CIS-A2K/Indic Languages/Bengali/Discussions/2011
This page documents the discussions I have had with few Bengali wiki community members. For these discussions, I reached out to everyone I knew and tried to connect with some I didn't through Email-user facility/talk pages. I have created this page based on those interactions. Since then, some community members whom I couldn't contacted earlier have asked to share their views. I request you to share them directly with me personally at shiju@wikimedia.org. I request you NOT to post directly on this page. (In the cases below, I have removed personal details to protect privacy, any personal remarks to try and keep the learning focused and the discussions constructive.) And most important is, all the initial discussions that happened in 2011 were to get the community started sharing the ideas. This will continue in 2012 and in coming years also. Please post your comment/opinion/views regarding the below discussions on the talk page of this page.
| 2011 | Assamese | Bengali | Gujarati | Hindi | Kannada | Malayalam | Marathi | Nepali | Odia | Sanskrit | Tamil | Telugu | Summary of discussions |
Jayanta
1. How you reached Bengali Wikipedia?
In 2004/5 I knew about wikipedia by google search. I reached Bengali wikipedia from the sidebar of English wikipedia.
2. Why you decided you must contribute to Bengali wikipedia?
Because my mother tongue is Bengali, If I don't contribute it will be not growing.
3. Why do you edit?
Relative to any wikipedia, there are no big number of active volunteer our wikipedia .So I edit Bengali Wikipedia. And other part I love my language.
4. Have you attended or conducted outreach sessions? If yes, what was the outcome?
Yes Personally I have been organised our Kolkata Meet-up. our community is growing. People are exited about wikipedia.
5. What has been your experience in adding content or encouraging content on specific topics?
Sometimes some argument occurs but after that it will be sorted out with consensus.
6. How active are the sister projects (Wikisource, wiktionary, and other projects) in Bengali?
Wikisource is more ative rather than wikitionary and other project.
7. How are the technical challenges/issues been for your language? Now, is it easy for a new user to start contributing in wiki easily?
Initially there was huge technical challenges/issues.But now 99% issues solved.Now phonetic typing more popular in Bengal. So anyone can start new article any time very easily.
8. How is the interaction between Bengali wiki community members? Is there is enough interaction?
Every month in Kolkata community members meet.
9. Could you share any and all ideas - small or big, sucessful & not-so-sucessful - that you think can help drive Bengali and other Indic language projects?
We have to work heard to growing strong community in Bengal. Our Bengali print/electronic media silent about Bengali Wikipedia. We have to promote among the Bengali reporters about Bengali Wikipedia. It can be helped drive Bengali and other Indic language project.
Arnab
1. How you reached Bengali Wikipedia?
I reached Bengali Wikipedia through the language sidebar of a certain English Wikipedia article.
2. Why you decided you must contribute to Bengali wikipedia?
I started it carelessly. Later I got addicted to it.
3. How active are you? and What type of topics you usually edit?
Now I am active in English Wikipedia (around 2100 edits, mostly in last few months) and Wikimedia Commons (around 300 files uploaded in last 3 years). I am mainly interested in literature (especially Bengali literature), Hinduism and anything that is related to West Bengal as I consider these topics my cup of tea.
4. Why do you edit in wikipedia?
To share knowledge.
5. Have you attended or conducted outreach sessions? If yes, what was the outcome? What were the positives and negatives from these outreach programs?
No, I haven’t.
6. Have you attended or organised community meet-ups? What was the outcome? What were the positives and negatives from these meet-ups?
Yes, I have, but not recently.
7. Speaking of outcomes, I am not aware of the states of recent meet-ups?
But I think, the positive things about the meet-ups are:
- We can tell people that there is something called Bengali Wikipedia.
- People can directly consult us regarding there editing-related problems.
- We can directly make people aware of what Wikipedia and as well as what Wikipedia isn’t.
And the Negative things are:
- Some people think free-content stuffs are of no good and there is no authenticity of what is written in Wikipedia articles. Unfortunately, for our poor status of review system, we cannot produce any better picture of Bengali Wikipedia to them.
- Some activists think, as Wikipedia is a free-content website, it would serve as a platform of their socio-political movements and most of them differ with our stand on neutrality. I found many of them actually join meet-ups to convince us to work for them. I think it is a big problem.
