FYI, the Kikuyu (Gĩkũyũ) Wikipedia https://ki.wikipedia.org/ has passed the 1000 article milestone, currently with 1321 articles. At the end of January it had only 847.
A quick look at random pages, however, shows many of the pages are single sentence articles on cities. Still, it would be interesting to know more about who has been doing the recent editing, and their plans.
One evident gap is that the interface (commands) has not yet been translated into Kikuyu.
Don Osborn
*
Whoever it was, they seem to have given up. There have been zero active editors in the past few months. :(
A.
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 6:14 PM, Don Osborn dzo@bisharat.net wrote:
FYI, the Kikuyu (Gĩkũyũ) Wikipedia https://ki.wikipedia.org/ has passed the 1000 article milestone, currently with 1321 articles. At the end of January it had only 847.
A quick look at random pages, however, shows many of the pages are single sentence articles on cities. Still, it would be interesting to know more about who has been doing the recent editing, and their plans.
One evident gap is that the interface (commands) has not yet been translated into Kikuyu.
Don Osborn
African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
Thanks. This is one of the ongoing challenges for small Wikipedias. It helps to keep the focus on them, but also needed, I think, is recruitment of individuals with skills and interest (that's a long discussion). For small projects, one or a few individuals can have tremendous impact - a current example is the Northern Sotho (aka Sepedi) Wikipedia https://nso.wikipedia.org/
Don
On 5/11/2016 8:06 PM, Asaf Bartov wrote:
Whoever it was, they seem to have given up. There have been zero active editors in the past few months. :(
A.
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 6:14 PM, Don Osborn <dzo@bisharat.net mailto:dzo@bisharat.net> wrote:
FYI, the Kikuyu (Gĩkũyũ) Wikipedia https://ki.wikipedia.org/ has passed the 1000 article milestone, currently with 1321 articles. At the end of January it had only 847. A quick look at random pages, however, shows many of the pages are single sentence articles on cities. Still, it would be interesting to know more about who has been doing the recent editing, and their plans. One evident gap is that the interface (commands) has not yet been translated into Kikuyu. Don Osborn * _______________________________________________ African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians-- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org
African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
Yes, Aliwal2012's work is impressive. But toiling on one's own often leads to burnout, after a while.
"Recruitment of individuals with skills and interest", as you say, is indeed the key. It has proven a quite formidable challenge, for the non-colonial African languages. Even Swahili, the largest of the African language Wikipedias, has been largely cultivated by non-native-speaker (but fluent) Europeans (Three of the four very active editors of that Wikipedia are Europeans.)
In other words, for various reasons it has proven much harder to attract native Swahili (and Zulu, and Sotho) speakers to edit Wikipedia in those languages. It seems to me that over and beyond the objective infrastructural difficulties (Internet access, availability of source material in those languages, etc.), the key obstacle is self-motivation: volunteering to create and curate encyclopedic knowledge -- a bit of a weird hobby *everywhere* in the world -- is even less appealing in Africa. It is anyone's guess what might be done about that. Perhaps some videos focusing on the *why* more than the *how* could be attempted.
A.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:18 AM, Don Osborn dzo@bisharat.net wrote:
Thanks. This is one of the ongoing challenges for small Wikipedias. It helps to keep the focus on them, but also needed, I think, is recruitment of individuals with skills and interest (that's a long discussion). For small projects, one or a few individuals can have tremendous impact - a current example is the Northern Sotho (aka Sepedi) Wikipedia https://nso.wikipedia.org/
Don
On 5/11/2016 8:06 PM, Asaf Bartov wrote:
Whoever it was, they seem to have given up. There have been zero active editors in the past few months. :(
A.
On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 6:14 PM, Don Osborn dzo@bisharat.net wrote:
FYI, the Kikuyu (Gĩkũyũ) Wikipedia https://ki.wikipedia.org/ has passed the 1000 article milestone, currently with 1321 articles. At the end of January it had only 847.
A quick look at random pages, however, shows many of the pages are single sentence articles on cities. Still, it would be interesting to know more about who has been doing the recent editing, and their plans.
One evident gap is that the interface (commands) has not yet been translated into Kikuyu.
Don Osborn
African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
-- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org
African-Wikimedians mailing listAfrican-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
Thanks again. Various other ideas have been suggested over the years, such as star-power (collaborate with selected celebrities about some aspect of Wikipedia in an African language they speak, write in, perform in, etc.), education (generally projects to use Wikipedia in education in Africa focus only on Europhone editions, esp. English and French, as these have a lot of material, but ignore African language editions - it would be easy to expand the scope), problem-focused (for instance health - the WikiMed project aims to expand coverage of basic medical topics in many languages, but African languages have not had as much attention as others worldwide). There could be others.
It would be interesting to try to coordinate several efforts such as the above on a small number of smaller African language editions for a period of a few years to see how they develop.
Another model which is controversial is that of paying local students or experts to author articles for African language editions. The Bambara Wikipedia got an important start this way (though it hasn't grown much in the years since). I think it is worth exploring how this approah might be productively used while also minimizing potential longterm disincentives to voluntary contribution.
Don
On 5/18/2016 4:23 AM, Asaf Bartov wrote:
Yes, Aliwal2012's work is impressive. But toiling on one's own often leads to burnout, after a while.
"Recruitment of individuals with skills and interest", as you say, is indeed the key. It has proven a quite formidable challenge, for the non-colonial African languages. Even Swahili, the largest of the African language Wikipedias, has been largely cultivated by non-native-speaker (but fluent) Europeans (Three of the four very active editors of that Wikipedia are Europeans.)
In other words, for various reasons it has proven much harder to attract native Swahili (and Zulu, and Sotho) speakers to edit Wikipedia in those languages. It seems to me that over and beyond the objective infrastructural difficulties (Internet access, availability of source material in those languages, etc.), the key obstacle is self-motivation: volunteering to create and curate encyclopedic knowledge -- a bit of a weird hobby *everywhere* in the world -- is even less appealing in Africa. It is anyone's guess what might be done about that. Perhaps some videos focusing on the *why* more than the *how* could be attempted.
A.
On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:18 AM, Don Osborn <dzo@bisharat.net mailto:dzo@bisharat.net> wrote:
Thanks. This is one of the ongoing challenges for small Wikipedias. It helps to keep the focus on them, but also needed, I think, is recruitment of individuals with skills and interest (that's a long discussion). For small projects, one or a few individuals can have tremendous impact - a current example is the Northern Sotho (aka Sepedi) Wikipedia https://nso.wikipedia.org/ Don On 5/11/2016 8:06 PM, Asaf Bartov wrote:Whoever it was, they seem to have given up. There have been zero active editors in the past few months. :( A. On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 6:14 PM, Don Osborn <dzo@bisharat.net <mailto:dzo@bisharat.net>> wrote: FYI, the Kikuyu (Gĩkũyũ) Wikipedia https://ki.wikipedia.org/ has passed the 1000 article milestone, currently with 1321 articles. At the end of January it had only 847. A quick look at random pages, however, shows many of the pages are single sentence articles on cities. Still, it would be interesting to know more about who has been doing the recent editing, and their plans. One evident gap is that the interface (commands) has not yet been translated into Kikuyu. Don Osborn * _______________________________________________ African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians -- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians_______________________________________________ African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians-- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org
African-Wikimedians mailing list African-Wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/african-wikimedians
african-wikimedians@lists.wikimedia.org