You may want to be sure and explain exactly what the GFDL entails in this case. There is no guarantee that any work that is done under this license will be treated in a sacred manner by downstream users. Non-speakers would be within full rights to take the fork made in the Ute's language and put it up on a new website or even on Wikipedia where any "16 year old with a computer" will be able to edit it.
Wikipedia is alien to most cultures I imagine. It is alien to capitalist culture and academic culture to name two. However many people accostomed to those cultures learn to adapt to and even appreciate WP culture. I think you are focusing too much on the negative at WP and overlooking the positives of inter-culture collaboration. I hope your endeavor succeeds in any event.
Birgitte SB
--- "Jeff V. Merkey" jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com 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.
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
"ÐикипедиÑ" 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: > >ááªáªáµ á¦á£áá³ > >(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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