Re: [African Wikimedians] African-Wikimedians Digest, Vol 8, Issue 139 African languages wikipedias

Hi Isaac, I do not understand any Yoruba but from my point of view I see quality as probable reason for problems you mention including small readership. Yoruba Wikipedia has many extremely short articles even on basic subjects. ( Odò (river), Erékùsù (Island), Omi (water), Òkun Atlántíkì (Atlantic), Odò Niger (Niger River), Samuel Ajayi Crowther (first author of a Yoruba grammar, first African Anglican bishop) are less than one or even a half line of text.) It looks like much was written with an eye on the ranking tables and the aim to have a large number of articles, even if there is hardly content (Sáyẹ́nsì - science has 4 (!) words of text). In 2013 there were 31,000 articles. Only 5,400 had more than 200 characters plus one reference. (cf https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesTotalAlt.htm). This is poor quality and not interesting for coming back, recommending it to others by using the text on a blog or linking to it. As for google - I think it IS indexed but it seems not the very short ones. I find that google search shows me the Yoruba wikipedia. I entered the above words in search and got most of them. But very short entries are not visible on top of google search list (at all??). Like I search Sáyẹ́nsì = 4 words = 25 characters and it does NOT show. But I GET the "Sáyẹ́nsì categories" which have more words and I GET "Sáyẹ́nsì aládánidá" which has 16 words. This looks like a major reason for few readers, because we get most visitors on wikipedia thru the search machines. So if you want to boost yo.wikipedia and if you forgive me an advice: forget about facebook, start with the list at https://yo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ẹ̀ka:Oluilu_ipinle_Naijiria (Category:State capitals in Nigeria) and put some content into these 1-liners, many of which until now do not show on google. Once you make them 5-liners, they start to be helpful and will be visible on the search machines. And then go to this list of 100 basic articles for any wikipedia and see that they get 5-liners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/ Level/2 . (General rule: first sweat, then genius!) I add a word for our co-readers in the foundation: for many small and growing wikipedias the ranking list on Meta is a temptation to trick themselves up. We have the situation that everybody has different categories for stubs vs. articles and the rankings: Meta official count, Meta list of 1000 articles every Wikipedia should have, the 10,000-list, the count of stubs on wikistats, and finally the de-stub definition here at african-wikimedians (some or many of the successes are maybe not destubbed by Meta-criteria) . Eric Zachte probably saw the problem in his numbers years ago and so did the "alternative article count" which kept the tiny articles out, but it never was taken up and is not continued. I think it would be helpful to integrate it into the regular statistic count and convince the guys who do lists to agree on common criteria. The state of Yo-wiki looks to me like a result of giving in to the temptation and it had its reward by shooting up in the ranking - but what for? Cheers, Ingo - Kipala Am 02.12.2016 um 19:55 schrieb african-wikimedians-request@ lists.wikimedia.org: Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2016 14:48:57 +0000 From: "Olatunde Isaac" <reachout2isaac(a)gmail.com> <reachout2isaac(a)gmail.com> To: "Mailing list for African Wikimedians" <african-wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org> <african-wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [African Wikimedians] African-Wikimedians Digest, Vol 8, Issue 136 African languages wikipedias Dear Kipala, Thanks for the clarification. I agree with your analysis and I'm sure it would be helpful in moving forward to achieving our goal of making knowledge available in all languages. Below are the two major problems I have identified with Yoruba Wikipedia: 1. Yoruba Wikipedia is not indexed on Google and possibly on other search engines too. I discovered this sometimes in July and I informally discussed the problem with a Steward on facebook. Unfortunately, he has no idea of how to solve the problem. Yoruba Wikipedia like the English Wikipedia is a digital encyclopedia. There is no way its contents could be read if not indexed on Google or other search engines. I believe once this is resolved, there would be a significant difference. I will discuss the problem with our engineering team at the Foundation this week. 2. Yoruba is a major language in Nigeria but only 1 of 10 people are aware of its existence. I recently launched the "Yoruba Wikipedia" page on facebook to create awareness about it. In fact, I discovered recently that Yoruba language scholars and students are not even aware of anything called "Yoruba Wikipedia". I believe this can be resolved with outreach to Yoruba language department of academic institutions in Nigeria. Furthermore, I would appreciate any advice and recommendation in solving the highlighted problems above. Best, Isaac _______________________________________________ African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians