As Kolhapuri had pointed out we need some postive discussion on this topic. Indian language wikipedias have quality articles. I was just pointing to some of the strategies adopted by some Indian wikies to increase the article count. Creating new articles *using bots*, or creating thousands and thousands of *short pages* as I have pointed out earlier, or copying content from english wiki will eventualy lose the quality of the wiki. More over it will not motivate a new user to become a wiki editor. Another disadvantage us it will not attract the readers. If the wiki that we are creating is not helping a user to find the required information and we are still redirecting the user to english wiki then there is some thing wrong. Most of us need to read the below policies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:There_is_no_deadline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:The_world_will_not_end_tomorrow More Later Regards Shiju Alex http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Shijualex On 1/16/08, Kolhapuri &lt;ppdixit+wiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > Hi, > I think we should take whatever has been written in the two mails > below positively. > We don't need to pinpoint bad things about other language wikipedias at > this stage while this group is just in formation stage. > > 2> We need more contributors to add more quality articles. > 3> To attract people to Wikipedias we need a valuable information to be > already present in them. > Now how do we do this? > If you have some ideas that might work in Indian scenario please share > them, especially if you have seen them working on your Wikipedia. > > e.g Shiju Alex can tell us how ml wikipedia has been able to achieve so > many registered users? > > Regards, > kolhapuri > mr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:कोल्हापुरी > > On Jan 16, 2008 9:52 AM, Shiju Alex < shijualexonline(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > I am from Malayalam Wikipedia. Since you have mentioned about Malyalam > > wikipedia I would like to discuss some thing about the article count race > > (Indian language wikipedias in particular). > > > > > > > > - Creating thosands of short pages like this http://mr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5… > > > > - Or orphaned pages like this http://mr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5… > > > > - Or copying content from english wikipedia like this > > http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%AA%E0%B0%A6%E0%B0%BF > > > > > > for the sake of increasing the number of articles in a wiki will not > > increase the quality of a wikipedia or will not do any thing good for the > > language also. > > > > If we would have adopted one of the above techiques we would have been > > well ahead in the number of articles, since malayalam wikipedia has the > > maximum number of registered users among all the indian language wikipedias > > (More than *4400*). > > > > Please go through the various quality parameters listed in > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias, for an understanding > > about various indian langauage wikipedias. > > > > > > Regards > > > > Shiju Alex > > > > http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shijualex > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On 1/15/08, Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia &lt;mahitgar(a)yahoo.co.in > > > wrote: > > > > > It is quite ununderstandable why Wikipedias like Kannada Language > > > wikipedia and Gujrathi and Malyalam language wikipedia are so slow given the > > > fact that literacy levels and IT exposure in respective states is quite OK > > > and they are immensely contributing to India centric articles on English > > > wikipedia in big way. > > > > > > > > > > > > Important regional Languages Assamese ,Oriya , Punjabi wikipedias are > > > lagging behind like nothing. > > > > > > > > > > > > Besides we need to look after now sort of extinct but important old > > > languages wikipedias Sanskrit and Pali > > > > > > > > > > > > Main chalange is not how to increase their article or edit count > > > but statisticaly self sustainable website service has to achieve menimum > > > 3000 membership mark from respective languages so website keeps getting > > > adequate content and how do we do that? > > > > > > > > > > > > Thanks and Regards > > > > > > Mahitgar > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > Now you can chat without downloading messenger. Click here<http://in.rd.yahoo.com/tagline_webmessenger_5/*http://in.messenger.… know how. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Wikimediaindia-l mailing list > > > Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikimediaindia-l mailing list > > Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaindia-l mailing list > Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l > >

On Wed, 2008-01-16 at 09:52 +0530, Shiju Alex wrote: I agree with Shiju here. I've noticed the trend of articles being created just for the sake of numbers particularly in Marathi and Bengali Wiki. Looking at numbers may be fascinating, but without even the basic quality in content the respective wiki might loose out. - Hari Prasad

Hoi, When you say "there are technical barriers", what technical barriers? We have for instance been working hard on getting a better localisation framework. BetaWiki <http://translatewiki.net>is clearly superior. It now shows pointers to what a message is used for. It allows for the use of "gettext" files. I am really happy to see that for several languages from the Indian subcontinent this has been taken up. Consequently the use of Commons has been improved because the user interface of these languages is improving. I have noticed Bengali, Gujarati among, I have failed to notice Hindi for instance. What other technical barriers are there that we can help with? I have read in mailing lists that not enough complaints are received from Asia and consequently developers are not aware about issues. In one instance there was an issue with performance and once this was noticed, the performance in Asia is said to have increased substantially as a result. Thanks, GerardM On Jan 16, 2008 7:50 AM, Hari Prasad Nadig &lt;mail(a)hpnadig.net&gt; wrote:

One of the big technical barrier is inputting the Indic text, I think many users still does not know that there are indic input editors which can transliterate english text into their mother tongue. Even if they knew that, some won't like to copy-paste from these editors into the browser to edit wiki pages. They have to switch between the editors many times in-order to edit a single page. Users of some of the Indian language wikis have over come this issue by incorporating custom javascripts, which can transliterate english text while typing into their mother tongue, into the mediawiki namespace and attached that script to the wiki edit box, and text boxes where ever necessary. It will surely help the editors of indian language wikipedias if there indic input support for all the indian language wikis. Padma <http://padma.mozdev.org/> is one of the open source project which can transliterate many Indian Languages. Incorporating transliteration into the mediawiki itself would greatly improve the usability of the indian language wikis. On Jan 16, 2008 2:35 PM, Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Pradeep Makineni

