Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
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.
I guess this is a question of what you mean by Wikipedia culture. The concept of respect is a big part of it. The English Wikipedia just has a lot of ravens running around trying to impose it.
More like swift birds of prey, not intellectual ravens, I've got several sets of talon marks on my keyboard from WP experiences to show. :-)
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.
Mutual respect is not a function of an editor's age. There can just as easily be wise youth as there can be foolish elders.
The whole power admin thing is out of hand on the site. I think the energy of peoples karma can come home to roost, good and bad. WP is a lot like the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange when folks get going. Sound like someone we all know and love? :-)
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'm sure it's not the only reason they stay away. But the reason that you cite for the absence of first nations people can just as easily apply to people from other cultures, including ones whose only language is English.
One main reason is a lot of them are disinterested and don't have the resources. There are also political and religous issues as well for a lot of our folks.
I am meeting with 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.
I guess this depends on what you mean by "how the site works". I would certainly not encourage machine translations; the results are often something that makes native speakers laugh. Although technical material about how the site works is probably best translated, beyond that each language Wikipedia (or other project) develops its own culture.
Well, this machine translation and the software is being done by a Native speaker, and since the template is my brain for how the translations are done in software, one could say I translated them with a machine assist due to volume, so I guess one could say they were done by a Native Speaker and member of the culture. Once they have a large volume of content to edit, I think we are ok.
There have been a few words I've had to adapt to. I use a link parser for english decomposition then take the decomposed strings of morphemes and remap and tense them into Cherokee. Cherokee has a rigid structure so this makes it a lot easier to do. I do proofread and the latest run is now at 98% completeness and accuracy. I am shooting for 100% by the end of the summer.
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.
I have no basis for making comments specific to the Utes, but the linkage between language and culture is a well known one. This kind of connection where language was a part of the introduction to a culture's mysteries is even a common theme in European cultures. If it's meant to be the Ute material will come in its own time.
Correct. Not my call. I expect some of their own ambitious folks will drive that to happen. We just need to give them the space to come to that conclusion on their own.
Jeff
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