On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Noopur Raval <nraval@wikimedia.org> wrote:

Hey folks,

Shiju has published an interesting post on numerals in an Indic context. It's a really fascinating overview - including how numerals are depicted across Indic languages, their use across languages, the policies adopted by the various Indic communities, the need for some community decisions to take things forward, a bit of Shiju's personal grumble on the fact that Hindi film posters are no longer in Hindi :-) and a picture of a Northern Railways bed sheet!

Intrigued? Read more on either on meta and or the Chapter blog.

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Program/Indic_Languages/Numerals_in_Indic_Languages_%26_Indic_language_Wikipedias

[2] http://blog.wikimedia.in/2012/06/01/numerals-in-indic-languages-indic-wikipedias-2/

Coincidentally I came across Kaplan's blog[1] about digits and numbers just yesterday. It was a good read, also throws in implementation (technical + usage) related issues. I would also like to ask Shiju if Wikipedia community has the right to adopt the say its own numeral standard without considering the fact that whole world does not use it. Can Wikipedia be used as medium to introduce language changes or should the task be just documenting things?

I ask this because we are also having similar debates about language style[2] (not to be confused with grantha, which is planned to be discussed later as grantha will have similar factors + additional factors for consideration.) and if a Wikipedia can introduce a new language style(not sentence constructs, but new forms of words[again not technical words, but new words for nouns which are in popular use] on its own without an external guideline and there are different thoughts.