Postcard from Bishkek

We established the Celestial Mountains companies in 1997 and one of my first tasks was to create a web site so that we would have a presence on the internet.

At that point in time, it was quite small – about twenty pages … some about Kyrgyzstan, because very few people outside the county seemed to know anything about it; a couple about us as a company; a few about different tour itineraries that we offered.

After a while I noticed that we were getting the same sort of questions from various potential clients, many of them about applying for visas and crossing Torugart.  Although there were differences between them, depending on everyone’s particular circumstances, we realized that we were writing the same sort of message in reply.  So, to make life easier for ourselves, we created a series of leaflets and standard letters to send out, and started adding them as pages to the website.

In time, the website grew and it was necessary to redesign it … but we found a good web-designer and were very happy with the result.  We added more pages about places in Kyrgyzstan, traditional nomadic culture and general travel advice.  Soon there were about two hundred pages and we found that people were asking different sorts of questions.  We were receiving a large number of comments about how helpful and informative the site was, and it was often quoted by others.

I have lost count of the number of times I looked at a website while surfing the net and thought to myself: “That looks familiar” … only to realize that it was text that had been lifted from our site.  On one occasion, one of our partners said that he needed information about Kyrgyzstan to put on his website, and he asked if he could use our material.  We were more than happy to agree … it it helped him to sell more tours, then we would receive more clients as a result.  Hence, no problem!  You can probably imagine our surprise, therefore, when he later told us that he was going to get someone to write something new … the problem was, he said, that the majority of sites about Kyrgyzstan had used the same text … lifted from our site.

To be fair, some people did ask us if they could use the material, others cited us as the source of the information or provided links back to the original page … but most didn’t.

One tour operator even learned from this experience and blocked access to his site from Kyrgyzstan … people anywhere else in the world could access it, but nobody in Kyrgyzstan could.

Our approach to the issue was a little different … after a while, once we thought we had sufficient information on the site to attract people as potential clients, provide sufficient basic background information to arouse interest in learning more and answer the most common questions, we stopped adding new information … so that it couldn’t be “lifted”.

Even though I know it happens, I still find surprising the extent and scale of the wholesale “lifting” of information, reports and articles.  I subscribe to a number of Google alerts … for example – for “Kyrgyzstan” – and each day I receive an email containing links to pages where Kyrgyzstan is mentioned … and many of the articles are not only on similar themes … it is clear that many are simply the same article placed on a different site or blog.

Now, this problem of plagiarism is nothing new … the internet has just made it easier.  The education world is now using quite sophisticated software to help identify and eliminate it from student’s work.  In a way, we all do it … we all “recycle” information.  I know that I do … if you look for it, you can see numerous examples in these pages!  I do, however, try not to use other people’s work verbatim … hence the phrase “‘recycle’ information”.  I try to find out as much as I can from a number of different sources … and then write something, using my own words to say what I want to say.

Few of us these days are “renaissance men” – knowledgeable and skilled in all aspects of human endeavor.  When faced with a problem, one of the first tasks we have to undertake to resolve it, is to gather the information necessary for us to understand and put it into context.   Most of the time, we  need to go and search out that information – background or specific, detailed information.  Indeed, this is one of the skills that schools try to develop when students are given the task of writing reports, summaries, essays and so forth – they are taught to research, to go and look for the information … and then to use it responsibly: Researching; Organizing, (“mind mapping” techniques); Selecting; Précis and summarizing, Judicial use of quotations, Citing references, Using footnotes … and so forth … in addition to the general skill of learning to express oneself in writing.  In the days when I was teaching it was called “study skills” – and it was the responsibility of every teacher no matter what subject they taught, to address these issues.

When I was growing up, there was a popular “teenage” film where the “hero” is doing shown his homework. He is sitting with three large books open on the table in front of him and copying a paragraph from each book, one after the other, and he comments — “copying from one book is just ‘cribbing’, but using three … that’s research”. If someone just copies then there is little value in what they are doing … but if they collect and combine information from different sources, reorganizing and restructuring it, then they really need to understand it.  That is research and does have value.

In addition to the website, we also developed other ways to disseminate information – such as publishing articles, leaflets and catalogues as well as assisting journalists who wrote their own articles.  We also developed a CD which was a much larger version of the website … with over a thousand pages and covering a much wider range of topics.

