Wikipedia:WikiProject Melanesia/Tok Pisin/Wikipedia

Tok Pisin Wikipedia
This sub-page is created for discussions regarding the Tok Pisin Wikipedia. Please don't be put off by the suggested organization below. The resulting TOC will make it a bit easier to locate discussions of specific interest as the page grows in length. Please keep in mind that the organization below is only suggested, not locked in concrete. The intention is to keep focused on the reorganization and revitalization of the TPI Wikipedia. K. Kellogg-Smith 14:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

-

Who is the target audience for this Wiki's articles?
My thinking is that one of the first orders of business in discussing and coming up with solutions to revitalizing the Tok Pisin Wikipedia should be to discuss and define the target audience for the TPI Wikipedia. Won't the editorial content of the Wiki depend entirely on who we think the target audience will be? What I mean is, who do you think is going to be reading Internet-based Wikipedia articles written in tok pisin? What age group types or age group ranges are we talking about? What economic level or circumstances are required to view the TPI Wiki's articles? Will a browser-based tok pisin article viewable only by those at income levels and in economic circumstances where they have access to the Internet have any interest at all in reading the TPI Wiki's tok pisin articles? What education level should the Wiki's articles be targeted for? Community/village schooling? High school? College or university? Government worker or village teacher? What I'm saying is, I believe socio-economics is an elemental factor in coming up with TPI Wiki editorial policies. Tok Pisin is clearly used extensively in Papua New Guinea and the surrounding islands. But is it the language that anyone interested in encyclopedic knowledge be the language they will prefer? Think about it. How would anyone go about writing an article on highly technical subjects like astronomy, digital electronics, or web page design and development do so using tok pisin as the medium of communication? Wouldn't articles more closely aligned with the day-to-day activities of those who regularly use tok pisinbe more appropriate for this Wiki? Wouldn't articles on gardening, horticulture, agriculture, fishing, aqua-culture and the like be more suitable for this Wiki, for example? As I see it, defining the target audience is really the first step in reworking the TPI Wikipedia. Got any ideas? K. Kellogg-Smith 01:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Completely agree that defining the target audience is a crucial exercise for this. Right now the penetration of the internet to villages is near-zero; however, there is a modest urban population that has some internet access, of course. This is changing and will change more rapidly; there are some pilot projects around to bring satellite internet to some schools, with villages able to get access to internet terminals at schools or possibly via wi-fi from the schools.  It is undoubtedly true that overwhelmingly the current population with internet access in PNG has good functional English and would (naturally) favour English for technical and scientific subjects, since Tok Pisin is so generally cumbersome in describing such things.


 * So, it could be argued that the total audience is pretty small at the moment, and is largely urban and well educated. However, even though most of the current audience has good English already (and, indeed, could favour en-pedia simply to improve their English), many Papua New Guineans urban and rural are more comfortable with Tok Pisin and use it by preference.  Also, in future the internet will extend more into villages and people with weaker English will start using it, and there will be more and more value in having a general reference resource in TP.  If there is one thing that a Wikipedia can help satisfy, it is curiosity about the outside world and things beyond one's immediate experience.  Accordingly I think there is definite value in simply translating existing all kinds of en-pedia articles into TP, and in my opinion the writing style is best targeted at approximately an upper-primary education level.


