*An anonymous editor made this remark in Shiju's post:
**I think a thousand short, unreferenced and well-formatted articles are
better than a million long, translated articles translated from English
Wikipedia.*
I think that the editor meant well but has not correctly understood the
importance of referencing. No article is reliably useful if it is not
referenced well, whether it is in English or in other languages or whether
it is one of a thousand short Hindi articles written originally or a
million articles machine-translated from English into Hindi. Referencing is
the easiest way to improve an article's quality; it is much more useful for
readers than better language or manual-of-style fixes, even more than
adding images.
*Another editor from Hindi Wikipedia got it right :
**As another editor said "I feel presenting a project as a high-quality
project is important for attracting more contributors to it".*
On the other hand, I do not know whether high quality referencing is a
priority to Indic-language Wikipedia editors as of now. In the few
conversations I have had on such issues, referencing has not appeared as a
topic of concern. This is probably due to the state of growth of these
Wikipedias at this moment. When the Wikipedia is young, the focus is on
growth, increasing number of editors and articles. When you grow to large
sizes (as Hindi Wikipedia is on the verge of but not yet reached), quality
increasingly becomes a prime concern not only of the users but also
provides the most convenient deficiency for critics to use.
It is here that English Wikipedia can help. Large numbers of English
Wikipedia articles have verifiable references. These are a source of easily
found references which when added will enhance the quality of any indic
language article on the same subject. I certainly agree with the anonymous
editor that machine translated articles are not the way to add value to any
indic-language wikipedia but English Wikipedia is an undeniably an easy way
to locate useful information, references and images to add to many Indic
Wikipedia articles.
There are many issues to consider. Would the indic language community like
to retain the references in English, translate them or provide both
original and translated versions of the same reference? Each of the
extremely important cite templates which are available on English Wikipedia
needs to be translated into Indic languages and added to each Wikipedia if
not already done so. Most of all, editors need to be educated on the
importance of proper referencing and inline referencing. Referencing is one
of the best ways one can improve the overall quality of articles in Indic
Wikipedias and the more the efforts in this direction, the better the
Wikipedia will be.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
------------------------------------------------------
On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 11:12 PM, Shiju Alex <shiju(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Unfortunately this has not been going on recently
however in the past there were several articles
where more than 3 people
would contribute constantly to bring it to a featured article
level.........Hope we can see the same days again.
Hope those days will be back soon. Strengthening the community by bringing
back old experienced editors and retaining existing editors are the key.
For that focus need to be shifted to that direction.
I remember in 2010
January<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/indian-language-wikipe…
wiki was having approximately 50,000 articles and 50 active users.
Now 2 years down the line, we have more than 1 lakh
articles<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/indian-language-wikip…r/>,
but the number of active users is still 50. Considering the huge speaker
base of Hindi, it should have at least 1000 active users now.
As we can see from the responses of the editors, most of them are not
happy with the results of google translation project or bot created
articles. As one editor said"
I think that the articles translated using machine translation tools
should go under a rigorous review for style, quality and flow before being
made 'live'. A number of articles have been created on Hindi Wikipedia with
Google translation, but these serve no purpose. The style and the flow (and
the English text in untranslated templates, references section etc.) render
them of little interest to a native Hindi reader, and the unfixed errors
render them useless to Google (whose interest is most probably lies in
improving its algorithms and training its bots with good Hindi-language
content). When other editors look at such an article, most of them think
"Well, this article already has all the necessary content. There is no need
for me to edit this." I think a thousand short, unreferenced and
well-formatted articles are better than a million long, translated articles
translated from English Wikipedia.
Now it is duty of the community to address these concerns. As another
editor said "I feel presenting a project as a high-quality project is
important for attracting more contributors to it".
The latest statistics also shows that readership for Hindi
wikipedia<http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/indian-language-wiki…
shooting up. It is showing exponential growth for the past few month. So
there is no lack of visibility or awareness for Hindi wikipedia. We should
be able to convert at least a small percentage of our readers to editor.
According to me, the key solution to address all the current issues is
building the community.
Shiju
On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Gunjan Verma <vermagunjan(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Thanks Shiju for compiling all this information.
I have read through all
the replies from diffrent editors. Some editors have mentioned that there
is no "edit-war" and multiple edit for a single article or collabaration
for a single article. Unfortunately this has not been going on recently
however in the past there were several articles where more than 3 people
would contribute constantly to bring it to a featured article level. Of
course there were edit-wars and that too in good sense. Some examples are
1.
http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%BE_%E0%A4%A8…
2.
http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%AC%E0%A4%B0
3.
http://hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%85%E0%A4%AB%E0%A4%BC%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%…
Hope we can see the same days again.
Regards,
Gunjan
On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Shiju Alex <shiju(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Dear Indic Language Wikimedia Community members,
As part of the Indic Languages initiative of India
Programs<
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…
,
I
have been having detailed discussions with a wide range of Indic
language
wikipedians for the past few weeks. Yesterday I
shared the summary of
discussions with few Assamese Wikipedians which helped us to understand
the
current situation of Assamese wikipedia. Thank
you for the discussions
and ideas that emerged on the mailing list and the talk page.
Today I'm particularly excited to share a summary of the discussions
I've
been been having with *Hindi wikipedians*. It is
available here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_-_India_Programs/Indic_…
I will be honest and confess that I was not sure about the level of
engagement I would have with Hindi wikipedians because the community is
relatively quiet in public forums. I'm really pleased to report that I
was
very pleasantly surprised by the broad-based,
insightful, and
constructive
communications. Hindi community might be silent
but they are active and
full of powerful ideas. We have seen wonderful Hindi wikipedians like
Anirudh in WCI. Even though the current community strength of Hindi
wikipedia might not be good cosidering the huge speaker base of Hindi,
I am
sure the situation will change soon.
Even if you are not involved in Hindi projects, I invite you to read
this
report because the points raised are applicable
to all Indic languages.
Personally, as someone who has been passionate about Indic languages
for
many years now, I found the discussions very
educative and informative
and
thought-provoking. I have learnt a lot from
these discussions and I
hope
you find them as useful as I have. I want to
thank Hindi community for
their time and their fantastic inputs.
Remember most of the issues the Hindi editors raised are applicable not
only to Hindi but for all the Indic languages. So it is important that
other Indic language communities take lessons from it while building the
community.
As mentioned before, I've edited the discussions to protect
confidentiality
as well as to remove any specific personal
comments.
Inviting your active participation in these discussions (either on talk
page or in the mailing lists).
Warm Regards,
Shiju Alex
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