Ahem <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations>.
On Tuesday 29 November 2011 03:20 PM,
wheredevelsdare@hotmail.com wrote:
> There seems to be a little bit of misunderstanding. I was talking of
> English Wikipedia and livability of English references.
>
> I have helped a couple of articles attain GA status. We conducted a PR
> for FA status and realised some of the refs need to be changed. At GA
> level they were accepted due to YES:POV, however to attain FA they
> need to be changed to better refs. We have had to give a break and
> wait for such refs to come up before we can proceed.
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:17:21 +0530
> From:
ashwin.baindur@gmail.com
> To:
wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Quality Issues with English Wikipedia
>
> I agree partially with you, Pranav. Yes, finding reliable sources in
> Indic languages can be quite a challenge.
>
> My own personal view is this - But while a source may be in a language
> but its utility as a reference is basically language neutral. That
> means a source in any language can be used providing you can read it
> and cite it. I dont see so many places where sources are not available
> in English but are available in indic languages. For vast majority of
> article subjects, english language web can provide all the sources you
> can possibly need. What is needed is NOT to have an attitude where
> anything English is painted as a villain.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Ashwin Baindur
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 3:09 PM, <
wheredevelsdare@hotmail.com
> <mailto:
wheredevelsdare@hotmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Bigno, Ashwin - you hit the nail on the head.
>
> One other point I dont see mention is availability of reliable
> sources. For Indian articles, that is something that can be
> difficult to find at times.
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:01:57 +0530
> From: ashwin.baindur@gmail.com <mailto:ashwin.baindur@gmail.com>
> To: wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> <mailto:wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Quality Issues with English Wikipedia
>
>
> Srikanth, I find it a bit difficult to believe that the reason you
> said is the only reason why English editting stopped. It must be a
> combination of many things-
>
> * Retirement and reduction of editting by long term editors
> * For some reason, the same pleasure no longer felt in editting.
> * Hostile atmosphere, lots of rules & edit-warring.
> * Switching part of effort to Indic, Commons, GLAM, Outreach etc.
> * Lesser recruitment of newbies.
> etc
>
> Anyway, whatever be the causes, I think you and I and all of us
> agree that we need to make WikiProject India a happening place again.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Ashwin Baindur
> ------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan
> <
parakara.ghoda@gmail.com <mailto:
parakara.ghoda@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Hisham,
> Do note, we had ALL that till two years ago.
> Since the offline meetups have begun, a lot of English editors
> have now reduced editint to concentrate on outreach activities
> and all.
> --Re,
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Hisham <
hisham@wikimedia.org
> <mailto:
hisham@wikimedia.org>> wrote:
>
>
> On Nov 28, 2011, at 9:26 AM, Ashwin Baindur wrote:
>
> This is a letter to all Indian editors of the English
> Wikipedia requesting discussion, cooperation and help.
>
> Recently I was asked to give a three to four minute
> presentation on the state of WikiProject India on
> English Wikipedia for the session on state of Indic
> Wikipedias at the recently concluded WikiConference in
> Mumbai. At first I thought nothing about the matter,
> but as I was compiling the report, I came across
> statistics which would horrify any of us.
>
> To begin with, as of time of writing this post,
> WikiProject India has a total of 90,021 articles. This
> is a very large number and second only to Hindi
> Wikipedia's 100,588 articles. Since all these English
> articles cover only India or some aspect of its
> geography, history, culture or its people, this set of
> 90,000+ articles is important to all Indians,
> representing the largest core of knowledge about India
> on any Wikipedia project.
>
> But all of this is not high quality stuff. User:Svick
> on English Wikipedia provides a useful service to
> WikProjects on English Wikipedia. He provides a
> WikiProject-wise listing of articles which have
> improvement tags such as {{unreferenced}},
> {{cleanup}}, {{copyedit}} and so on. In his report for
> WikiProject India, at the following url:
>
>
http://toolserver.org/~svick/CleanupListing/CleanupListingByCat.php?project=India
>
>
> you will find that of the 79435 articles in this
> project which were assessed by Svick, a total of 52077
> articles or 65.6 % are marked for cleanup, with 86271
> issues in total. These are tagged with 82 different
> types of tags, the most populous being :
>
> * Articles with unsourced statements (6815)
> * Articles lacking reliable references (1989)
> * Articles needing additional references (4840)
> * Articles lacking sources (8970)
> * BLP articles lacking sources (1297)
> * Articles needing cleanup (2751)
> * Articles containing potentially dated statements (9317)
> * All articles needing coordinates (14571)
> * Articles to be expanded (1020)
>
> Besides this, there are 40,338 articles unassessed for
> importance and 20,527 for quality, making a backlog of
> 60,865 assessments.
