Tell us about Tagalog Wikipedia

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Tagalog Wikipedia

Tagalog Wikipedia – (Wikipediang Tagalog)

Questionnaire

Contributors

Statistics of contributors in Philippine wikis

• Wikimedia Statistics can be difficult to interpret. What is your impression, how many steady contributors do you have?
  • On average, we have about 15-20 really active Wikipedians (five of which are administrators or bureaucrats). In addition, we have a multitude of anonymous editors and a number of not-so-active Wikipedians. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Around 43 users with more than ten edits per month as of May. -- Felipe Aira 09:46, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
• Are your contributors mostly native speakers?
  • Yes. However, some of our contributors (both registered and anonymous) use Taglish in their contributions, which we translate into proper Tagalog/Filipino. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
• Where do your contributors live (regions/country)?
  • The vast majority of our contributors are from the Philippines, specifically from the Metro Manila area and its suburbs in provinces such as Cavite and Rizal. There are some, however, who are from countries such as the United States. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
• How common is it that your contributors meet in real life?
  • The Philippine community has had five meet-ups: four in Manila and one in Cebu City. Most of the attendees are from the English Wikipedia, but a good number from that community (such as myself) are also active contributors to the Tagalog Wikipedia. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Other Wikipedias

• Do you have special contacts with another Wikipedias (maybe in related languages)?
  • The Philippine Wikipedia community in both the English and Tagalog Wikipedias are in constant contact as many editors on the English Wikipedia are also editors on the Tagalog Wikipedia (all of the active administrators contribute to the English Wikipedia and three originally came from there). We also keep contact with the other Philippine-language Wikipedias (Cebuano, Ilokano, Waray-Waray, Chavacano, etc.). If I remember right, we also keep in touch with contributors to Philippine articles in the Dutch, Spanish and Min Nan Wikipedias. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
    • Correction: I am an active admin there but I don't edit English articles. -- Felipe Aira 11:09, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
• Do you translate a lot from other Wikipedias? Which ones?
  • Many newly-written articles are translations of the English counterparts. However, when appropriate, we also have original articles written in Tagalog. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Although most contributors translate from the English-language Wikipedias, there are also Wikipedians who translate from the French and Spanish counterparts. - AnakngAraw 23:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Organization and support

• Is there a Wikimedia chapter in your country? How does your language relate to it?
  • We are currently organizing Wikimedia Philippines (WMPH), the first Wikimedia chapter in Southeast Asia to be conceived (to the best of my knowledge) and the second to ever come into fruition, after Wikimedia Indonesia. Although English is the official working language of WMPH, documents and correspondence of the organization are translated into Tagalog. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
• Are there work groups in other organizations about Wikipedia?
  • None that I know of. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Your Wikipedia and the linguistic community

• Is there a language institution for your language, like an Academy, or a club of people interested in your language? Do you have contact with them?
  • The Filipino language, the official standardized form of Tagalog which we use on the Tagalog Wikipedia, is regulated by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (Commission on the Filipino Language). Sadly, we have no contacts within the KWF. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
• Who (else) supports you?
  • To the best of my knowledge, no one else. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
• What does the public outreach for your edition look like? Do you have flyers, give lectures, trainings etc.?
  • The Philippine Wikipedia community as a whole does not have a full-fledged awareness and outreach campaign pending the establishment of WMPH. However, we have participated in events such as the Philippine Open-Source Summit (POSS). In addition, Wikipedia is discussed in events such as the Philippine Youth Congress in Information Technology. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
• Do you get feedback from readers?
  • We actually do. Some join Wikipedia, others leave comments in the guestbook. Still others post their comments on the article itself and we are forced to revert those edits (especially if the feedback involves complaints arising from a lack of said article). --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Usually in articles and talk pages. Usually bad comments but we also get good ones like someone thanking for a correct assignment in school. We delete them due to being unencyclopedic. -- Felipe Aira 05:10, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
  • In some cases, sensitive Wikipedians take note of the reverted edits/deleted unencyclopedic contributions and transform them into encyclopedic ones, after a process of verification. Some comments are taken as a form of "requested articles". - AnakngAraw 23:38, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
• What other encyclopedias exist in your language?
  • From 2004 until 2007, the Tagalog Wikipedia had the distinction of being the only existing encyclopedia, print or otherwise, in the national language of the Philippines. Presently, there is only one other Tagalog-language encyclopedia that exists: WikiFilipino, a project of the Vibal Foundation which also supports WikiPilipinas, originally a Wikipedia fork that became its own full-fledged encyclopedia about the Philippines. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Content

• Does your edition concentrates on certain topics, like your region and language, or Latin Wikipedia on Roman history and Christianity?
  • The coverage of topics on the Tagalog Wikipedia is broad and varied, with a strong focus on the Philippines. Some editors have a specialization on certain topics. However, we have a shortage of articles on mathematics, science and non-Philippines topics either due to translation issues (for the first two) or a lack of editor interest (for the last one). --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Much of our featured articles are about entertainment, Microsoft Windows and Philippine topics, like history. -- Felipe Aira 05:02, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I found article references/sources already written in Tagalog that are related to Medical topics such as diseases and pregnancy. Examples are from those written bilingually in Tagalog and English from the Philippines, Japan, Middle East, and from US Hospitals (public service/no restrictions on copyright) regarding sexually transmitted diseases; and also one article about pregnancy from National Geographic (already written in Filipino). Some Tagalog translations had been provided by translation services. - AnakngAraw 05:41, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Another source/reference already available in Tagalog are those about religion and the Bible. - AnakngAraw 05:59, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Regarding news items: Philippine and Internationally acclaimed news sources are utilized, which are mostly available in English, but there are a few that are available in bilingual editions such as from ABS-CBN's Bandila. - AnakngAraw 06:05, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
• Did your edition enjoy text donations, for example from older encyclopedias?
  • None that I know of directly, but maybe we did indirectly from the English Wikipedia. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
  • An example of an old encyclopedia source/reference would be the 1977 edition of Grolier's English-language The New Book of Knowledge. But this is complemented by contributions adapted from the English-language Wikipedias, including the Simple English-language Wikipedia editions when appropriate. - AnakngAraw 05:41, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Language

• Is there a generally accepted norm about your language (spelling, dictionary, pronunciation)?
  • We use Filipino as a basis. However, we use no standard dictionary as none exist in Tagalog. We are forced to rely on multiple dictionaries from different time periods (from the late 1800s until the present day) in order to translate words, especially ones with meanings now lost in contemporary Filipino due to the rise of Taglish. Spelling and pronunciation are more or less standardized with a few exceptions that are permitted (niy versus ny, siy versus sy) depending on the word. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
• How do you deal with different spellings, dialects etc. (like B.E. lift and A.E. elevator)?
  • Tagalog spelling, especially Filipino spelling, is quite standardized as mentioned above. If there are derivative spellings, we frequently use the most common spelling and standardize its use throughout an article. In addition, in trying to keep Filipino as "Filipino" as possible, we encourage, and sometimes introduce, the use of existing Tagalog words for words that people usually believe have no translation (like suleras for "template" and talangguhit for "graph") while permitting the use of Spanish words absorbed into Tagalog, as well as using words from other Philippine languages (like gahum for "hegemony"). Borrowing from English is usually reserved as a last resort. --Sky Harbor 13:03, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Different spellings and synonyms are either provided on the text such as at the introductory paragraphs or at the body and sections. These are also provided through redirects. - AnakngAraw 23:45, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
    • This is also true regarding varying sentence structures, length and constructions. - AnakngAraw 23:47, 31 August 2008 (UTC)