We have pending site-work to be taken care of in the next couple of days. Creating Gallery-folders for the new members who have posted since last month, is one such job. Site might be offline due to maintanance for a few hours either on Friday or Saturday. Also, if you have more than one rangoli uploaded in the queue, please kindly wait to upload more until your images are published. Thank you.
One of the things that I do ceremoniously, as part of publishing the submitted rangolis, is to verify the work to make sure that it is original work and not plagiarized. This actually takes up quite a bit of my time too and is needed to maintain the quality of the site.
Sometimes, there isn’t much we can do about giving credit to the designs we make that are inspired by store-bought series of kolam books or note-books passed on down the familial line. Both the former and the latter fall under the “unknown author” category. But, when we consider the freehand kolams/rangolis originally designed by other people, we can certainly give credit to them by mentioning the name of the person and/or website. Also, it might be better to ask for permission prior to integrating another person’s original work into our works.
According to most people experienced with the cyberworld, plagiarism entails not only the act of copying but also the presentation of another’s ideas as one’s own. There have been cases of plagiarism here at iKolam over the years. Members have posted plagiarized images from other sites here, and iKolam members have plagiarized our members’ images and posted them elsewhere too. At iKolam, we always give the benefit of the doubt, and send a message to the owner whom we suspect has committed plagiarism. And we have about 70% success rate in making somebody realize and fix the mistakes. We have also not denied access to members to the site, who have plagiarized in any way till date.
I have provided two examples of work which are considered plagiarized. Image 1 is completely hand drawn by me, but the idea belongs to another ikolam member and I have not mentioned source of the idea, thus giving the impression that this is my original work. Image 2 is the direct copy of the original file that belongs to some body else.
When you mouse over the thumbnails on the front page, you'll see the city names of the kolams too. We were excited to realize that, each entry comes from a different place (ofcourse we all knew that), and couldn't help thinking about this idea.
Let us know if you don't want us to reveal your city.
I wanted to let you all know that, going forward, I would be spending my time on ikolam publishing rangolis, managing/moderating, and answering to emails/issues etc. I like the way our long time members support each other by commenting on each other's rangolis. Due to time constraints, I may not be commenting as much on our established member's submissions. At the same time, I feel like I owe the same support/encouragement to our new members, who may not be completely aware of how our system works.
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1950's, 60's,70's & 80s
First, we survived being born to mothers who had no full time maids/cooked food/cleaned the house while they carried us.
They took aspirin, ate cheese , sweet dishes and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.
This post should have been written a long time back, it is late but nonetheless. This pertains to members who get their rangolis published at iKolam.
HI FRIENDS THIS IS JUST TO CONFIRM THE DATE AND TIME OF OUR ANNIVERSARY MEET.
Here is an article I wrote in telugu along with SrI brahmAnaMdaM in eemaaTa. It is entitled sA virahE tava dInA. It is on the eighth ashTapadi in SrIjayadEva's gItagOviMda with that name. Many of the readers may not know telugu. But there is an English translation of the ashTapadi in the text. More importantly there are links on the site for the songs sung by various artists as well as to external links marked in red. There are at least 15 versions of the same song sung in the same and different rAgAs in all styles - karNATaka, hiMdUstAni, fusion, etc.
