User:Hindustanilanguage/Unedited interview

1. Who are you? How would you describe yourself?

I consider myself as a simple Indian guy in the field of education who strongly believes in the dissemination of free knowledge and maintenance of multilinguistic societies. Prior to my contributions on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, I contributed to articles to websites such as Hindinest.com, Boloji.com and the now defunct Urdustan.com website, which was also the first Urdu language website online. I also had my own multilingual blog in English, Hindi and Urdu as well as webpages on Yahoo! GeoCities to facilitate people learning Hindi and Urdu.

2.            If you asked another Wikimedian to describe you, what would they say?

I guess that most of them would consider me as a friendly fellow editor. Aside from my personal contributions, I have often supported efforts to ease and ameliorate the conditions of fellow editors. For example, I helped some of the Wikimedians to apply and get approval on their appeals for laptops under the hardware donation program. I was instrumental in mooting the idea and preparing the blueprint of the first Hindi Wiki Sammelan (Conference) in 2015 ( https://diff.wikimedia.org/2015/03/03/hindi-wiki-sammelan/ ), making a presentation on Hindi Wikipedia in the World Hindi Conference in Vishakhapatnam in 2017 and in including Hindi Wikipedia in MA (Hindi) distance education programme of the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya in Wardha, Maharashtra, India. I also scripted a 10-video Hindi tutorial on editing Hindi Wikipedia which serves as a useful guide to any new editor of Hindi Wikipedia ( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Learn_to_edit_Hindi_Wikipedia ).

Similarly, my Urdu Wikipedia colleagues might possibly recalling the fact that I was able to hold the first ever Urdu Wikipedia workshop ( https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/first-urdu-wikipedia-workshop-hyderabad ) as well unite the Urdu Wikipedians with other Wikipedians for collaborative efforts such as the Urdu-Ukranian, Urdu-Chinese and Urdu-Hebrew projects in which editors from these geographical diverse linguistic projects came together with zeal to contribute articles on each other’s culture, geography, business, economy and politics. I was also one of the founder members of the Dehalvi Urdu Wikimedia Usergroup.

3.            How did you get started with the Wikimedia movement? What was your first memory?

I started as an IP editor  in 2004 where my initial focus was to correct the small typos and grammatical edits. However, it was somewhere post-2010 that I created my present account and became a regular editor. There were two motivating events involved here. First, I appeared and passed India’s prestigious National Eligibility Test for Lectureship in Business Management. I found that Wikipedia articles offered a vast ocean of knowledge which surpassed my syllabus requirements and thus helped me to clear the examination. Second, I served a lecturer teaching to students of healthcare management and Pharmacy for a few years. In order get myself more acquainted with the health-related issues during this period as well as to better understand the global implication of HIV/ AIDS, I pursued the Diploma in HIV and Family Education course from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). I happy to state that Wikipedia information not only helped to better my understanding of many of the medical and sociological interventions mentioned in the course, but it was also helpful me securing a gold medal in IGNOU’s convocation at its headquarters in Delhi. After these achievements, my initial contributions to Wikipedia were focused on Business Management and HIV as well as medical topics. A summary of my work on “AIDS Control Agencies in India”  ( https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/WikiProject:_AIDS_Control_Agencies_in_India  ) can be seen in this proposed submission for Wikimania 2013, although it could not presented because I was not able to attend the conference in the absence of travel scholarship for the event.

4.            Why do you volunteer your time? Why is this work meaningful to you?

I feel it is highly rewarding to see that people benefit from my contributions across the world in English, Hindi and Urdu. Often times, I work on articles after I personally read related topics online or offline. As a contributing editor, I personally feel that I have gained valuable insights on a number of subjects. Additionally, Wikipedia contributions in Hindi and Urdu on particularly emerging areas of information such as Knowledge Management, Green Marketing, Tourism Management, etc serve help many students and writers in gaining deep insights into these matters, which is definitely a matter of pride for me as a champion of free knowledge dissemination.

