On Tue Sep 5 20:13:59 UTC 2006 David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
Some will be improved with good promotion, others will need efforts extended from our virtualworld community. And it would be a possible task and challange for the Foundation, but for that, a careful and thoughtful approach, collaboration of other organizations both local and global etc will be expected.
Has anyone asked Free Software Foundation India if they're interested in this? It's not absolutely part of their primary mission, but open content is quite related to open software, and it's under the GFDL, which is an FSF licence; and pride in local content can be developed into pride in local software (under a free licence), not least in helping Mediawiki localisation.
I'm just joining the thread, but I can answer your question to some extent.
I am a bureaucrat of the Bengali Wikipedia (bn), which has increased in size from 500 articles in March 2006, to 8970 articles as of now. This phenomenal growth has been achieved via a full scale media campaign in Bangladesh, which has 75-80% (150 million) of all Bengali language speakers. Bangladehs Open Source Network, a proponent of Bangla localization and other open source technology, has promoted this a lot.
We have regular updates in the local (Bangladeshi) news media, and a BBC Bengali World service programme (radio) covered the movement in this May. Actually, we had set a target of 10,000 total articles and 1000 total good quality ones by May 2007, but with a lot of efforts, and somewhat semi-automated imports, the 10k article will probably be reached within 15 days from now.
Access to the Internet is a privilege in Bangladesh ... until a few months ago, the country only had satellite linkage (V-SATs) to the Internet, only got submarine cable connection 2 months ago. So, Bangladesh Open Source Network has taken up an office, and arranged so that interested writers can send content via postal mail, which can be entered into bn-wiki by people who have Internet. I myself have received articles via email (from people with offline Internet access), and added them.
So, we have a huge number of interested people in Bangladesh, and the Bengali Wikipedia development is gaining a lot of media coverage there. This shows up in the statistics from Kelly Martin, where, Bangladeshi editors have added up to 60% of total edits. Around 25% came from the US, but that's most likely the few (2 or 3) Bangladeshi and West Bengali expatriates here (including me), who are very active.
Definitely, we are planning to open a Wikimedia chapter in Bangladesh soon. A limited edition of Bengali wikipedia on CD is also planned for the Language Movement commemorative Book Fair in February 2007.
Thanks
Ragib
(en:Ragib , bn:Ragib )
Ragib Hasan wrote:
On Tue Sep 5 20:13:59 UTC 2006 David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
Some will be improved with good promotion, others will need efforts extended from our virtualworld community. And it would be a possible task and challange for the Foundation, but for that, a careful and thoughtful approach, collaboration of other organizations both local and global etc will be expected.
Has anyone asked Free Software Foundation India if they're interested in this? It's not absolutely part of their primary mission, but open content is quite related to open software, and it's under the GFDL, which is an FSF licence; and pride in local content can be developed into pride in local software (under a free licence), not least in helping Mediawiki localisation.
I'm just joining the thread, but I can answer your question to some extent.
I am a bureaucrat of the Bengali Wikipedia (bn), which has increased in size from 500 articles in March 2006, to 8970 articles as of now. This phenomenal growth has been achieved via a full scale media campaign in Bangladesh, which has 75-80% (150 million) of all Bengali language speakers. Bangladehs Open Source Network, a proponent of Bangla localization and other open source technology, has promoted this a lot.
We have regular updates in the local (Bangladeshi) news media, and a BBC Bengali World service programme (radio) covered the movement in this May. Actually, we had set a target of 10,000 total articles and 1000 total good quality ones by May 2007, but with a lot of efforts, and somewhat semi-automated imports, the 10k article will probably be reached within 15 days from now.
Access to the Internet is a privilege in Bangladesh ... until a few months ago, the country only had satellite linkage (V-SATs) to the Internet, only got submarine cable connection 2 months ago. So, Bangladesh Open Source Network has taken up an office, and arranged so that interested writers can send content via postal mail, which can be entered into bn-wiki by people who have Internet. I myself have received articles via email (from people with offline Internet access), and added them.
So, we have a huge number of interested people in Bangladesh, and the Bengali Wikipedia development is gaining a lot of media coverage there. This shows up in the statistics from Kelly Martin, where, Bangladeshi editors have added up to 60% of total edits. Around 25% came from the US, but that's most likely the few (2 or 3) Bangladeshi and West Bengali expatriates here (including me), who are very active.
Definitely, we are planning to open a Wikimedia chapter in Bangladesh soon. A limited edition of Bengali wikipedia on CD is also planned for the Language Movement commemorative Book Fair in February 2007.
Thanks
Ragib
(en:Ragib , bn:Ragib )
I am glad to read that :-)
ant
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