 * I fear it might be somewhat condescending to limit articles to gardening and fishing and such; though indeed there is a lot of good and useful information that a TP WP can present on these topics. To me, both urban and rural Papua New Guineans will look to Wikipedia for all kinds of knowledge, just like people all over the world.  So I would favour a generalist approach, with an effort to include articles on topics of practical value to villagers, such as garden crop plants and cash crops, diseases and medicines, etc., as you suggest; but importantly, also including articles on interesting things from elsewhere in the world; places, cultures, technologies.
 * Wantok (toktok) 03:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have no quarrel at all with what you're saying, Matt. It makes sense.  My thinking was to develop a core of PNG/Melanesia-related articles first to garner interest in the project at all PNG levels &mdash;the educated, government, schools and colleges by having articles that are not only relevant to their daily lives in PNG, but also articles that they can get into the "Wikipedia mood" by doing edits, commenting on discussion pages, and writing/contributing TP articles in either English or Tok Pisin, or both.  For example, I have this feeling that a non-expatriate, English only-speaking Wikipedian would have only a text book knowledge of the various ways to put together and use a mumu (an imu in Hawaii, and whatever throughout Oceania).  Most folks from PNG and the outer islands would know, ating, and be able to write a short article about it.  I know how it was done in rural Ponape (Pohnpei now) while I was there for a few days &mdash;a pig, selected stones, firewood, a fire, and lots of Budweiser beer all around.  Probably a tad different elsewhere, but pretty much the same thing I suppose.  It was about the same thing in Hawai'i, with sitting around playing guitar and uke, swimming, body surfing, etc., before hearing the call "eyah you guys! Kaukau stay ready, no?  Kam quick if you like eat!".  K. Kellogg-Smith 19:24, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It's an excellent point, Ken, about bringing new users into the mode of editing. And indeed that raises a really crucial question (re tpi wikipedia, anyway): what referencing/sourcing policy to adopt?  Many aspects of Papua New Guinean life have few, if any, published references; and those that exist are almost universally in English.  The only consistent source I can think of in Tok Pisin (apart from the Radio Australia news, which are largely translated from their English stories) is Wantok newspaper.  And there's no way that's enough to support referencing an encyclopaedia.  While we can certainly draw from English sources (and en-pedia articles), the scenario you depict is an interesting one: Tok Pisin speakers could contribute excellent material about the various approaches to mumu feasts in PNG, but finding references would be tricky.  And that's a pretty mainstream subject; for many others there would be basically no chance of finding a published reference. It would be interesting to learn more about what other wikipedias in comparable languages (with very little published source material) have adopted. Wantok (toktok) 02:59, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Editorial content and style
I've done some test pages for bilinguality, and for figuring out what's missing from the TPI Wikipedia's template list, etc. I had originally thought that a translated sub-page for each Tok Pisin article would be a way to go, but it has been pointed out to me by a Wikipedia Administrator (?), Sean Whitton, that subpages are permitted everywhere in Wikipedia except in the main namespace. As it turns out, creating in the main namespace a English-translation article from a Tok Pisin article (and vice-versa) works out much better than doing a translation on a subpage. The Wikipedia search engine searches only for article titles, so I found it to be exceptionally awkward to have to type "/English" in the search box when going to the English translation of a tok pisin article (see "Papua Niugini" for an example). It's much easier to just enter the English article's name. I've since set up "German New Guinea" as another test article for translation to tok pisin, and have included "buttons" to select and switch to the Tok Pisin translation (sorry, only in its primative, embryonic state at the moment!). I've also included a "button" on both pages as a test intraWiki link to the Deutsch-NeuGuinea article (in German) in the German Wikipedia. I also modified the stub template a little, gave it some color, centered the text, etc. I used that template as the starting point for a template to be used for an article where the translation is in progress, but dropped that mini-project when I ran out of time. Will get back to that later, or someone might be willing to revise/create a translation template themselves. Also, for the past many weeks I've been regular daily updates of the "Karen afeas" front page template by copying Radio Australia tok pisin news bulletins. As a result, my understanding of tok pisin has improved significantly, to the point where I've been able to copy edit the news bulletins. Just as an example, over the last