8. What has been your experience in adding content or encouraging content on specific topics in Bengali wikipedia?
Adding content is easy in any Wikipedia project. In Bengali Wikipedia too, we, the general contributors, get all kinds of possible technical help from the administrators and the other veterans. But unless any article get reviewed, it is impossible to improve the quality of the content added. Poor review system is a serious drawback for Bengali Wikipedia. For an example, I have contributed to over 1000 individual articles there, but only two got reviewed. I could never knew, whether I did the right thing or not. Neither it improved my skills, nor helped me in any other way. Moreover too much writing fruitlessly started to hamper my studies and personal life, and led me to give up contributing for Bengali Wikipedia.
9. How active are the sister projects (Wikisource, wiktionary, and other projects) in Bengali?
Fairly active. The administrators and policy-makers of Bengali Wikipedia don’t launch any project that they cannot keep active.
10. How are the technical challenges/issues been for your language? Now, is it easy for a new user to start contributing in wiki easily?
There is no big technical challenge for my language. Thanks to the governmental and private initiatives, Bengali is a very computer-friendly language nowadays. To start contributing to Wikipedia, one just has to know how to type Bengali on key-boards (which is also quite easy).
11. Could you share any and all ideas - small or big, sucessful & not-so-sucessful - that you think can help drive Bengali and other Indic language projects?
Publishing advertisements in like-minded magaziner or newspapers citing the aims and mission of Wikipedia may help it to reach to a greater readership. For Bengali Wikipedia, I think, literary magazines would serve the purpose, as these are very popular among the educated masses.
Tanvir
1. How did you hear about Wikipedia? How did you reached Bengali Wikipedia?
Well, Wikipedia was introduced to me by Google, without knowing that is the Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. When Google forwarded me to Wikipedia for some information, I really did not care to look at the logo or to click further beyond my need.
But eventually, I did know about Wikipedia through Bengali Wikipedia, in a book fair in Dhaka. Some volunteers were holding a banner with an open call to reach the largest encyclopedia of Bengali language. I was curious, so looked-up in the internet, and yes, that site attracted me. The coolest thing was I could edit, a the edit went live immediately! After few months of IP edits, I created an account and was given a welcome message with few guidance, and an invitation to the mailing list. Those really encouraged me!
At first, I reached Bengali Wikipedia by increasing the contents with new articles on many things of my interest. Later I realized the system of Bengali Wikipedia is not so organized. By that I mean, there are lack of proper guideline and instruction pages in Bengali. So, I worked on project pages, templates, and other things to help the new contributors. After being an administrator, I also helped the community with those tools.
2. Why you decided you must contribute to Bengali Wikipedia?
For the sake of language of course! It is my language and it is only my duty to serve my language. As I saw English Wikipedia is already reached in a good way, but it is also true that most of the speakers of my language cannot speak English or even they can, many are not able to get the effective help from an English Wikipedia article. Although I agree, we need more contributors in English Wikipedia to enrich articles related to our country and culture.
3. How active are you?
I am active enough, editing everyday. Now I also work in few more projects, so I am not able to provide as much as time as used to, but I keep an eye on things. :-)
4. What kind of topics you usually edit?
I love to work on all kind of topics. I am primarily a reader of Wikipedia, and when I find the interest on a topic while reading, I usually work on it. That could be a biography, country, culture, sports, animals or anything.
5. Why do you edit?
I edit to spread the free knowledge, serve my language, and myself. As I said I am primarily a reader so, it increases my knowledge, and as I write articles, that means it is and will be there, and some others are reading it, and that is the ultimate goal, providing the information to other people free of cost and complexity.
6. Have you attended or conducted outreach sessions? If yes, what was the outcome? What were the positives and negatives from these outreach programs?
Yes, I have involved myself in many outreach sessions to enrich Bengali Wikipedia, like workshops and photo-walk. The positive outcome was we got editors. The negative bit was we failed to keep many of those editors for a considerable amount of time. But I do not like to call it as a failure of our outreach sessions. Because arranging continuous outreach programs do require volunteers, and we are in need of volunteers. We are in kind of a vicious cycle, but the good thing is the situation is getting developed.
7. Have you attended or organized community meet-ups? What was the outcome? What were the positives and negatives from these meet-ups?
Yes, I have attended and organized community meet-ups. Meet-ups helped to develop our collaboration (both on-line and off-line). I believe meet-ups also encourage people to stick to the project. With meet-ups we were able to do more outreach of Wikipedia.
8. What has been your experience in adding content or encouraging content on specific topics?
Pretty good. Whenever we asked the on-line community to help us on something, they expressed great interest and also helped us. Some of our Wikipedians gave a call for participation to add contents (like article drive) and images on specific topics, and people have contributed effectively.
