Wikipedia:WikiProject Melanesia/Tok Pisin/Progress

(Note: Please feel free to use the discussion page for comments, suggestions or exclamations of abject dismay on the contents of these progress reports This page is on my watch list, so please don't put your comments on my Talk page, or make direct edits to this page.)

Progress report as of Saturday, 11 August

Summary

On vacation in Canada from 27 July to 6 August.
Monitored and blocked spam and vandalism entries in both Wikis.
Blocked non-registered users from creating articles.
Blocked excessive interWiki linking bots.
Completed test of gloss linking of selected English to TP Karen Afeas words.
Reviewed and tagged additional articles in Main namespace.
Completed copyedit of “Tabubil” (PNG) article in EN Wikipedia
Continued work on developing standard entry format for Wiktionary.
Reading Wurm and Muhlhausler's 1985 “Handbook of Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin)”, (708 pages, 585 pages to go iet).
Reading/listening to contemporary tok pisin discussions by ABC staff on ABC Tok Pisin service.
Reading posts written in contemporary tok pisin on two web forums for expatriate wontoks.
Daily editing of "Karen Afeas" column.

Wikipedia

Continued reviewing Main namespace articles for content. Tagged PNG stubs as being either legitimate stub articles requiring further work, or placeholder stubs with little or no content. to date have completed review of articles listed in Main namespace up through “Otodos Kristen”.
Continued with daily review of new entries.
Found bot “SieBot” making continual (and in my opinion, excessive) daily entries in the TPI Wikipedia, making review for spam/vandalism and entries by non-registered users a more time consuming and difficult task. Of particular concern is that the “SieBot” is indiscriminately adding interWiki links to all pages regardless of content, i.e., one-, two-, and three-line stubs with little or no content have very long “SieBot” generated lists of interWiki languages in their sidebars. Blocked “Siebot” for 30 days so I could get my work done, which pissed off the owner of the bot. Although my block was limited to 30 days, and the owner was given my rationale (in detail, of course) for temporarily blocking the bot, the owner filed a Mediawiki complaint. Steward Drini sided with bot owner Siebrannd, and unblocked “Siebot” and another bot which I had also temporarily blocked. You can read the discussion and judgement [[meta:Wikimedia:Request for Permissions|here}} if you like.
Blocked anonymous user IP's. The articles were stubs, but relevant, and could be developed further. However, since there’s no Talk page or Wikipedia e-mail available for anonymous users, I figured the only way to get the author’s attention was to block its IP. The tactic was successful, the author dropped a query on my TPI Talk page, and I responded to the author by Wikipedia e-mail.
After returning from vacation in Canada, continued with my daily updates of the “Karen Afeas” column. I commented out the “Huli wigman” pix, will search for more contemporaneous PNG/Melanesia-related photos in Commons.
Completed tests of linking selected Englsih words to glossary at end of Karen Afeas column. Used same technique to gloss selected tok pisin words. Technique used standard Wiki ID’d interlink combined with interlink return to ID’d word. Test proves out a method that can be used to gloss words in English and Tok Pisin articles.
Continued daily editing of Karen Afeas column. Copy editing the ABC Tok Pisin news items, correcting typos, noting English loan words with single quotes, English phrases with double quotes, using blockquote tag for English text, etc. Indications are that ABC staff is viewing the Karen Afeas column, and is recognizing (and using) my English grammar corrections.

Wiktionary

Have had very limited time to work on the Wiktionary.
Worked on developing a prototype word entry page, using the Pacific Linguistics guidelines for creating printed dictionaries.
Added a few other languages to the prototype main page I set up before I went on vacation. The list is set up by relevance in the development of Tok Pisin, starting with Solomon Plantation Pidgin (“SPP”) as the earliest recorded pidgin used in Melanesia, and continuing on. The plan is to provide a link on the main page to take the user to a contents page, which will have a larger search box than the one provided in the sidebar. Any comments and ideas for the Wiktionary are welcome.

