Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Melanesia/Tok Pisin/Progress

Comments from Wantok

Hi Ken. Here are some initial comments from me:

establishing the new TPI Wikipedia as essentially a bilingual Wikipedia, with an age group of 15- to 22-year olds as the target readers and editors. My reasoning behind this is that since all Wikis are browser-based documents, bilinguality for the TPI Wikipedia is necessary to meet the reality of everyday writing and speech of educated Micronesians who speak, read, and write English as well as Tok Pisin, and who have much greater access to computers with Internet connections than do most rural Micronesians.

• To be frank, this appears to have been an entirely unilateral decision, and one that you have not actually disclosed here or on the Tok Pisin Wikipedia (as far as I've seen - perhaps I missed it). I personally see no point in a bilingual Wikipedia as such - it's just duplicating work to have English-language articles on TP Wikipedia as well as English Wikipedia and simple English Wikipedia. If the purpose is to encourage editors who are not fluent in Tok Pisin to contribute, my suggestion is that English-language articles can be added to the simple English Wikipedia, and a policy could be adopted on the Tok Pisin Wikipedia that articles are translated (by editors with good Tok Pisin) from the simple English Wikipedia.

To be equally frank, Matt, there have been two points of view expressed on bilinguality; yours and mine.  My best evidence against having monolingual Wikis is that the two Wikis are and have been since they were created four years ago, simply empty skeletons with no real tok pisin content (save the one Tok Pisin article on Buddism). I also point to the Hawaiian, Maori, Bislama, and Samoan Wikipedias as being Wikis that are monolingual, but are also almost totally lacking in any real encyclopedic content. Lots of one- or two-line "stubs", but that's about all.  So I don't know where you'll get editors with good tok pisin skills to populate this Wikipedia.  They haven't come forward so far, Matt.  You're the only one who has shown up and done anything recently (and certainly much thanks and a tip of the hat go to you for that!).  So while having an exclusively Tok Pisin Wikipedia and Wiktionary may seem at first like a very good, worthwile, and esthetically pleasing idea, you have to have people who are not only capable of writing good encyclopedia-quality Tok Pisin articles, but have people like that who are willing to come forward and do so.  Ergo, my position that a multilingual Wikipedia will be written and used by more people than a monolingual Wikipedia.  Anyone with different ideas is free to weigh in, but until there's more than just you and me deciding which way to go on this issue, I'll keep working on the Wikipedia as being a bilingual encyclopedia.  As far as using the Simple English Wikipedia, I've been revising and writing the "Electronics" article over there (work on the article paused while I'm working on this project here), and I know the difficulties of doing that type of writing (I've done it professionally in writing electronics assembly instruction manuals).  I personally don't see any point at all in "writing down" to educated Melanesians.  K. Kellogg-Smith 08:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• bilinguality...is necessary to meet the reality... Sorry, this sentence isn't clear enough for me. What exactly do you mean? Why does a bilingual user base lead to a need for a bilingual Wikipedia?

The reality is, Matt, that Tok Pisin is that (a) the two Wikis are available only to those who have access to computers connected to the Internet (ie., urban and educated), and (b) as far as I know, there are no websites extant in Melanesia written exclusively in Tok Pisin.  What this essentially means is that only educated people will be accessing our two Wikis.  This means to me that the two Wikis will be educational tools used for either learning English, or learning Tok Pisin.  That, to me, is the reality.  K. Kellogg-Smith 08:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• Where did the 15-22 age range come from? Why limit the audience like that? Does any Wikipedia have a target age range (apart from the general assumption that a Wikipedia is not for children of primary school age)? Again, I see no purpose to this.

We discussed this early on, and the figure was your age range (high school through university).  That age range is also the age range used in PNG statistics for literacy. The rate of literacy in that age range is considered to be more significant in evaluating the rate of literacy in PNG.  K. Kellogg-Smith 08:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

• And it's Melanesians, not Micronesians.

My error.  Must have been thinking of my nephew, who lives in Saipan.  K. Kellogg-Smith 08:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

As a function of the target audience age range and educational level, User:Wantok's suggestion that the Wikis' articles and definitions should be written, as much as possible, in simple English.

• That was not my suggestion at all, and it isn't my suggestion now. I suggested that the Tok Pisin Wikipedia could adopt a policy of having a one-to-one relationship with the simple English Wikipedia, so English-speaking editors could contribute articles on Papua New Guinean topics to the simple English Wikipedia, and that editors with good Tok Pisin could then translate those for the Tok Pisin Wikipedia.

