Hey Everyone,
Just wanted to inform you that we have put up a post about the India Education Program here [1]. Please fell free to initiate, advance or follow the conversation on the same page.
Thanks Nitika
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program#Update_o...
Hi IEP,
I don't understand the involvement of "India programs" in developing "Simple Wikipedia".
I have never seen Simple Wikipedia coming up in search results or anyone using it from India. (Please let me know the visitor stats for the project from India if this could be considered an Indian language Wikipedia.)
It has around 15.2 M page views per month "globally".
To put it in context, Hindi Wikipedia has 6.2 M page views per month. So, what is the point of spending resources in the name of India programs? Which Indian is this program going to benefit?
If this is done with an idea of being a safe place to experiment with the hope of some editors migrating to en and other Indic language Wikipedias:
All the best. Just the Indian tag attached to the education program seems misplaced !
Ravi
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htm
Hi Ravi,
Please find my answers in line. Though I'd highly encourage everyone to post any comments on the talk page itself to make sure that there are no disparate communications and we maintain only one central page.
Thanks Nitika
On 19-Jun-2012, at 6:49 PM, Ravishankar wrote:
Hi IEP,
I don't understand the involvement of "India programs" in developing "Simple Wikipedia".
I have never seen Simple Wikipedia coming up in search results or anyone using it from India. (Please let me know the visitor stats for the project from India if this could be considered an Indian language Wikipedia.)
It has around 15.2 M page views per month "globally".
To put it in context, Hindi Wikipedia has 6.2 M page views per month. So, what is the point of spending resources in the name of India programs? Which Indian is this program going to benefit?
Involvement of India Programs comes into play since the program will run in India with an attempt to bring new editors from India and thereby increasing India related content on Wiki projects. One of the important aspects of the program is to continuously encourage these new Indian editors to continue editing beyond their in-class assignments and India Programs will work on setting up Wikipedia Clubs with this intent.
If this is done with an idea of being a safe place to experiment with the hope of some editors migrating to en and other Indic language Wikipedias:
As mentioned in the post as well, one of our main reasons to approach Simple Wikipedia community is that they are extremely welcoming and supportive to new editors, especially towards students. In a sense, the vision of IEP and Simple Wikipedia have common ground in the belief that students can become long term editors through right kind of support.
In addition to this, Simple Wikipedia is suitable for new editors whose mother tongue is not English. Though most IEP students will be comfortable reading, writing and speaking in English, it is not their first language. They will not be able to use complex words or frame big sentences — which is great for Simple Wikipedia project. However, like any other Wikipedia editor, after the in-class assignment students will be free to move to any Wiki project that appeals to them.
Ravi, the Simple English wikipedia has one of the lowest visibility rates for a Wikipedia, atleast to Indian readers, from my experience. As Theo stated, if anyone screws up, there will be noone to complain or monitor it. Maybe then, they'd call it a success. I think I should start there now.
Hi
Just to update this list, simple wiki community has opposed this. The current votes stand at 6 opposes and 3 support with 1 editor waiting to confirm his vote. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_talk#Agreement
I had a good conversation about this yesterday with Frank on wiki and Rob on IRC. I trust and respect Frank - he knows the education program and the community better than anyone. I got a different impression from them, they seemed open to working on this and coming up with a good solution agreeable to all parties- like this wasn't a done deal. I trust both of them will do the right thing in the interest of the community.
I did however get a different impression from reading the most recent comments in Nitika's table on Wiki. So, I would like to state this - I consider myself part of simple wiki community, I have edited there for a while last year and know a few of the editors. I will not let this be pushed without their support and approval. There has been a few ideas kicking around Meta, a cross-wiki arbcom has been discussed for a while. If need be I will create it on Meta or locally, or find another way, just to deny this being pushed and not let the community be undermined.
I greatly respect Frank and know he will not let it come down to that, but just in case anyone on the india side thinks, this will happen without the community on simple wiki - they would be wrong. They have to convince the simple wiki community first, they will not be circumvented.
Regards Theo
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 4:29 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan < parakara.ghoda@gmail.com> wrote:
Ravi, the Simple English wikipedia has one of the lowest visibility rates for a Wikipedia, atleast to Indian readers, from my experience. As Theo stated, if anyone screws up, there will be noone to complain or monitor it. Maybe then, they'd call it a success. I think I should start there now.
-- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan.
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On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 1:27 AM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
Just to update this list, simple wiki community has opposed this. The current votes stand at 6 opposes and 3 support with 1 editor waiting to confirm his vote. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_talk#Agreement
I didn't have enough time to go through it, but I certainly felt odd looking / hearing at some of those comments from few. The "blood boiling" and "here to prove a point" ones. More than the proposal itself, these makes me very uncomfortable. If you are contributing to Wikipedia "to prove a point to someone else", I can only feel sorry for you.
The discussion has been moved to http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Proposed_Indian_Education_Program
--Re
On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 3:43 PM, Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.comwrote:
On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 1:27 AM, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
Just to update this list, simple wiki community has opposed this. The current votes stand at 6 opposes and 3 support with 1 editor waiting to confirm his vote. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_talk#Agreement
I didn't have enough time to go through it, but I certainly felt odd looking / hearing at some of those comments from few. The "blood boiling" and "here to prove a point" ones. More than the proposal itself, these makes me very uncomfortable. If you are contributing to Wikipedia "to prove a point to someone else", I can only feel sorry for you.
-- Regards Srikanth.L
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IEP will be moving things to Simple Wiki I see, I wonder who suggested this, in March - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program/Analysis...
Or else, this could be the result of exhaustive internal quantitative, qualitative, esoteric or even Isometric analysis, that was in waiting for a while.
It would have been nice to get some acknowledgement; not to mention the dearth of ideas from staff. I also suggested incorporating the help channel on IRC, contracting editors remotely, and starting with Tier-l cities in India and only established institutions, at some or the other point during the last year. As usual, most of my feedback was ignored.
And then people wonder why I sound angry half the time when talking about these things.
Anyway, like the two editors who commented on that suggestion, I agree with them more and more now. Writing simple English actually requires a stronger command of the English language than standard, not to mention it doesn't exclude all the requirements of verifiability and copyright violations. Maybe students can copy over entire articles directly from English Wikipedia to simple wiki, and this will happen a lot. What can be hoped for, is that copyvio and errors will go unnoticed for the most part and given simple wiki's small size and tiny community, it is entirely possible they will be unnoticed, and even if they were, it won't generate a strong reaction.
Regards Theo
On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Nitika Tandon ntandon@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Hey Everyone,
Just wanted to inform you that we have put up a post about the India Education Program herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program#Update_on_India_Education_Pilot [1]. Please fell free to initiate, advance or follow the conversation on the same page.
Thanks Nitika
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program#Update_o...
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On 20 June 2012 02:06, Theo10011 de10011@gmail.com wrote:
And then people wonder why I sound angry half the time when talking about these things.
((hugs))
I know that feeling.
Thank you.
Best,
Gautam ________ http://blog.prathambooks.org/p/social-media.html
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