5.            How would you describe volunteering to someone not familiar with Wikipedia?

I personally interacted with the students of Christ University, University of Hyderabad, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Chaitanya Bharati Institute of Technology, University of Mumbai, Chandigarh Group of Colleges, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Osmania University, etc during the Wikipedia events. I also interacted with many other students and professionals during the workshops and other personal interactions. I feel great that these individuals also have a tremendous zeal and potential to contribute to Wikipedia. We need to offer them support and encouragement to ensure that the initial enthusiasm shown is retained for a long time to come.

6.            You're known for your many profiles of other people. What draws you to interviewing?

I am glad to have interviewed or profiled Wikimedians from English, Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Sanskrit, Esperanto, Punjabi, Maithili, Doteli, Dutch, Sindhi, Turkish, Burmese, Bahasa, Korean, Bahasa, Basque and Latvian backgrounds. I am happy to have interviewed Jimmy Wales in the process. As a humble volunteer myself, I believe that the least thing we can do with respect to many of our high profile contributors is to at least recognize their sincere efforts in the form of a profile blog.

7.            What's one skill you have that you think is important to contributing?

I think every Wikimedia project is unique and it is important for any user to understand this while making any contribution. For example, Neutral Point of View (NPOV) is a key characteristic of any Wikipedia article. On the other hand, Wikimedia Commons is open to user image uploads which can possibly be used for article-creation or thematic representation within existing articles. A commons user needs to very well understand that the project is not a social media platform like Facebook where vacation and wedding pictures can also be unhesitatingly showcased.

8.            Besides volunteering your time and energy to the Wikimedia community, what else do you do with your time?

I try to use my time constructively for academic and research purposed, although over the years I have realised that quite inadvertently I seem to be reverting my off-Wikipedia time also to become Wikipedia-focused activity such as my research paper entitled "A Study on the Usage of Wikipedia in the Field of Academics" published in Edu World Journal, Vol-V No. 1 ISSN 2319-7129 Jan- Dec 2016.

9.            If you could ask other people to help out in one area, what would you ask for?

I would ask people to help in writing more specifically India-focused and research-backed articles by having online access to websites such as IndiaStat ( https://www.indiastat.com/ ) and Informs ( https://www.informs.org/ ).

10.          Tell us about a project you worked on this year that had implications for the larger movement.

During the last one year or so, I have worked on a number of projects. However, one particular project I have been working has been the #MeToo Movement. It unfortunate that English Wikipedia has confined the articles on a few countries like India, China, South Korea and Pakistan as on date. I personally feel that this movement against sexual harassment against women at the workplace is a global movement and we need more articles on its manifestation in many other countries. I have written a few articles on this subject in both Urdu and Hindi Wikipedia and I intend to further expand information with articles on other countries as well. In article on the movement in Nepal (https://ur.wikipedia.org/s/jz7s ) , a theatre activist made an interesting remark that the movement failed to make significant headway in the country as despite being apologetic towards the victim women, the same perpetrators were back to work, without any actions taken against them. On the other hand, the movement in Slovenia (https://hi.wikipedia.org/s/miy5) gained an additional momentum thanks to the backing of an organization March 8 Institute. We rarely discuss about Mongolian culture (https://hi.wikipedia.org/s/mj2f)  in the general feminist discussions, but an important development to note about the country is that the movement there has been highly impactful as highlighted by the fact that a parliamentarian was forced to resign following allegations of rape at the start of the movement in 2017. Similarly, my Wikipedia article on the movement in Iran (https://ur.wikipedia.org/s/k78h) highlights how boastful utterances of a perpetrator on the social media about his uncalled for sexual encounters not only led to a direct confrontation with the victims in the form of scornful and despising posts from many of his victims, but also resulted in a first time open invitation from the capital city’s police chief to register their complaints as well as drafting of the legislation outlawing sexual violence and harassment of women at workplace by the parliament. I believe that work in this area will be of help for Wikipedians and online information seekers in understanding the underlying causes of this movement, the concomitant problems and also evaluate the success in each country in a pragmatic manner.  

11.          What are you wanting to work on next?

           I would like to continue contributing on Wikipedia on many emerging topics in the areas of business management, medicine and healthcare, linguistics as well as on women’s issues.