Other

Continuing to improve my knowledge of tok pisin by reading and listening to ABC’s “Tok Pisin” articles that have audio links. Continuing also to do the same by reading the messages posted on two Internet forums, one for PNG wontoks, the other for Milne Bay wontoks.
Continuing to read, take notes, and otherwise work my way through Wurm and Mulhausler’s classic linguistic compendium, “Handbook of Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin), 704 pages.

Work for next week

Wikipedia:

Continue to review tag articles depending on their content, starting with “PNG” and continuing on through the list. It may be possible to complete this process by mid-week. My plan is to move stubbed articles that do not meet Wikipedia article standards to “Wikipedia:Stubs/(article name here)”. This will get placeholder articles off the Main namespace to improve the credibility of the Tok Pisin Wikipedia’s article count, while at the same keeping the pages and their page history in an accessible location, one where subpages are permitted.
Create a “Calendar” article (or whatever) to bring together in one place all the individual articles on days of the week, months of the year, etc.
E-mailing ABC staff to discuss the Wikipedia and get their ideas about the project.
E-mailing Volker, Romaine, Bolton, and other academics to see if they might provide input on the TPI Wikipedia project.

Wiktionary:

Will try to set up at least one, possibly two other prototype word entry page in the Wiktionary for review and comment on the prototype(s) discussion page(s).
In e-mails noted above, will also discuss with ABC staff their ideas about the TPI Wiktionary, and academics ideas about the Wiktionary as well.

Abung kanta katch, y'all. An' grits on ya'! K. Kellogg-Smith 01:16, 13 August 2007 (UTC) (TPI sysop/administrator)[reply]

Progress as of Friday, 27 July 2007

Summary

Continued sysop/administrator functions by moving/renaming articles, deleting spam and blocking spam authors, and other sysop/admin functions.

Blocked anonymous user who re-edited/reverted in an existing article.
Emails to academics who have written about PNG
Emails and Wikipedia User page ‘awareness’ notices
Continuing work to classify existing Wikipedia articles
Continuing research on acceptable dictionary formats
Registered on two tok pisin forums
Starting Hindi language study (basic grammar and vocabulary)
Continued tests on English swap word gloss in “Karen afeas” column.

Wikipedia

Contributions

Contacted User:RedSolution on the German (DE) Wikipedia about contributing a short article on “Unserdeutsch”, which he did. Although the article is essentially a copy of the Wikpedia article (which the lead is in itself a virtual copy of an Abstract to a paper written by Prof. Craig Volker (previously on staff at University of Papua New Guinea). Maintaining this contact with a suggestion that he and others interested in PNG might think about writing a series of short articles on the historical period of German colonization that ended in 1914.

User:Wantok” added three articles from the English Wikipedia: namespace to our Wikipedia’s Wikipedia: namespace on the subject of requesting permission for sysop/administrator.

As part of my research in Unserdeutsch, have collected enough research materials to write a reasonably definitive article myself on “Unserdeutsh”, it’s beginnings, history, and demise.
Yesterday I came across a very interesting personal website by an individual who lives/works in the northern Solomons. Emailed the author about the possibility of using his description of the region and of the peoples using the Ndi tok ples. Nbsp;See the Wikitionary summary below for more details.
Yesterday I also came across another interesting website on the Freedom movement for the ailan of Bouganville. Although the website is dated (some progress of sorts has been made towards establishing a free and independent nation of Bouganville), I emailed the author anyway to get an update on the movement. There’s a short history of the ‘transfer of authority’ of Bouganville to Australia, with a proviso that the islanders be given the opportunity to vote for/against independence, a provision that Australia, according to the website, has ignored because of the copper-mining interests of a large Australian mining company. Sounds very much like a reasonable article on contemporary Bouganville and its history could be written/contributed to our Wikipedia.
Continued working down the list of articles. So far, have found just two relatively complete (but short) articles in Tok Pisin. The remaining articles are simple one-line stubs, most of which do not meet the Foundation’s requirements for an article. The stub articles are placeholders; the content of the pages will eventually be put on a “Placeholders:” page and the pages deleted. The “Placeholders:” page is there to preserve the extremely minimalist content of the pages in the event someone cares to write a related article.

