Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Self-assessment

This subpage is created to facilitate self-evaluation by members of Wikipedia:WikiProject India. This is specifically designed to stand as a self-assessment of projects by their members. There is a separate final section for comments by non-members who have feedback, but I would request that non-members please do not respond in other sections. Unregistered users are welcome to respond in the final section, but as there are at the time of this writing no unregistered users listed at WikiProject India/Members, I'm afraid that comments by unregistered users in the other sections will have to be discounted or removed.
 * Self-assessment

The purpose is to identify what works and does not work for community groups on Wikimedia Foundation projects, to help promote good practices across projects. It is also intended to help brainstorm ways for community groups to reach out to new users interested in their areas, to help encourage growth for Wikipedia. I will be presenting information gathered from this conversation to the Wikimedia Foundation, both to help provide guidelines to other projects and to see if there is anything the Foundation can do to better facilitate your work.

However, the Wikimedia Foundation does not create or control content on its projects, and it does not interfere with community practices, including banning practices. To the latter point, banning is a community-wide matter and not a project matter. For these reasons, material related to content disputes or community banning/blocking issues will be excluded from the report.

Your contribution here is very much appreciated. There is certainly overlap in some of the questions and some of your responses may seem redundant; please don't worry about this. Brainstorming among project members is very welcome here, as it may help other responders to consider different aspects. Conversation can be helpful to generate a kind of consensus view among project members of the issues as well as to note individual opinions. Please feel free to add your answers below and to discuss the answers others have left. (If you are not a project member, please add your input in the final section.) Thanks! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Project member question: How "healthy" is your project?
"Would you say that your project is thriving, declining, effectual, struggling, etc.? Do the members of the project interact well with one another? Do members typically feel welcome and included? This space is to share your opinion of the overall current status of your project."

Project member question: What does this project do well?
"What are some of the best examples of this project's successes? This space is for exploring what your project does well--whether those successes are innovative (coming up with new ideas or approaches) or simply examples of successfully following through on established practices."

Project member question: What challenges face your project?
"In your opinion, what are the greatest challenges that your project faces or has faced in succeeding on Wikipedia? These challenges can be issues that you have overcome or issues that you are still facing."

Comment by RegentsPark
Two conflicting paradigms inform the wikipedia project. One, and this is the dominant paradigm, that attempts to construct a reliable and well sourced encyclopedia, and a second, a secondary paradigm, that attempts to construct a design by consensus encyclopedia. In most cases, the tension between these two paradigms is a healthy one and this is evidenced by the fact that we have an encyclopedia that is largely well sourced but not dogmatically academic. The dominance of the reliable sourced paradigm leads to a stable encyclopedia that provides a reliable and useful source of knowledge that is largely neutral, while the 'design by consensus' sub-model ensures that the information on wikipedia is relevant and current.

The biggest challenges facing the India project are the persistent attempts by a large number of editors to make the 'design by consensus' model dominant over the 'reliably sourced' model. These editors, rightly or wrongly, believe that reliable sources have an inherent pro-western bias, that there are some 'Indian' viewpoints that are not available in any sources, and that they (i.e., the editors themselves) are the best situated in providing this 'Indian' viewpoint. Lacking sources or a mandate from all Indians, these editors attempt to bolster their positions either by denigrating other editors as pro-Western, by constant appeals to the systemic bias essay, by appealing to authority figures such as Jimbo Wales or Sue Gardner, by attempting to down play the role of sources, by using emotional appeals to drive content, or by the simple but expedient method of being persistent. Over the four years that I have been editing wikipedia, I've seen an unfortunate increase in the number of these agenda driven editors on India articles who edit with the fervent belief that they are representatives of a larger silent majority. As a result, the level of acrimony on various talk pages has increased dramatically and is driving away the middle ground editors who, because they tend to be the disinterested ones, are best able to navigate the tension between sourcing and popular wisdom. Fortunately, as we saw with the recent India FAR, the balance in favor of reliable sourcing is still in place, though tenuously, but, going forward, the challenge for the India project, is to ensure that things stay that way. --rgpk (comment) 15:51, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

The 'Sourcing' challenge
It is an unfortunate reality that available sources on India topics are poor and limited. Sources on topics associated with the three troublesome areas: history, religion, and caste, are problematic because either there is little or no academic research in an area or a large quantity of the available literature is written from ideological viewpoints (while this is particularly true in the case of right wing, mostly hindutva, writers, it is also, to some extent, true amongst leftist writers as well as amongst historians from India's colonial period). Focusing primarily on history here since I'm clueless about religion and caste, distinguishing ideology driven history from the relatively dispassionate study of history is not easy for the casual editor. As a result, the India project is periodically overrun by editors who tout fringe sources to push an ideological viewpoint or, as we see in some of the comments on this page, other editors who try to dilute the importance that wikipedia places on reliable sourcing. It is important for all editors to realize that the credibility of wikipedia rests on the quality of its sources and not on presenting some chimerical 'truth' that is unsourced or sourced to a fringe view.