several weeks I've been editing urban "blong" to "b'long" to show the missing vowel, or to the rural pronunciation "bilong". (Now there's an orthography issue for you to discuss: is there to be a preferred standard spelling of words in TP articles, and if so, what should that standard be?). And as time has gone on my edits have become somewhat cautious, but nonetheless more extensive. Now this is interesting: Since the source of "Karen afeas" news bulletins are from the Australian Broadcasting Company, I've lately been noticing that some of the things I've done in my copy edit "corrections" have begun appearing in the news bulletins themselves. Things like using single or double quotes to mark English swap words, for example. So I sort of like to think that maybe the "Pacific Beat" staff is taking a look at our TPI Wikipedia's front page. I've got on my project calendar a note to email the "Pacific Beat" staff to see if they might register with Wikipedia and join our project, or at least act as ad hoc advisors. Incidentally, I did talk to someone (a receptionist most likely) at the PNG embassy in Washington, D.C., and was advised to send them an email with questions about PNG, eg., travel documents required, travel restrictions, etc.,. I was told that the email would be circulated among the staff for replies. One of the questions that I'll be asking is contact information (email, whatever) for specific PNG offices in port Moresby (e.g, education, health, welfare, etc.) Those of you who are relatively familiar with the PNG government might want to comment here on what offices (and/or questions) would be useful to ask with respect to the contents and development of the TPI Wikipedia. Today (Sunday) I went a step further and began identifying English swap words, and including in the news bulletins a sort of definition of English words. If you would, any of you that has a command of tok pisin might take a look at what I've written (the sole article of the day is on a fellow who has been operating a "black pearl farm" on Jaluit, and has run afoul of the provisions of the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority.  Please, if you know what "golip" means (in the context of the article), please correct my use of the word as I've used it in the article.  The three Tok Pisin dictionaries I'm using don't have the word "golip" in them. I've also been updating to the "Dispela wik" template more or less weekly with  photos from the Wiki Commons about PNG and the surrounding regions.  The photo I inserted today is one that I thought was relevant to the Karen afeas article on black pearl farming.  Take a look at it. Everything I've been doing so far is up for discussion and comment.  My objective is to get something going, to stir up interest in further development of the TPI Wikipedia project. Dialogue about the project is extremely important;Wantok and Aliasd have made significant contributions. Any with some more ideas? K. Kellogg-Smith 19:03, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
 * A lot of interesting activity there, Ken - and I'll comment soon, but I'd like to start with a basic issue: I'm not yet convinced about a bilingual wikipedia, to be honest. I don't yet see the value of separate English versions of each article, other than perhaps to those learning Tok Pisin (or English). What is the advantage over the existing, widely used interwiki system?  If anything I would think interwiki superior in that it offers versions in many languages, not just English; and in the case of English, obviously a large and active community producing good and well maintained articles.  Wouldn't a bilingual approach just create a whole set of parallel English articles that then need maintenance, in addition to the Tok Pisin articles?  What do you see as the benefits of a bilingual wikipedia (over interwiki)? Wantok (toktok) 03:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Country template borders
For some reason, the table's borders are not displayed in the templates "Infobox Country" and "Infobox Kantri" in the TPI Wikipedia. Except for the title for "Infobox Kantri", both templates in our Wikipedia are one-to-one copies of the "Infobox Country" template used in the EN Wikipedia. In that Wikipedia, the table borders of the template are rendered properly. You can see this infobox border problem in the tok pisin article Papua Niugini. After looking through the template's code, the only thing that I can come up with is as a possible reason is the CLASS="infobox geography vcard" call used in the TABLE tag. Some of the other CLASS calls in the table might be working okay, but I can't tell if they are or not. I've read through the Help:Cascading style sheets article in Wikimedia. The Monobook.css file can't be listed there under MediaWiki:, but that file is locked and the template code can't be viewed. What I'm thinking is, is it possible that the .CSS files on the server that our TPI Wikipedia is on might possibly be a different version than the one on the EN Wikipedia's server? Is it possible that the same problem exists on other Wikipedias? Are there other explanations for why the borders in our Infobox Country's template don't show up on our Wikipedia? Any ideas, anyone? K. Kellogg-Smith 13:14, 9 July 2007 (UTC)