Well... Not that teaching languages—big or small—is bad, but wouldn't we be losing focus if we got into it?
Wikibooks and Wikiversity can theoretically be places for teaching. Are they good at it? Probably not. Should they be made better? Maybe.
בתאריך 27 בפבר׳ 2018 19:52, "Jean-Philippe Béland" jpbeland@wikimedia.ca כתב:
Amir,
I agree with everything you said, especially that languages are knowledge in themselves, but I must say that Wikimedia is not doing much in an effort to teach languages to people. Why isn't there more effort at the WMF or as a movement to try to develop a platform to teach languages?
Jean-Philippe Béland Vice President and Programs Coordinator, Wikimedia Canada Coordinator, Wikimedians of North American Indigenous Languages User Group _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)
Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or not: https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90-bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20...
Have you seen how much Wiktionary has been growing in Brazil? https://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2018/02/14/seo-world-rankings-2018/
Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s
Best regards, Jim
On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 11:14 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Well... Not that teaching languages—big or small—is bad, but wouldn't we be losing focus if we got into it?
Wikibooks and Wikiversity can theoretically be places for teaching. Are they good at it? Probably not. Should they be made better? Maybe.
בתאריך 27 בפבר׳ 2018 19:52, "Jean-Philippe Béland" jpbeland@wikimedia.ca כתב:
Amir,
I agree with everything you said, especially that languages are knowledge in themselves, but I must say that Wikimedia is not doing much in an effort to teach languages to people. Why isn't there more effort at the WMF or as a movement to try to develop a platform to teach languages?
Jean-Philippe Béland Vice President and Programs Coordinator, Wikimedia Canada Coordinator, Wikimedians of North American Indigenous Languages User Group _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I don't think it would be losing focus as it fits directly in the mission of the movement to share the sum of human knowledge, since languages are knowledge in themselves.
Yes I agree that Wikiversity could be used for that, but this project really needs support to get to current standards of "online courses", and I don't see much push in that direction.
JP
On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 2:23 PM James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)
Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or not: https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90-bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20...
Have you seen how much Wiktionary has been growing in Brazil? https://blog.searchmetrics.com/us/2018/02/14/seo-world-rankings-2018/
Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s
Best regards, Jim
On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 11:14 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Well... Not that teaching languages—big or small—is bad, but wouldn't we
be
losing focus if we got into it?
Wikibooks and Wikiversity can theoretically be places for teaching. Are they good at it? Probably not. Should they be made better? Maybe.
בתאריך 27 בפבר׳ 2018 19:52, "Jean-Philippe Béland" <
jpbeland@wikimedia.ca>
כתב:
Amir,
I agree with everything you said, especially that languages are knowledge in themselves, but I must say that Wikimedia is not doing much in an
effort
to teach languages to people. Why isn't there more effort at the WMF or
as
a movement to try to develop a platform to teach languages?
Jean-Philippe Béland Vice President and Programs Coordinator, Wikimedia Canada Coordinator, Wikimedians of North American Indigenous Languages User
Group
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
2018-02-27 21:23 GMT+02:00 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)
... Yeah, and building an authoritative dictionary is considerably harder than building a (de facto) authoritative encyclopedia. Despite, I have enormous respect for Wiktionary, and great (great!) hopes about Lexical Wikidata.
Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or not: https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90- bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20/1/
Why not :)
Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s
Um... thanks for the publicity :)
But no, that's not what I said. I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it. Of course, if that point didn't come through, it's my fault.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it.
I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative to the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia articles?
On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 1:11 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
2018-02-27 21:23 GMT+02:00 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)
... Yeah, and building an authoritative dictionary is considerably harder than building a (de facto) authoritative encyclopedia. Despite, I have enormous respect for Wiktionary, and great (great!) hopes about Lexical Wikidata.
Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or not: https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90- bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20/1/
Why not :)
Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s
Um... thanks for the publicity :)
But no, that's not what I said. I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it. Of course, if that point didn't come through, it's my fault.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
A person language is a key part of their culture, their knowledge, and their identity to truly understand a concept its best shared in its original language. Since our goal is to freely share the sum the all knowledge we should be endeavouring to encourage every culture to use its own language. Indigenous languages have and continue to be suppressed by the colonial languages making any decision to deny a language project, or to translate an article based on one written in another language is political decision that has greater impact. Wikipedias have by the very nature of what we have created become to be seen as part of a languages(cultures) recognition and online identity.
