Tell us about Persian Wikipedia

Add links
From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

This page belongs to the project Tell us about your Wikipedia.

Persian Wikipedia[edit]

Questionaire[edit]

Contributors[edit]

  • Wikimedia Statistics can be difficult to interpret. What is your impression, how many steady contributors do you have?
    As matter of fact it is not that much easy to answer i think we have around 120without bots of course active user which at least 20 of them make daily edits.and the number is growing every they.--Mardetanha talk 20:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
graph of user growth in fawiki
comparison between active user vs real users and very active users vs active users and also same comparison with Norwegian wikipedia
other comparison
  • It is hard to interpret. First we should know some statistics about Iranians. I think there is a lot of users who Internet is just luxury in their life! It cost time and money for them to contribute continuously when they use slow dial up connections. Persian Wikipedians I think:
    1. Most of them are students.
    2. Many just signed in, make some edits and good bye.
    3. Most of them are new users. we experience suckpuppet users before maybe there are a lot of them.
    I think :
    1. Internet filtering in Iran is a very effective issue.
    2. Lack of free media (political and religious freedom) influenced applications of internet in Iran.
    3. Internet and its use is growing in Iran it can bring new types of users.
    I think there wasn't enough trust between persian wikipedians to have more sysops then there wasn't enough contributions to create collaborative communities. maybe if we had more admins we could have more active users. --Mmehdi.g 15:18, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is not easy to give the exact number, but approximately there are 100 active users (More than 60 votes have been submitted here [1] and I think from that time up to now many other active contributers have joined us and also some of the active users didn't participate in that voting. As I know there are thousands of Iranian bloggers, whom if we make them interested in contributing in fa-wiki, fa-wiki will grow much faster than before. In my view the growth of internet in Iran(which is still present in all other countries), would not be a logical reason of future rapid grow in Persian wiki, but the choose and desire of contribution in future, can be the true reason. --Wayiran 19:16, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are your contributors mostly native speakers?
    Overall Yes most of them are native speaker though we have some of contributors who like me has two language as native--Mardetanha talk 20:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, maybe all of them! --Mmehdi.g 17:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I think all. Once there was a non-native speaking friend from English wiki, who was wishing to contribute in Persian wikipedia (because of his interest in Persian language and literature), but his Persian was not so perfect. I tried my best to help him. --Wayiran 19:16, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    All users I have seen there in our Wikipedia are native Farsi speakers. We have lots of Iranian who can speak English and Azeri(Turkish) but not the other way, I never find an English native speaker contribute in Farsi Wikipedia. I wish if we can have contributors from other languages.--KhabarNegar 20:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Where do your contributors live (regions/country)?
    Mostly from Iran but we have some contributor from Afghanistan , USA , Canada and Germany --Mardetanha talk 20:24, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    From Iran but there are Iranians living in other countries and some Afghan people too. Contributors from Tehran are in majority, I think. --Mmehdi.g 17:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Mostly from Iran, but there are some Iranians from other countries too. --Wayiran 19:16, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Contributors are mostly from Iran, and some Persian speakers from all the other countries around the world. but maybe more than 95% (or maybe much more than this) contributors are from inside Iran. Again I like to add if other Persian speakers for example people from Afghanistan join us it would help fa.Wikipedia a LOT.--KhabarNegar 20:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • How common is it that your contributors meet in real life?
    Unfortunately it is not very common. but some of us has meet some others.e.g i have seen many of them and wishing to see others--Mardetanha talk 20:25, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    For me it's weird but I like to see some one real! :)) --Mmehdi.g 17:52, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    up to now, I haven't seen any one of them in real life, but as soon as I go back to Iran, I will try to meet some of them.--Wayiran 19:16, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    For majority of Wikipedia contributors, That is Not very common. But I have seen some photos on some user pages that shows they are friends outside Wikipedia world. But majority of contributors do not meet in real life. They mostly just want to have edits and make Wikipedia a better & better place and they enjoy this, and that's enough for them. --KhabarNegar 20:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Other Wikipedias[edit]

