Wikipedia entries in Hindi, Malayalam, Telegu on the rise

A study done by the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) revealed the number of Wikipedia entries in vernacular Indian languages has had notable growth in the last eight months. Entries in around twenty Indian languages have increased, said a report on the same in the Times Of India.  So far, Hindi leads the Indian list with one lakh articles, followed by Tamil with 52,000, and Telugu with 51,000. Indian language entries in Wikipedia (numbering around three lakh last April) might seem like a very small part of the massive pool of information on Wikipedia. But with the numbers going up, and volunteers from different linguistic backgrounds joining the online encyclopedia, the entries have seen a massive surge over the last two to three years. According to the CIS study, Wikipedia contributors in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi have added thousands of new articles on various subjects since September 2012. Marathi, which had 30 lakh page views per month previously, had grown by another 10 lakh visitors, while Bengali Wikipedia had 14 lakh page views. [caption id=“attachment_1002661” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Wikipedia webpage in use on a laptop computer. Reuters[/caption] “We strive to represent all arguments. It is more than democratic. In democracy, the majority view prevails. But Wikipedia believes that all arguments in an issue should get a representation, even when it is expressed by just one individual,” Rahimanuddin Shaik, Chair of Special Interest Group (Telugu), told Business Line. “Marathi has 40,000 articles. But most editors in Mumbai prefer to work on English. Pune has more Marathi editors,’ says T Vishnu Vardhan, programme director, Access to Knowledge project at CIS to the Times of India. It was back in 2011, at India’s first Wiki Conference, that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had said that he hoped to see an increase in the number of Indian language contributors, which at the time were a meagre 50 in the Hindi language. “At the regional language level, there is a lot of potential for contribution,” Wales had said. “Every little bit helps.” In November that year, Wikipedia also opened an office in Delhi to encourage participation in India. “Information about India and contribution by people from India are not adequately represented on Wikipedia, and we want to change that,” said Hisham Mundol, the Wikipedia consultant. In 2012, Marathi was added to the list of Indian languages that Wikipedia is available in. Indians had shown their support to the knowledge-sharing website during a fundraiser last year, data from which revealed that Indians were at the front of the pack when it came to a desire to donate to Wikipedia. According to the survey, 42 percent of Wiki readers from India were ready to donate, followed by Egypt and US where nearly 33 percent users were keen to donate.