From Hindi (hi) Wikipedia

Hi,

I am a regular contributor to one of the indian language Wiki , the Hindi (Hi) wikipedia. Here is the answer to some of your questions you posted at here

Before that let me tell you something about the hindi wikipedia. Hindi is the language spoken by most of people in India. In wikipedia there are around 55,000 articles in Hindi. There are other indian languages in wikipedia with more than 20,000 articles. There is also a large number of Indians contributing to the english wikipedia. English is India's second most spoken language. However most of the people using internet in India are well versed in English. So you would expect a lot of people using English on ineternet rather than any other Indian language.

So here are answers to your questions. 1. We at Hindi wiki have used various forums like social networking site, mouth publicity as the primary source of advertising the Hindi Wikipedia. However since typing in Hindi is not widespread in India so net users generally search for English article and then move to the hindi article from the link provided there. 2. We are working to improve the quality of the articles and using social networking platforms to post link of these articles. Also we have couple of sections on the Main page which we keep on updating regularly which maintains the visitors curiosity. 3. The biggest challenge for any non-english wiki in India is that as English is the most prevalent working language people are not used to use these local language scripts for Internet browsing. A local language wiki is welcomed by a lot of people but still there is a lack of contributors due to difficulty in typing the indic scripts. Material on the net is alos not readily available in local languages, so these wikis are generally translations of the English articles with English sources and refrences. 4. Foundation can help in bringing this issue in front of the major internet search engines by which typing in Indian languages is easier in the search engine and people are educated about how to use the features. Also in wikipedia also if script support on all the browser is made available by few clicks, people would tend to use it more readily. 5 & 6. India is a vast country and I think putting staff on ground would need serious reconsideration. You can choose any of the big cities, for example Bangalore which is flourishing with English wiki contributor. But for local languages there could be that many locations as the languages.

I hope these points would be helpful for you. Please let me know if you need any further information

Regards, Gunjan verma81 16:23, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Tyler,

It was nice to recieve a message like that one, from the foundation. We at Hindi wiki are constantly making hard efforts to upbring the Hindi wikipedia. During that if someone praises our effort or asks like this, is like a glass of cold water when you are working in a desert. Well now coming to your queries:

1. By Indian wiki community I am replying for Hindi one only. We are not so strong at electronic media to convince anybody for contribution here. Well then we have the only way by mouth (Also telephones) to aur friends & contacts to start contributing at Hindi wiki.
2. We here have been working hard to uplift the Hindi wikipedia. A few deeds to give a refreshing look to the front page are:
   1. We have been updating the Featured article bimonthly, & also planning to change it monthly, but due to sudden lack of active Sr. workers, just continuing the bi-monthly status. We can still now change it monthly, but due to strict quality considerations, maintained the status.
   2. We update the featured picture on weekly basis, in which many a pics are coming in between, on special occasions.
   3. We are daily changing a new article for Aaj ka aalekh (Today's article), which is of short length (250-400 or more words)

1. Last year, we started a drive in the month of August, nearing to Hindi Day, to achieve a target og 50,000 articles. And also achieved it.
2. Regarding Hindi wikipedia, if any staff at all is to be put up, any metro can be chosen, but as considering Hindi, so Southern India may be ruled out. Similarly, west & east can also be on a lesser preference to North India. Well that way as per Hindi speaking metros, Delhi, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Bhopal, Agra & Gwalior can be considered. Now here Patna has its own Bhojpuri wikipedia, to which it is closer than Hindi. Similarly Chandigarh is closer to Punjabi one. Now on the basis of IT facilities except Delhi, all other cities are behind Delhi here. Delhi also enjoys the status of Capital. Well that way Delhi has the max points in favour. Pls forget that I am fm Delhi & so canvassing for that. Still many of the Hindi wiki users & Sys-admins are from here.
3. Last but not the least, the foundation can help by setting some Internet cafe like parlours, where interested people can come & contribute. They can have information, guidance, facilities, concessions, etc.

Rest what our tireless contribute Gunjan has said above is also useful.

--आशीष भटनागर:प्रबंधक, हिन्दी विकिपीडिया आशीष भटनागर 10:16, 18 March 2010 (UTC)