User:Hindustanilanguage/Vigyani

Question and Answers for a blog on Punjabi Wikipedia. Questions by Muzammil (User:Hindustanilanguage) and answers by Vigyani (User:Vigyani)

1. You first started editing on English Wikipedia. How did you reach Punjabi Wikipedia?

Ans 1: I started editing en.wiki regularly in Feb 2013, during that time one day I casually navigated to pa.wiki through one of the interlanguage links.

2. Why did you decide you must contribute to Punjabi wikipedia?

Ans 2: I think that will be because of general belief in aims of wikipedia and the love for the mother tongue. In addition to contributing, it is also a learning process. Since finishing school about 12 year back, I had not learnt much in Punjabi language. My use of the language was limited to making a phone call at home or occasionally reading an online Punjabi newspaper. The writing part was missing. I felt the need to use Punjabi more. In the daily life conversation, we tend to use English words whenever suitable, therefore ignoring the corresponding Punjabi word. So, I found pa.wiki a great win win situation. While translating articles from English, I have to search for lesser used Punjabi words. I have to look for ways to communicate something in Punjabi, which I usually will have done in English. Which enhances my knowledge of Punjabi.

3. What is the primary difference you find in the editing cultures on Punjabi and English Wikipedia? Ans 3: The two wikipedia can not really be compared in any way. En.wiki has much more

elaborative infrastructure in place and a large pool of contributors. Pa.wiki on the other side has very few contributors. The total number of registered account on pa.wiki so far maybe even less than number of new editors en.wiki gets everyday. However, since pa.wiki attracts very less attention, it has very low vandalism. So most of the editing is content creation as opposed to large amount of non­content work on en.wiki. We usually have very less conversation amongst us, only whenever required. Another point is that on en.wiki, they have to develop the infrastructure on anything new, we on pa.wiki has to just adopt that. Which means usually less reasons for conversation. Mostly the editors focus on editing. Everyone has their own area of interests. We however do fix/check articles started by others.

The atmosphere in the past for some period of time on the other hand was not been very healthy. There have been content disputes, which led to fights, personal attacks etc, and resulted in few users leaving. I feel that some of the users were not fully versed in wikipedia policies, especially those related to content dispute resolution and collaborative editing. And then for a period of time pa.wiki had no admin, which also made things slightly difficult. The last phase of this period has overlapped with starting phase of my editing. We however are luckily having peace, since an year or so and have grown on a rapid pace.

I will like to briefly discuss the main reasons of content dispute. First, unlike English, Punjabi does not have many online dictionaries or language resources. Sometimes, ways to spell a particular word differ. Even the most reliable of our sources differ in the use of exact spellings. This problem worsen in case of articles on foreign topics. Second, Punjabi language is influenced by both Persian and Sanskrit. Hence a number of times, we have two choices of words. This in fact has been the reason for most of the disputes. Where editors each other of being pro­persian or pro­sanskrit.

4.  Congratulations on getting an extended term as an admin on Punjabi Wikipedia. As an admin (in addition to another admin Satdeep Gill), how do you find fellow editors? Are there conflicts?

Ans 4: Thank you very much. I usually find fellow editors good faith editors. Everybody is ready to help, listen and learn. I so far had not any conflict with any of the editors. We all have a different way to look at things, which sometime results in a slightly different naming/categorization schemes etc (just an example). But with little conversation, we easily settle things.

5.  Indian Wikipedians joined hands for various editathons such as http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ Lilavati's_Daughters_Edit­a­thon    .  Has  there  been  such  other  special  editathons on Punjabi Wikipedia?

Ans 5: No, on pa.wiki. We did not so far had any editathons. Our pool of editors is very low and it is difficult to get enough users on board for a particular focused activity.

6. Where are most of the Punjabi Wikipedians located (geographically, if you’ve done some analysis)?

Ans 6: I think a couple of editors reside in Patiala, Punjab and one more at another place in Punjab. Other then that I am not aware of geographical distribution of pa.wiki editors.

7. Have you attended or organized Punjabi Wikipedia community meet­ups? Please share the details, if any.

Ans 7: No. I have not attended so far any meet­ups.

8. Are there any institutions that are either promoting or likely to promote Punjabi Wikipedia? Is there possibility of exchanges or collaboration with Punjabipedia?

Ans 8: I am not aware of this. My contribution to pa.wiki so far, has been only via computer.

9. What has been your experience in adding content or encouraging content on specific topics with fellow editors?

Ans 9: Adding content has been problem free, smooth. I can directly type in Gurmukhi using my keyboard and does not need any website or transliteration service. pa.wiki has a lot of space to cover and there are many very important topics, which have not yet been covered.

I have a couple of times tried to encourage fellow editors in a specific direction, which has not been much successful. I perfectly understand that. Everyone has their own topics of interests and it is not easy to work on other topics just because someone suggested. So what I have learned is that, it is more important to take the lead and start doing it. With time, you will always have people willing to help and work with you.

10. How are the technical challenges/issues been for your language? Now, is it easy for a new user to start contributing in the wiki easily?

Ans 10: When I had started editing, that time I was not much aware of methods of typing in Gurmukhi. Later, I discovered that my computer (Mac) had two Gurmukhi keyboards already installed. I just activated one of those and since then there has not been much technical challenge for me.

