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User:Hindustanilanguage/Tahir Mahmood

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1. Can you please elaborate about  yourself.

My name Tahir Mahmood Qureshi (Wikipedia: Tahir_mq). I am working in a well

reputed Saudi Company as Network and Operations In charge.

2.  Where do you come from?  Tell us about your native place / places      where you spent your childhood and teen years.

I am from Lahore, Pakistan, but comparatively spent very little time there. I am

residing in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia since childhood. In fact after my SSC (Metric) in went to

Lahore for my HSSC (High Secondary) for two years, and then I  to Cyprus for Higher Studies.

3.  How did you first discover Wikipedia?

In June 2009 I edited some information about my Company, and some changes here and

there. Believe me at that time I had no idea that Urdu Wikipedia existed.

4.  When did you realize that you could edit Wikipedia?

I was aware that Wikipedia can be edited in

2007 and did some edits but created the user in 2009.

 5. What’s the most interesting thing you have      used Wikipedia for?

I like reading and Wikipedia is just a click away from a comprehensive knowledge

on a topic.

6. I saw on your userpage  and amazed by your diversity of      interests. Can you elaborate more?

Oh the Userpage, I would like this opportunity to elaborate why I am recording

every page that I am creating except Categories. Well when I started working on

Urdu Wikipedia I was using Arabic Keyboard and the missing letters in the

keyboard was added by the characters below the edit screen at that time. To

search the article again to continue editing was a difficult task for me and

therefore I started recording them on my userpage, and later it became a habit.

I remember an Administrator informed me that do not create duplicate pages that

I created using Arabic “ک “. Interestingly the

Admin was also not aware that this letter has different codes in Arabic and

Urdu. My main interest is history and related topics, and just some general

knowledge.

 7. What’s the most interesting thing you      have used Wikipedia for?

I like reading specially, and especially when I and reading a book I refer to Wikipedia on the same topic to get a different point of view.

8.  You are very proactive on Urdu Wikipedia      and almost present there all the time – How do you balance your work life      and Wikipedia edits.

I am working as Network and Operations in charge for my company, and therefore I

need to be in front of my computer all the time, monitoring backups, networks

in almost 60 branches, collaborate with my assistants in different areas. I get

time slots for Wikipedia all day during my work.  

9 Do your near      and dear ones support your Wikipedia pursuits?

Yeah as long as it is done in Office time.

A.ctually I get full support, but you know that life in Saudi Arabia is

different from life in Pakistan & India, as women do some tasks like

shopping alone but here all the tasks are pending and waiting for you when you

reach home.

10.  Urdu      Wikipedia is generally a friendly community, mostly free from conflicts.      Tell us more about it.

Urdu Wikipedia is a friendly community,

there were some issues in the past but the community came over it. Sometimes

old users still have that impression where we need to explain them that they

can freely edit within the rules of Wikipedia.

11.  Tell us a      bit of your role as admin of Urdu Wikipedia.

I do tasks that will help in improving the articles like templates and categories. Guiding new users. Fixing thing missing

things in the pages, and other admin tasks.

12.  Number of      Active Urdu Wikipedia users far less compared to Urdu Speakers in the      world. In your opinion what is the main reason for that?

Speakers of Hindustani Language (Urdu / Hindi)

are approximately 330million 4.70% of the whole world population. Urdu speakers

are 94 million (64 million in Pakistan and 50

million in India - 2014) which makes that 11th biggest population of

speaking a language. There are multiple socioeconomic reasons for less active

users on Urdu Wikipedia. But I believe that use of so called “Roman Urdu” is

the biggest hurdle, which is used to text on mobile devices. I have noticed a

misconception that Roman Urdu users think that Urdu keyboard would be very

difficult for typing.  

13.  How do you      feel crossing the 1 lakh edit mark?

Well I am trying to get Urdu Wikipedia to

the goal set by Urdu Wikipedia Team to reach 1 lakh articles, and this mark

just came in striving for the main target. I am very happy about that.

 14. What are      your future Wiki goals and ambitions?

Like to bring more and more users to Urdu

Wikipedia, annual Wiki meetups.

 15. Have you participated      in offline Wiki events (meetups, editathons, etc)?

I participated in the only meet up that took

place on Skype some ago. I am very happy for the annual Wikipedia annual meet

ups taking Place in India. In past some meet up events took place in Karachi. I

am planning to revive that in Pakistan.

 16. What other      Wiki projects do you patronize?

Mainly it is Urdu Wikipedia,

other than that I have 12972 edits on

Wikidata, 4896 edits on English Wikipedia, 1049 edits on Commons and some edit

on Punjabi Wikipedia & Meta wiki and others. Although I have good knowledge

of Arabic & spoken Greek but I believe to stick to my native language.

17.  How do you      see the role of Urdu Wikipedia vis-à-vis other Wikipedias?

For the comparison sake ONLY Urdu Wikipedia

is on No. 61. In fact as a team effort in 2014 we were able to bring the Urdu

Wikipedia from No. 90 to the current position. I personally compare Urdu

Wikipedia with Arabic, Persian an d Hindi Wikipedia, and I believe that we have

a long way to go.

18.  Can you      elaborate a bit on your Urdu Wikipedia colleagues?

We are working as a perfect team, Mohammed

Shoaib is an excellent technical resource, Obaid Raza excellent knowledge on

language, Ameen Akbar great general knowledge, Muzammil knowledge of Hindi,

Ahmed Nisarknowledge of Telugu, Osman Khan knowledge of Pashto, Mohammed

Mujeebknowledge of Sindhi, Irfan Arshad, ZeeshanAmjed, Shahab, SajidAmjedSajid,

Qasirani, Abdul Razzaq, Mohammed Afzal, Kalamkaar, Taha Tahir are excellent

contributors.

19.  How      practical do you feel is the recent plan to bring together all      Persian-script based Wikis (languages of Pakistan)?

Thai is good step, but also I believe that

every language should keep their identity.

 20. What is the      scope of expansion of other Wikiprojects such as Wikiquote and Wikibooks      in Urdu?

Good projects but due to any Copyright issue

that may arise, I stay at a distance from them.

 21. What is your      message for new Wikipedians?

Although Urdu has no threat of extension as

it is national language of Pakistan, and huge number of publications from

Pakistan & India are there. Yet I see the level of Urdu Text especially on

electronic media and social media is poor, many famous

media houses making basic mistakes in spelling &grammar. I believe that

these mistakes are coming from the new generation “Roman Urdu” users. I urge

the Urdu speakers to user Urdu keyboard and write in “Urdu”, Wikimedia is an

excellent platform for that.