Just to add to this, there are a few articles in each researched
language (Malayalam, Hindi, Sepedi) in development, all of which use
oral citations, and each of which will be catalogued on the research
page:
(As of now, there are two that have been posted: one in Malayalam and
one in Hindi)
There are also links to the discussions happening both broadly and
within very specific Wikipedia communities, which should give you some
sense of why/how this is being taken up.
Cheers,
Achal
On Sunday 24 July 2011 10:20 AM, Ramesh N G wrote:
There is one Malayalam article
<http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neeliyar_bhagavathi> where we already
used oral citation
User:Rameshng
On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 9:21 AM, Anirudh Bhati <anirudhsbh(a)gmail.com
<mailto:anirudhsbh@gmail.com>> wrote:
/“We have started using oral citations for non-controversial
content. A tayyam dance form has been documented using such
citations of proponents,” says Cherian, who is also at the
forefront of creating Wikipedia content in Indian languages.
/
We have already started using oral citations?
anirudh
On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 9:38 AM, CherianTinu Abraham
<tinucherian(a)gmail.com <mailto:tinucherian@gmail.com>> wrote:
*DNA : Mumbai blasts: Ajmal Kasab's birthday confusion*
http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_mumbai-blasts-ajmal-kasab-s-birthday-…
/As Mumbai reeled under shock, despair and anger over being
attacked again on July 13, a message started clogging the
jammed telephone networks and set the internet on fire. Though
other information — another blast in Navi Mumbai, suspicious
bag found in Santa Cruz — was also flying thick and fast, this
one had the potential to spill mass anger onto the streets.
The blasts were apparently a ‘birthday gift’ for convicted
26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab, it said, and no less than
Wikipedia said so.
The user-generated online encyclopaedia insists on
verifibility, says *Tinu Cherian*, a Bangalore-based Wikipedia
administrator: “It is all about verifiability, not necessarily
of the truth, but whether readers and editors can check that
the material has been published by a reliable source, and not
whether they think it is true.” the resource has become a
definitive go-to for unbiased information.
But on that fateful Wednesday, verifiability itself was the
problem. Three sources — Indian Express (2009), IBNLive (2009)
and Hindustan Times (2010) had mentioned Kasab’s date of birth
(DoB) as September 13, 1987, while two — The Times of India
(February 2011), The Hindu (2008) said it was on July 13 that
year.
The entry on Kasab was created on November 29, 2008, three
days after the attacks, and since December that year, his DoB
has been mentioned as July 13.
No wonder then that when a Chennai-based user changed it to
September 22 at 8.18pm (the last blast occurred at 7.05pm),
there was consternation among Wikipedians, and minutes later,
an ‘edit war’ as the community calls such rapid changes, had
begun. Unable to verify the date, an administrator locked the
page.
Wikipedians say such problems are not uncommon, two recent
cases being the rumour that freedom fighter Bhagat Singh was
born on Valentine’s Day (February 14), and premature reports
that West Bengal chief minister had died. Though there is no
laid-down code, and no one in particular monitors changes to
the database, the loosely organised community says it
self-regulates and decisions are arrived at on case-to-case
basis and actions depend on creating consensus.
Soon after the edit war, a group of Wikipedians went into a
huddle on the ‘Talk’ page of the website. Among them was
*Utkarsh Raj Atmaram*, a 27-year-old Wikipedia administrator
from Hyderabad.
Though he too had learnt about the controversy on Twitter, he
was initially circumspect about the real date being July 13.
However, when he checked the revision history of the article,
he realised the truth was at best a shade of grey.
“Though the DoB had always been July 13, somewhere down the
line the reference was deleted. This fuelled the confusion
further,” Atmaram says.
A Washington Post blog later attributed a part of this
confusion to: “Those who are making the Wikipedia entry
changes [to September 13] are trying to delegitimise the
terrorists behind the attack.”
It was finally decided at 11.26pm that both the dates should
be reflected after one contributor, ‘*kangzan*’,pointed out:
“Right now Kasab’s birthday is both in September and in July
at the same time, exactly like Schrodinger’s hypothetical cat
is both dead and alive at the same time — a thought experiment
used to illustrate physics’ aptly named uncertainty
principle”. Later, when Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad chief
Rakesh Maria confirmed the date to be September 13, the issue
was laid to rest.
The incident highlights the fragile nature of ‘truth’ on the
internet — Wikipedia doesn’t know something happened until a
credible source doesn’t ratify it. “That is why, even though
Twitter can be ahead of us in breaking news, we do not create
articles based on what is said there,” Atmaram says. Perhaps
that is why Kasab’s birth date being mentioned as July 13 on
Wikipedia created such a furoreas people trust its content
more than even conventional sources of information.
The flip side, however, especially in countries like India
where only a fraction of government records are online, is a
lot of information does not meet the encyclopaedia’s
‘notability factor’, which determines whether particular
information can be added to the database. To circumvent the
problem, Wikipedians in India are experimenting with a novel idea.
“We have started using oral citations for non-controversial
content. A tayyam dance form has been documented using such
citations of proponents,” says Cherian, who is also at the
forefront of creating Wikipedia content in Indian languages.
As the dust settles on the debate, one thing is clear:
Information wars of the future will be fought online, and in
crises, what transpires between netizens will shape reality on
the ground./
Regards
Tinu Cherian
http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news#July_2011
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
<mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
<mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l