Tim its not hard to imagine a community of 100,000 who are held back because there is no Wikipedia in their language when you look at how much Wikimedia projects are now at the centre of knowledge systems on the web. For the last four years I have been working with the Noongar community to establish a Wikipedia in Noongar. The noongar language is widely used within English language here in Western Australia such is impact that we have over 2 million people who use noongar in their daily lives yet it gets called Australian english. The influence of noongar goes beyond the words and permeates through the Western Australian culture to understand that impact one needs to be able to access that knowledge.
So how do those people who are monolingual interact with computers at the moment, its really quite simple they dont computer literacy in Indigenous communities is well behind that of the colonial based language communities in the same country. In the process of reaching out for that knowledge we need to ensure we do more than just take.
On 28 February 2018 at 07:25, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it.
I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative to the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia articles?
On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 1:11 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
2018-02-27 21:23 GMT+02:00 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
Languages are taught by authoritative dictionaries (after people, and ahead of almost all other similar reference books.)
... Yeah, and building an authoritative dictionary is considerably harder than building a (de facto) authoritative encyclopedia. Despite, I have enormous respect for Wiktionary, and great (great!) hopes about Lexical Wikidata.
Wiktionary has multiple teaching functions whether we want it to or not: https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/efe362e1-fe80-4c90- bc1e-4ab2d9bbae20/1/
Why not :)
Amir, you know it would not be losing focus because of what you said in your talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_xJaqQV71s
Um... thanks for the publicity :)
But no, that's not what I said. I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that
knowing
English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it. Of course,
if
that point didn't come through, it's my fault.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
2018-02-28 1:25 GMT+02:00 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it.
I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative to the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia articles?
We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. We are making it possible to write them and to read them. It is not the same thing as teaching subjects.
Should we do teaching? Maybe, but since it's different from making it possible to write and read, I'm afraid it would be losing focus.
Is there anything bad about teaching languages? Of course not. It's great. I'm just not sure that it's the right thing for Wikimedia to do, when Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki articles.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity and other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand what you are saying.
JP
On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 2:32 AM Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2018-02-28 1:25 GMT+02:00 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it.
I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative to the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia articles?
We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. We are making it possible to write them and to read them. It is not the same thing as teaching subjects.
Should we do teaching? Maybe, but since it's different from making it possible to write and read, I'm afraid it would be losing focus.
Is there anything bad about teaching languages? Of course not. It's great. I'm just not sure that it's the right thing for Wikimedia to do, when Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki articles.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
This thread brought me to think of an article I wrote on Norwegian Wikipedia about a year ago. It was about the Allex Project (African Languages Lexical Project), a project where universities in Oslo, Gothenburg and Harare cooperated in developing monolingual text corpus based dictionaries for shona and ndebele languages in Zimbabwe.
The project resulted in a dictionary in shona, establishing a lexicographic institute at the university of Zimbabwe, African Languages Research Institute, 10 doctor degrees for zimbabwians and much more. Shona and ndbele were lifted from spoken language to university level and acknowledged as education language.
There is a wikipedia in shona language. It has 3106 articles. If one could engage some of the people that worked in the Allex Project to do a paid translation job, it would benefit about 14 million speakers, shona is the most spoken Bantu language, Zulu is next to shona, spoken by 10 million, according to our articles.
https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALLEX-prosjektet
Greetings from frozen, sunny Norway
Harald Haugland
2018-02-28 15:03 GMT+01:00 Jean-Philippe Béland jpbeland@wikimedia.ca:
The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity and other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand what you are saying.
JP
On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 2:32 AM Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2018-02-28 1:25 GMT+02:00 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it.
I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative to the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia articles?
We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. We are making it possible to write them and to read them. It is not the same thing as teaching
subjects.
Should we do teaching? Maybe, but since it's different from making it possible to write and read, I'm afraid it would be losing focus.
Is there anything bad about teaching languages? Of course not. It's
great.
I'm just not sure that it's the right thing for Wikimedia to do, when Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki articles.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
That is a very good example!
