[Wikimediaindia-l] Lower user and edit count of some Indian wikis

[Pradeep Makineni]

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 <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> 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 <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 <mail at hpnadig.net> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 2008-01-15 at 20:28 +0530, Mahitgar from Marathi Wikipedia
> > 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?
> > >
> >
> > 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.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>
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>


-- 
Pradeep Makineni
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