I guess you haven't had as much experience in going back and forth between the various foreign language Wikipedias as I have, Matt.  I think it's far better to write a simple English article in the TPI Wikipedia and keep the original article and the translated article all in one place, as is done in virtually all language texts.  I can't see your point in writing an article in the Simple English Wiki when the sole purpose of that article is for it to be converted to Tok Pisin in the TPI Wiki.  Your idea certainly would complicate life for those non-native speakers who are interest in learning to write tok pisin articles by translating English articles they've written.  K. Kellogg-Smith 08:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Fr. Mihalic's "Introduction to New Guinea Pidgin" (1969), Jacaranda Press, Queensland AU http://www.mihalicdictionary.org/index.html

• A minor point - that's not actually the 1971 Jacaranda dictionary and grammar of Melanesian Pidgin Mihalic dictionary (generally acknowledged as the only decent Tok Pisin dictionary produced so far), it's the Revising the Mihalic project, and the site contains only the revisions - the project's updates and corrections of the Mihalic - not the full dictionary.

Thanks, Matt, but I'm also a member of John Bolton's Mihalic Project, and think I understand what John is trying to do.  The reference I made to Fr. Mihalic's 1969 grammar/dictionary refers to the Mihalic dictionary that I have in hand, one that I'm currently using along with several others Tok Pisin dictionaries. Above all, what I've suggested in my progress report is that the Mihalic Project's dictionary format should be considered as a possible/potential format for the TPI Wiktionary.  K. Kellogg-Smith 08:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

With good online dictionaries at hand, Tok Pisin is surprisingly easy to learn and use once you are familiar with the vowel pronunciations, acquire some common verbs, and understand the language's simple grammar. The Tok-Pisin online dictionary contains about eleven hundred words/definitions; that's all you need to read and write tok pisin articles.

• That is a common belief among non-Papua New Guineans. So many expatriates blow in to PNG thinking that Tok Pisin is dead simple, something like broken English, never bother to learn the language properly, and spend years there believing that they're speaking Tok Pisin when what they speak is an embarrassing mess - and privately regarded as hilarious by Papua New Guineans. The grammar is not always as simple as it looks, and I completely disagree that you can learn the language with a few online dictionaries (none of which are very good) and no proper study of grammar and usage. Or at least, what you'll learn will be poor quality Tok Pisin, instantly recognisable as such by a native speaker. There are one or two good courses around, though the full versions are hard to find - generally regarded as the best (though the accompanying audio tapes/CDs are hard to come by) is A New Course in Tok Pisin by Tom Dutton and Dicks Thomas.

My only comment is, so what? I doubt very much that Melanesians anywhere will snigger and laugh at the poor Tok Pisin grammar and vocabulary spoken expatriate doctors, nurses, medical practitioners, and other health workers who are in Melanesia to provide health care and services to them.  Sure, maybe some Melanesians snigger and laugh at the Tok Pisin attempts of Australian surfers, beach bums and tourists, but that's not the general norm for the peoples of the Pacific.  Over the years in my travels throughout the region I've found Pacific peoples everywhere to be very friendly, helpful and above all, very courteous and kind.  K. Kellogg-Smith 08:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, you've tagged for deletion a number of stub articles on various geographic places, apparently because they are stubs. What rationale do you have for deleting them? I can see that writing new stubs (or articles) on non-Melanesian topics is not the highest priority, but I also see no reason to actually delete articles like this. Are you applying an unstated policy that all articles should be on Melanesian topics, or something?

The tagging I'm doing is an ongoing project, finishing up next week.  I'm following Wikipedia/WikiMedia guidelines for counting pages as articles.  I've tagged article with one-, two-, or three-lines of text as "placeholders".  I've tagged for deleteion any placeholder stub that doesn't meet the criteria as an bona fide Wikipedia article, although I am keeping in place all PNG-related stubs.  What I plan on doing is creating a Main namespace page that will hold the placeholder title and text of all the pages that I'll be deleting.  My policy is to tag PNG 'articles' as stubs and keep them.  Yes, I'm also deleting at this state of development/organization of the Wiki any article that doesn't have some relationship to Oceania and the Pacific Rim countries.  I think there's been about two or three articles that I've deleted as being what I call "contest" articles, and a couple of articles about home towns or a country.  These are articles that don't meet any of the Wikipedia criteria for encyclopedia articles, are basically stubs, and which have usually been about someone's home town. &nbbsp;To me, those types of stubs have either no encyclopedic content at all, or have minimal stub content that is not relevant to Melanesia, Oceania, or the Pacific Rim countries. K. Kellogg-Smith 08:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

On a related note, why would you limit the interwiki languages? For what reason should interwiki languages be "Oceania-related"? That seems somewhat against the spirit of Wikipedia(s), as a general observation.

As I wrote in my report, the language lists are bot-generated, and automatically appear in the sidebar.  These lists significantly increase the blank page space after simple stubs, and in my opinion, the stubs make no significant contribution whatsoever to anyone's Wikipedia.  As for being against the spirit of Wikipedia, my philosophy at this stage in reorganizing and redeveloping the TPI Wikis is to follow the Wikipedia Foundation's "Ignore All Rules" (IAR) policy, unless there's a constructive reason not to do so.  K. Kellogg-Smith 08:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Wantok (toktok) 02:05, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

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