Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 1 key questions/What is the current demand for Wikimedia in India?

What is the demand for enWikipedia?

Literacy is low in Northern part of India , excluding the big cities even though they are literate that does not mean that they are computer literate and more over they use the wiki. Most of them can only speak,read and write in their mother language..English wiki is only in the reach of the privileged population ..empowerment in the local wiki(local language ) is the most to boost up the usage of the wiki ..the high traffic pages need to be translated to the local languages and also the main occupation in India in Agriculture we have to focus how can we make wiki useful even in agriculture and in controlling the often outbreaks of the epidemics .सरोज कुमार ढकाल 17:03, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

• Presently, its use is limited to those who used to read in search of knowledge. But that constitute only a tiny fraction of the educated people and people in the education sector.Dineshjk 10:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok Alexa figures show some intresting facts I will come back on this as time permitsMahitgar 15:06, 23 October 2009 (UTC) 5.7% Wikipedia.org users come from India. But where they go alexa listing does not include any Indian language other than english itself besides .Alexa rating for wikipedia is 9th top most visited among all Indian usage.Meaning from this stat is very clear as of today a huge Indian Population is referring to English Language Wikipedia. Why enough people are not going to local languge wikipedia instead of en wiki the reason is either simply they do not know about existance of local language wiki or still they do not find enough content on local wikis ^{[1] , [2]} Mahitgar 08:13, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

• In india mainly in the urban cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, chennai, banglore. The demand for wiki en is very high ive have seen loads of people set wiki as thier default search engine on firefox. There are not enough contributers to the other indian projects hence there is not much response...

I have a suggestion that every single page related to Idia should be translated into all indian languages. That way you can attract more traffic.Syler.mi4 04:26, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

What is the demand for South Asian language Wikipedias?

• Much more compared to the demand of it's counter part, enWiki. But still the regional ones are in incubation period. Dineshjk 10:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Alexa like figures are not available.Ok I will come back with figures for Marathi Language wikipediaMahitgar 15:06, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

For India the following languages make the top 50 of most spoken languages

in the world: Hindi (3), Bengali (10),Punjabi (15),Marathi (17),Telugu (20),Tamil (28),Urdu (29). Gujarati (34), Kannada (33), Sindhi(37,)Malayalam (39), , Nepali (43), Oriya (42)

The language like Nepali is not only the language of India it is the Official Language of Nepal with significant no of speakers in Bhutan and few speakers in Myanmar ..we can work out together with the people from the other corner of the world so that we can help them and we can help ourselves सरोज कुमार ढकाल 17:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

In terms of market(For local language Wikipedias that is minimum potential), Maharashtra ( Read Marathi Language) is seen as the most lucrative market with the state having as many as 1.17 million broadband subscribers. Tamil Nadu(Read Tamil Language) follows Maharashtra with roughly 0.8 million broadband subscribers. Other high performing states include Delhi, Karnataka(Read Kannada language) , Kerala(Read Malyalam Language), Andhra Pradesh(Read Telugu Language), Rajasthan, Gujarat(Read Gujarathi Language), Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh(Read Hindi Language).^{TelecomTiger.com Oct 2009}Fasten 09:55, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

You said,Some people have stated that the slow growth of an Indian language wikipedias is due to people in the India's preference for using English while online

See, here at google trends that people are searching for local langugae fonts.In india eduacational cream opts usually for technical fields and do not have any other option than that of english so they get used to english.But what do the rest do they also do not have option but use roman script favoring net so they end up communicating in their own languge using roman script how so ever they would be uncomfortable with that.

My answer is People are not aware that they can use their own language,how to use their language and they do not have a fair choice, since today they are not assured of availability of all communication and knowledge in their own language,and they are not being represented.

See in Maharashtra state anually some 15,00,000 student apear for 10th standard out of which 12,00,000 are from Marathi Languge Medium ^[3] (rest of 3,00,000 of english medium what is their level of fluency in english needs study). out of these 15,00,000 only 3,00,000 students are registering for Science faculty^[4] which is dominnated by english language the rest 7,50,000 students opt for Arts and commerce studies which are predominantly in Marathi Language.and 4,50,000 lac students are not persuing any studies beyond 10th standard.so they remain Marathi.Since from 10th standard exam results and 11th standard admissions happen to be online so good size of students know what internet is.

So what we need, is real field sample survey studies of students of atleast 11th standard and beyond to understand thier real online preferences,do they know wikipedia,how do they perceive wikipedia and how much local language wikipedias are important to them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahitgar (talk • contribs) --Fasten 10:00, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Hindi Language demand is more, but compared to English, there is very less updates. As the people even don't know that Wikipedia can be updated. --Lalit82in

Here is a link to some very interesting market research on Indian Internet users Juxt Online Market Research Online India 2009 topline findings. Based on their survey data they claim that only 13% of online Indians prefer to read in English! Sarah476 22:28, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

What is the potential role for other Wikimedia projects?

• Many of them are well-received and I have witnessed the discussants in academic fora referring to Wikis. Dineshjk 10:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

There is lot of potential for Wiktionary,Wikibooks, wikisources,Wikiversity have got good scope.Only Wikiquote might remain a minor even in long run in most of south asian languages Mahitgar 12:21, 29 October 2009 (UTC)