Dear Jon

This is an exciting project!! I have been wanting to do something similar with the UNESCO heritage sites for so long - and am so glad you have initiated this plan. I will definitely be helping - And I think we can definitely help to get the word out in several countries across Africa!! 

Warmest
Isla
 


On 26 Apr 2016, at 10:50 PM, Florence Devouard <anthere@anthere.org> wrote:



Le 26/04/16 14:54, john cummings a écrit :
Hi all

hi John

I have met a few of you over Skype and in person before at Wikimedia events, I'm currently working at UNESCO.

May 5th is African World Heritage Day and I was thinking about running a small online campaign for it.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1364/

I have an idea and would like to know what you thought and how it could be improved upon.
I think it is a great idea...


I would like to encourage editors in many languages to write Wikipedia and Wikivoyage articles about the World Heritage sites in Africa through social media and also on Wikipedia and Wikivoyage.

I want to make this as multilingual as possible so I've used dynamic Wikidata Lists to create this table which shows which articles are available in which language. I think its a really nice way to create a project 'hit list' using Wikidata.

https://tools.wmflabs.org/listeria/dynamic.html?#list=148

There are a few Wikidata items down the bottom of the list that are blank or with very few articles, I need to fix this, they're duplicate items so don't point to any articles or only one or two.

Great table
The one thing I am missing here to make it appealing is...
1) the name of the country where the site is located
2) whether there is at least an image of the site, or not. Ideally... link to Commons category page IF it can be automated.

My personal suggestions are
1) that table should be transfered on a wiki page
2) that it be divided in two tables actually... one about wikipedia and the other about wikivoyage
3) name of country added
4) organise it per country perhaps ?
5) for each article, we could add an indicator to show the general state of it (without making it painful. Something fairly simple)

Whilst meta would be a cool place to coordinate that... the real effect is ON the project itself (Wikipedia...) for a simple good reason... it is exciting to see the blue links and the red links.
On meta... everything is blue... whether it exists or does not exist.



Some questions I'm currently thinking about:
  • What languages should be included in the list? The languages I currently have are the 6 UN languages + a few other popular languages but this is easy to change.
am not sure
  • What should be the aim of the campaign? E.g to create articles where they don't exist in smaller Wikipedias.
well... I have a question. I see 137 items (and you say a few are duplicates). Do those are the entirety of WH sites ? (= is there at least one article in one language for each site; or are some sites missing ? If some are missing... how many sites are missing ? )
If ALL sites are listed here... make it a call for translation (and improvement if people feel like it)
If SOME sites are missing... make it a call to make sure that ALL sites have at least one article in a language

Make it a 2-4 weeks effort.


  • Should I include both Wikivoyage and Wikipedia or just stick to Wikipedia, or should I split into two tables?
both. Two tables
  • Is the tool easy enough for experienced editors to use to find where articles don't exist yet? Its a shame they can't click on a button where the gap is to just write or translate the article.
Not simple enough. Should be a wiki table with links to explain rules and translation tool etc.
  • Does anyone want to work with me on this?
I love it. Not sure how much time I will have to dedicate to it though. On the 5th, unless it is cancelled, I will be travelling (somewhere in Marocco). But I can help a bit I am sure.
 
  • Where and how should we encourage people to take part
On social media, we have plenty of accounts to relay this (usergroups, wikilovesafrica, wikiafrica etc.). Project pages could be created on local wikipedias.... we can quite easily do it in French and English. But need to find local relays for other languages (if no local relay... use meta at least to have a global page and tables). Can get Wikimedia Foundation to do a blog (ask Ed). Then village pumps. Some mouvements can help relay as well, such as WikiFranca.

  • Does this need a homepage or can it simply be a tweet that can be translated? This would allow it to be shared in many languages easily.
Depends how much time you can dedicate to this. But the idea seems cool enough to do more than a tweet.
All thoughts welcome

Flo

Thanks

John


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