Although I am not a programmer, I had worked hard for this phonetic transliteration thing. I think this problem has been solved (at least partially) by now. I had incorporated this system even in places like Oriya, Panjabi and Assamese where there are virtually no users. Except for places where the admins did not want it installed, it is present in all Indian languages except Urdu, Sindhi and Pastun which are written in Nastaleeq (I dont know the basics of Nastaleeq and am trying to learn basics). About "technical" problems, these are faced by almost all non-Latin wikipedias. Among them, those faced by Brahmic derived are very similar. If people here are interested, we can form a new group for "Brahmic derived abugida using wikipedias". That way, we can solve these issues in a broader ground with help/cooperation from Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Thai, Lao, Burmese, Singhalese, Khmer, Bhutanese and Tibetan wikipedians as well. Pradeep Makineni &lt;makineni.pradeep(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: One of the big technical barrier is inputting the Indic text, I think many users still does not know that there are indic input editors which can transliterate english text into their mother tongue. Even if they knew that, some won't like to copy-paste from these editors into the browser to edit wiki pages. They have to switch between the editors many times in-order to edit a single page. Users of some of the Indian language wikis have over come this issue by incorporating custom javascripts, which can transliterate english text while typing into their mother tongue, into the mediawiki namespace and attached that script to the wiki edit box, and text boxes where ever necessary. It will surely help the editors of indian language wikipedias if there indic input support for all the indian language wikis. Padma is one of the open source project which can transliterate many Indian Languages. Incorporating transliteration into the mediawiki itself would greatly improve the usability of the indian language wikis. On Jan 16, 2008 2:35 PM, Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Hoi, When you say "there are technical barriers", what technical barriers? We have for instance been working hard on getting a better localisation framework. BetaWiki is clearly superior. It now shows pointers to what a message is used for. It allows for the use of "gettext" files. I am really happy to see that for several languages from the Indian subcontinent this has been taken up. Consequently the use of Commons has been improved because the user interface of these languages is improving. I have noticed Bengali, Gujarati among, I have failed to notice Hindi for instance. What other technical barriers are there that we can help with? I have read in mailing lists that not enough complaints are received from Asia and consequently developers are not aware about issues. In one instance there was an issue with performance and once this was noticed, the performance in Asia is said to have increased substantially as a result. Thanks, GerardM On Jan 16, 2008 7:50 AM, Hari Prasad Nadig &lt;mail(a)hpnadig.net&gt; wrote: On Tue, 2008-01-15 at 20:28 +0530, Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia wrote: I don't know what to make out of your first statement, really. It would be stupid to say what you've said. It might sound rude, but it would be nice if you do some homework before writing vaguely like this. None of the wikis you have mentioned are "slow". They have much better ratio of quality content to stubs which is what the projects need in order to grow. An infinite array of stubs isn't going to motivate new visitors to become editors. Instead, it might just do the opposite. Literacy levels or IT exposure has nothing significant to do with how respective language Wikipedias are faring. The challenge of motivating more visitors to become editors has to be addressed with a much different approach. There are technical barriers. There are differences in culture that affect the way the projects are received by the native speakers of each language. But I'd rather not discuss that in a thread that started with some poorly formed observation. - h.p. _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- Pradeep Makineni _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

Your concern about the above wikies are true (especially about Oriya and Punjabi wikies). Infact, *Oriya and Punjabi wikies are the first indian language wikies*. But even after 5 years, the article count in those wikies is below 1000 and the number of registered users is hardly 100. In Malayalam wikipedia we made use of all the opportunities to popularise the malayalam wikipedia and its sister projects. We tried to reach maximum numer of people. We got help from *regional language newspapers*. We used the *regional language blogs* to reach to out to people. That is the reason why we got more users. Give importance to other wiki projects also when you are reaching out to people. Especially include *wikisource* and *wiktionary* in the priority list. There are lot of people who are not interested in wikipedia but are very much interested in projects like wikisource and wiktionary. *Both these wikies are going to be the online backbone for each regional language*. Wikipedia itself can use wikisource as a reference library. *Try to make understand the regional language newspapers about moving to unicode for their online edition*. That will really help wikipedia. Most of the Malayalam newspapers are now planning to move to Unicode. Some online portals are already moved. In malayalam hardly anyone uses Baraha for transleteration. We use varamozhi, keyman or some other customized tools. In the long run it is not good to give too much importance to transliteration tools for inputing the text. An experienced user must be able to use inscript tool which is integrated in all operating systems. In malayalam I have seen people using their own custom keyborad layouts also for inputting the text apart from the inscript and transilteration. Regards Shiju Alex http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Shijualex On 1/20/08, Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia &lt;mahitgar(a)yahoo.co.in&gt; wrote:

I second shiju here, Rather than what Shiju pointed out, as a group we do all those and as an individual my additional startegem is to publicize malayalam wiki wherever I meet more than 2 people. and I have seen good responses from my friends and colleagues. I have got many from flickr site who are willing to provide any picture if one asks for wiki and I am glad that I have personally motivated many people to write for malayalam wiki in their free time, and I have succeeded. Another factor is retention of the active users. we constantly engage in serious discussions about articles and related issues which sometimes goes beyond the wall of discussion and that as well keep those active users come back for more.. Dr. Vipin -- An Orthodontist dreaming to become a pilot www.bharathdental.com you can find me in regional wiki as http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Challiyan and in flickr as http://www.flickr.com/photos/11852045@N08/