I think you need to have a look at Hindi and Nepal basha (newari) wikipedias also.<br><br>Some time back (2 years before) I pointed out this issue in this mailing list itself. (<a href="http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2008-January/000092.html">http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2008-January/000092.html</a>)<br>
<br><br><br>All the top 5 language wikipedias that I mentioned in this<a href="http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B4hBi4hJ-5mnZmMxYzFhNTYtZWU5Yy00ZTAwLTliZDItMWJiZGI5MGUxZGQ2&hl=en"> statistical report </a>are following the same strategy to increase the article count. It is really sad to see that even Hindi wikipedia, which has the maximum user base among all the other Indian languages, is also following this same method to increase the article count. (Hindi wikipedia was having 30,000 artcles on June 2009. But now it has more than 50,000. But the active users in that wiki is still less than that of Tamil or Malayalam wiki.<br>
<br>We can easily make out the quality of the articles in a wiki if you look at the parameters <b>bytes per article</b> and <b>articles with size more than 2000 bytes</b>. <br><br><br>The fact that all these thousands (or ten thousands) of one-liners are created by one or two admins (or some bots) of that wikipedia is really alarming. The very purpose of wiki software and collaborative authoring fail there. These type of users are killing their wiki projects and <b>prevent any potential new users</b> to start editing in that wiki. <br>
<br>Readers will not get any benefit from these type of wikis. They still need to go to English wiki for some good/fruit
information about any topic. <br><br>Shiju<br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 12:00 PM, YellowMonkey <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:blnguyen2230@gmail.com">blnguyen2230@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"><div>I don't know who to talk to about it specifically, but there is some problem with the cricket articles on the Marathi Wikipedia; perhaps it is indicative of a wider trend</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Lots of English wikipedia Australian cricketer articles have Marathi interwikis more than any other language. But going to all of them, they consist of three parts</div>
<div> </div>
<div>*Stub message</div>
<div>*Empty infobox</div>
<div>*The same five words as following</div>
<div> </div>
<div>उदाहरणादाखल <a title="सचिन तेंडुलकर" href="https://mail.google.com/wiki/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%9A%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%A8_%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%A1%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0" target="_blank"><font color="#002bb8">सचिन तेंडुलकर</font></a> हा लेख पहा.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The wikilink goes to Sachin Tendulkar, judging by the photo</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I went to the Marathi article on Len Hutton, and clicked on the cat</div>
<div> </div>
<div><a href="http://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%97:%E0%A4%87%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%9F_%E0%A4%96%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B3%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A1%E0%A5%82" target="_blank">http://mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%97:%E0%A4%87%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%97%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B2%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6_%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%95%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%9F_%E0%A4%96%E0%A5%87%E0%A4%B3%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A1%E0%A5%82</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>Presumably this is the cat for English cricketers? I randomly clicked on about 15 of them and all of them have the same sentence. The same thing happens on teh Australian, NZ and South African cats by following the interwiki, about 800 articles appear to be completely empty or more useless than a substub.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>--------</div>
<div>Whoever did this, all they are doing is meaninglessly inflating the article count with articles that are all but empty except for an irrelevant comment about Sachin Tendulkar.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>They may think it makes Marathi Wikipedia look better on the article count rankings, but it is only likely to make it look like a farce, especially if this is widespread.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>It may trick a few admins in other Wikipedias into being impressed and generate some fake prestige, but there is also a chance that anyone who might use/contribute might consider the WP to be a joke, or people from other projects who bother to take a look will think that the culture of the Marathi project is to fraudulently inflate themselves with misleading statistics</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I checked another Indic wp with the random function and saw a very substantial minority consisting of empty section headers cut and pasted around the place, although the depth ranking is very high.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The depth can be gamed very easily, but it doesn't do anything useful except for false bragging and probably harm in the long term</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Can someone who knows Marathi deal with those cricket articles please.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Thanks</div>
<div> </div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br>