Wiktionary

Came across a personal website from an individual who lives/works in the northern Solomon Ailans. The author included a brief grammar and glossary for the Ndi tok ples. I’ve emailed the author re our Wikipedia and Wiktionary effort, and request his okay to include his grammar and glossary in our multilingual Wiki dictionary.
Continued reviewing Pacific Linguistics recommendations on formats for Pacific language dictionaries being prepared for publication.

Projected for next week

I will be away in Canada (Cambridge, south of Toronto) visiting friends and in-laws from this weekend through next weekend. My access to the Internet will be very limited, so I’ll be working off-line on my notebook most of the time that I’m away.

Other work yet to be done

(Pretty much the same as last week, except with more emphasis on expanding the Tok Pisin Wikipedia/Wiktionary community to include more academics and other professionals to act as advisors on the development of the two Wikis)

Abung kanta ketch !

K. Kellogg-Smith 13:58, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Progress as of Saturday, 21 July 2007

Summary

Temp sysop/administrator permissions for 90 days were approved for me on 9 July. Began term by:

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.

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. For tok pisin articles, English swap words can be defined in a "glossari" section at the end of the article (see my note below on how this works in the "Karen afeas" section of the TPI Wikipedia).

establishing that the new TPI Wikipedia is by definition a document for learning, and that an explicitly bilingual Wikipedia will be of very great help to native as well as non-native speakers/readers of tok pisin.

studying contents of WikiMedia “System Administrator’s Handbook”, printing and compiling the more immediately relevant pages.

deleting miscellaneous spam and vandalism pages from both Wikis, and indefinitely blocking access to two anonymous (spamming) users.

surveyed Template namespace to determine reorganization needs.

surveyed Category namespace to determine reorganization needs.

updating "Dispela wik" and "Karen afeas" columns in Wikipedia.

Reviewing user lists, daily monitoring of changes to Wikipedia and Wiktionary.

Studying/printing relevant sections in WikiMedia System Administrator's User Manual, primarily sections on "Customization"

Creating a "contact list" of Wikipedia users who are listed as having TPI as a language capability, and users who have written or supported Melanesia-related articles.

Wikipedia

reviewed French, German, Malay/Indonesian, Maori, Samoan, and Hawaiian Wikipedias for examples of content and format.

copied several articles PNG-related articles from English Wikipedia to serve as prototypes for (1) determining what EN templates need to be added to the TPI template list, and (2) to serve as prototypes for simplification, and then for one-to-one translation to Tok Pisin.

modified existing templates and created new ones for article tagging. Edited the WikiProject Melanesia infobox to link from TPI Wikipedia user or article pages to the WikiProject Melanesia project page in the English Wikipedia. User:Wantok has very kindly translated the English in the box to tok pisin.

Started surveying and tagging Wikipedia Main namespace articles as PNG-relevant stubs needing development, developed non-PNG relevant stubs to be developed or Wikified, or dictionary-type entries to be either compiled into Tok Pisin-English articles (e.g., list of months of the year, days of the week, etc.).

Developed a 'short list' of Melanesia/Oceania-relevant languages to cull out of the bot-generated, overly long 'reciprocal'sidebar language lists. The long lists create excessive and totally useless white space at the end of articles and stubs. The short list I'm currently using (suggest additions/deleteions on the discussion page) is as follows:

CEB
DE
EN
ES
FR
ID
ILO
JA
JV
KO
NL
SIMPLE
SM
SU
TL
VI
ZH
ZH-yue

When the work of tagging all the existing articles is completed (in about another week), I will ask Project members to review the tagged articles and add comments (if any) to the articles' discussion pages. After seven (7) days I intend to move, delete or otherwise act on the articles to establish the base level of integrity of the TPI Wikipedia and its articles. Currently there is only one (1) tok pisin article in the TPI Wikipedia that can be considred an encyclopedic article. All the remaining articles are either one-, two-, three-, or four-line "placeholder" stubs, the majority of which do not meet the Foundation's definition of an article.

