Where does the number 750,000 speakers come from? And what is the rationale
to exclude smaller linguistic communities?
I think emerging communities can have less speakers than that. A language
can be viable and alive with less speakers than that, so we are not talking
about preserving a language even if there are less speakers than that. If
the language is used in day to day life and to teach at schools, why
wouldn't it be considered for a Wikipedia and a Wiktionary even if there
are less than 750,000 speakers?
Thank you,
Jean-Philippe Béland
Vice President, Wikimedia Canada
On Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 04:29 Balázs Viczián, <balazs.viczian(a)wikimedia.hu>
wrote:
Hi Asaf et All,
Hope I won't get skipped because I barely talk on this list or in general
on an international level but this proposal could have a long term effect
on my chapter.
Happy to see WMF is ready to start giving up at least a bit on geography or
census numbers and shift focus to existing communities based on their
actual state and health.
I would suggest not stopping here but going forward by completely
abandoning geography and such overgeneralization where the entire world can
be described by 3 (that is three) labels.
Instead evaluate each community topic by topic.
Say one: governance. Even WMF itself had such a crisis, not to say the
British, German and now the French "developed" chapters. For them, better
organized but ever labeled "emerging" communities might have been able to
provide support, if their category would not be discouraging them from
stepping in.
Discouraging, yup. Put your hands on your hearts and be honest. We all
think that at least on a general level the "developed" should teach and
support the "emerging" and not the other way around, right?
Yet said governance as an example appears to be a lot more problematic for
the ever "developed" than the ever "emerging".
This proposal does not recognize such patterns but it is a big step forward
nevertheless as it shifts more focus on the existing communities. The
labels are in my subjective opinion are somewhat patronizing as per above.
Balazs,
from an ever "emerging" community
On Sep 27, 2017 19:30, "Asaf Bartov" <abartov(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Dear Wikimedians,
Years ago, as part of the first Strategy process of 2009-2010, a
distinction entered our lives, between Global North and Global South
countries. That distinction was borrowed from a United Nations agency
named ITU, and it was used as shorthand to refer to communities the
Foundation considered to need additional resources and help to achieve
impact on our mission of creating and sharing free knowledge.
However, the distinction was never a very good fit for us. It was based
on
UN notions like the Human Development Index, and
gave much weight to
nation-wide economic conditions. Its binary nature did not allow for
distinguishing between countries where Wikimedia work is possible and
happening, albeit with difficulty, and ones where no Wikimedia work, or
next to none, is happening, or possible. It also looked only at
geography,
whereas much of our work is defined by language
communities and not by
geographies. And it was political and alienating to many people.
In short, it was both not as useful as we needed it to be as well as
unloved and rejected by many.
The Community Resources team at the Wikimedia Foundation has been
thinking
about replacing that distinction with a more
nuanced one, that would be a
much better fit with our needs, would take into account the actual state
of
editing communities, would consider multiple axes
beyond geography, and
would be less controversial.
We began using the term "emerging communities" two years ago, first as a
replacement for the term Global South, but it has always been our
intention
to define Emerging Communities ourselves.
Finishing the proposed
definition took a back seat for a while due to other priorities, but we
are
ready to share the proposed definition today:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement/
Defining_Emerging_Communities
We welcome your thoughts, on the talk page (ideally) or on this thread.
The definition is already our working definition, but we are open to
incorporating changes to both wording and substance through October 31st.
Be sure to take a look at the FAQ supplied at the bottom of the page,
too.
:)
Cheers,
Asaf
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