Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Saanjh - Step towards a Global Punjab

Title ideas

• Saanjh - Step towards a Global Punjab
• Collaboration between Eastern Punjabi Wikipedia and Western Punjabi Wikipedia

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• Punjab and Punjabi language has been divided into two since the partition of Punjab and this edit-a-thon is one of the first major steps in order to bring both the Punjabs together once again. Saanjh (ਸਾਂਝ سانجھ), a Punjabi word which mean collaboration, is an online edit-a-thon between Gurmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia and Shahmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia that officially went on for 17 days from 15th to 31st January 2016. Wikipedians from both sides diligently labored making the edit-a-thon a triumph and this is indeed one of the major steps toward an amalgamated Punjab that was once pride and esteem of its people.

Body

Logo of Saanjh

Saanjh (ਸਾਂਝ سانجھ), a Punjabi word which mean collaboration, is an online edit-a-thon between Gurmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia and Shahmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia that officially went on for 17 days from 15th to 31st January 2016. Wikipedians from both sides diligently labored making the edit-a-thon a triumph and this is indeed one of the major steps toward an amalgamated Punjab that was once pride and esteem of its people.

While there have been similar initiatives earlier but the communities were not mature enough to collaborate then. This collaboration is a direct output of the Wikimania 2015 where one Wikipedian from each of the Punjabs interacted and planned to have an edit-a-thon.

This is the first major edit-a-thon organized by Punjabi Wikimedians User Group, since it received recognition from the Wikimedia Foundation on 17th November 2015. An event page was created on Meta and both the communities participated in enlisting important articles to be created during the 17 day edit-a-thon.

101, an auspicious number in the Indian subcontinent, articles was chosen to be worked upon during the edit-a-thon. 50 good articles from each Wikipedia were suggested by the communities and 50 more articles were enlisted to be created on both the Wikipedias. One more article, History of the Punjab, already existed on both Wikipedia but was selected as the most important article and was improved significantly.

A total of 23 editors signed up for the event. Many editors used this transliteration tool created by Punjabi University, Patiala and some of them even expressed the need to create a similar tool, so that it can be easily used in Content Translation. Interestingly out of the 50 article suggested by the Gurmukhi Punjabi Community, 22 were about Pakistani film actresses like Madiha Gauhar, Sanam Jung, etc and 29 out of the 50 articles suggested by the Shahmukhi Punjabi Community were about former empires and countries like Gaznavaids, Maratha Empire, etc.

Satdeep Gill, Wikimedia Volunteer, Punjabi Wikimedians
Wikilover90, Wikimedia Volunteer, Punjabi Wikimedians

Notes

We have noted that many times Wikipedians find it difficult to choose an article to write and most of time whatever they choose to write about, already exists on Wikipedia. Organizing such events surely helps in giving a specific direction to the movement and motivates editors as well. If you want to organize a similar event in order to exchange knowledge between different communities, just choose a community that you want to collaborate with and invite editors to help in enlisting articles. This also helps in bringing both the communities together. We had collaborated with Afrikaans and Esperanto community in the past and now Maithili community has offered to organize a joint edit-a-thon as well.