Note:Translations to English are required for all tok pisin articles, so users only need a very basic knowledge of Tok Pisin to do translations. In these Tok Pisin to English translations, when not sure of an adequate or correct translation, editors can swap in Tok Pisin words in the same way that English words are swapped in to articles written in tok pisin.

Used potential users Talk pages to advise them about WikiProject Melanesia and about the two Wiki projects. Asked if they’d help out or comment on the project.

Emailed professional and academic non-Wikipedians with experience and knowledge about Papua New Guinea and Melanesia in general, alerting them to the project, and asking their advice or participation on the projects projects.

Blocked anonymous users.

Edited/added a few existing Tok Pisin articles.

Daily preparation and editing (some copy editing regularly involved) of the “Karen afeas” column using daily news bulletins from Radio Australia's Tok Pisin Internet service. Have just initiated and began testing the addition of a tok pisin “Glosari” section at the end of the “Karen afeas” column, where English swap words in the ABS tok pisin news articles are interlinked to pisin definitions, with a link back into the article. The test article(s) will be at the top of the page until 23 July, when they'll be relocated (and kept for a while for comments) to the bottom of the column. Based on comments received (here), the linking in current affairs articles to/from the "Glosari" will be either kept or discontinued.

Note: When I started updating the "Karen afeas" column I began using single quotes around English swap words in the tok pisin text, and doing other common "Manual of Style" editing. Within the last few weeks I've noticed that the authors of the news bulletins are beginning to do the same thing. Also notable is that they are also beginning to "follow my lead" in putting commas around names, e.g., "Komisina ov Edukesin, Mr. John Wehewehe, i-spik ...". Previously they had not been putting in both those commas. My egotistical guess is that maybe they're looking at our Wikipedia's front page over there?

Dictionaries I've been using (in order of what I consider their usefulness):

http://www.tok-pisin.com

Fr. Mihalic's "Introduction to New Guinea Pidgin" (1969), Jacaranda Press, Queensland AU

http://www.mihalicdictionary.org/index.html

"Clinical Clerking and Examination in Tok Pisin" by Dr. Stephen Ward (a white paper for medical workers)

http://lucy.kent.ac.uk/Rainforest/frp-website/Publications/worksheets/SHEET3/biopidg_1.html

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/translation/Tok+Pisin (Webster's Universal)

Inserted weekly (sometimes more often) Melanesia/Oceania-related photos from Commons in "Dispela wik" column. I encourage anyone with personal photos of peoples, places and events in PNG and associated areas to upload them to Commons so they can be shared.

Wiktionary

Developed protoype for a new front page for multilingual TPI dictionary. I've moved this prototype page to the front page of the Wiktionary for review and comment (here, please). The general idea is that users can enter a search word in the sidebar search box and be taken directly to the search word's definition. Clicking on one of the languages listed will take the user to a "portal" namespace page (Portal: to be added as a namespace) with explanations of using the dictionary given in that portal's language. Also, the portals will have a larger search box, with more room for phrases, and more room for search button explanations (ie., "go" and "search" in tok pisin).

Renamed entries where recent user used Japanese Kanji characters for definition titles. Expanded some of the definitions (some of which are significantly disambiguated in my Japanese dictionaries).

Wrote/revised definitions to developed prototype Tok Pisin + English and English + Tok Pisin definition formats.

On a personal note, I've been compiling a Tok Pisin - English linear dictionary taken from the English - Tok Pisin definitions in my copy of Fr. Mihalic's small 1969 "Introduction to New Guinea Pidgin" grammar, dictionary, and phrase book. I've also begun compiling a list of English loan words that are frequently being used in the current affairs columns. I plan on translating these to tok pisin (ie., from the work I've started doing with the Karen afeas "glossari") and will be adding them to the TPI dictionary.