There is another sourcing challenge faced by the India project and that is for articles on 'popular' topics. Unlike newspapers and newsmagazines in the UK and USA, Indian news outlets have not digitized their archives. As a result, sourcing for movies, tv series, books, political and historical events that were covered by the media in the 60+ years since India's independence are impossibly hard to research and source. In my opinion, the India project lags far behind similar projects in the popular domain (notwithstanding the outstanding work done by editors such as User:Shshshsh and others) in comparison to similar projects in the UK and USA. --rgpk (comment) 17:40, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment by MatthewVanitas
Zuggernaut and I disagree on some issues, but I respect that he clearly articulates his position and has a genuine interest in addressing Endemic Bias. That said, a few of his statements below bring up some of the challenges we face: ''Editors should not rely totally on reliable sources or their right to express themselves freely on Wikipedia. They should instead work hard to make their edits without hurting the sentiments of the real-world Indian communities, they should work hard to not to attack Indian belief systems. Failure on this single aspect can derail not just this project but the larger Wikipedia project in India.''

I've been doing extensive work to remove "caste puffery" from Indian caste articles: it is exceedingly popular to build up caste articles with unsubtantiated or non-RS material bascially saying "this caste is awesome". I try to AGF, but CoI seems quite likely, especially given that a number of editors so working are SPAs that covering nothing but Foo caste topics, and/or have Foo somewhere in their username, and/or make explicity statements on Talk or elsewhere about "this page tells lies to our children! The wonder of the Foo case must be told to the world!" WP:RS is an absolutely vital tool to prevent POV-pushers from inserting "what everybody knows", which, coincidentally, paints an extremely rosy picture of the Foo caste. If I dig into RSs and add a paragraph on "the Foo caste classifies themselves as coming from a line of ancient warriors, however scholars such as Smith, DeSoares, and Patil note that they were classified as bricklayers until they successfully politicall agitated for a prominent role in the British Indian army, from which they had previously been excluded." At that point, the IPs/SPAs dive in accusing us of "Western bias", falling for "Britisher lies" or "Brahmin propaganda", and proceed to delete cited text with no explanation, and add text that is either uncited, cited to "Foo Caste Association of Ottawa", or uses the quote from an 1843 British travelogue "and then I met A. C. Foo, a swordsman of no mean skill" to prove that Foos have been warriors for 4,000 years.

Are we expected to chuck out the whole concept of WP:RS because the Foo community insists that all published material about them (save anyone saying positive things they like) is false, Western, Brahmin, racist, uninformed? So far as hurting the sentiments of the real-world Indian communities, WP:NOTCENSORED; while clearly aimless defamatory content would be undesirable, these folks want to attack anything that doesn't fit their legendary narrative. And if there are socio-historically significant negative comments about Foos (noted down in RSs), should we not include "in 1898 the Hoo caste alleged that the Foo caste was ritually unclean, and convinced the Raj government to exlude them from the Palm Festival premises"? It might "hurt feelings", but life and history aren't pretty. Even more so if there are documented cases of Foos doing unsavoury things; if attested by RSs, are we doing a community any favours by letting it whitewash its own history on Wikipedia?

Fundamentally, articles on Indian social/political/communitarian topics are challenging because there is a body of English-speaking, computer savvy people with a strong vested interest in topics that, bluntly, almost nobody outside the Foo caste cares about, except folks like me who care on general principle of having a good NPOV layout of the caste system. The tiny handful of neutral editors attempting to clean up the Foo caste article are subject to constant personal attacks, unexplained deletions, allegations that "you Christian Westerners just don't understand", and other disruptive behaviours by folks willing to defend the "glory" of the Foo at all costs. MatthewVanitas (talk) 15:47, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Project member question: What could make this project fail?
"In a 'worst case' scenario, what circumstances could make this project fail?"