>
> In addition, of the 90,000+ articles, there are 43,843
> stubs and 10,986 start class articles. All these need
> to be developed in time also.
>
> Besides these are a very large number of cryptic
> articles, articles pertaining to India but not tagged
> on the talk page with the WikiProject banner. The
> articles themselves sometimes need more cleanup tags
> than are marked at present.
>
> You may have read Sven Manguard's special opinion
> editorial in the Signpost some time ago
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-10-31/Opinion_essay
>
> wherein he has drawn attention to the hundreds of
> thousands of articles needing cleanup and improvement
> on Wikipedia as a whole. That is exactly the issue
> with WikiProject India, as of now.
>
> To me it appears that - Something needs to be done
> URGENTLY.
>
> My own suggestion is that this can easily be tackled
> if all of us do a little bit every day. Many hands
> make light work. There are about 450 active editors
> listed on the WikiProject members page. If each of us
> decided to do just one cleanup task each day, then we
> can do away with 1,64,500 odd problems in a year. Over
> time, these issues will fall to negligible levels.
>
> Please reply to this thread with your views. Firstly,
> do you agree with me. Is there a problem or am I
> sensationalising the case? What exactly are the issues
> and how do we resolve them. Can we as Indians rise to
> the challenge and bring down these backlogs to
> manageable levels. Please give us any ideas, inputs,
> insights or critiques that may occur to you.
>
> Many thanks for your note, Ashwin. I think this is a
> really important discussion and I agree wholeheartedly
> with you about the need to do something, and the need to
> do it urgently!
>
> I notice your initiative to Collaboration of the Month on
> a select set of nominated articles - and that's fantastic.
> That's exactly the kind of stuff that needs to be done.
>
> Here are few thoughts that I had
>
> collaboration. It would really be nice if as many
> interested editors as possible sing up. One comment
> I've heard from some wikimedians is that there isn't
> enough collaborative editing. Can we create some
> vehicle for this? For instance, can we take some time
> out in community meetups and do a little bit for one
> or more of these articles? Can we create some kind of
> mini-events equivalent to hackathons? For instance,
> can we create an Edit Utsav every (just throwing this
> out as an example) on Sunday afternoons every week?
> * We need to make a start - no matter how small Even if
> you choose to do 2 articles per month for
> Collaboration of the Month, that's great and we should
> take it from there and slowly build up.
> * We need to create excitement and momentum. For this
> to happen, we need to be generous in our celebration.
> I think every article that interested editors work on
> as part of your Collaboration of the Month should be
> celebrated - on this mailing list, on the WP:INDIA
> talk page, on various social handles (let's
> shamelessly exploit Tinu's vast fan following here)
> and maybe even in the press.
> * We need to have something to work towards (in your
> parlance, a beachhead... :-)). I have an idea.
> There are a bunch of discussions happening on various
> offline initiatives. One challenge that these will
> face will be to select a reasonable set of acceptable
> quality articles on India. I don't know what that
> number should be or how long it should take - but
> whatever the determinations are on both of these, what
> if you have these work with the offline initiative
> (which I also know is also very dear to your heart.)
> * We need to magnify an already big message. One common
> refrain I've heard from many who are interested in
> editing Wikipedia is the equivalent of "everything is
> covered; I don't know what to edit". Asking folks in
> India to edit about India is a powerfully relevant
> message - and one that they are likely to intuitively
> connect with. ..and as you've outlined, there is no
> shortage of articles - many of great importance /
> relevance. Maybe this could be a message covered in
> every outreach sessions that community folks
> undertake? [Edit] India!
>
>
> In all of this, do let me know if there is anything we can
> do to help and we'll do our best.
>
> Best
>
> hisham
>
>
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