Projected work for next week

Wikipedia

Complete survey and tagging of Main namespace pages.

Continue to look into creating four new Wikipedia namespaces: Contents:, Index:, Appendix: and Portal:. The Portal: namespace will be helpful, I think, as "home pages" for grouping topic areas and specialties (e.g., "Tropical medicine", "Plants and animals", "Geopolitical entities", and the like).

Continue to review proposed grouping of current Categories under broader parent categories (e.g., "Category:User languages" as a parent category for all the "Yusa-(#)" categories that have been created, or, change all the "Yusa-(#)" categories to a single category. This work is in line with the categorization guidelines suggested in Wikipedia:Categorization, which were not followed when the TPI Wikipedia was set up and the user language boxes (for one example) were implemented on an as-needed basis.

Continue to review Templates. Post message on tech help IRC channel about the apparent CSS class problem that causes Template:Infobox Country (for one) not to display table borders. (Might possibly be that we have an older version of monobooks.css file on our server, who knows.)

Continue with work on developing the "Glosari" idea to include with the daily "Karen afeas" column.

Wiktionary

Begin to develop/propose prototype(s) for Wiktionary definition format. Review article "en.Wiktionary/Wiktionary:Criteria for inclusion" article, and white paper titled "A guide for Pacific Linguistics dictionary-makers" to help in coming up with prototype formats.

Begin populating Tok Pisin-English definitions from "Glosari" in "Karen afeas" column.

Begin work on developing prototype "home" pages for the languages listed on the new (prototype) cover page. The home pages will be language-specific, with the larger search box centrally located on the page.

Other work yet to be done

Editorial content of Wikipedia: Any user/editor who currently has, or has had in the past, an interest in writing about PNG and Melanesia, and also Oceania in general, should try their hand at writing "simple Tok Pisin" and "simple English" articles. 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. Remember, Tok Pisin incorporates new English words daily; you can substitute English words and phrases liberally wherever and whenever you run into a translation problem. In other words, don't be shy. Write!!. Native speakers and others more adept with Tok Pisin will (hopefully) come along and correct whatever errors you make by editing (and adding to) your work. And if they don't, no worry, eh? As you become more proficient with tok pisin you can go back, review your article(s), and correct whatever errors you made. Like, I made the mistake of copy-editing "giaman" in one "Karen afeas" article, which I took to be an uncapitalized, phonetic word for "German". So I substituted "Jermin" in its place. Wrong!! The article was about 'rebels' in the highlands, not Germans lurking around up there. So okay, laugh. I did when I later came across the meaning for "giaman", and found it didn't at all mean "German".

Language resources: The Tok-Pisin online dictionary, by all means. Radio Australia's "Time to Talk" at http://abc.net.au/timetotalk/tokpisin/default.htm is a great way to both hear Tok Pisin and read what you're hearing at the same time. It's all tok pisin, no English, but it's a good way to see/hear how pisin words are pronounced, and to see how much English is interspersed with urban speech. Running the Tok-Pisin online dictionary along with "Time to Talk" lets you pause the audio stream, highlight and copy a pisin word you don't undersatnd and paste it into the Tok-Pisin word search box. It's a very good way to build up your tok pisin vocabulary.

A very excellent tok pisin language resource —written, spoken, translated and annotated — can be found at http://bilbo.ling.su.se/staff/evali/TokPisin/Meri_i_kamap_ston.html. Swedish researcher Eva Lindstrom's recording of New Ireland folk tale about a pregnant woman grabbed by a sea god and turned into a stone is exceptionally well-documented. You can hear/read the story in tok pisin, read the 'word for word' translation, and read Lindstrom's notes about the transcription and manner of speaking in the telling of the tale.

Abung kanta katch !, K. Kellogg-Smith 05:30, 22 July 2007 (UTC)