Kasper,
I am on sw-wikipedia. At wikiindaba in Joburg I gave an overview about African language
wikipedias.
Cf
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/African_language_Wikipe…
There are 6 with more than 10.000 entries. Of these Malagasy and Yoruba have lots of fake
content, their statistical numbers hide a lot of empty shells. The small but fairly solid
one is Afrikaans, Swahili a bit shaky but not doing badly. Amharic has a lot of chances
(but hampered by very poor internet access in Ethiopia). Masri I have no judgement......
Somali, although hardly existing, also has a good chance once there is a bit of peace
(fantastic viewer share amongst ALWs).
You wrote about workshops for West African languages. I am cautious. These tiny wikipedias
need content for casual users to join in. My impression of wikiindaba (my first Wikimedia
meeting ever) was: lots of people who like conferences, to communicate and organize but do
not produce content. Few producers. A workshop (especially if you pay the participants and
the participants are not paying you) CAN be a starter for a language but if it does not
take off afterwards you probably will not force it by repeats.
East African SW-experience was similar. Great workshops in Kenya, lots of material
produced when there was an incentive (google promised some laptops fo winners of an
article writing competition), lots of lousy Swahili uploaded (horrible google-translate
stuff), and after the competetion: quiet. Very, very few who registered for competition
ever showed up again. If - only rarely.
If there is a need to have a Wikipedia in a language it will come.
I think it is worthwhile to prepare structures and starter sets online for people to kick
in. But no amount of workshops etc. will overcome lack of internet access, inability to
read and write a widely spoken language, and the contempt for own culture.
Cheers, Kipala - Ingo
-----Original Message-----
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 13:40:30 +0100
From: Kasper Souren <kasper.souren(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [African Wikimedians] Afripédia Douala
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My email was sent too quickly. There are few more things I wanted to bring up:
I'm curious about (creating) connections between Francophone and Anglophone
contributors. It seems WikiAfrica has mainly been about the English Wikipedia and
Afripédia is almost only about the French Wikipedia. How many people on this list speak
French? How many have contributed to French language projects?
And then there is the question of African languages. Personally I think this is where
Africa can gain most. How many of you have contributed in African languages? Which
languages Any obstacles?
There is a mailinglist list about Wikipedia in African languages which has been active
since 2006:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Afrophonewikis