On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 11:39 AM, Harald Haugland harhaugl@gmail.com wrote:
This thread brought me to think of an article I wrote on Norwegian Wikipedia about a year ago. It was about the Allex Project (African Languages Lexical Project), a project where universities in Oslo, Gothenburg and Harare cooperated in developing monolingual text corpus based dictionaries for shona and ndebele languages in Zimbabwe.
The project resulted in a dictionary in shona, establishing a lexicographic institute at the university of Zimbabwe, African Languages Research Institute, 10 doctor degrees for zimbabwians and much more. Shona and ndbele were lifted from spoken language to university level and acknowledged as education language.
There is a wikipedia in shona language. It has 3106 articles. If one could engage some of the people that worked in the Allex Project to do a paid translation job, it would benefit about 14 million speakers, shona is the most spoken Bantu language, Zulu is next to shona, spoken by 10 million, according to our articles.
https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALLEX-prosjektet
Greetings from frozen, sunny Norway
Harald Haugland
2018-02-28 15:03 GMT+01:00 Jean-Philippe Béland jpbeland@wikimedia.ca:
The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity
and
other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand
what
you are saying.
JP
On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 2:32 AM Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2018-02-28 1:25 GMT+02:00 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it.
I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative
to
the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia articles?
We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. We are making it possible
to
write them and to read them. It is not the same thing as teaching
subjects.
Should we do teaching? Maybe, but since it's different from making it possible to write and read, I'm afraid it would be losing focus.
Is there anything bad about teaching languages? Of course not. It's
great.
I'm just not sure that it's the right thing for Wikimedia to do, when Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki articles.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
There are something similar to paid translations in what you may call prioritized articles. That is articles that are so important for a language that they should be written, no matter whether they exist in a larger language.
For example in the Northern Sami Wikipedia there should be an article about Sami border guides during WWII. The article at nowiki describes exclusively border guides between Norway and Sweden, [1] which where a rather low intensity border during WWII. The frontier between Norway and Russia was much more hostile, and later in the war also the frontier between Norway and Finland. The article at enwiki is similar. [2] There are a number of good sources, and also some quite interesting articles.[3][4][5]
I wonder if such important articles can be prioritized on a list of paid work by WMF, as they are extremly important to balance facts that otherwise can go unnoticed by the community. We as a community tend to write about our interests, and so reflects the interest of the larger society. That society is not necessarily aware of some of the biases that is inherent in our common knowledge.
[1] https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenselos [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_guide [3] https://forskning.no/andre-verdenskrig/2015/02/risikerte-livet-ble-fratatt-a... [4] https://www.nrk.no/nordland/vil-ha-frem-samenes-krigsinnsats-1.11694527 [5] https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/samiske-grenseloser-reddet-tusenvis-sa-ble-...
That would be a very good project! Exactly the kind of thing that would be a good implementation of John Erling's suggestion in his opening email. I'd support it.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2018-03-01 12:39 GMT+02:00 Harald Haugland harhaugl@gmail.com:
This thread brought me to think of an article I wrote on Norwegian Wikipedia about a year ago. It was about the Allex Project (African Languages Lexical Project), a project where universities in Oslo, Gothenburg and Harare cooperated in developing monolingual text corpus based dictionaries for shona and ndebele languages in Zimbabwe.
The project resulted in a dictionary in shona, establishing a lexicographic institute at the university of Zimbabwe, African Languages Research Institute, 10 doctor degrees for zimbabwians and much more. Shona and ndbele were lifted from spoken language to university level and acknowledged as education language.
There is a wikipedia in shona language. It has 3106 articles. If one could engage some of the people that worked in the Allex Project to do a paid translation job, it would benefit about 14 million speakers, shona is the most spoken Bantu language, Zulu is next to shona, spoken by 10 million, according to our articles.
https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALLEX-prosjektet
Greetings from frozen, sunny Norway
Harald Haugland
2018-02-28 15:03 GMT+01:00 Jean-Philippe Béland jpbeland@wikimedia.ca:
The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity
and
other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand
what
you are saying.
JP
On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 2:32 AM Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2018-02-28 1:25 GMT+02:00 James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com:
I was not trying to say that everybody should learn English. The point I was trying to make there is that knowing English is a privilege and that it is easy to not notice it.
