User:Hindustanilanguage/Tahir Mahmood
1. Can you please elaborate about yourself.
My name Tahir Mahmood Qureshi (Wikipedia: Tahir_mq). I am working in a well
reputed Saudi Company as Network and Operations In charge.
2. Where do you come from? Tell us about your native place / places where you spent your childhood and teen years.
I am from Lahore, Pakistan, but comparatively spent very little time there. I am
residing in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia since childhood. In fact after my SSC (Metric) in went to
Lahore for my HSSC (High Secondary) for two years, and then I to Cyprus for Higher Studies.
3. How did you first discover Wikipedia?
In June 2009 I edited some information about my Company, and some changes here and
there. Believe me at that time I had no idea that Urdu Wikipedia existed.
4. When did you realize that you could edit Wikipedia?
I was aware that Wikipedia can be edited in
2007 and did some edits but created the user in 2009.
5. What’s the most interesting thing you have used Wikipedia for?
I like reading and Wikipedia is just a click away from a comprehensive knowledge
on a topic.
6. I saw on your userpage and amazed by your diversity of interests. Can you elaborate more?
Oh the Userpage, I would like this opportunity to elaborate why I am recording
every page that I am creating except Categories. Well when I started working on
Urdu Wikipedia I was using Arabic Keyboard and the missing letters in the
keyboard was added by the characters below the edit screen at that time. To
search the article again to continue editing was a difficult task for me and
therefore I started recording them on my userpage, and later it became a habit.
I remember an Administrator informed me that do not create duplicate pages that
I created using Arabic “ک “. Interestingly the
Admin was also not aware that this letter has different codes in Arabic and
Urdu. My main interest is history and related topics, and just some general
knowledge.
7. What’s the most interesting thing you have used Wikipedia for?
I like reading specially, and especially when I and reading a book I refer to Wikipedia on the same topic to get a different point of view.
8. You are very proactive on Urdu Wikipedia and almost present there all the time – How do you balance your work life and Wikipedia edits.
I am working as Network and Operations in charge for my company, and therefore I
need to be in front of my computer all the time, monitoring backups, networks
in almost 60 branches, collaborate with my assistants in different areas. I get
time slots for Wikipedia all day during my work.
9 Do your near and dear ones support your Wikipedia pursuits?
Yeah as long as it is done in Office time.
A.ctually I get full support, but you know that life in Saudi Arabia is
different from life in Pakistan & India, as women do some tasks like
shopping alone but here all the tasks are pending and waiting for you when you
reach home.
10. Urdu Wikipedia is generally a friendly community, mostly free from conflicts. Tell us more about it.
Urdu Wikipedia is a friendly community,
there were some issues in the past but the community came over it. Sometimes
old users still have that impression where we need to explain them that they
can freely edit within the rules of Wikipedia.
11. Tell us a bit of your role as admin of Urdu Wikipedia.
I do tasks that will help in improving the articles like templates and categories. Guiding new users. Fixing thing missing
things in the pages, and other admin tasks.
12. Number of Active Urdu Wikipedia users far less compared to Urdu Speakers in the world. In your opinion what is the main reason for that?
Speakers of Hindustani Language (Urdu / Hindi)
are approximately 330million 4.70% of the whole world population. Urdu speakers
are 94 million (64 million in Pakistan and 50
million in India - 2014) which makes that 11th biggest population of
speaking a language. There are multiple socioeconomic reasons for less active
users on Urdu Wikipedia. But I believe that use of so called “Roman Urdu” is
the biggest hurdle, which is used to text on mobile devices. I have noticed a
misconception that Roman Urdu users think that Urdu keyboard would be very
difficult for typing.
13. How do you feel crossing the 1 lakh edit mark?
Well I am trying to get Urdu Wikipedia to
the goal set by Urdu Wikipedia Team to reach 1 lakh articles, and this mark
just came in striving for the main target. I am very happy about that.
14. What are your future Wiki goals and ambitions?
Like to bring more and more users to Urdu
Wikipedia, annual Wiki meetups.
15. Have you participated in offline Wiki events (meetups, editathons, etc)?
I participated in the only meet up that took
place on Skype some ago. I am very happy for the annual Wikipedia annual meet
ups taking Place in India. In past some meet up events took place in Karachi. I
am planning to revive that in Pakistan.
16. What other Wiki projects do you patronize?
Mainly it is Urdu Wikipedia,
other than that I have 12972 edits on
Wikidata, 4896 edits on English Wikipedia, 1049 edits on Commons and some edit
on Punjabi Wikipedia & Meta wiki and others. Although I have good knowledge
of Arabic & spoken Greek but I believe to stick to my native language.
17. How do you see the role of Urdu Wikipedia vis-à-vis other Wikipedias?
For the comparison sake ONLY Urdu Wikipedia
is on No. 61. In fact as a team effort in 2014 we were able to bring the Urdu
Wikipedia from No. 90 to the current position. I personally compare Urdu
Wikipedia with Arabic, Persian an d Hindi Wikipedia, and I believe that we have
a long way to go.
18. Can you elaborate a bit on your Urdu Wikipedia colleagues?
We are working as a perfect team, Mohammed
Shoaib is an excellent technical resource, Obaid Raza excellent knowledge on
language, Ameen Akbar great general knowledge, Muzammil knowledge of Hindi,
Ahmed Nisarknowledge of Telugu, Osman Khan knowledge of Pashto, Mohammed
Mujeebknowledge of Sindhi, Irfan Arshad, ZeeshanAmjed, Shahab, SajidAmjedSajid,
Qasirani, Abdul Razzaq, Mohammed Afzal, Kalamkaar, Taha Tahir are excellent
contributors.
19. How practical do you feel is the recent plan to bring together all Persian-script based Wikis (languages of Pakistan)?
Thai is good step, but also I believe that
every language should keep their identity.
20. What is the scope of expansion of other Wikiprojects such as Wikiquote and Wikibooks in Urdu?
Good projects but due to any Copyright issue
that may arise, I stay at a distance from them.
21. What is your message for new Wikipedians?
Although Urdu has no threat of extension as
it is national language of Pakistan, and huge number of publications from
Pakistan & India are there. Yet I see the level of Urdu Text especially on
electronic media and social media is poor, many famous
media houses making basic mistakes in spelling &grammar. I believe that
these mistakes are coming from the new generation “Roman Urdu” users. I urge
the Urdu speakers to user Urdu keyboard and write in “Urdu”, Wikimedia is an
excellent platform for that.