Well, my impression, and I'm by no means an expert in this (I'm not associated with Google), is that they emphasized quantity over quality and forgot to mention the importance of community to our projects.
I heard that for the Swahili Wikipedia contest at least, they gave away prizes... but perhaps they should've included a requirement that the articles they created be rated as "good" by the community, not full of errors and nonsense sentences, and that all project participants who want any chance at winning must respond to all talkpage messages within 72 hours (or something like that).
I think telling a group of newbies that they'll get a big prize if they translate the most articles is a recipe for disaster. What incentive do they have to make sure their translation is of good quality? What incentive do they have to stick around afterwards?
-m.
On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 9:10 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com wrote:
Mark Williamson:
GTTK can be used as a force of good if someone puts in the appropriate time and effort; when used _properly_ by a careful, knowledgeable
It is my thought that the huge problem here is lack of engagement with communities. Essentially, Google swooped down and started dropping
Agreed. Again, in my experience it is quicker and delivers more quality to translate by your own. If others have different experiences (it may depend on the language), okay. It seems that something went very wrong when telling people who to contribute to a Wikipedia language version. Could you report more about that, Mark?
Kind regards Ziko
-- Ziko van Dijk Niederlande
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