ISpeakHindi, a wiki, and you!

Have you heard of Wikis? Maybe you have heard of wikipedia? It is this online encyclopedia that is being edited by people all over the world. In fact, you can go right there, right now and contribute. You can create new articles, edit existing ones… you don’t even have to log in.. (at least the last time I checked you didn’t)

Anyway, the software behind that marvel is MediaWiki. And it is freely available, just like WordPress (which you are looking at right now!)… Anyway, I have setup a Wiki for the ISpeakHindi site.

We can make this a good resource about Hindi and Hindi learning. But we can also use it to create the scripts and ideas behind our daily podcast.

Several pages you need to check out. The main page: http://www.ispeakhindi.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Then I have created ones for sessions, both present and future. And ideas for sessions that haven’t been written yet. You can see that here:

http://www.ispeakhindi.com/wiki/index.php?title=ISpeakHindi_Sessions

Also, I have a list of all the December 2007 episodes on one page:

http://www.ispeakhindi.com/wiki/index.php?title=December_2007_Podcasts

And I have the episodes that are still coming up for the month here:

http://www.ispeakhindi.com/wiki/index.php?title=December_2007_Upcoming_Podcasts

Now how can you help? Glad you asked :-)

Probably the most important thing is to improve the quality of the daily podcasts. I think having well thought out and rehearsed scripts would be the best way to do that. So, please click on one of the upcoming episodes and help me create some compelling dialog:

http://www.ispeakhindi.com/wiki/index.php?title=December_2007_Upcoming_Podcasts

Ok, looking for something a little less mind intensive?

Well, a lot of people have emailed me saying that we need an easier way to get to past episodes. (Apparently people don’t like click the “previous” link a million times… I don’t like it either…)

Well, I have created a page for all the December 2007 episodes:

http://www.ispeakhindi.com/wiki/index.php?title=December_2007_Podcasts

Can you be a dear and create a similar page for the other months?

http://www.ispeakhindi.com/wiki/index.php?title=ISpeakHindi_Sessions

Ok.. so, that doesn’t suit you either? hummm. How about add some ideas for future sessions to the bottom of this page:

http://www.ispeakhindi.com/wiki/index.php?title=ISpeakHindi_Sessions

Ok, well, I hope that you all will help me out here. We can really get a good thing going.

However, remember that anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can edit these pages. that means we are going to have people posting spam, and other craziness. So, when you see this, look at the history tab, and roll back to a better version.. Or just delete the bad stuff. This is one thing that I am really concerned about. and if you have experience on how to fight it, just let me know.

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