On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 4:39 PM, BalaSundaraRaman
<sundarbecse@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I agree Sundar. What I meant was that this particular narrative is now
> the only one committed to paper (as it were) and will be crawled and
> indexed and searched and read and referenced and since it is the only
> narrative that is discoverable, outside the Community that is, it will
> tend towards being the default one in my opinion.
Which is what I'm concerned about as well, Gautam.
- Sundar
I think Tory did a great job and had her finger on the pulse, and I do see your larger point too.
So I think one good way forward in general - and this doesn't hold only for wikipedia, but for history making in general - is for others to start documenting and writing histories too. Either of individual indic language wikipedias, or alternate views of the same thing.
It's always good to have multiple accounts of the same period/s or phenomenon/s, seen through different eyes and lenses, if only to ensure that there is no one official history.
In that spirit, I do think the first edition of the community newsletter (published in 2010), subsequent editions of the newsletter, and Gautam's article in Critical Point of View are also vital narratives of wikipedia in India, that tell parts of the story. Hopefully, these are easily accessible, online atleast.
Which is my way of saying that I don't see Tory's narrative as the official one, and the others as unofficial. For me, they all tell parts of the story through their own lenses.
Cheers
Bishakha