User:Hindustanilanguage/Questionnaire regarding Samskrit Bharati

Questionnaire regarding the valuable contributions of Samskrita Bharati to the Sanskrit Wikipedia.

1. Tell us when did Samskrit Bharati start contributing to Sanskrit Wikipedia? Samskrit Bharati started contributing to Sanskrit Wikipedia from May 2011.

2. How many volunteers from Samskrit Bharati have joined for contributing to the Sanskrit Wikipedia? Around 50 volunteers have joined their hands in this work. Some of them have worked as a full time worker in Wikipedia office.

3. Are the volunteers contributing on Sanskrit Wikipedia from Bangalore only or do you have editors from your centres in New Delhi and San Hose as well? Apart from Bangalore there is one more centre in Karnavati, Gujarat. Some others are also working from their places.

4. How many articles have been edited so far? When Samskrita Bharati took this content development of Sa Wiki as one of its projects, there were only around 2000 articles and most of them were in Hindi. Now the number of articles is around 10, 100.

5. What kinds of topics have been edited usually? In the beginning we made a plan of 10 main categories like – Geography, People, Sports, Culture, Religion, Science, Health, History, Society and Language. We have edited more articles on Geography, People, Religion Sports. We are trying to improve also in other fields.

6. What has been your experience in adding content or encouraging content on specific topics? Adding content to the articles related to Samskrit is always easy and inspiring. But writing on current issues is really challenging because of two things – 1. It is very difficult to get suitable words in Samskrit for modern usage. 2. Hardly we find any reference materials in Samskrit regarding modern subjects. Since Samskrit is taught through other languages in most of the education system, we hardly find people who are able to write in correct Samskrit. Since most of the people are not used to converse/write in Samskrit, it is very difficult for them to express fluently in this language. So content development in Samskrit wiki is really a challenge.

7. Tell us about most number of contributors of Sanskrit Wikipedia – are they north Indians or South? Similarly any observations which you have made? At present more number of contributors of Sanskrit Wikipedia are from South India. There is a lot of difference between South and North Indians regarding usage and pronunciation of Samskrit words. This leads to lot of confusion regarding the title of articles ie the way of writing...

8. How is your experience as the admin of Sanskrit Wikipedia? Only from last few months I am working as admin. Since our community is very small at present, I find not much difficulty in handling. It will be very nice if all admins could become active in contributing to sa wiki.

9. Have you attended or organized Sanskrit Wikipedia community meet-ups? I have attended few workshops. We have conducted introductory workshops in many educational institutions like Karnataka Samskrit University, Delhi University etc. We have organised some community meetups which has helped us in getting some dedicated wikipedians.

10. How was your experience in holding Sanskrit Wikipedia Workshops at Christ University last year? Actually in Christ University, I conducted only one workshop which I really enjoyed. I think it would have been more fruitful if we could have direct contact with all the Samskrit students. Since students are not so able to write in Samskrit by themselves, we hardly got some good articles. I sincerely believe that we could get more good result if we could train them to contribute for wikisource instead of Wikipedia.

11. How are the technical challenges/issues been for your language? Now, is it easy for a new user to start contributing in wiki easily? We faced lot of technical challenges when we first started this project. We got a lot of help from Malayalam and Kannada wikipedians. Now many issues have been solved. We have included tutorials also. So now it is easy for a new user to contribute to sa wiki.

12. Could you share any and all ideas - small or big, sucessful & not-so-sucessful - that you think can help drive Sanskrit and other language projects? I think we could achieve more if different communities work together. We could think of taking some projects like developing content on all taluks of each state or specialities of each state or Indian history... Through this we could minimise the effort of each community along with improving the quality of all wikis. And I think workshops on technical aspects of Wikipedia (like wikidata) is very much necessary. If Wikimedia could arrange for this all community members could attend and improve the quality of wiki. I have these ideas to improve Samskrit wikiprojects – 1. All the Samskrit teachers, lecturers, professors must know about Samskrit wikiprojects. All of them must be informed about the basics so that they introduce this to their students. 2. Samskrit Project works that are assigned to student community by the educational institutions could be based on wikiprojects. 3. MA, MPhil, PhD students must be involved in some small wikiprojects so that we could get good quality of work in sa wiki. 4. Religious organizations where Samskrit is promoted must be involved in introducing sa wiki so that common people will involve themselves in this unique work. 5. Scholars must be involved in coining new vocabulary in order to build up content in different subjects. 6. Different Samskrit promoting organisations must become aware of the importance of digitizing Samskrit knowledge for next generation and help in this cause. 7. Samskrit Universities could adopt some wiki projects like wikisource, wikidictionary.... for a period of time and give full attention on improving it. 8. Wiki content development should become an important feature in the biodata of delegates for different educational posts. This is very important because it shows one’s capacity to express himself in Samskrit language which is most necessary in present situation of language teaching and learning. 9. Engineers and other professionals who have inclination for Samskrit could be involved in technical work so that quality improves. 10. Samskrit Wiki clubs can be introduced in high schools (like Science club, Literary club.....) so that we could train future wikipedians. 11. Arrangements for monthly prizes for good article should be made to propagate enthusiasm in editors and also to get good quality articles. 12. Audio contents should be increased in leaps and bounds so that it reaches all those who have great taste for this unique language.