Robin Patterson

Haere mai, Robin

Thanks for your note.  I've followed your work on the Maori Wikipedia, and have been wondering if you have any interest in working on the Tok Pisin Wikipedia and Wiktionary.  There's plenty of work available!

The first thing is to sign on as a WikiProject Melanesia participant at en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Melanesia.  After that, go to the Tok Pisin subpage at en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Melanesia/Tok Pisin and acquaint yourself with the discussions on the main and talk pages.  Please do the same for the discussions on these two subpages, en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Melanesia/Tok Pisin/Wikipedia, and en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Melanesia/Tok Pisin/Wiktionary.

The main idea is to form up an ad hoc board of editors to discuss and arrive at overall editorial policies for the two Wikis.  The first priority is to determine who is going to read and contribute the Wikipedia's articles, i.e., what's the target audience.  Wantok has suggest high school and above readership, and I go along with that.

The issue of monolinguality or bilinguality is still on-going.  My position is that both Wikis should be bilingual, in the sense that English-language articles can be written and contributed, but that they must be translated as closely as at all possible to their Tok Pisin equivalent.  I may be wrong, but my reasoning is that an important component of the target audience will be non-nationals ("expatriates") assigned to and working in urban and/or rural PNG and the surrounding regions where a knowledge of Tok Pisin will be useful, if not absolutely necessary for good communication with the local population.  Secondly, I see the two TPI Wikis as learning tools for TPI 0, TPI 1, and TPI 2 level speakers/readers; one-to-one translations are, IMHO, absolutely the best way to learn and acquire fluency in any language that's being studied.  One to one translations have been a canon of cryptology, and of language studies, since time immemorial.

If I recall correctly, I think you were pushing for bilinguality in the Maori Wikipedia, at least on the discussion pages.  Tok Pisin is already bi-lingual, with a lot of English words, phrases, and even whole sentences mixed in with the pisin vernacular in the urban areas, and perhaps not so much so in rural areas.  That code swapping and substitution helps to make translations easier, particularly after one has learned the basic grammar, and has access to the online dictionary at http://www.tok-pisin.com and the Mihalic Project at http://www.mihalicdictionary.org/index.html.  So you can contribute both pisin and English articles if you like.  A suggestion that I'll be making to the TPI Wiki project group (of which I hope you'll become a contributing member) is that a "Needs Translation" tag be added to English language articles, and something equivalent in pisin, as "Nidim tan tok ples Inglis", for example.

I talk too much (and there's a lot more to talk about re the two Wikis), so please join in the discussions, and hopefully, join in with technical and editorial (articles) help.

Very best regards, K. Kellogg-Smith 01:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Requests for adminship process

Hi, I wanted to inform you that we now have a local Requests for adminship process here on the Tok Pisin Wikipedia, for the first time. It follows the English Wikipedia in most respects: registered users may show support or opposition to any candidate, and users who are not logged in may make comments but not actually support or oppose.

Regards, Wantok 08:24, 15 August 2007 (UTC)