I agree with that, too. How is teaching language different relative
to
the Foundation Mission than teaching subjects of encyclopedia articles?
We are not *teaching* encyclopedia articles. We are making it possible
to
write them and to read them. It is not the same thing as teaching
subjects.
Should we do teaching? Maybe, but since it's different from making it possible to write and read, I'm afraid it would be losing focus.
Is there anything bad about teaching languages? Of course not. It's
great.
I'm just not sure that it's the right thing for Wikimedia to do, when Wikimedia should be busy getting even better at its main thing: wiki articles.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
2018-02-28 16:03 GMT+02:00 Jean-Philippe Béland jpbeland@wikimedia.ca:
The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity and other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand
what
you are saying.
Paid translation of Wikipedia articles to underresourced languages is a project that I can easily imagine. What needs to be done is quite clear; the questions are how to get the resources for this, and how to make it not too biased for undesirable interests, neither Western nor local.
Improving Wikiversity (or Wikibooks) is possibly a valid thing, but I just don't know how to do it. Of course, I'm not the only person in this movement; I'm just one of thousands of editors, and I also happen to be an analyst in the Foundation staff, and my decision-making capacities are very, very limited. If anybody has a *good* idea on how to improve them, it would be awesome.
When I compare a project with a pretty easy-to-draft path, and an understandable goal (paid translation, growing a language's online presence), to a project the goal of which is finding ideas for how to improve Wikiversity, I'd bet my resources on paid translation (if it even was my decision to make). And I have to remind again, that I, in particular, am very biased about the topic of translation, so really, you don't have to agree with me ;)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
One idea which was spelled out many times but never took off is that of a Wiki-compendium. If we are talking about a language which is let us say not endangered, has a reasonably large number of speakers but not millions, and only has a limited number of sources published in this language - the Wiki-community is typically not large, may be a dozen or a couple of dozens speakers. Yakut (Sakha) is a good example of such language, Tatar would be another one. They do not have resources to support Wikipedia, Wikisource, and possibly even Wikibooks and Wiktionary at the same time, and they have to concentrate on Wikipedia as the largest project. The idea was that for such languages the traditional division between sister projects is not really useful, but one project, which would comprise Wikipedia, Wikisource, and possibly others would be much better so that the editors would just be in one central place, and every speaker of this language would know what the place is. The idea is old, at least as old as LangCom, and the fact it never took off probably means that it is somehow flawed - I just do not know how.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 3:59 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2018-02-28 16:03 GMT+02:00 Jean-Philippe Béland jpbeland@wikimedia.ca:
The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity
and
other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand
what
you are saying.
Paid translation of Wikipedia articles to underresourced languages is a project that I can easily imagine. What needs to be done is quite clear; the questions are how to get the resources for this, and how to make it not too biased for undesirable interests, neither Western nor local.
Improving Wikiversity (or Wikibooks) is possibly a valid thing, but I just don't know how to do it. Of course, I'm not the only person in this movement; I'm just one of thousands of editors, and I also happen to be an analyst in the Foundation staff, and my decision-making capacities are very, very limited. If anybody has a *good* idea on how to improve them, it would be awesome.
When I compare a project with a pretty easy-to-draft path, and an understandable goal (paid translation, growing a language's online presence), to a project the goal of which is finding ideas for how to improve Wikiversity, I'd bet my resources on paid translation (if it even was my decision to make). And I have to remind again, that I, in particular, am very biased about the topic of translation, so really, you don't have to agree with me ;)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Yaroslav,
I like this idea of a compendium. It reminds me of cross-wiki search and the ability to look up words on mobile Wikipedia. I believe that WMF Discovery has been working on cross-wiki search. Perhaps, for smaller communities, there would be a way to extend the Discovery team's efforts into supporting the compendium that you describe. If LangCom or certain language communities would be interested in this then I would encourage those interested people to contact the Discovery team.
