Talk:Projects: Wikipedia for Schools/Indian version

Hi, I'm Nikhilsheth 07:42, 1 February 2011 (EST) I appreciate the effort, but I have a few doubts. Please don't mind if they look a little offensive - that is not my intention.

The people I want to aim this project for - ie, our 'consumers', are kids who are going to grow up into a world where countries will be irrelevant. I cannot exactly prove it, but deep inside I know it. I do not mean to be offensive or anything about it, I'm sure everyone will maintain their local identities; just that the most essential knowledge will become universal and unbiased. I am seeing that process in motion right now so thinking 20 yrs forward and taking that picture in mind, I want this project to aim at giving children a universal education, not westernized nor Indianized. So it's a good thing to want changes to the current WFS, but I would prefer if it went the other way - to a more universalized version instead of an Indianized version.

Meaning, I would love to see more and more India-specific articles ADDED to the collection rather than seeing articles already existing being CUT out in a Censor board-type way. There is plenty of room for addition and we don't really need to get destructive at this point.

I do not believe the SOS Childrens Villages group spent so many months meticulously at work just to give a westernized or biased version. Believe it or not, they have made the WFS for all schools around the world - in Africa, Asia, Europe and Americas. In fact, their primary attention is towards the least developed countries and hence the first places where they implemented it were in Africa. I do not believe they went through the entire trouble just to "westernize" people of the world. It doesn't make sense.

So I would request that before launching ourselves into an editing drive, the people who want to work on this Indian version project should contact SOS and get from them a list of the articles they left out and those they included. That will really save you a lot of time.

Another idea : Go to the article on India, compare it with present Wikipedia to find what all is missing and start putting that in.

As for me, I'm satisfied with the current state of the WFS. Because India-specific knowledge is ALREADY available all around these children. It is global and universal knowledge that I want to make available to them.

Therefore, if this project does take a destructive direction as in cutting out things or scanning through articles to delete out things or to alter them to give any "Indian" bent, I would respectfully... well, drop out.

Besides, I've signed up for the global movement, not for the strictly India-specific movement even though I am a patriot and I love my country. But I love humanity more ;). In fact, I'd love to send a package of these to Pakistan as well as a humanitarian gesture.

Peace and Regards Nikhilsheth 07:42, 1 February 2011 (EST)

Response
Hi Nikhil,

Thank you for your detailed comments. I agree with you that there is a need for our kids to be internationally relevant and I respect your inclusionist approach. There are a few points to make:


 * Firstly, your contention that India-specific information is available all around is a fallacy. I can find more information easily about the Bastille than I can about Shaniwarwada.


 * Secondly, prima facie, all the articles are not necessarily relevant, there appears to be some ad hocism here also. For example, I cannot understand why this article was added "Apaochi" but no "Kublai Khan". Similarly the chosen article "caveman" really sucks. They should have added "Human evolution" instead.
 * I understand this kind of curating involves tremendous amount of work. I'm also criticising post-event which is so easy to do. But my point is, they have a wonderful first version - but its exactly that, as far as choice & development is concerned - a first version, which can be improved, which I intend to do.


 * Secondly, the plan is to go over our class text books from 3rd to 10th and check that every important subject is included which the children would have questions about. Also important topics from our culture, environment, current affairs, etc are added which they may want to ask about. This task of mine will take quite some time. I plan to ask domain experts in both the teaching of children and the subject matters to help us select appropriate articles.


 * Thirdly, space will be a constraint if the encyclopedia is to be on one DVD only so that some items would have to be excluded to make way for the new ones. Also, why retain articles like Boadecia or Elizabethan Poor Law which more than 95% Indians will never have come across or never will?


 * Fourthly, Indic language Wikipedias are more likely to have topics of Indian interest and very few about the rest of the world. Too many articles outside our milieu will result in our inability to gather enough articles in that language for an offline Wikipedia.


 * Fifthly, I agree that there should be an international edition too. But I feel there is tremendous scope for improvement on this version to achieve that goal also. If the encyclopaedia is actually to be made relevant to the world than there is a huge amount of critical examination of articles to be done and then articles added, expanded, rewritten, improved etc. Just making a good choice of articles to compile an encyclopedia is not enough, even on English Wikipedia. Let the Universal edition be another fork on which interested parties may work.

To conclude, I do not take it as a given that every thing is hunky dorey. Without meaning disrespect for the absolutely wonderful work and colossal efforts put in by the SOS Children's village Wikipedia team, I personally would like to tweak it so as to suit the Indian palate. I too am part of the world movement but I consider it a glocal one, not a global one. At this point of the time, I'm looking at how to make the world relevant to our locality.

Respectfully, AshLin 08:50, 1 February 2011 (EST)