After a while, our webmaster moved abroad, (her husband had been appointed to a new job), and although things continued to go well, at first, communications were sometimes difficult.   After a while, we decided to repatriate the site back to Kyrgyzstan … and started planning a new strategy for our exposure on the web.

One approach we adopted was to develop a number of different sites on particular, specific, themes – and some of those are up and running already … whilst others are “in the pipeline”.  At first, we decided not to touch the original site for the time being, the site we referred to as: the “encyclopedia” site, whilst we developed these other, thematic sites.

One of the problems associated with the site, however, was that it was very static … As I said, we had decided not too add new pages partly in order to solve the problem of plagiarism and partly due to problems communicating with our webmaster.  The world “moves on”, however, and new destinations and opportunities open up within the country … regulations over visas, OVIR and permits change … people are posing new questions …

Finally we decided to redesign the site to take advantage of developments in technology and provide a number of different ways to access the information … as well as to try and make the site more interactive.

Why not visit it … and make some suggestions about what you would like to see on it:
www.celestial.com.kg

---

PRESS RELEASE

All you ever wanted to know about travel to Kyrgyzstan …

The Celestial Mountains companies opened for business in Kyrgyzstan in 1997.

Although they have been featured in several guidebooks to the region, newspaper and magazine articles, several tourism trade fairs and in TV and radio programmes around the world, many of the clients for the tour company and two hotels run by the companies learn about them and Kyrgyzstan through the internet.

Their website, www.celestial.com.kg, covering background information, history, places to see and visit in the country, famous people, traditional nomadic culture traditions and general travel advice, has become a much visited and often quoted source of information about the country.

Originally it was a small, “visit card”, type of website, but as people asked questions the answers were posted on the site and it grew to over 200 pages.  The companies now have over a thousand pages of information ready to upload and so it was decided to redesign and update the website to take advantage of new features available using Web2 technology and offering the user a variety of ways to access the information.

Ian Claytor, the General Director of the companies, explained that “aim is create a comprehensive and authoritative source of information, an encyclopedia that answers questions about everything that someone might want to know about travel to Kyrgyzstan.  It is a living project that will grow over the course of time as questions are received from members of the public.”

Notes for editors:

·        Kyrgyzstan is a small, landlocked, mountainous country in Central Asia, that sits astride the Great Silk Road, and was a constituent republic of the former Soviet Union  … It has a variety of landscapes, climatic conditions, varied wildlife, historical connections, over eighty nationalities represented in the population in addition to the native nomadic Kyrgyz.

·        The Celestial Mountains Companies a tour company which owns and runs the Silk Road Lodge hotel in downtown Bishkek and the Celestial Mountains Guesthouse in Naryn …

·        Ian Claytor is a former school teacher from Britain who has been in Kyrgyzstan since 1995.  As well being the General Director of both Celestial Mountains companies,  he has served four terms as President of the Kyrgyz Association of Tour Operators and as  a member of the Management Board of the International Business council for eight years.

·        The companies operate a number of websites, each designed to concentrate on a specific aspect of Kyrgyzstan and their work, all of which can be accessed via their portal, www.celestialweb.info:

• www.celestial.kg – about the companies
• www.celestial.com.kg – a travel encyclopedia to Kyrgyzstan
• www.tours.kg – outlining the tour services offered by the tour department
• www.silkroadlodage.kg – featuring the Silk Road Lodge hotel in Bishkek
• www.cmgh.kg – featuring the Guesthouse in Naryn
• www.horses.kg – about horses in the daily life of the Kyrgyz
• www.tastes.kg – exploring the variety of cuisines available in the country
• www.sounds.kg -
• www.gk.kg – a platform for a number of “good causes” or charitable projects in Kyrgyzstan
• ianbek.kg – a personal website of “Postcards from Bishkek”, by Ian Claytor.

Also, in preparation are:

• www.yurts.kg – about the traditional dwellings of the nomadic Kyrgyz
• www.crafts.kg – featuring traditional crafts such as feltwork and jewellery
• www.kyrgyzdiary.kg – about events that take place in Kyrgyzstan throughout the year

Tags: Celestial_Mountains, Kyrgyzstan, Websites