...... However one of them mentioned
that it is slowly becoming more and more difficult for new writers to join
in as contributions have become extremely complicated. Some of the simplest
things lead to disputes and trivialities cause locks on certain articles.......

 

You asked this question at very right time and I do agree with you.While I am a regular wikipedian at times I got chance in giving a constructive and positive look to an article, Specially my experience with English language wikipedia is not too good.

 

It is OK to defend policies earlier wikipedia was supposed to be flexible and new people were supported and helped in creating new articles.That culture is very much lost. With new bots and techniques and so called more vigilante people are doing policing with the policies.Even before you start writing a new article some editor ends up deleting it even they would not give 10 minutes to clean up on your own, so called sand box for users is useless if you want to create a bigger article with proper research.

 

My most recent experience is just yesterday. There is a new article created    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence_in_India  even while I am down to earth secular I would not agree the article is made even while it gives references all the way from this or that on-line new source by any scholarly standard article is too poor and based on yellow journalism, constantly part of constant edit wars. I tried to give some positive and constructive useful direction to the article but it was not of use. SO I decided to begin a new article /Religious_harmony_in_India ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox/Religious_harmony_in_India&action=edit&redlink=1 )  and you will observe it got deleted within few minutes, It did not allow me to request call other wikipedians for participative editing. If I can not get space for contributory writing then whats the use of wikipedia concept , it gets defeated there itself.

 

Similarly I tried to make positive contribution to the article about Dr.Baba Saheb Ambedkar but at times people are so influenced with personal points of views that they keep editing articles bring in all required sources and all to prove and still articles keep making bad impression, one can not help at times.

 

In comparison local Indian Language Wikipedias provide more comfortable working ambiance and there where I like to work.

 

Thanks and Regards

Marathi Wikipedia User Mahitgar


--- मंगल, 11/3/08 को, wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org <wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org> ने लिखा:

द्वारा: wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org <wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org>
विषय: Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 1
To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
दिनांक: मंगलवार, 11 मार्च, 2008, 11:32 AM

Send Wikimediaindia-l mailing list submissions to
	wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
	wikimediaindia-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Wikimediaindia-l digest..."


Today's Topics:

   1. Happy Mother Language Day (An updated list of	Devanagari
      fonts (Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia)
   2. Tough for beginners on Wikipedia? (Sidin Vadukut)
   3. Re: Tough for beginners on Wikipedia? (Utkarshraj Atmaram)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:28:58 +0530 (IST)
From: Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia <mahitgar@yahoo.co.in>
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Happy Mother Language Day (An updated list
	of	Devanagari fonts
To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <315687.81701.qm@web94606.mail.in2.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Dear  Friend,

Do you know any friends who use Devanagari fonts then please forward this email
to them. 
         
To read Marathi Unicode text on internet please just see on top of your
computer screen's window  you find a blue bar mentioning Microsoft Internet
Explorer ,Below that is the second line Where in first menu is file, second is
edit and third is view.Please select view menue their you find -Encoding- there
you please select  Unicode(UTF-8) 
 
and you will see Marathi text in proper marathi .a little more info we are
giving in english which you may feel free to forward to your friends  in the
intrest of Marathi Language. 
 
Welcome! We are pleased that you have taken first step to understand how to use
Marathi Language fonts on internet. 
mala marathi type kase karayche he have ahe ? or How to type using Marathi
font? is one of the frequently asked question(FAQs) on Marathi
Wikipedia.Already several Marathi users are making thousands of edits in
Marathi Language here using different different Marathi Font facilities and
many facilities are freely available on internet. 
A detail technical help is provided in english language at Setup For Devanagari
page.To read font help in Marathi Language go to article ????? ??? and refer
???? ??????? ?????? or Google Marathi Font ???? ??????? ?????? , Google Marathi
Font ???? ??????? ??????? which gives copy paste facility,refer ????? Direct
subject to your operating systm is able to support the same;if still not
comfortable try direct typing a test Marathi Font at our sister projectMarathi
Wiktionary; or look for more online options at ??????? ????? ??? ??????? ? ????
?????? ?????? 
Besides O.S. Window XP it self now supports devanagari fonts and the related
help is provided at Setup For Devanagari. 
Still find defficult then revert back at Help-forum for new users.If you are
using online messanger, then which one ? keep us informed we can support a live
chat help also,if needed. 


