I have to made a amendment to my comment - power supply may not be a
suitable topic - I almost forget the rule which Josh set down. I can't
think of something which can link power supply and cultural heritage. But I
can still link water supply and transportation with culture - In China, we
have the ancient irrigation system of Dujiangyan. Ancient Chinese do
business with people from Asians, and even Europeans. The overland and
maritime Silk Road served as the route of transportation for the merchants.
Cheers,
2013/8/19 梁忠明 <sprconan(a)gmail.com>
Hi, everyone.
Sorry for my English proficiency - I used about 3 days to read all emails
here.
I am not a participant of this dialogue until now. As I am concerned about
the scheme, I am here to voice about my opinions about it.
First, I will talk about the listing issue. Josh had stated that wiki
communities in Asia can either submit a country list or a language list of
article for collaboration/translation. I think the issue can be
controversial:
1. If we choose to submit a country list, then only those
cultural/biological things which are known nationwide is to be promoted.
Regional cultures will fall apart. Also, listing by country may trigger
some political debates about the sovereignty of some places - I will stop
here and provide no more explanations. You know that.
2. Though a list by language maybe a better option, I can still find
some problems - take Mainland China as a example. When Cantonese, Wu
dialect and Zhuang language have their own Wikipedia, some dialects still
don't have their Wikipedia (e.g. Hunan dialect and Manchu language). Then
some regional culture will be promoted, when others don't. It seems that
some regional cultures will be privileged in this circumstance. Also, how
about those commonalities of these regional cultures (e.g. Hinduism,
Buddhism, Chinese culture)? I remember Craig has said that doing this will
bring more volunteer for us. I had think for that - How will we coordinate
and arrange their work/duties? How can we administrate a user group with a
numbers of members? I once talk with another Chinese Wikipedian during the
Wikimania, and we agreed that more volunteers can make a big task (e.g.
improve/create articles in Wikipedia; in this case, our scheme) easier to
finish, but also a potential source of controversies and debates.
I don't have a firm stance for which option should be adopted. I just
think that each regional communities can adopt either one based on their
actual situation. Maybe some will submit a national list, some will submit
article lists by languages - that's okay, no problem.
For the number of articles for collaboration per 3 month - in my viewpoint
- 12-13 is already enough - one per week. Each community should nominate 10
articles per country or 2-3 articles per language# for collaboration. For
other arrangements, I agree the merged suggestion mentioned by Josh. I
don't know how the work efficiency of our colleagues is. Nevertheless, I
just want to remind all that we should not overestimate our actual ability.
Though Francis, our colleague from Hong Kong suggested that we can choose
the weekly article by counting the clickthrough rates, but I think that's
not good - do we prefer choosing an article randomly or by its time
order/controversial nature?
For the topic, Nature, climate, culture and customs are acceptable.
Transportation, water supply and electric network can also be a topic -
e.g. the article *Cebu Bus Rapid Transit* has not being updated for a
year (until when I was read for the last time). Some may say that comparing
with nature and culture, these topic is more related to the politics. But
I'll say it's not like that - even the government of each country in Asia
should have its policy about the nature and culture! But of course,
political topics are to be avoided (and administrative unit also?).
Up to now, I still think that the scheme can be operated with the
assistance of the corresponding Wikiprojects and COTW projects in the
participating Wikipedias. They provide volunteers and resources, as well as
the list of articles which is waiting to be improved. Well-developed
Wikiprojects can also provide manpower. Though, I still doubt that will it
able to build momentum for the Wikiprojects/COTW project's future
development.
One last thing. I don't think that we should be too optimistic to comment
it as something which can surely connect the knowledge related to all
region/countries in Asia. As we have discussed before, Each Wikipedian
community is free to join or quit the program. Then, we cannot ignore the
reality that not every community is willing to do so. Also, have we inform
our colleagues from Central Asia, Middle East or Vietnam? If they are not
informed, then the things go on. Though more Wikipedias' participation of
the program means we may have the chance to achieve more, not all
communities is looking forward, especially the smaller ones - as the
manpower and resources they have is not enough to maintain such a
commitment for the scheme.
That's my opinion, and thank you to read for it. Feel free to discuss
about that.
Cheers,
Kevin
(known as Spring Roll Conan in Wikimedia projects)
#: National community may submit lists in several regional languages (eg.
Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam... for India, Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese...
for Indonesia). If 10 per language, the work we have to do will be heavy,
thus I suggest to reduce the number for the nominated articles per language
to pursue a more modest quantity of works we have to do.