User:IFaqeer

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Wikipedia:Babel
en This user is a native speaker of English.
ha This user is a native speaker of Hausa.
Ya iya Hausa "kaman jakin kano".
یہ شخص اردو کا صاحبِ زبان ہے۔
 ur
de-1 Dieser Benutzer hat grundlegende Deutschkenntnisse.
Community Affiliations
This user is a Citizen of the World (Terra, ⊕).
This user is a
Pakistani Wikipedian
Born in Nigeria, Africa
This user is a member of WikiProject Nigeria.
Feel free to send me e-mail.
WikiProject Countering systemic bias open tasks
This project creates new articles and improves neglected ones.

Contents

[edit] Current: Working on

[edit] Request

You will have heard about the earthquake that hit my native Pakistan the hardest. The time since then has been spent working on creating what has become a growing sub-site on the quake within a WikiCity I am associated with. Here's a backgrounder:

http://ifaqeer.blogspot.com/2005/10/information-site-on-earthquake.html

and a note on the genesis of the site:

http://pakistan.wikicities.com/wiki/Talk:Earthquake_10-05#History_of_this_Page

Please come by, even if just to browse (I am counting on Wiki folk to be too tempted to only be spectators ;)):

http://pakistan.wikicities.com/wiki/Earthquake_10-05

Thank you for reading this off-topic message.

[edit] Me, I, ... er ...

Starting out on the journey of self-discovery, (when I was young, and, well, cornier--cornier than this, you might ask ;)), I came up with the following characterization for myself:

I am a 2nd generation Pakistani of Arab extraction, Indian origin, and Nigerian birth.
or maybe I should say
I am a 2nd generation Pakistani of Arab extraction, Indian origin, and Nigerian birth.

That might give you an idea of how it is that I butt in on the #WikiWikiMe that I do.

A writer whose day job is as a technical writer in the Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay Area, I blog at [iFaqeer] and [WadiWallah]. I have recently also started paying attention to a blog I started a while back: Rickshaw!, which captures the inscriptions on the back of Rickshaws (jinrickshaws, cycle rickshaws and auto rickshaws). It's part of what drew me into the Wikipedia; looking for places with information on rickshaws.

I recently had reason to say the following in a discussion on an article:

...the main reason I associate myself with the Wikipedia is that I consider it a chance to receive and present a more complete picture of the world than I grew up having to read. (Source; for the curious.)

...and in another discussion:

Let me say the following up front by way of disclaimer: I am a Muslim and sympathise with Islam. And I also am not sympathetic to inflexible and/or extreme rationalist "devotees" of any ideology—be it Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Communism, Capitalism, Progressive philosophies or any other.
And I am also a strong believer in the importance of strict NPOV policies for an encyclopedia to really live up to its name. See, for example, what I am trying to do at Template talk:Timeline of Islamist militancy.

Which is why I spend time on Wikipedia.

[edit] Updates

[edit] Wiki Pakistan!

6/18/05
See: #Pakistan

[edit] Urdu Language Users

5/15/05 We are actually breaking some very interesting ground here on the Internet as the Urdu language starts to mature in its use on this medium. And Wikipedia is on the cutting edge. See: http://urdu-ke-naam.blogspot.com/2005/05/urdu-speaking-wikipedia-users.html and http://urdu-ke-naam.blogspot.com/2005/05/on-being-saahib-e-zubaan.html

I have just finally got to publishing my thoughts and translations on Urdu poetry, Sufism and related topics. For now, it will be mainly on the following page:

http://urdu-ke-naam.blogspot.com

See #Net sites I own/contribute to below for more details.

Just posted the following at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countering systemic bias#Can_we_measure_Wikipedian.27s_Bias.3F

My personal bias (excuse the pun) is that bias is something that exists in every person—it's basically a function of our being human and being shaped by our own experiences and background. The High Road, IMHO, is to understand what one's own bias is and work from there—identify opinion as opinion and try to work with others to achieve objectivity and completeness is a priority, as it is for projects like Wikipedia. (And yes, I have worked as a journalist and do have a blog.) The way I do this on Wikipedia is to place an honest statement of my background and an attempt at describing my own bias on my user page. I know this will make me an easy target for people that want to discredit me or my contributions based on their perception of "people like me". So be it; it is the price of honesty.