There might also be people from SWMT and from Community Tech who would be interested in this idea.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 7:40 AM, Yaroslav Blanter ymbalt@gmail.com wrote:
One idea which was spelled out many times but never took off is that of a Wiki-compendium. If we are talking about a language which is let us say not endangered, has a reasonably large number of speakers but not millions, and only has a limited number of sources published in this language - the Wiki-community is typically not large, may be a dozen or a couple of dozens speakers. Yakut (Sakha) is a good example of such language, Tatar would be another one. They do not have resources to support Wikipedia, Wikisource, and possibly even Wikibooks and Wiktionary at the same time, and they have to concentrate on Wikipedia as the largest project. The idea was that for such languages the traditional division between sister projects is not really useful, but one project, which would comprise Wikipedia, Wikisource, and possibly others would be much better so that the editors would just be in one central place, and every speaker of this language would know what the place is. The idea is old, at least as old as LangCom, and the fact it never took off probably means that it is somehow flawed - I just do not know how.
Cheers Yaroslav
On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 3:59 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2018-02-28 16:03 GMT+02:00 Jean-Philippe Béland jpbeland@wikimedia.ca:
The Wikimedia movement is more than encyclopedias... We already have Wikiversity for teaching, no? Are efforts to contribute to Wikiversity
and
other sister projects making us lose focus? I'm not sure to understand
what
you are saying.
Paid translation of Wikipedia articles to underresourced languages is a project that I can easily imagine. What needs to be done is quite clear; the questions are how to get the resources for this, and how to make it
not
too biased for undesirable interests, neither Western nor local.
Improving Wikiversity (or Wikibooks) is possibly a valid thing, but I
just
don't know how to do it. Of course, I'm not the only person in this movement; I'm just one of thousands of editors, and I also happen to be
an
analyst in the Foundation staff, and my decision-making capacities are very, very limited. If anybody has a *good* idea on how to improve them,
it
would be awesome.
When I compare a project with a pretty easy-to-draft path, and an understandable goal (paid translation, growing a language's online presence), to a project the goal of which is finding ideas for how to improve Wikiversity, I'd bet my resources on paid translation (if it even was my decision to make). And I have to remind again, that I, in particular, am very biased about the topic of translation, so really, you don't have to agree with me ;)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On the subject of paid translation, I could imagine this being included in the scope of work for a "Wiki Community Foundation" or "Wiki Content Foundation" that would do work that WMF doesn't do and/or shouldn't do. I have a number of activities in mind for this kind of organization. Unfortunately, I do not know how to fund it. I think that this organization should get most of its funding from non-WMF sources, and WMF has such strong fundraising capabilities that I think that competing with WMF for funding from readers and grant-making organizations would be very difficult. If WMF would like to have conversations about how the community could raise funds directly from readers and non-WMF foundations, I for one would be very interested in having that conversation.
Pine, why not ask your namesake? https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7jj0oa/im_donating_5057_btc_to_cha...
On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 7:13 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
On the subject of paid translation, I could imagine this being included in the scope of work for a "Wiki Community Foundation" or "Wiki Content Foundation" that would do work that WMF doesn't do and/or shouldn't do. I have a number of activities in mind for this kind of organization. Unfortunately, I do not know how to fund it. I think that this organization should get most of its funding from non-WMF sources, and WMF has such strong fundraising capabilities that I think that competing with WMF for funding from readers and grant-making organizations would be very difficult. If WMF would like to have conversations about how the community could raise funds directly from readers and non-WMF foundations, I for one would be very interested in having that conversation.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
If he/she sends a few million dollars to the community in a way that is independent of WMF, and we organize ourselves to accept and use the funds wisely, I will be very grateful. :)
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 6:46 PM, James Salsman jsalsman@gmail.com wrote:
Pine, why not ask your namesake? https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7jj0oa/im_donating_5057_btc_to_ charitable_causes/
On Sat, Mar 3, 2018 at 7:13 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
On the subject of paid translation, I could imagine this being included
in
the scope of work for a "Wiki Community Foundation" or "Wiki Content Foundation" that would do work that WMF doesn't do and/or shouldn't do. I have a number of activities in mind for this kind of organization. Unfortunately, I do not know how to fund it. I think that this
organization
should get most of its funding from non-WMF sources, and WMF has such strong fundraising capabilities that I think that competing with WMF for funding from readers and grant-making organizations would be very difficult. If WMF would like to have conversations about how the
community
could raise funds directly from readers and non-WMF foundations, I for
one
would be very interested in having that conversation.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
You guys are making the whole idea way to complex. There should be no editorial board. That goes against the whole wiki-way of doing things. There should be no additional foundation, that makes the whole idea unmanageable. It will also cost way more than the gain.
