1. There should be more articles like this in non-English newspapers. I found a few in the http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news page, but there should be much more.
2. Here's one thing that can make the Kannada Wikipedia popular: It should have more content that would be useful for children preparing their homework in Kannada-medium schools. That is true for any other language, too. I know a few teachers in Israel who are not really Wikipedians - they don't participate in talk page discussions, they don't consider themselves part of the "community", they don't come to meetups and they don't necessarily have accounts, but they improve articles in Hebrew about the subject that they teach at the time. The growth of Wikipedia is not important to them per se; they simply know that the students will search for homework online whether they like it or not and will probably find Wikipedia, so they want to make sure that the students will receive the right information. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore 2012/2/20 Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.bain...@gmail.com>: > > As a person working in the relevant field, we would welcome Shiju's comments > on the article, its facts, proposed steps by the editors mentioned and what > Kannada Wikipedia needs for revival. > > Warm regards, > > Ashwin Baindur > ------------------------------------------------------ > > > > On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Tinu Cherian (Wikimedia India) > <tinucher...@wikimedia.in> wrote: >> >> The Hindu : "The struggles of keeping Kannada Wikipedia afloat" >> >> http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article2909005.ece >> >> In the world of online Kannada content, blogs may be thriving but >> Wikipedia is struggling. The reasons vary from technology barriers to lack >> of contributors, say Wikipedians. >> >> While there has been a surge in Kannada content in the last two years, >> contributors to the language have been grappling with technology barriers. >> >> After floundering for years, the Kannada Wikipedia picked up with font >> availability, said Hari Prasad Nadig, a Kannada Wikipedian. The software to >> add to Kannada Wikipedia is not so user-friendly, and only geeks can edit it >> properly. >> >> Unlike English, which has a large community, technology issues are glaring >> in smaller communities. “Growth is slow with respect to technology in >> smaller communities,” he said. The lack of a good Unicode font has been a >> persisting problem so the reader ends up seeing boxes instead of Kannada >> text. After trying to write using the ‘Thunga' font, which had problems with >> vowels, besides other bugs, today, ‘Kedage' is the most complete font, >> though issues remain with this one too, Mr. Nadig said. >> >> Besides, various operating systems provide different levels of support for >> the script. “All these small factors together discouraged people from >> contributing. It's not that people don't want to use Kannada on the Net. >> Traffic on the Net is very high; there is Kannada on Facebook and Twitter >> too,” he said. >> >> Another challenge is writing and adding quality content. “The community >> has to grow if Kannada Wikipedia is to grow,” he said. The quality of >> content also matters. One person adding thousands of ‘stubs' on, say, >> Kannada films, does not help the reader, and in fact, drives them away from >> the site. Also, Kannada Wikipedia needs “starter” articles, to get people >> reading before they can start adding content, he said. >> >> In order to grow, Kannada Wikipedia requires an active, organic community, >> which is not imposed through a catalyst of paid content creators. Once, >> Google started a tool that had machine-translated content improved by manual >> translations. Yet the Kannada content was “looking like spam. They (manual >> translators) didn't understand markup, templates; (it was) all malformed”, >> he said. >> >> An observation about contributors is that people in metros prefer writing >> to the English Wikipedia though they know Kannada and are tech-savvy. >> “Bangalore has less than 10 people writing to Kannada Wikipedia,” he said. >> >> Omshivaprakash, Chair for Kannada Special Interest Group for Wikipedia, >> said people are not aware that Kannada Wikipedia now has simple tools to add >> content. He said “Wiki academies” would be set up to train people on adding >> Kannada content. “Everyone complains that the quality of Kannada Wikipedia >> is low, but they do not know that they can edit it themselves,” he said. >> >> Regards >> Tinu Cherian >> pr...@wikimedia.in >> http://wiki.wikimedia.in/In_the_news >> >> Important Note : Non-commercial reproduction for informative purposes >> only. The publisher ( The Hindu ) of the above news article owns the >> copyrights of the article / content. All copyrights are duly acknowledged. >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Wikimedia >> Chapter, India Member's Group. >> To post to this group, send email to wmin-memb...@googlegroups.com >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> wmin-members+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/wmin-members?hl=en?hl=en > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaindia-l mailing list > Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l > _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