Comment by Animeshkulkarni
I am the reader of Wikipedia since i dont know when. But surprisingly i never noticed the edit link on the rightmost side & hence never tried it. But i still kept coming everyday to check featured stuff. One day i fell for that edit tab & fell in love with WP even more. But... as i became editor, i started getting under the main article pages. I was surprised to find how stuff works. And then i had to read brawls, fights, accusations, blockings, Oh!-they-are-all-framing-to-block-me & such things. I dont know if all projects have this underneath them. (Now please dont go posting examples of fights of other projects.) But probably this could fail this project. These things never encourage editors. Welcome posts dont keep editors working. The environment inside keeps them there. I doubt its a tough thing to understand & practice. -Animeshkulkarni (talk) 19:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Project member question: Where could this project improve?
"In your opinion, what steps could the members of this WikiProject take to help reach its goals (however your project's goals are defined)?"

Project member question: How can this project expand?
"How can this project reach out to and nurture newcomers to Wikipedia who share an interest in the project's goals?"

Comment by RegentsPark
I believe that there is an excessive focus on history, caste, and religion in this project. We need more of the mundane articles on people, arts, places, government, that sort of thing. Just as there are fans of Doctor Who on wikipedia who care little about history, science, or all the rest, we need more editors with specialized interests, perhaps a fan of Buniyaad who could do something with the slight single article on that significant (for indian tv) series, or someone willing to research The Times of India to make our coverage of that grand old newspaper comparable to our coverage of The New York Times. To that end, I think the outreach efforts started by the foundation are, on the balance, good, because they will add diversity to the set of topics that are of interest to editors on this project. A simple, non-scary (!), welcome template that invites them to add new articles on India would go a long way in helping retain these and other editors who show an interest in India related topics. --rgpk (comment) 17:11, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Comment by MatthewVanitas
I would suggest that folks (myself included) make a habit of posting the "come check out WP:INDIA" template on the Talk pages of users we see editing on India topics. That said, I disagree with others who want to, for example, invite whole masses of Indian editors from WMF recruiting initiatives in India (such as the current 1,000ish new editors from an engineering college in Pune), before said editors have even expressed an interest in India topics. I think it'd be presumptive to assume that people who happen to be Indian want to focus on India topics, when they may be interested in the Russo-Japanese War, or motorcycle racing, or any of thousands of WP topics. Some editors have stated hopes that Anglo Endemic Bias can be removed from WP:INDIA with an influx of Indian editors, but given that people intimately close to a topic, or emotionally invested in it, are by no means the best people to pull an article to NPOV, I would suggest that the ideal scenario would involve Anglos, Indians, and a healthy representation of editors from other nations, including the Global South. Having more editors with "no dog in the fight" who don't come from an Anglo, or not even Euro, background could add some great perspective. MatthewVanitas (talk) 15:56, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Non-member comments
"If you are not a member of the project or are not registered but would like to add your own observations related to the health of the project, its accomplishments and challenges and ways that it can improve, please do so here. Thank you."


 * Comments by Fowler&fowler: I've been a fellow-traveler for the last five years (actually didn't watchlist the page until 2008). In the early days (2006–2007), the project was more cohesive, it had an informal chain of command, had periodic FA drives, and even an "article of the week," which members and fellow-travelers worked on collectively.  I think User:Nichalp and user:Dwaipayanc might have been the prime movers then.  Now, it seems to be directionless; there hasn't been an FA drive in years.  The talk page of the project is still used to post queries and seek answers, but it is also increasingly being used to vent, and very lately to engage in content disputes and to wreak mischief.  To be sure, there were mischief makers (vandals, agent provocateurs, the wronged, the paranoid, the loose cannons)  in my early years as well, but they were dealt with firmly and with dispatch.  Now, either because this group is more canny or the admins less assertive, the mischief makers seem to be getting away with murder.  Or, should I say, "death by a thousand cuts," for, they stick around for ever and wear people down.  More generally, some people with twisted agendas have latched on to the "systemic bias" bandwagon on India-related topics.  They believe that the only reason their agenda is not Wikipedia dictum is that they lack the numbers.  When more Indian members enroll, they earnestly believe, they will win the numbers game and have their moment in the sun, when Ganges will be Ganga, when Hinduism will again be the oldest religion in the world, Sanskrit the oldest language, Varanasi the oldest city, and India the oldest and the greatest civilization.  Until such time, like Camus's plague, they will bide their time.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  16:13, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * PS. Looking back at the last five years, I feel that the cohesion began to  dissipate sometime in 2007, when a group devoted to Karanataka-nationalism&mdash;to furthering a positive, even grandiose, description of their state&mdash;took off on its own, which often put it at odds with "all-India" editors.  This group seems to have disappeared now.  These days, the disgruntled seem to have a vague Hindu nationalist outlook, though they are quick claim otherwise.    Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  16:33, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
 * For systemic bias, it is instructive to read the talk page of the Welcome India template: Template_talk:Welcome-India.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  17:45, 8 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I think the project is problematic because lots of users seem to want to perpetuate an anglophone bias on the project. New users do have problems and do make mistakes. It is only to be expected. But the solution is not in driving away new users. The solution is in informing them about common pitfalls and by showing them ways of avoiding them and by showing them ways of doing constructive things.- M W ℳ 08:34, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I am also coming around to the view that this project needs to lay greater emphasis on being much more demanding in sourcing standards and healthy editing practices. M W ℳ 12:45, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Concepts like WP:INVOLVED should be applied. M W ℳ 15:38, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

