[Wikipedia-l] bambara

[Mark Williamson]

Hi Anthere

I have heard about the project and am skeptical if it will really work
or not, but I totally support it because I hope it does. (this could
mean growth opportunities for other Wikipedias, primarily in languages
spoken mostly in third-world areas: so far there is no single
African-language Wikipedia, other than Afrikaans, with over 100
articles, even Swahili which drew some attention for a while; also
some other Wikipedias might be candidates, ie central asian languages,
native american languages could get a lot of grant money probably)

We do need to be careful though that bm.wikipedia does not turn into a
portal for telling people about GC Mali. It isn't quite so bad (the
way the Wolof Wikipedia got, I mean), but we should still be careful.

Also we should have to consider the issue of Bambara in the context of
Mande. Should t there be one Wikipedia for all varieties of Mande
(includes Bambara)? Or should there be a multitude of smaller
Wikipedias for each variety? With either option (but especially the
first!)  NKo script conversion needs to be considered.

Mark


On 27/05/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Just to keep up with information.... I saw an announcement today in two websites, so thought it worth to say a bit about it
> 
> .... Perhaps to divert our gentle editors from daily life in France or in the USA ... (grin)
> 
> News from a very minor wikipedia (I think this deserves to be reported in next Quarto Sj, I'll write up a bit....)
> 
> The association Geekcorps recently (it started possibly 2 months ago) made a lot of efforts to try to stimulate a minor wikipedia in an african language.
> Along with work in translation of the interface, addition of major rules and principles of Wikipedia, Geekcorps also decided to motivate editors speaking bambara in Mali to participate to the bambara wikipedia (http://bm.wikipedia.org) in a *financial* way.
> 
> The conditions : to live in Mali and to be able to write in bambara.
> The prize is : 200 CFA to earn per article written with at least 200 words (max 5000 CFA per person) plus a bonus prize for specific actions.
> Specific actions are
> 1) translation of document or interface
> 2) start a wikibooks on Bamanankan
> 3) start Bamanankan Wikiquotes
> 4) start Bamanankan Wiktionary
> 5) start another wikipedia in other languages spoken in Mali
> 
> (Note that there are no requirement of quality to get the prize per article, but the length)
> 
> Geekcorps also remind to Mali editors that Mali people might be interested in the following languages
> * french (fr)
> * english (en)
> * fulfude (ff)
> * wolof (wo)
> 
> ----------------
> 
> The bambara version is still not very active, but Guaka is working on it from time to time. But what I find interesting is the organisation proposal... this way might be one of the good ones to really get such versions off the ground. Ie, a wikipedia being babysitted by a local organisation.
> 
> I think there is much interest in following such initiatives. What do you think ?
> 
> Please also look at the site of MaliWiki : http://mali.geekcorps.org/mediawiki/index.php/Accueil (based on mediawiki)
> 
> ----------------
> 
> Note that there are a couple of slightly embarassing little issues related to these attempts by local organisations.
> For example, when an organisation (ANAFA) made some work on the wolof version about 3 months ago, someone asked me a sysop account, which I gave (usual process for small projects).
> I however noticed soon after that the main page was a bit cluttered with quite a bit of advertisement for their organisation. (see for example http://wo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=1482)
> I tried to discuss to them about that, and since we did not really reached an agreement, I had to remove the sysop status.
> 
> Since then, the wo is inactive.
> 
> Ant
> 
> 
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