—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 20:53, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

Starting to take interest in Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 20:55, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Just discovered something while reading User:DigiBullet). As that user puts it, "Im among the Top 1000 users of Wikipedia by edits or something, despite me reducing my usage of the site. I dont know if this is an honor or an indicator of something else. The List".—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 02:21, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Just started engaging with the Wiktionary Project, too--iFaqeer 08:47, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

September 20, 2004: Wikipedia passed 1 million articles in over 100 languages.
Articles I created on September 20, 2004:

[edit] WikiWikiMe

The very nature of the medium makes it difficult to list things like pages I have made a significant contribution to. And of course, on Wikipedia and in the wider Wikiworld, there is no such thing as owning a page, let alone a whole Wiki. Even pages one starts are communal property and contributed to by others, often extensively. And often that's the desired result. And things happen fast. The lists below are provided only to give you a small sampling and an idea of what I am interested and engaged in. They are, by definition, rather sketchy and out-of-date. You can check a list of my contributions to see what I have been up to lately.

[edit] Wikis

[edit] Genealogy

The Wikipedia re-ignited the hope in my heart and mind to try and work on a dream project of mine; to collect and overlay genealogies, sufi initiation chains and other information, starting in South Asia and work outwards to document people and other topics around the world. After discussions on Wikipedia:Help, I was able to make a case for its being hosted at WikiCities. Of course, like all WikiCities projects and all true Wikis, it is a community resource that I just have the honour being the founder of:

http://genealogy.wikicities.com

[edit] Pakistan

I have the honor of being the founder of Wiki Pakistan! Or "The Pakistan Wiki", PakWiki, or WikiPak, call it what you will.(You may want to avoid "Paki Wiki", since in some parts of the world, that first word is seldom used in affection.) It is at:

http://Pakistan.wikicities.com

The basic idea is a national project. A "Pakistan Information" database to which everybody can and does contribute...You can read more at that wiki's About page.

[edit] WikiProjects and Boards

[edit] Those I started

[edit] Those I am subscribed to

  • Boards and lists of Wikipedia users related Pakistan, Africa, Urdu, etc.

[edit] Categories

[edit] Pages I Started

[edit] Entries

[edit] Redirects

The (usually pre-existing) articles are in brackets. I have just added another way of people might be looking for the same information.

[edit] Projects, Notice Boards, etc.

[edit] Pages I have Butted In To

[edit] Entries

[edit] Pages I have Edited A Wee

[edit] Entries

[edit] WikiPedia Content I Recommend Highly

The usual reason a page is listed here is that reading it will provides an insight that, in my humble opinion, is important in helping us all better understand (and be more understanding of) the universe around us.

[edit] Entries

Christian Denominations and their "lineage"
Christian Denominations and their "lineage"
Just like the charts available off:
http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/index.html

[edit] WikiHumor?

[edit] WikiContent I like to browse

[edit] To Do list

Please free to help—and let me know if you want to/are working on one.

[edit] External links

[edit] Net sites I own/contribute to

  • iFaqeer; I blog, therefore I am
  • WadiWallah, another blog I am experimenting with; might get merged with the previous
  • Rickshaw! a blog that captures the inscriptions on the back of Rickshaws (jinrickshaws, cycle rickshaws and auto rickshaws)
  • I have just finally got to publishing my thoughts and translations on Urdu poetry, Sufism and related topics. For now, it will be mainly on the following page:
http://urdu-ke-naam.blogspot.com
The blog's not really "mine", but a collaboration with some folks (among them manzoorkhan (talk · contribs)) who are mainly in Hyderabad (Deccan) (see Hyderabad, India and Hyderabad state), one of the homes of Urdu.

[edit] Other places you can catch up with me

[edit] Links of interest

[edit] Placeholder

< nowiki >< /nowiki >]]—[[User:IFaqeer|iFaqeer]] [[User talk:IFaqeer|(Talk to me!)

[edit] Awards

Barnstar

I present this Barnstar to you for your excellant contributions to articles related to South Asia. -- utcursch | talk 08:04, May 17, 2005 (UTC)