Other then that, a couple of times I have tested the wikipedia provided typing services, which I think are also quite comfortable. For a new user, it is not much difficult to start editing. Only some lesser used characters or symbol are sometime difficult to find. With a few days of practice, however everything falls in place.

11. How about interface translation and other things?

Ans 11: I have not tried interface translation so far. I few times, I have tried to translate some notifications at meta.wiki. But now, I think it is not so useful as compared to content contribution at pa.wiki. Most of the people (Punjabi) who ends up at those notifications at meta already have a basic understanding of English.

12. Are there any Pakistani Contributors on pa.wikipedia.org?

Ans 12: I am not aware of any Pakistani contributor at pa.wiki

13. In addition to Punjabi and English Wikipedia, do you plan to contribute to any other language Wikipedia?

Ans 13: As of now, no. Other than English and Punjabi, I am fluent at Hindi, but I don’t see myself as a regular contributor there. Primarily because of time. I want to devote all available time to pa.wiki. In case of en.wiki content contribution too, I usually work on topics related to Punjab. One of the reason to specifically focus on pa.wiki/Punabi content at en.wiki is the imbalance. pa.wiki or Punjabi content at en.wiki are lacking a lot in the whole setup. I think, if things were not so imbalanced, I would have loved to contribute in other areas too.

14.  Are  you aware of any software/ online website to convert Gurmukhi to Shahmukhi and vice­versa?

Ans 14: No, I am not aware of any software/website for such purpose. It will be wonderful though, if something like that can be found.

15. What are the prevalence/ knowledge levels of Shahmukhi script in India?

Ans 15: I think it is very low. Almost dying. Perhaps only the older generation (50+ years old) may have knowledge of this script properly. I myself, can not ready shahmukhi script.

16. Do you foresee or would like to be part of any collaboration / friendly association with

Shahmukhi (pnb.wikipedia.org) Wikipedians? Ans 16: Yeah. If something can be done. I will be happy to be a part of it.

17. What is your view about the stub class articles on Punjabi Wikipedia/? Also, does Punjabi

Wikipedia in general adhere to the Neutral Point of View (NPOV) rule?

Ans 17: We do not have any fixed standard for rating articles as stub, referred as “aadhar” (i.e. base). By my personal thresholds, about 20 % of the articles can be classified as stub. I take into account the sarcasity of the editors we have, to set a bar. If I go by usual standards at en.wiki, I think maybe around 40­50 % articles could be classified as stub.

Yes, I think we adhere strongly to NPOV rule on pa.wiki. All of our present regular editors editor follow this policy. I have a few times found POVey/biased content from the past contributions, which I cleaned up immediately.

18. Some of the other Wikipedia projects such as Punjabi Wiktionary and Wikibooks do not have enough contributors. Is there any effort to rejuvenate these projects? Also, what is your view about starting Punjabi Wikiquote and Punjabi Wikisource?

Ans 18: I am not aware of any efforts to rejuvenate these projects. I will happy, if these projects become healthy. If we look at pa.wiki, it was started in 2002. It crossed 1000 articles in April 2009 and took another 2 years to double its size. It was only after the workshops in Ludhiana and Patiala in 2012, pa.wiki started growing on a decent pace and have been being edited regularly since then. The Punjabi Wikitionary and Wikibooks do not have as of now any regular dedicated editors, which is why those projects are stale. So in view of that, until at least two­three regular editors are available for a given project, I won’t advocate starting additional Punjabi Wikimedia projects.

19. Could you share any and all ideas ­ small or big, successful & not­so­successful ­ that you think can help drive Punjabi and other language projects?

Ans 19: Time to time, I think of many ideas, I will try to describe some of those here

I recently created many articles using AWB and data list in form of csv files on topics of geography and politics. Articles related to politics were already being done at hi.wiki and I borrowed their data. Later I created my own data sheets too for geography articles, which was provided to hi.wiki too. This kind of collaboration can be easily done across all the other language projects, especially among Indian languages. A huge number of stub/start class articles can be easily created by recording the useful data in excel sheets and using bot or AWB. A large part of data is numeric and rest text. By easily translating those text portions, data list for each local language can be created, resulting in huge number of articles on important topics.

In recent times, internet has expanded on a rapid pace in Punjab (maybe in whole India) due to popularity and availability of smartphones and low cost internet packages. More numbers of editors can be attracted, if more workshops are held in colleges and schools. The present regular wikipedia editors could lead such initiatives in their respective areas. Such a move can be very useful for wikis like pa.wiki, which has very few number of regulars. Computer education has also now been introduced in most of the schools in Punjab. If a some kind of tie up could be done with schools and colleges, then their is a real potential for growth. Students could be given translation exercises which could involve translating articles or portion of articles from en.wiki into Punjabi.

For projects such as wiktionary, students could be encouraged to prepare tables of words on computer as their homework/school exercise as they learn new words as part of language subjects. These kind of tables can be easily used with bots or tools such as WP:AWB to create mass list of entries.

20. Could you give us a personal introduction of yourself?

I will like to withhold my name due to obvious privacy concerns. I am male, about 30 years old and a native of Punjab. I did my primary schooling in Punjab. Later I moved out of Punjab for pursuing academic career and have been living outside Punjab ever since. I hold a doctorate (PhD) in science. Presently, I am a researcher by profession. Hence the username “Vigyani”.