[Foundation-l] small Wikipedia projects - follow-up to Jimmy Wales' talk

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Do you have an URL for this project ?
Thanks,
      GerardM

On 18 July 2010 15:45, Oliver Keyes <scire.facias at gmail.com> wrote:

> There's an en-wiki project I'm getting involved in that is planning
> "outreach" to smaller wikis. Would you like me to give you a ping when we
> launch?
>
> On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <
> amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>
> > 2010/7/18 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> > > Amir, we talked about issues with right to left languages at Wikimania
> in
> > > Gdansk, that is another can of wurms where we need people to pick up
> the
> > > slack. At translatewiki.net we are looking for developers who are able
> > and
> > > willing to help solve technical issues that have to do with allowing
> > > structures commons to languages. Examples are multiple plural forms,
> > > addressing people by their gender, addressing people in a formal or
> > informal
> > > way.
> >
> > OK. This is certainly important and i am willing to hear more thoughts
> > about that. Another significant technical issue about which i would
> > want to read is how do such outreaching wiki-activists cope with poor
> > or non-existent network infrastructure in such places.
> >
> > But i am particularly curious not about the technical issues, but
> > about people's experiences - if there are any - with the actual
> > content.
> >
> > For example, i can quite easily imagine teachers in some countries
> > saying: "Why should we write encyclopedia articles or textbooks in our
> > local language? Textbooks should be written in English / Russian /
> > French / Spanish / Portuguese." Did anyone have to cope with that?
> >
> > I am not even talking about countries where it is a question of
> > language preservation; for example, in regions of Russia such as
> > Tatarstan or Sakha most people know Russian and many know Russian
> > better than their regional language. In this case, writing a Wikipedia
> > in Tatar is not an immediate educational necessity, because Russian
> > textbooks are accessible to people. It is rather a question of
> > preserving the local culture; i strongly support that, but there are
> > worse cases.
> >
> > I am rather talking about countries in, for example, Africa, where
> > people don't necessarily know English or French well, but where
> > education nevertheless functions mostly in a foreign language. Do
> > people there even imagine that it's possible or desirable to write an
> > encyclopedia in their language? Given all the technical tools and
> > support, will they actually think that it's worth doing it?
> >
> > These are the challenges about which i am most curious.
> >
> > There are, of course, many other issues, technical and non-technical:
> > lack of words for modern and foreign things, lack of standard
> > orthography, low literacy rates, etc. I am willing to hear about all
> > the aspects.
> >
> > --
> > אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni
> >
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> >
> > "We're living in pieces,
> >  I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>