Make thing DarnSimple™! A single list covering all universally valid topics that a true encyclopedia should cover. Leave it to the translator to chose which source article to use, as this creates the best opportunity to find translators. Allow other editors to join in after publication, but do respect the primary translators effort. Split the payment in one for the initial translation, and one for the followup edits. Cap them to avoid bloated articles.
Make a DarnSimple™ interface to manage the translations, where the only action is for some identified user to tick of translated articles when they reach a certain threshold. In another interface the translator must identify himself with sufficient details to make the payment possible. This should be an optional part of the usual configuration of an account. All persons involved in the editing should have a split, but no payment will be done before the account for each editor reaches some threshold.
Make the core list big enough to create a real encyclopedia, but small enough that there are room for local additions. There should probably be some way to specify local articles, like municipalities, important authors, and politicians. A good test is whether such additional articles makes sense in neighboring countries or languages. If it isn't possible to describe such things in a generic way they should probably be left out. I'm not sure if it should be possible to exclude articles, but I guess it will be an issue for some languages. Think Armenian genocide, which is problematic for some countries.
A small single-book encyclopedia is about 60-70k articles, so lets say such a list would cover 25% of this. That would be a list of 15k articles. There are perhaps 50 Wikipedias that are large enough to be sustainable, and still small enough to miss articles on such a list. That would imply 750k articles, thus plenty of articles for those that would like to translate one! Lets say this project is spread over 10 years with a cap on each article at 2x USD 10, then it would cost about USD 1500k each year. I believe that would be manageable. (Quite frankly I doubt it would be possible to find many enough translators, so this will never reach the proposed levels!)
It should also be possible for an editor to let the payment go back to foundation. This would probably be the case for many users in industrial countries.
Perhaps it wasn't clear enough but the interface to manage translations would be for someone other than the involved translators, aka a third person within the local community, to accept the translation as valid and good enough. After it is ticked off as "done" further payment of that specific article will stop.
On Sun, Mar 4, 2018 at 11:27 AM, John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
You guys are making the whole idea way to complex. There should be no editorial board. That goes against the whole wiki-way of doing things. There should be no additional foundation, that makes the whole idea unmanageable. It will also cost way more than the gain.
Make thing DarnSimple™! A single list covering all universally valid topics that a true encyclopedia should cover. Leave it to the translator to chose which source article to use, as this creates the best opportunity to find translators. Allow other editors to join in after publication, but do respect the primary translators effort. Split the payment in one for the initial translation, and one for the followup edits. Cap them to avoid bloated articles.
Make a DarnSimple™ interface to manage the translations, where the only action is for some identified user to tick of translated articles when they reach a certain threshold. In another interface the translator must identify himself with sufficient details to make the payment possible. This should be an optional part of the usual configuration of an account. All persons involved in the editing should have a split, but no payment will be done before the account for each editor reaches some threshold.
Make the core list big enough to create a real encyclopedia, but small enough that there are room for local additions. There should probably be some way to specify local articles, like municipalities, important authors, and politicians. A good test is whether such additional articles makes sense in neighboring countries or languages. If it isn't possible to describe such things in a generic way they should probably be left out. I'm not sure if it should be possible to exclude articles, but I guess it will be an issue for some languages. Think Armenian genocide, which is problematic for some countries.
A small single-book encyclopedia is about 60-70k articles, so lets say such a list would cover 25% of this. That would be a list of 15k articles. There are perhaps 50 Wikipedias that are large enough to be sustainable, and still small enough to miss articles on such a list. That would imply 750k articles, thus plenty of articles for those that would like to translate one! Lets say this project is spread over 10 years with a cap on each article at 2x USD 10, then it would cost about USD 1500k each year. I believe that would be manageable. (Quite frankly I doubt it would be possible to find many enough translators, so this will never reach the proposed levels!)
+100 to this. Thank you, John.
I have slightly different ideas about what this should cost and how to encourage translators and support a 100k-person network of polylinguals + babelfish + just.in.time conversion tools to melt language barriers. But simplicity, focus, persistence are what matter.!