  • Do you have special contacts with another Wikipedias (maybe in related languages)?
    I myself as person yes . me and user:huji have been ambassador of farsi community into many other projects.And i myself have relation with trwiki and azwiki community beside sometime into other related language --Mardetanha talk 20:29, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    There is a lot of persian speakers using Cyrillic writing system in Tajikistan. They can't contribute in fawiki but they are in tgwiki. There was some common contributors. I wish I could be one of them but I don't know cyrillic. --Mmehdi.g 10:40, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No, not in related languages. But I edit Iranian related articles in English wiki. --Wayiran 19:23, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Did you know that Tajik Wikipedia has an option to view articles in Latin alphabet transcription? If you know the Latin alphabet then Cyrillic is quite easy to learn! No more than one or two days of practice. - Francis Tyers 10:40, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you translate a lot from other Wikipedias? Which ones?
  • Not too much. Personally I use English and German(by translating to english by google translate) for translation purpose, but about more than 75% of my edits are based on Persian sources. --Wayiran 22:04, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Organization and support[edit]

  • Are there work groups in other organizations about Wikipedia?
    As far as i know the answer is "No"--Mardetanha talk 20:33, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think so. --Mmehdi.g 18:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No, but sometimes some college professors are giving wiki related projects (like once it was the editing of different kinds of fishes) to their junior students. --Wayiran 19:30, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No, no work groups in other organizations about Wikipedia. And About the answer above I want to add, I am seeing more and more school children (and mostly high school ones) using Wikipedia articles as the source for their scientific projects. To them Wikipedia is so much useful, popular and they use it a lot. But the point is, most of them are not interested in doing any contribution or edits, and most of Active contributors of Wikipedia are the old ones, and the majority of them are at the same age... --KhabarNegar 21:00, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your Wikipedia and the linguistic community[edit]

  • How looks your public outreach for your edition? Do you have flyers, give lectures, trainings etc.?
    We haven't been very active in this era .Though past happening shows there have been some effort about that and we had a small semi-conference in Tehran. but i am sure we will have a very Good confrere in early future. now it is secret --Mardetanha talk 20:39, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    We've made a board for asking Equivalent words from other languages to Persian language (here). We've tried to discuss about new words and translations. --Mmehdi.g 18:36, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I think there have been some "wiki intro conferences" in Tehran in "International book exhibition", which is held every year. Also some introduction conferences have taken place in colleges for the students by the wikipedian students of the same college. --Wayiran 19:50, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Content[edit]

  • Does your edition concentrates on certain topics, like your region and language, or Latin Wikipedia on Roman history and Christianity?
  • Not really . i think fawiki has covered many unrelated topics in many fields --Mardetanha talk 20:44, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, There are many articles about cities and geographical locations in Iran and Afghanistan. for example compare en:Damavand in persian fa:دماوند. We have also articles about political crisis and news inside iran. there is no good political article but so much editwars. --Mmehdi.g 18:49, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I personally like articles about economy and about health and I have some knowledge about them, So my edits are mostly about these two issues. AND, I am not interested in politic talks (I read political articles but not interested in joining these kind of talks) so I think, I have no edits about political issues. There are people which are exactly different and they like (and have knowledge about) other stuff. And that's it, Fa.Wikipedia is a gathering of contributors which they have knowledge about different topics, so fa.Wikipedia as a whole has covered many unrelated topics in many fields. There are also a few users that try to have edits in so many topics, but I am with Wittgenstein in this case, when he said Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. --KhabarNegar 21:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Did your edition enjoy text donations, for example from older encyclopaedias?
    No. we have tried to produce of product --Mardetanha talk 20:46, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    We had discussed about using Dehkhoda Dictionary. According to the Iranian Law for Supporting Authors, Composers, and Artists copyright in published books lasts for the life of the creator plus 30 years. Dehkhoda died in 1959 (49 years ago) then its work is in public domain. But the problem is digitalized work has its own copyright holder and we cant just copy/paste it. --Mmehdi.g 08:47, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Language[edit]


  • How do you deal with different spellings, dialects etc. (like B.E. lift and A.E. elevator)?
Retrieved from "https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tell_us_about_Persian_Wikipedia&oldid=25833410"