A massive earthquake in Nepal has killed thousands of people since a devastating 7.8 tremor on April 25, 2015. Nepalese Wikipedian Krish Dulal shared many images of this disaster, such as this photo, freely licensed underCC BY-SA 3.0.
Krish Dulal, a prolific Wikipedia editor from Nepal, recently uploaded photos of Kathmandu to Wikimedia Commons, to document the impact of this devastating earthquake — and to invite more photographers to contribute images about this disaster.
After seeing the photos he posted, we reached out to him to learn more. Here is our email correspondence, which was lightly edited for this post.
For more information about the Nepal earthquake, follow its Wikipedia page — and this image gallery. Suggestions on how to support relief efforts are included at the end of this post.
Krish Dulal is a Nepalese Wikipedian and video editor. Photo by Krish Dulal, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Can you tell me who you are and where you come from?
My name is Krish Dulal. I am a video editor by profession. My home town is Dulalthok, a small village lies in Panchkhal valley in Nepal. Currently I am living in Brooklyn, New York. I am graduated from Tribhuwan University and my major is Nepali Language and literature. I am one of the top contributing volunteers on the Nepali Wikipedia. I am working to improve quality and quantity of articles in Nepali Language. I have mentored some of the top contributing wikipedians, including my own brother Nirmal Dulal.
What was your experience with the recent earthquake?
As I am far away from my homeland, I couldn’t exactly experience the tremors but emotionally that was panic and it was a terrible situation for me. I spent the whole day just trying to contact my family members, who were in the most affected area in Nepal.
Why did you upload the photos of the earthquake — and what was the context behind the photos?
My main goal is documentation of the calamity. I want foreign people to get more information about the situation of Nepal. The pictures were taken by my brother in the Kaushaltar, Bhadrakali and Shantinagar areas in Kathmandu (I uploaded them to Commons with his permission). Many of the houses are down and people are in fear. Most of people are living in the streets.
Do you expect to be uploading any more photos in the near future?
Yeah, I am trying to get more pictures from my brother and others. I have inspired some of other Wikipedian friends to take pictures and upload them on Wikimedia Commons. I hope they will be adding some pictures as the situation gets better.
What would you say to others about contributing images to Wikimedia Commons?
I just want to say donate your pictures to Wikimedia Commons and make them last forever. Many of my friends are uploading pictures in social media, and I want to ask them to upload in Commons, so that their pictures get more value. Donating them on Commons makes them re-usable.
Krish Dulal mentors a class on how to edit Wikipedia. Photo by Srijana Timsina, freely licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
How did you become involved with Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects?
It was 2009, I was looking for some articles in English Wikipedia. Till that time, I was unaware of Wikipedia in the Nepali language. Then I saw a link for Nepali language. When I opened the link, I found some articles. When I went through I found the quality of articles were very poor and I felt they needed to be edited. Most of them were written in the Hindi language and some of them were machine translated. As Nepali Language is my mother tongue and my major is Nepali Language, I was motivated to improve the quality of articles. Since then, I started to edit and create articles as well, as I begun to upload pictures in Commons.
Is there anything else that you would like to add?
I just want to request all the people around the world to help people of my motherland to recover from this calamity. Every little bit counts.
Victor Grigas, Storyteller, Wikimedia Foundation
Donate to support relief efforts
Here are some of the many nonprofit organizations you can donate to, in support of the relief efforts in Nepal:
• UNICEF
• World Food Program
• Red Cross / Red Crescent
• Habitat for Humanity
Donate images to Wikimedia Commons
To donate your images to Wikimedia Commons, you can start an account here, and follow the upload instructions here. We recommend you add them in this category: Category:2015 Nepal earthquake.
More information
For more information about the Nepal earthquake, follow its Wikipedia page. Here are more images of the relief efforts, recently added by contributors in this growing photo collection on the 2015 Nepal earthquake
Dharhara after Nepalquake. Photo by Nirjal stha, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Nepal depremi. Photo by Hilmi Hacaloğlu, Public Domain.
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John Ball and his dog Darcy from the UK’s International Search and Rescue team. Photo by DFID – UK Department for International Development, CC BY-SA 2.0.
More photos are welcome in this category.
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