Yesterday Yuri, ED of WMUA (and my college in FDC) was interviewed in
the main morning program on Swedish Radio re the ua.wp contra ru:wp in
Ukraine and of Kazak WIkipedia
The 8 minutes report is half in Swedish and half in English so a bit
hard to listen to [1]
The most interesting parts are
*The Kazak dictator is making all academics in this country to update
the Kazan version of Wikipedia, perhaps to get it POV but mostly so they
will not be dependent of ru:wp, ie he sees it as a must to have a decent
Wikipedia version in order to be independent of the culture from Russia
*In Ukraine the former education minister (pro eu and pro Ukrainian
language) actively promoted the ua:wp so not be dependent on ru:wp. The
current minister have the opposite idea and has made Russian an
official second language in the eastern part of Ukraine
*It seems the university students make it as almost a political choice
if to use ua:wp or ru:wp, and then in western Ukraine choose ua:wp
The central role of Wikipedia in theses vital political issues I have
not heard of from our ordinary "western" chapters/language versions (or
is catalonian/Amical an example)
And reflecting on this, I also think, even if independent, of the
dramatic increase of use of arabic and indonesian wikipedia [2] . Also
of Vietnamese wikipedia which has a tremendous increase in number of
article by intellegent use of bots. Also of the very interesting
development in India, with their many different language versions.
We here very little (nothing?) from these interesting developments,
where we all probably can have a lot to learn
Asaf talks of the problem of getting Global South started as there are
very weak/missing wp communities. But are we as a movement doing enough
to support the active communities and developments in the Global East?
(I can not help also think of Sues words re elections within the
movement. Do these processes conserve our existing dominance in Board
and groups of representatives coming from western world?)
Anders
[1]
http://sverigesradio.se/api/radio/radio.aspx?type=db&id=4725418&cod…
[2]
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htmtic
increase of use of arabic wikipedia