SJ
On Mar 4, 2018 5:28 AM, "John Erling Blad" jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
You guys are making the whole idea way to complex. There should be no editorial board. That goes against the whole wiki-way of doing things. There should be no additional foundation, that makes the whole idea unmanageable. It will also cost way more than the gain.
Make thing DarnSimple™! A single list covering all universally valid topics that a true encyclopedia should cover. Leave it to the translator to chose which source article to use, as this creates the best opportunity to find translators. Allow other editors to join in after publication, but do respect the primary translators effort. Split the payment in one for the initial translation, and one for the followup edits. Cap them to avoid bloated articles.
Make a DarnSimple™ interface to manage the translations, where the only action is for some identified user to tick of translated articles when they reach a certain threshold. In another interface the translator must identify himself with sufficient details to make the payment possible. This should be an optional part of the usual configuration of an account. All persons involved in the editing should have a split, but no payment will be done before the account for each editor reaches some threshold.
Make the core list big enough to create a real encyclopedia, but small enough that there are room for local additions. There should probably be some way to specify local articles, like municipalities, important authors, and politicians. A good test is whether such additional articles makes sense in neighboring countries or languages. If it isn't possible to describe such things in a generic way they should probably be left out. I'm not sure if it should be possible to exclude articles, but I guess it will be an issue for some languages. Think Armenian genocide, which is problematic for some countries.
A small single-book encyclopedia is about 60-70k articles, so lets say such a list would cover 25% of this. That would be a list of 15k articles. There are perhaps 50 Wikipedias that are large enough to be sustainable, and still small enough to miss articles on such a list. That would imply 750k articles, thus plenty of articles for those that would like to translate one! Lets say this project is spread over 10 years with a cap on each article at 2x USD 10, then it would cost about USD 1500k each year. I believe that would be manageable. (Quite frankly I doubt it would be possible to find many enough translators, so this will never reach the proposed levels!) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi John, perhaps I'm overlooking something. If you recommend that there be no additional foundation, then who will pay the translators to translate articles? Are you envisioning WMF paying translators directly, or WMF paying a third party organization to pay the translators, or a third party organization executing a self-funded or crowdsourced initiative to pay translators?
SJ, I'd be interested in getting a fuller description of your thoughts.
Thanks,
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Sun, Mar 4, 2018 at 2:27 AM, John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
You guys are making the whole idea way to complex. There should be no editorial board. That goes against the whole wiki-way of doing things. There should be no additional foundation, that makes the whole idea unmanageable. It will also cost way more than the gain.
Make thing DarnSimple™! A single list covering all universally valid topics that a true encyclopedia should cover. Leave it to the translator to chose which source article to use, as this creates the best opportunity to find translators. Allow other editors to join in after publication, but do respect the primary translators effort. Split the payment in one for the initial translation, and one for the followup edits. Cap them to avoid bloated articles.
Make a DarnSimple™ interface to manage the translations, where the only action is for some identified user to tick of translated articles when they reach a certain threshold. In another interface the translator must identify himself with sufficient details to make the payment possible. This should be an optional part of the usual configuration of an account. All persons involved in the editing should have a split, but no payment will be done before the account for each editor reaches some threshold.
Make the core list big enough to create a real encyclopedia, but small enough that there are room for local additions. There should probably be some way to specify local articles, like municipalities, important authors, and politicians. A good test is whether such additional articles makes sense in neighboring countries or languages. If it isn't possible to describe such things in a generic way they should probably be left out. I'm not sure if it should be possible to exclude articles, but I guess it will be an issue for some languages. Think Armenian genocide, which is problematic for some countries.
A small single-book encyclopedia is about 60-70k articles, so lets say such a list would cover 25% of this. That would be a list of 15k articles. There are perhaps 50 Wikipedias that are large enough to be sustainable, and still small enough to miss articles on such a list. That would imply 750k articles, thus plenty of articles for those that would like to translate one! Lets say this project is spread over 10 years with a cap on each article at 2x USD 10, then it would cost about USD 1500k each year. I believe that would be manageable. (Quite frankly I doubt it would be possible to find many enough translators, so this will never reach the proposed levels!) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org