On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 8:35 PM, Steven Walling <swalling@wikimedia.org> wrote:

On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 8:22 PM, Matthew Flaschen <mflaschen@wikimedia.org> wrote:
I am wondering why Tagalog is not mentioned (there is a Tagalog Wikipedia).

Though I am certain it's correct that a significant number of Filipinos
speak/write sufficient English to edit (and some of them may not even
know Tagalog), it would seem possible many people might prefer editing
in their mother tongue

I suspect a bunch of reasons. 
  1. English is actually an official language of the Philippines, and taught in school. Despite the fact that people in Philippines might be secondary speakers, they're potentially a good group to invite to join a geography-specific WikiProject. Unlike targeting say, a U.S. state, the population to draw from is enormous. 
  2. To my understanding, Tagalog Wikipedia suffers from confusion and conflict over which orthography to really use, which among other reasons keeps it small. This was one of the smaller projects studied as part of the WikiHistories undertaking, and there's more detail at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:WikiHistories_fellowship/Tagalog#Language
Our assumptions were similar to Steven's suspicions.  But also we've been seeing growing anecdotal evidence (and I'd love to have a citation for this, some day) from talking to people in Anglophone Global South countries like Kenya and the Phillippines, and to researchers like Heather Ford who study Wikipedia in the Global South, that points to the idea that people often want to contribute to projects with wide readership.  If you speak and write 2 languages equally well, but one will be read by many many more people both locally and internationally, this can be a motivating factor.  

When Tanvir did the Small Wiki Engagement Project (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Small_Wiki_Editor_Engagement_Project), for example, one of the things he noticed that many people come to Bangla Wikipedia via English Wikipedia.  They start reading in English (because of word of mouth, or what Google preferences in returns, or because many searchers don't have Bangla fonts enabled for input, I don't know), they create their first account in English, and only later do they learn about the Bangla version and start getting engaged in Bangla.  I've heard this is true in India as well.  If so, it may be a good reminder to think about English as an entry-point for other language wikis, and expect there is room for further experimentation on that front, as well as in local-language wikis - we'd love to see similar experimentation in Tagalog, if anyone is inspired by this, of course! 

--

_______________________________________________
EE mailing list
EE@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ee




--
Siko Bouterse
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

sbouterse@wikimedia.org

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. 
Donate or click the "edit" button today, and help us make it a reality!