How "healthy" is your project?

 * With close to 90,000 articles of which about 200 are GA class or better, the project seems to be doing well. Interaction between community members is on par with the kind of communication you see in the wider Wikipedia community. There are disputes and some can get acrimonious but there's nothing extraordinary about it. I've been around a year and at no time did I feel that I was not welcome here. It is easy for an editor to get involved with the project though it might be a bit harder to get involved with the related, real-life India chapter and it's activities.
 * A problem with communications on the project is a massive failure of AGF when experienced and knowledgeable editors are too quick to draw conclusions about Indian editors - that they are "Hindu nationalist POV pushing editors". While there are certainly some editors of that type, the great majority of Indian editors are rational and mature editors who make well balanced edits. They know full well that while Sanskrit is an old language (and Tamil even older), it is not the oldest, and that Damascus is the oldest city, and that while India is a great civilization, there are others like China and America in that category too, each with their own strengths.

What does this project do well?

 * A minor but recent example of the project's success is the template Welcome-India which is a collaboration between people who have not always agreed with each other. The conversation has largely been civil and majority of the collaborators have worked with each other without hurling insults at each other. It's a small template but it's a good example from template space.
 * The project's successes in article space are the large number of GA level articles on religion and spirituality. While these may fall under the Hinduism project, they have a significant overlap with this project.

What challenges face your project?
As the table above shows we have about 20,000 un-assessed articles and the number of articles below B class is even larger. The challenge is to have all articles assessed and to have an increase in the number of GA (or A or FA) level articles. My remedies:
 * Setup a team who have the goal of assessing all of the 20,000 articles, say in a month or a quarter or some reasonable period depending on the number of volunteers we get.
 * Initiate a GA promotion drive to elevate at least 20% (or some similar number) of B-class articles to GA level. Similar initiatives can be started to promote stub and start class articles to B-class. Promotion to FA is welcome too but it can take substantial time per article and I'm not too sure if that's an achievable goal for now.
 * Improving articles on the caste system and educational institutions in India are big challenges.
 * Some reliable sources use language that is offending and racist toward Indians. These same sources also contain information that is useful and an excellent source of information for numerous India related articles. A challenge is to build a repository of terms that are outmoded and should not be used on Wikipedia (examples are Hindoo, "freebooter" used by Grant Duff, "natives", etc.)

What could make this project fail?

 * India is a complex society with complex belief and value systems that would take an outsider aeons to figure out (even one Indian community is baffled by the customs and beliefs of other Indian communities at times). Editors should not rely totally on reliable sources or their right to express themselves freely on Wikipedia. They should instead work hard to make their edits without hurting the sentiments of the real-world Indian communities, they should work hard to not to attack Indian belief systems. Failure on this single aspect can derail not just this project but the larger Wikipedia project in India.
 * Negative responses and negative attitudes as seen in this thread will not attract new editors, they may frustrate existing editors who may leave the project and finally editors who are aware of their POV issues and are working hard to keep them at bay will take the bait and get blocked. In summary if more people don't join or don't remain active on this project until at least 2015, this project will fail.

Where could this project improve?

 * New and young editors need to be made aware WP:COPYVIO. This is a big problem and needs to be addressed:
 * In the forthcoming conference in Mumbai
 * By targeted training sessions to the new students who are coming onboard via the WP:INDIAEDU program


 * We need to dissuade people from taking the sock-puppetry route when they get banned or lose an argument.
 * We should encourage banned and blocked editors to stick around for their entire Wikipedia-life and make a comeback after they serve their ban (even in the rare cases when the ban or block is imposed unfairly or is entirely unwarranted)
 * Other important points (such as not using your real life name, not revealing too much personal information, etc) are captured by a relatively new user MangoWong on Template talk:Welcome-India (specific diff)
 * We should set achievable and proportionate goals to improve articles to FA, GA and A class. We can compare this project with other successful ones, say the US project, and set goals based on specific data (see the table given below) and by factoring in other relevant data like number of existing and experienced editors on the project, rate at which new editors are coming on-board, number getting banned or blocked, and so on.


