What's working and how?

What's working and how?

I'm trying to understand how India currently figures in the Wikimedia World. I know we have the baseline statistics to figure this out: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Regional_Analysis/South_Asia but the questions I am interested in are a little more complex, and I think they will help our task.

Shiju, I know you have been interested in analysing the numbers, so would you (and others) be interested in the following questions:

We have an idea of what the pages vs. quality/ depth vs. editors situation is like. In terms of number of pages, the top 3 are: Telegu, Hindi, Marathi. In terms of quality/ depth, the top 3 are: Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam. In terms of the number of active editors, the top 3 are: Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil.

Question 1: Is it worth understanding why there are so many Marathi (and Hindi+ Telegu) pages that apparently lack quality and depth? (Are these translations? Stubs? Are we misreading density of the article for quality in the case of these languages in a way we shouldn't be?)

Question 2: I'm interested in understanding how Telegu Wikipedia (which tops numbers) is different from Tamil Wikipedia (which tops quality). The reason I am is to try and understand what it is that is working for each of these attributes (numbers, quality) in each case. Does Telegu Wikipedia have a lot of translations? Is Tamil Wikipedia skewed to current events? I understand that no one (not even those who closely work with both languages) will have a definitive answer, but I think it's worth our while to understand if there are a few key things that make up the Wikipedias in these languages. As a practical exercise, we could try and think of key words that describe the style and content of Tamil and Telegu Wikipedias (words like; popular culture, film, current events, traditional encyclopaedic entries, etc. etc.)

Question 3: English: other than the generally felt assumption, that most internet users in India read (and edit?) pages in English more than other languages, I'm wondering if we know - or should care - how exactly English is working in the country and environs. Emotions aside, strictly from the perspective of what works and how it works, what's the feeling (and empirical basis of the feeling) for what English Wikimedia projects mean for South Asia?

Aprabhala19:54, 24 November 2009

Speaking strictly as a native speaker from the U.S., I think the quality of writing in English in South Asia is variable. I sometimes get annoyed when my marginally grammatical prose gets hacked up by someone who clearly doesn't know what they're doing. This is just the way things are with Wikipedia to some extent, however I usually find that articles I write about the U.S. only get edited when someone has something to add or my syntax really is off. There's less editing that seems to be purely driven by the thrill of seeing oneself in print or whatever.

So I'm wondering if partnerships would be helpful in general for assisting writing by people in second languages. It might improve the quality of articles where unpartnered writers and editors are getting in over their heads; at the same time benefiting from the local knowledge of writers who are inhibited about setting off on their own.

Another issue would be catching "Americanisms", peculiarities of Indian English, Britishisms that don't necessarily travel well, and so forth to move toward a more international style. "The Economist" may be a pretty good example. It's written for audiences on both sides of the Atlantic and probably doesn't grate on anyone's sensibilities. This is something Wikipedia could strive for too.

It's certainly true that there's lots of writing left to be done about South Asia! I've done a modest amount of writing about Nepal. There's a much higher density of writing about the Everest region, Kathmandu, and a few other places than other parts of the country. Many place articles seem to be of the "mailmerge" type with a few census variables plugged into the same invariable matrix. Obviously local folks in other parts of the country haven't involved themselves yet. 76.169.50.90 00:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

76.169.50.9000:36, 22 January 2010