Wikipedia talk:Rārangi arowhai

Introduction

The introduction to this idea, and the categorised lists, have been copied from the Meta-Wiki page where it was introduced. Contributors to Wikipedia Māori have then gradually adapted and translated it. (The "Meta" version will probably remain available for contributors who read Māori with difficulty or not at all.)

Origin and outline of proposal

The number of Wikipedia projects is growing; some are very active, others are moribund. There is a proposal to invigorate them, which includes ensuring that they each contain a basic core of encyclopedic information that will be of use to readers. This way, people will be encouraged to use each project, and a growing number of users will take the next step and help improve it.

Detail: the thousand basic articles

It was therefore suggested that we make a list of 1,000 basic articles that we should try to ensure appear on each existing Wikipedia.

It still remains to define how detailed these "articles" should be; possibly the list can include both significant articles (primary elements) and secondary topics/articles, which should either get short paragraph-length stubs, or be covered by a longer article.

Each article should at first be very basic, and incorporate the most essential information. In some cases, it will be only a table, while in other cases it will be a stub. This will, however, provide some impetus for the smaller projects to grow. This project hopes to create easily translatable versions of these articles, containing core information, in the "Simple English" version of Wikipedia.

What any user may do with this list

• Translate each item into Māori if it needs translating; and see whether you have an article on that topic. (With only 7,900 articles at present, Wikipedia Māori clearly has a few hundred gaps.)

Each item should end up following this model:

# [[:en:Captain James Cook|]] - [[Kāpene Kuki]]

# [[:en:Hernán Cortés|]] - [[Hernán Cortés]]

The link with ":en:" at the start goes direct to the English Wikipedia. (From there, there are usually links to other language versions.) The one on the right goes to our article (or shows that we don't have one with that name yet).

Until we do all the lines, this "blank" may be useful - just copy the name in twice: # [[:en:|]] - [[]]

• Some of the articles you don't have will be easy to start without needing to translate from anywhere else. Contributors who feel they can start such an article should (please!) just get on and do so, even before step 1 is complete.
• Where you are missing any of these basic articles, someone can translate from another Wikipedia. All topics are fairly certain to have articles in the main English version. We will probably link to that initially, because over 90% of Māori-speakers understand English. Many topics are (and all may eventually be) linked from the English article and the Meta list to articles in the Simple English Wikipedia too. A few contributors may prefer to go there, especially if the English article is comparatively very detailed.
• Please ignore the list and create an article on any unlisted topic that comes to mind if you feel like a change. We want far more than one thousand articles eventually, and each unlisted article written by someone who is keen may be worth more than several listed articles.

You can check the language links in the English or Simple English articles for more comprehensive coverage of the topics in other languages. Copy the "interwiki" links to our article so that subsequent contributors can go direct to a language they can easily translate from.

Discussion

Whatever that addition was, it seems to be a dead link, and not in an appropriate form for that page anyway. Robin Patterson 09:27, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

June 2005 teamwork

Thanks for the tidy-up. Now, we actually have more of those articles than is obvious, so I had better create some more redirects for words such as country names (unless someone beats me to it). I have a feeling, in passing, that Kuini Wikitoria is listed twice. Robin Patterson 22:23, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Finalising list or just boxing on?

Now I've skimmed through the discussion on Meta and added our page to the list at the top of it.

Judging by the discussion, I think the Meta list could be getting changes for ever. It may thus be a "better" list eventually for really small new WPs. But we are not all that new. We may be well past a thousand articles before the Meta people "finalise". I recommend that we not bother to keep going back to look hard at the Meta version.

The list we have here has been amended considerably and now gives some attention to most parts of the world and human thought; it is therefore a good "starter" list of articles, all of which any decent encyclopedia should have, in addition to many thousands of others. The list is a "preliminary checklist" that can be given some regard in our choice of our next thousand articles, but it is no kind of restriction.

I've revised and expanded the introduction as a guide to readers so that any contributor will see value in at least one aspect of the list and can work in that area.

Robin Patterson 12:15, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)