 * A large corpus of reliable secondary sources themselves have within them a POV problem, the worst of which manifests itself in terms of offending language towards Indians. Tweaking or amending policies like WP:Sources and WP:POV or having exceptions clearly listed out could be possible solutions to this problem.
 * There also seems to be a misconception or misunderstanding that Western editors should not edit India related articles or that "Western methods" (copyright and other policies) should not be applied to these articles (East Asian cultures venerate copying). More than on any other project, this is the one which requires more emphasis on policies like WP:COPYVIO, WP:NOR, RS and all. The diff says copying is venerated in East Asia but that is not true for India at all.

How can this project expand?
Zuggernaut (talk) 09:11, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
 * This project can be expanded by welcoming India editors who come on-board via the INDIAEDU and other programs of the India chapter. (MangoWong and I are already doing this)
 * When expanding, WMF should to bring to Wikipedia (so we can eventually bring them to this project) non-elite Indian minorities from the Muslim and Christian communities and most importantly from the lowest caste communities - these should include those who have availed the affirmative action benefits as well as those who are so socioeconomically depressed that they cannot even access and avail these benefits. We also need participation from rural communities in India. Bringing such communities to Wikipedia as editors and to WMF as staff is a challenge but I'm sure if enough dollars are allocated, it is solvable. Online/web conferences can be an effective and cost saving component of events like WCI.

Comment from The Blade of the Northern Lights
I've been wanting to become involved in this project for a while now, but at the moment I'm fighting with the WMF over implementing this. As soon as that nightmare goes away, I intend to join on here. In the meantime, I've worked on several Indian village articles hot off Special:NewPages, and I'm generally putting at least 3 maintenance tags on any given article and/or removing enormous amounts of unsourced puffery or outright advertising. So having seen it from a rather different angle, I have a few suggestions; I don't know how they'll be received, but here they go. (Full disclosure; I'm of completely European ancestry living in the northeastern US, though I have my BA in history and have studied Indian and East Asian history and philosophy)


 * First, I've said elsewhere that in general, we should encourage editors who clearly don't have even a rudimentary command of English to go to the Wikipedia of their native language. On NPP, I've had similar issues with Hindi and Tamil-speaking NPPers whose English isn't really sufficient for the task, and I've seen this problem here as well.  It's not a matter of being impolite, or of being exclusive, but rather being practical.  Someone only capable of writing this (which I sort of cleaned up; I was doing NPP at the time, so I wasn't too focused on content beyond turning it into something at least a little useful) does not need to be writing articles here; not only will it make things easier for them to be working in their native language, it will make the job of the people here much easier because they can focus on producing quality articles on the same topic instead of attempting to clean up and running into a snakepit.  It may sound a bit xenophobic, but I think it will be an overall improvement.


 * As to those who do have enough command of English to effectively contribute, I think getting them involved will be helpful. I am aware that copyright doesn't hold much weight with many Indian people, so we need to make them aware that it is a big deal to us.  Furthermore, it wouldn't be a bad idea to try to talk with some of the people on (for instance) Hindi, Tamil, Sinhala, or Malayalam Wikipedia, and maybe get a few of them involved in translations; symbiosis is oftentimes a good thing.  It will also help to knock out the stereotype that we're just pig-headed evil colonial Westerners who don't know anything about Indian history.


 * Finally, though I know it's a problem not limited to this subject, a good firm reminder that the members of a caste don't get to revise their history to suit themselves would be very good. I've lurked on a few discussions (I would have jumped in, except I couldn't figure out where to start in the walls of text) and that seems to be a major problem. Not every caste is a kshatriya everywhere, and indeed some of them are/were shudras (I know there are politically correct ways to say it, but lest you think I'm biased my specialty is Ainu history; you won't hear me saying Utari to refer to Ainu people either).  Coming down harder on blatant cases of IDIDNTHEARTHAT would do everyone some good, and being more aggressive in enforcing policies such as NPA and NOR might help cut down on the amount of needless fighting that goes on at these talkpages.

This is a little long (comes with the writing style of historians), but I hope there's something useful in there for the project members to act on. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 00:44, 13 September 2011 (UTC)