WikiConference India 2011/Submissions/Expanding the Bengali Wikipedia
 | This is an open submission for WikiConference India 2011. |
- Timestamp
- 18:18, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
- Title of the submission
Expanding the Bengali Wikipedia
- Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, or presentation)
Presentation
- Author of the submission
Sucheta Ghoshal
- E-mail address or username (if username, please confirm email address in Special:Preferences)
sucheta.ghoshal@gmail.com
- State of your origin (Country, if you are not based in India)
Paschim Banga
- Abstract (maximum 500 words)
Wikipedia is the place where knowledge meets people and people meet knowledge. Now this process cannot go on without a habit of expanding this book of knowledge to more Indian languages. Though the initiative has already been taken, there is a lack of maintenance. This is a fact that I found while going through the Bengali version of Wikipedia. I was completely taken aback, when I came to know that there are only 195 active users in Bengali Wikipedia! This is quite unacceptable as Bengali language have 230M native speakers.
I did a bit of research on this very fact, and this is what I found out:
| Languages | Native Speakers in Million | Articles | Active Users | Articles vis-à-vis Native Speakers | Active Users vis-à-vis Articles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard Chinese | 845 | 370922 | 5,904 | 0.0439% | 1.592% |
| English | 328 | 3,716,942 | 144017 | 11.3321% | 3.875% |
| German | 120 | 1,276,538 | 22,951 | 1.0638% | 1.798% |
| Bengali | 230 | 22,313 | 195 | 0.0097% | 0.874% |
A language which has 230 million native speakers only 0.0097% is the percentage of articles in Wikipedia against the number. This is a miserable figure and needs a lot of things to be done. Honestly what I want to do is to act as a mediator and my modest effort will be to bring Wikipedia into the realm of Bengali intellect. My scheme is to target 2 to 3 individuals who I feel could be ideal contributors – in Bengali - on subjects related to ethno-culture especially Bengali ethos and technology in general. They are professionals and have a repository of knowledge. I would orient them on some basic things like inputting in Unicode and would seriously work with them to contribute on specific subjects.
- Track (Community/Knowledge/Outreach/Technology)
Community
- Will you attend Wikiconference if your submission is not accepted?
- Yes, I will.I want to have a first hand account of the deliberations in the conference.