[Wikipedia-l] probably one of the most remarkable Wikipedians to date...

[Andy Rabagliati]

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005, guaka at no-log.org wrote:

> I was too optimistic about what would be the right incentive (200 CFA is too little).
> 
> > An issue I have, though, is: how many speakers of Bamana and Fulfulde
> > have access to the internet, to actually read these articles? How many
> > even have access to a computer?
> 
> 1) Very very little.
> 2) A bit more.
> 
> Another question: how many speakers of Bamanan and Fulfulde are actually able to read?
> 
> Quite some more, but only very very optimistic estimations are higher than 30%. It's
> more likely to be 10% or so.

And can they also speak French ?

> > wider dissemination of internet technologies in Mali, Nigeria, Burkina Faso,
> > Guinea...?

However, wikipedia does not need Internet.

Put a copy of fr and Bamako on a Linux box there,

> There is a lot activity there as well. Often one internet connection is shared by
> radio station, hospital, CLIC and municipality office.
> BTW, most Geekcorps Mali partner radios aren't equipped with internet yet. Geekcorps
> first wants to make sure that people at the radio actually use the computer for their
> radio shows. However, I did add the wik2dicted French and Bambara Wikipedias to

I see you have done that ..

> Kunnafonix, the one-question-GNU/Linux-installCD. With fellow Geek Sebastian I also
> added the creation of Debian packages to wik2dict, in order to make it easier to get
> this stuff spreaded.

I must check that out. Sounds great.

> Maybe some of you know of another compressed hypertext format that does
> include images? I like DICT for its spead and simplicity, but it lacks images...

No pictures ? Still very useable.
 
> The possession rate of mobile phones in Mali is probably something like 1%. But many
> mobile phones are often used by entire families, just like fixed lines in the rich
> world. And an African family is somewhat larger than a western family...

And mobile phones are much more commonplace than landlines.

> But maybe this all sounds too optimistic. But it also seems interesting to get in
> touch with African mobile phone operators to set up a service where people can access
> information. The colonial language Wikipedias are already interesting enough to get
> this done. Read out live even by flesh-and-blood persons when there's no ogg version
> yet.

Discussions and conference in Pretoria talked about SMS'ing your
request, and a voice callback with the first para of the article.

> Another thing to take a look at is text-to-speech synths. It's a challenge to write an
> interface to access Wikipedia, that can be used by people who are not able to read.
> 
> What I haven't mentioned in this message yet: The existence of an encyclopedia in
> their own language, written by themselves, will probably give people a boost of
> confidence in their language.

I think you are right.

Cheers,  Andy!