NickK

तव मार्गदर्शनाय विद्यन्ते एतानि पृष्ठानि  विकिपीडियायाः परिचयः  देवनागरीलिप्या कथं लेखनीयम्?  नवागतेभ्यः परिचयः  स्वशिक्षा  वि-पत्र-पञ्जीकरणं करोतु

--♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ (चर्चा) १३:०४, २० जून् २०११ (UTC)

help for templates

Hi Nickk.. Welcome to Sanskrit Wikipedia. You know our community is very small. But our goals are very big and realistic. I am an editor of Sanskrit Wikipedia and I want some help from you. I know you are not familiar with Sanskrit. I will be there for Sanskrit related work. You have lots of experiences about wikipedia. So I want some help from you.

1. How to manage wikipedia ? What are the basic things which sourly have to in wikipedia ?

2. In sa.wikipedia there is noting much more easy or attractive. Because our community is so small and we have not enough technical knowledge. @Nickk: this template is available every wikipedia. Even Konkan wikipedia also have this. But I don't know How to import this in sa.wikipedia. This is only an example. There are so many things to do?

3. I know that some sort cuts of wikipedia we have to know. But we don't know sort cuts of wikipedia. Like if one word is wrong in all pages of wikipedia, than how to exchange that word with other correct word?

4. How we can increase our speed on wikipedia. What are the steps to speed up this sa.wikipedia project?

Please help me..... ॐNehalDaveND (✉✉) ०४:१३, १९ जनवरी २०१५ (UTC)

Hi NehalDaveND! Probably I am not the best person as honestly my experience with Indian languages is close to zero, so probably it would be more helpful for you to contact someone with good knowledge of Indian languages (I am sure there are people who can help you). I will do my best and try to explain, but probably I am lacking local context.

1. At your stage (your wiki has about 10 thousand article) what will most likely matter is usefullness of content. You already have the very basic content, and you should have the most basic templates (like en:Template:Otheruses, en:Template:Disambig, some templates for sources like en:Template:Cite web, templates for coordinates like en:Template:Coord, for navigation boxes like en:Template:Navbox and so on). However, there is no need to create overly complicated templates as English Wikipedia has at this point — they will not bring much added value if you do not have quality content. Probably it is worth to focus on creation of some content that would be interesting for Sanskrit speakers, e.g. local culture or geography of Sanskrit-speaking regions. What you may also need is to have more active administrators, as in case of vandalism or if you need delete some page you do not need you have only one active administrator now. I do not know if you have any local policies on that, probably try contacting Shubha for that
2. I have created फलकम्:Ping, but please translate it. The easiest way is to copy the template you need either from English Wikipedia, or, if you cannot understand the code of English template, from some Wikipedia in a closer language, like Hindi, Marathi or Bengali. You just copy and paste the code of the template you need, and you only have to translate from English (Hindi, Marathi etc.) to Sanskrit. Later, as your community grows, you may need to develop more complex and/or localised templates, but for now just copying templates from foreign languages should be enough for you.
3. The best tool for mass replacements is en:Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser. There is an interwiki to Sanskrit on that page as well, but there is virtually no information on that page, so it's better to refer to the English version. You need to add your name विकिपीडिया:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage to use it, then you can download it and you can do any semi-automatic replacements you need
4. This is the most complicated thing.
   • As you probably need to have more readers, it would be great for you to have some useful content in Sanskrit that is not available elsewhere. As far as I know the situation in India, most people look for scientific information in English, not in Indic languages, thus you probably need to provide some different information, like cultural or historical one. If there are any encyclopaedias available in Sanskrit, you may try to contact their authors or editors and request permission to distribute them under CC-BY-SA, so that you can copy articles from that encyclopaedias to Wikipedia.
   • It is quite hard for me to say how you can find new editors. As far as I know India, your main problems are that a) little people have necessary level of education to contribute to an encyclopaedia, b) little people have good command of written Sanskrit, as people do not tend to use Sanskrit for writing scientific texts, c) little people can type in Indic scripts on the Internet, either due to software problems, or due to bad Internet connection, d) people who have both good command of language, education and computer literacy, prefer to write in English anyway. You can try to reach people studying Sanskrit, for example, by making promotion in universities and colleges with Sanskrit-speaking students. It may also be helpful to organise a campaign in social networks, you can look for groups of people interested in Sanskrit and try to involve them with Wikipedia.
   • Finally, I tried to find some people and organisations with experience of promoting Wikipedia in India. There are two organisations working on promoting Wikipedia in India, m:India Access To Knowledge and m:Wikimedia India. They do not seem to work on Sanskrit projects so far, but they seem to have experience with other languages, e.g. Odia. I have also found a 2011 report that there is an organisation called Samskritha Bharathi that works on promoting wiki projects in Sanskrit. You can try contacting all these three organisations, they may have some experience you need. I know one experienced user who both speaks Sanskrit and has experience promoting Wikipedia, it is en:User:Viswaprabha, you can also contact him and ask him for help, it should be easier for you as he is Indian and speaks Sanskrit. I think these people (especially people from m:India Access To Knowledge, as they seem to be interested in Sanskrit and they leave some messages on your local page विकिपीडिया:विचारमण्डपम् (विविधविषयाः)) can help you with some ideas on how to help Sanskrit Wikipedia grow.

I am sorry if some of my ideas do not work well with the context in India, but this is primarily because I have no experience with wiki projects in India and cannot even read any of Indic languages. But I hope this helps — NickK (चर्चा) २२:१६, १९ जनवरी २०१५ (UTC)

Thank you Nickk ! This information is very very useful for me. This is a step or road map with this I can find my way. But in future I will ask some other road map for sa.wikipedia. I hope you will help. Again thank you and nice talk with you. ॐNehalDaveND (✉✉) ०८:०४, २० जनवरी २०१५ (UTC)