Chennai: The Tamil Virtual Academy (TVA) will soon come out with a more ‘authentic version’ of the Tamil Wikipedia, there being many errors in the existing information in cyber space.
Prof P.R. Nakkeeran, director, said on Tuesday that the academy had embarked on a project to document the arts, culture and heritage of Tamil Nadu online along the lines of Wikipedia.
In the first phase, it would document the history, tradition, significance, paintings, sculptures and rituals of five Chola temples in Tamil Nadu, including Tirupullamangai in Thanjavur district, Tirunanipalli, near Mayildatururai, Thiruppazhanam in Thanjavur district, Melakadambur, near Chidambaram and Tiruvirkolam (Cooum), near Chennai.
Prof Nakkeeran said that their team would soon shoot visuals of all the five temples, which would be three-dimensional videos and pictures with high class content.
“Much content on Wikipedia needs correction. Anybody can contribute to our website, we will verify the authenticity of the information and upload it as we need to provide correct information online. TVA is expected to complete the project within a year’s time,” he added.
In the next phase, the academy will document more temples and sculptures in the state. “Tamil Nadu is not only famous for temples, but for sculptures, rock and cave inscriptions too.
We will also reach inaccessible parts of the state to document these and upload them onto our website. This is a continuous process,” he said.
Welcoming the government’s initiative, former principal of Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai and renowned artist G. Chandrasekaran said that nobody had done an extensive documentation of Tamil Nadu’s culture and history online as envisioned by the TVA.
“Wikipedia does not have most of the details that the academy plans to have online. Wikipedia has only details of a few things from Tamil Nadu; we need to have a large amount of information about Tamil Nadu online to be on par with people in other parts of the world,” he said.