9. How active are the sister projects (Wikisource, Wiktionary, and other projects) in Bengali?
Sister projects of Bengali are not that active compared to Bengali Wikipedia. As Bengali Wikipedia itself a small wiki, so other projects are also small. Although Bengali Wikisource is quite reached, but Wiktionary and Wikibooks have less content than the others.
10. How are the technical challenges/issues been addressed for your language?
Technically it is okay for new users. We have the very basic help and guidance pages. Also we have the necessary templates. But of course, a new users do not need to know all the rules before start. They will know while working. And our users are quite polite and helpful, so whenever they ask a question or make a mistake, the active contributors help them by providing necessary help and guidance. The interface translation are being done at translatewiki, and it is done or almost done for Bengali.
Besides everything, we do have technical challenges. Like our PDF rendering tools do not work (it is also a problem with few other Indic language wikis), also we have few bugs reported at Bugzilla which need to be fixed. Recent MediaWiki 1.18 up-gradation caused a scary trouble with template parser which is not fixed yet. Those do not make trouble with newbies, but they are surely obstacles to spread the project in long-run.
11. How is the interaction between Bengali wiki community members?
The interaction among contributors is good. As I said above, we have a friendly community. But it is not enough. There are also users are working in their own way without interacting to other users. Due to small amount of contributors sometimes it is not possible to help a help seeker quickly.
We also get benefited from the discussion with other users. Got helps from other projects' contributors on many issues.
Mayeen
1. How did you hear about Wikipedia? How did you reached Bengali Wikipedia?
From the The Daily Prothom Alo, I was informed about Wikipedia, especially Bangla Wikipedia (I don't like to mention it as Bengali Wikipedia, though you may like).
2. Why you decided you must contribute to Bengali Wikipedia?
I don't know why. I work here because I have a tool to write Unicode Bangla and I do have resources to share with others. I don't know why I'm contributing much of my time here. :)
3. How active are you?
I'm active basically in Bangla Wikipedia. Beside it, I'm partly active in English Wikipedia, Meta, Commons, Bangla Wiktionary too. Love to work with Bangla, hence I'm a rollbacker and autoconfirmed user there.
4. What kind of topics you usually edit?
Related to Nature, Science, Religion, Occult and Bangladesh. And also like to contribute on notable biographies.
5. Why do you edit?
Million Dollar Question, I don't have any answer. May be I'm a mad. :x
6. Have you attended or conducted outreach sessions? If yes, what was the outcome? What were the positives and negatives from these outreach programs?
Yes I did. It's awesome! People, especially young students are familiar with English Wikipedia. When they heard about the Bangla Wikipedia, they simply want to contribute... not knowing what to do, how to do. And in that part we helped them. That's the most astonishing part of the our outreach programs. The only negative I can mention is our capability to support the new users. We till don't have enough volunteers and we don't have presentation materials for a quick learning session. But we are hopeful to acquire them all in a very short time, because finally the Wikimedia Bangladesh is founded.
7. Have you attended or organized community meet-ups? What was the outcome? What were the positives and negatives from these meet-ups?
Organized and attended. Positives and negatives are the same as the outreach programs. We have good contributing minds, but we don't have enough volunteers and resources to support them.
8. What has been your experience in adding content or encouraging content on specific topics?
Good in Bangla Wikipedia. Contributors and Administrators here are very friendly. Whenever we start a larger content we discuss, we usually get a good support from other Wikipedians, but as because we don't have much contributor, the discussion process is a bit slow in some of the cases. In the sense of contents, especially related to Bangladesh, we don't have enough third party sources to make an article good. But we are trying and we are making some of our contribution as good articles.
9. How active are the sister projects (Wikisource, Wiktionary, and other projects) in Bengali?
Partially active in Bangla Wiktionary. Till not active in Bangla Wikisource and other projects. But a reader there. Sometimes I visit there to have a look the recent updates.
10. How are the technical challenges/issues been addressed for your language?
We till have some common bugs in Bangla Wikipedia interface. The most common one is the number bulleting (#), though it's a minor one. We have the welcoming message and some of the introductory materials translated, and we are still translating the necessary pages also. Some features are not added but we have the demand, like the Reference tool in edit panel mode. But the overall is satisfying with some Bangla Keyborad Layout and font embedded with the interface.
11. How is the interaction between Bengali wiki community members?
It's much welcoming. Bangla Community is simply a friendly environment we have as in Bangladesh. Bangladeshi people are welcoming and the senior Wikipedians are also doing their best to support the new comers.