Oldak Quill wrote:
Not at all. The best way to improve the site would be to work with other langauge Wikipedias and within Wikimedia. Are you being active in seeking members?
Yes, I am, however, our culture is alien to the Wikipedia culture and there are going to be issues with the way the site operates. So far every Cherokee who has edited on WP has gotten banned or scrutinized to the point they leave. We have a concept of respecting the space of a person who is working on something.
WP 's policies allow a 16 year old with a computer to come in and disrupt someone else's work and this doesn;t work for us. Our culture is based on mutual respect, and I believe WP and Wales operate on the premise people on WP should be the same way. This has not been the course followed. I think WP should continue and we can do hat we need with the content -- off site where our cultural issues can coexist peacefully.
You wont get many native people editing here due to the way the site is organized -- respect for others is lacking in the way articles are edited. It's ok though, we can still both be successful if we figure out a way to create dual environments where folks can be successful.
I am meeting w9ith the tribal council of the Ute, Shoshone, and Unita Nations on July 18, at 1:30 in Fort Duschene on the machine translations for their Wikipedia, so I am making excellent progress. They also expressed a desire to host their content off Wikipedia due to their review of the issues with how the site works -- its alien to most native cultures. The Ute's believe their language is sacred and they don't want non speakers working on it for religious reasons. You are going to find this is a prevalent attitude among Native Peoples. The ute's did not even allow their langauge to be written down until the mid 1970's due to their religious beliefs, so this is a big step for them.
Jeff
On 13/07/06, Jeff V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
Oldak Quill wrote:
Most Wikimedia projects don't translate "Wikipedia", "Wiktionary", and "Wikimedia", they transliterate them. Even non-Latin alphabets do this: Russian Wikipedia is called "Википедию" which transliterates as Ve-I-Ka-I-Pe-Ye-De-I-Ya (those are the names of the letters, at least). Does Cherokee have some kind of formal transliteration system?
On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com wrote:
The name should be:
ᏗᎪᏪᎵ ᎦᏣᏄᎳ
(digoweli gatsanula) "the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "
to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".
The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the language, and was synthesized.
Just a suggestion...
Jeff
Yes. it does have one for words like this, but taking potshots at the name can create something you do not intend.
Let's look at it:
Wi-gi-que-di-ya
wi - (negative imperfect past tense) gi - to combine que - incomplete verb root about an animal di - plural for a non living object ya - broad area of concern (means "pertains to or covers a broad area or topic)
While it is interesting some of the points and counter points about this issue, isn't this something better left to be discussed on project pages by participants and made as a local decision? At least I would feel more comfortable with people who are involved with the development of the project (aka Cherokee Wikipedia content developers) instead of getting European or Austrialian attitudes from people who may never even add a single word to that project.
This whole discussion strikes me as something very similar to when the name Wikipedia itself was coined, along with all of the other major sister projects and their names.
There are no participants on the site. The site has been dead for months. Probably because NONE OF THEM SPEAK CHEROKEE. Perhaps best thing is to close the site completely and I'll just manage the fork off Wikipedia.
Jeff
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