Hi,
Point well noted Abbas.
I wanna challenge the local wikipedians to really put more effort and
emphasis on local languages. Swahili and Kikuyu for our case. Its a pity
that Kikuyu has not had any edits for the past few months and it may soon be
among those lined up for closure. A few weeks a ago I saw an effort in SA
calling for people to save a language, since heather was among those leading
this campaign she can share with us her experiences and startegies that we
can use to have more editors esp. on local languages. I would also be happy
to see people like Steve and Raidarmax taking a lead role in ensuring that
we get a few more Kikuyu editors.
Nice afternoon.
On 29 September 2011 15:04, Abbas Mahmood <abbasjnr(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Dear Heather et al.,
I am glad that we have someone from Ushahidi subscribed to our list :)
Anyway, back to the issue of the Google competitions: yes, you are right
that the challenge didn't result in an editor retention. However, I
personally think that the challenge was a success. I define success here by
the following:
-There is now an (upcoming) Kenyan chapter that has arisen as a result of
the Google competition.
-The Kenyan chapter is, IMO, very active and rejuvenated. This has led us
into carrying out quite a number of Wikimedia-related events like offline
Wikipedia projects, Wikipedia takes Nairobi and talking at various events.
In short, the Kenyan chapter and all these aforementioned activities were
as a direct consequence of the Google competition. So it may have not served
as a good tool for editor retention, but it very much aided the Wikimedia
movement in achieving its mission and Strategic Plan (specifically with
regard to offline and increasing reach) in Kenya (the "Global South").
However, the editor retention problem has been one of my personal concerns,
and that was the primary reason I started WikiSaturdays -- where chapter
folks gather one Sat. every month to edit (although, arguably, they haven't
been as successful, thus far).
So, with the upcoming Google challenge in Botswana, I would not solely
analyse its success with the number of editors retained after the challenge,
but how the challenge assisted Wikimedia to achieve its overall mission
and/or strategic plan in Botswana.
Sincerely,
Abbas Mahmood,
Learners' Voice 2011 Member: World Innovation Summit for Education*
http://www.wise-qatar.org*
From: hfordsa(a)gmail.com
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:32:10 -0700
To: wikimediake(a)lists.wikimedia.org; wikimediaza(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikimedia Kenya] Stats for WP Africa
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN_Africa/ReportCardAfrica.htm
This was interesting. I'm wondering whether the spike in Swahili was
because
of the Google competition? Also interesting to see how the
competition didn't result in more editors in the long term (something that I
think has been mentioned before)
Heather Ford
Ethnographer: Ushahidi / SwiftRiver
http://ushahidi.com |
http://swiftly.org
@hfordsa on Twitter
http://hblog.org
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