I agree Meta would be the right place for such a table. But a few other columns would be helpful:
1 Technical barriers. Do we need to make changes to Media Wiki Software, and are we dependent on changes to Lynux etc in order to enable people to edit in that language? 2 Literate population. This almost certainly influences our ability to recruit an editing community, and will be a major determinant as to the importance of getting workable text to speech interface for that language. 3 Current Online population, plus mobile penetration. 4 Political barriers. If almost all the people who speak a particular language live in a country that blocks the Internet or our parts of it then all we can do is lobby, or wait for reform. 5 Is there someone else already doing what we do for that language, and if so can we cooperate with them or are there aspects of there operation that are incompatible with our mission or ethos. 6 How many of these people are monolingual and how many are fluent in another language where they can access Wikipedia?
There's no point beating ourselves up if there are languages that we can't support until they change their Government. But if the barriers are under our control then that should be a different thing.
Whilst I agree that the eventual target is to make Wikipedia available to everyone, it would be good to set some intermediate targets:
We are likely to reach each of the following on the way to our target, and it would be great to announce them when we reach them: 1 90% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in a language that they understand 2 95% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in a language that they understand 3 99% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in a language that they understand 4 90% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in their native language 5 95% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in their native language 6 99% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in their native language
WereSpielChequers
On 05/22/2011 01:28 PM, George Herbert wrote:
Good work generally, but regarding this last list...
Afghanistan has many languages in use (Pashto, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek); Algeria uses Arabic, Berber, and French; Jordan's official language is Arabic (though the spoken one is a dialect); and generally so forth.
Can you break this out by which languages we are missing, not just by country, as country isn't specific enough?
Thank you.
Here is the table with all missing languages with more than 1M of speakers. See notes about usage (especially in the case of Arabic languages), as well as my reply to Denny about importance of native languages in primary education. Note also that we have a number of incubator projects in Arabic languages.
If any of you find some factual problem, please let me know.
It is likely that I'll put the complete list at Meta in the future.
On 22/05/11 18:29, WereSpielChequers wrote:
We are likely to reach each of the following on the way to our target, and it would be great to announce them when we reach them: 1 90% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in a language that they understand 2 95% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in a language that they understand 3 99% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in a language that they understand 4 90% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in their native language 5 95% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in their native language 6 99% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in their native language
WereSpielChequers
This raises the interesting prospect of bringing Wikipedia to the billion or more people who are currently illiterate, as the cost of access to mobile phones and network connectivity continues to fall to the point where it is becoming available even to some of the poorest people in the world, regardless of literacy. (Consider, for example, the reported increases in literacy in some parts of Africa as people learn literacy skills simply to be able to SMS their friends and use Facebook.)
As part of the WMF's mission, I wonder if it could be worth considering providing a Web-based English (or other language) literacy course that could start with very simple video lessons to give an elementary vocabulary first, and then allow the user to slowly bootstrap their language sophistication from there? Although this would be a massive job to create, once the mission was put in place, many people might be willing to crowdsource the needed content.
-- Neil
On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Neil Harris neil@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
As part of the WMF's mission, I wonder if it could be worth considering providing a Web-based English (or other language) literacy course that could start with very simple video lessons to give an elementary vocabulary first, and then allow the user to slowly bootstrap their language sophistication from there?
I think Wikiversity would love a English literacy course, if they don't have one already. :-) Their general discussion page is here: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Colloquium
On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Neil Harris neil@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote:
On 22/05/11 18:29, WereSpielChequers wrote:
We are likely to reach each of the following on the way to our target, and it would be great to announce them when we reach them: 1 90% of literate people have a version of wikipedia available in a language that they understand
I like this idea for milestones.
This raises the interesting prospect of bringing Wikipedia to the billion or more people who are currently illiterate, as the cost of access to mobile phones and network connectivity continues to fall to the point where it is becoming available even to some of the poorest
Yes.
Improving literacy is one way to proceed, but has a number of points of failure: you have to have a good program, you have to convince people to undertake it, and they have to find the time (and have that much time in connectivity or access to the material) to successfully become literate.
Another way is to develop good text-to-speech in each language -- a finite problem -- and a way for illiterate people to search for what they want to know. [is there a visual way to do this? does it require speech-to-text, which is a distinctly harder problem to solve that is multiplied by dialects?]
I think we should start being more conscious of the state of TTS in each language we care about, once we have developed good ways to offer it to our visitors on various platforms. A mobile client that can [locally, on your phone] render text into speech would be a tremendous step forward.
providing a Web-based [English or other language] literacy course that could start with very simple video lessons to give an elementary vocabulary first, and then allow the user to slowly bootstrap their language sophistication
It seems to me that most countries in the world have it in their interest to develop excellent intro-literacy courses to help people learn their language, which could then be disseminated far and wide. As Casey says, Wikiversity would be a great place to host such work.
SJ
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