Wikimedians of North India/Meetups/Promotion of Kashmiri Wikipedia
Promotion of Kashmiri Wikipedia is an event organised by Wikimedians of North India to develop Kashmiri Wikipedia which at present is in underdeveloped stage. Kashmiri or Koshur is the language spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley and Chenab valley of Jammu and Kashmir.The Kashmiri language is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is a part of the eighth Schedule in the constitution of the Jammu and Kashmir.
As per the Census of 2001 there are around 5.6 million speakers of this language throughout India.This language is spoken in Azad Kashmir, Pakistan also where it have 132,450 speakers in 1998. Despite the fact that Kashmiri language has adequate number of speakers yet the Wikipedia of Kashmir language is not developing properly.Kashmiri Wikipedia has just 268 articles as on 3 March 2017.[1].According to few scholars the Kashmiri language, spoken in certain areas such as the Neelum Valley, is on the verge of extinction.There is an urgent need to make efforts to promote the Kashmir language Wikipedia.Moreover people of the Kashmir valley are passing through the socio- political unrest for the last over two decades.The younger generation, which has better knowledge of web based language promotion tools like Wikipedia ,is born in crisis ridden period of the Kashmir Valley and therefore might have not paid much attention to ths issue.Many of the Kashmiri speaking people especially Kashmiri Pundits have migrated from Kashmir area to other parts of India due to the the socio-political crisis prevailing in the Kashmir valley .All these factors might have led to less development of Kashmiri language Wikipedia.Therefore special efforts are required to help Kashmiri language people to promote their language's Wikipedia.
Objectives[edit]
- To promote the Kashmiri language Wikipedia which at present is in less developed stage.
- To create awareness among Kashmiri speaking and other people about Wikipedia and its related projects.
- To conduct meetings, workshops and online interaction to increase number of Kashmiri language knowing Wikipedia editors.
- To increase content on Kashmiri Wikipedia.
- To increase content about Kashmir on other wikipedias.