Thanking you, With warm regards,Helpdesk Marathi Wikipedia ~~~~ 


      5, 50, 500, 5000 - Store N number of mails in your inbox. Go to
http://help.yahoo.com/l/in/yahoo/mail/yahoomail/tools/tools-08.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20080221/bfed2c4c/attachment-0001.htm


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:49:02 +0530
From: "Sidin Vadukut" <sidin.vadukut@gmail.com>
Subject: [Wikimediaindia-l] Tough for beginners on Wikipedia?
To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID:
	<801ee0040803092119k69f1fc1q9c600ca715fda4f2@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hi People,

I am working on a news story about the people behind the India-specific
Wikipedia pages and how a bunch of really eclectic personalities spend tons
of time to ensure pages are clean and useful. However one of them mentioned
that it is slowly becoming more and more difficult for new writers to join
in as contributions have become extremely complicated. Some of the simplest
things lead to disputes and trivialities cause locks on certain articles.

I was wondering if you guys had an opinion on this? Is Wikipedia
increasingly becoming more and more difficult for first-timers? I am talking
about those who intend to specialize in certain topics and be active and
regular. I work for the mint-Wall Street Journal in Mumbai. I was asked to
mail this group by Angela Beesely.
Thanks and regards,
Sidin Sunny Vadukut.
www.livemint.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20080310/c7f5528c/attachment-0001.htm


------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:02:49 GMT
From: Utkarshraj Atmaram <utcursch@goowy.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Tough for beginners on Wikipedia?
To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <1381d03bd6484153af325f97727fc0f0@webserver002>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

?On 10 March 2008, Sidin Vadukut <sidin.vadukut at gmail.com> wrote:

> However one of them mentioned that it is slowly becoming more and
> more difficult for new writers to join in as contributions have
> become extremely complicated. Some of the simplest things lead to
> disputes and trivialities cause locks on certain articles.
> 
> I was wondering if you guys had an opinion on this? Is Wikipedia
> increasingly becoming more and more difficult for first-timers? I am
> talking about those who intend to specialize in certain topics and
> be active and regular.

I am not sure what exactly do you mean by "contributions have become
extremely complicated". Are you referring to Wikipedia's now-somewhat
stringent standards for accepting articles? Or do you mean that the
wiki-syntax is too difficult? Or are you concerned that the cabals,
vandals and trolls are scaring away the new contributors?

As a society, Wikipedia is bound to grow more complex as it grows.

If the new contributors face a problem that they do not know how to
deal with (vandalism, another abusive user etc.), they can head over
to the new contributors' help page (the link to this page appears on
the help page):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:New_contributors'_help_page>.

Wikipedia's standards for accepting articles have evolved over the
years. Most Wikipedians will accept that the standards have become
more stringent, but these standards are necessary because in addition
to a lot of positive contributors, Wikipedia also attracts a number of
vandals, trolls and spammers. Very short articles created without
references, inappropriate pages, images uploaded without a license or
text copied from another website are bound to get deleted. Most
newly-created articles or newly-uploaded images are deleted because
they're either copyright violation (e.g. image of the user's favorite
actress copied from a film website) or because they're outside
Wikipedia's project scope (e.g. an article on an little-known school
band). New users can avoid such experiences by learning a few basics
of contributing to Wikipedia. On the article creation page, the users
are presented with a few instructions and a link to
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Your_first_article>. Creating
an article that'll not get deleted is as simple as following these
instructions.

The disputes (trivial or non-trivial) are a part of any large
collaborative project. This is not something specific to the new
users; controversial topics (e.g. Israel-Palestine) will always
attract disputes. The new users generally find themselves embroiled in
disputes, when they make controversial edits an article without going
through the talk page archives (where the issues might have been
discussed more than once in the past). An example is the article on
Muhammad -- many new users try to remove the images from the article,
without bothering to read the talk page, where the rationale for
including the image is explained in detail.

The vandals and trolls are a serious problem. Citizendium
<http://en.citizendium.org> is trying to deal with them (and other
issues like reliability) by disallowing anonymous editing. At
Wikipedia, we have an article validation proposal
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation> in the works. It
can be tested at <http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox>

As for understanding the wiki syntax, and the Wikipedia policies and
guidelines, these are the minimum basics. The users who joined
Wikipedia three years ago also learned them.

Wikipedia is just like any other project open to public
participation. Before people start contributing, they need to learn a
few basics. The set of "basics" grow larger as the project grows
larger.

Regards,
Utkarshraj
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utcursch
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/attachments/20080311/18fd1da9/attachment.htm


------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l


End of Wikimediaindia-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 1
**********************************************


Bring your gang together - do your thing. Start your group.