more information and start adding them on it and that is how articles grow in quality and content. Most people end up thinking that Wikipedia articles are written by paid editors just like any other newspapers and journals. But surprisingly, any person can who notices a factual mistake can correct it and add more information to enhance the articles. Contributing to Odia Wikipedia will not only create more free content online in Odia language, but also will bring more academicians and intellectuals together to a common platform. 

At the same time students and academicians who are seeking information in Odia language can make use of it without even buy volumes of books and spending time in library. “We are receiving this award for all the Odias, who has contributed a bit for the language. Everyone here is welcome to join us and be a part of this family”, said Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer of Centre for Internet Society, a grantee of Wikimedia foundation while receiving the award. Odia Wikipedia could be accessed at: http://or.wikipedia.org