Gerard Meijssen wrote:

Hoi, Actually according to the standard Panjabi is the correct spelling. Thanks, GerardM

Hmmm...really? And I'm half Punjabi. You'd think I should know that. --Kul

Andrew Gray wrote:

For those curious as to overall statistics, that's about 270 language editions of Wikipedia, now. (The various lists seem to disagree slightly, and it's a little lower if we omit two "empty" projects).

I think we need to get away from counting articles and languages, as if all were equal and more were better. Some languages are far more successful than others. Some articles are far more useful than others. Perhaps some languages and articles should be considered as failures and not be counted among our achievements.

Of these 270 languages of Wikipedia, only 41 have more than 50,000 articles and only 69 had more than 1 million page views in July of 2009. The 69th most used Wikipedia is Swahili. This East African language has 50 million speakers, which is huge, but less than 13,000 Wikipedia articles. Can poverty and illiteracy alone explain why the Swahili Wikipedia is so far behind?

But Swahili is far from the worst. Swahili has twice as many speakers as the West African language Yoruba (50 vs 25 M, both are huge languages) and twice the number of articles (13 k vs 6.3 k), but the Swahili Wikipedia had 6 times as many page views (1.0 M vs 172 k). Somebody with knowledge of Africa should study this in more detail. For the speakers of these languages, in which proportions do they read (newspapers) or listen (to radio broadcasts) to get news and knowledge? Do they ever use (printed) encyclopedias?

People who speak Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Norwegian are very similar in wealth, education, living conditions, and computer literacy. Yet, the Danish Wikipedia is far smaller and less visited than the other three. How can that be? Traditionally, Danish is the more literate of these four cultures. If we can find out what holds the Danish Wikipedia back, and find a remedy, perhaps it can be applied to other languages as well.

Language Danish Norwegian Swedish Finnish (Bokmål) Speakers 6 M 4.7 M 9 M 6 M Size rank 102 111 78 103

Wikipedia articles 114 k 225 k 325 k 213 k Size rank 23 13 11 14

July 2009 page views 14.7 M 21.5 M 59.8 M 49.7 M Traffic rank 25 23 12 14 Annual growth +18 % +11 % +19 % +2 %

Views/speakers 2.4 4.6 6.6 8.3 Articles/spkr .019 .047 .036 .036 Spkrs/article 53 21 28 28

Length of article on Michael Jackson before his death 18 kB 20 kB 41 kB 20 kB Current length 70 kB 26 kB 60 kB 44 kB Views in July 72 k 58 k 175 k 136 k Views/speaker .012 .012 .019 .022

When compared to Swahili or Yoruba, all of these North European languages of Wikipedia have been very successful, having more page views in a month than speakers of the language, and much higher traffic rank (12-25) than language size rank (78-111). But the interesting aspect is the differences within such a group, that presumably should have been even more homogeneous.

The German language has 105 M speakers, 942 k Wikipedia articles, and 846 M page views in July 2009, i.e. 8.0 views/speaker (as high as Finnish), but only .009 articles per speaker of the language (half of Danish). The German Wikipedia is generally considered to be successful, yet it has a low number of articles per speaker of the language. So maybe articles/speaker is a useless metric.

If the Finnish Wikipedia can get 8.3 page views per speaker of the language with only 213 k articles, then perhaps their articles are better (more informative, more useful) than the larger number of articles in the Swedish Wikipedia, which only attract 6.6 page views per speaker of the language.

The German article on Michael Jackson got 2.1 M page views during July, or .020 per speaker of the language, similar to the Swedish and Finnish Wikipedia articles. Why did the Danish and Norwegian articles get only 12 page views per thousand speakers?

Hoi, Apparently you are not aware that the Bengali Wikipedia is the biggest resource in Bengali on the Internet. As a consequence it is a big success !! Sure there should be more articles and we would absolutely welcome more articles, more readers more positive attention for the Bengali Wikipedia.

One other way of looking at it is the quality of the technical support for Bengali. I think I remember that there are issues with the Bengali script. I also think I remember that there was no solution forth coming. If I remember well, I would argue that that despite the odds the Bengali language Wikipedia is doing really well. Thanks, GerardM

2009/8/20 Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com

Personally, I think the 20000 articles in the Bengali Wikipedia serving a speaking community of 230 million is an even better example of failure.

-Robert Rohde

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Lars Aronssonlars@aronsson.se wrote:

...

Andrew Gray wrote:

...

For those curious as to overall statistics, that's about 270 language editions of Wikipedia, now. (The various lists seem to disagree slightly, and it's a little lower if we omit two "empty" projects).

I think we need to get away from counting articles and languages, as if all were equal and more were better. Some languages are far more successful than others. Some articles are far more useful than others. Perhaps some languages and articles should be considered as failures and not be counted among our achievements.

Of these 270 languages of Wikipedia, only 41 have more than 50,000 articles and only 69 had more than 1 million page views in July of 2009. The 69th most used Wikipedia is Swahili. This East African language has 50 million speakers, which is huge, but less than 13,000 Wikipedia articles. Can poverty and illiteracy alone explain why the Swahili Wikipedia is so far behind?

But Swahili is far from the worst. Swahili has twice as many speakers as the West African language Yoruba (50 vs 25 M, both are huge languages) and twice the number of articles (13 k vs 6.3 k), but the Swahili Wikipedia had 6 times as many page views (1.0 M vs 172 k). Somebody with knowledge of Africa should study this in more detail. For the speakers of these languages, in which proportions do they read (newspapers) or listen (to radio broadcasts) to get news and knowledge? Do they ever use (printed) encyclopedias?

People who speak Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Norwegian are very similar in wealth, education, living conditions, and computer literacy. Yet, the Danish Wikipedia is far smaller and less visited than the other three. How can that be? Traditionally, Danish is the more literate of these four cultures. If we can find out what holds the Danish Wikipedia back, and find a remedy, perhaps it can be applied to other languages as well.

Language Danish Norwegian Swedish Finnish (Bokmål) Speakers 6 M 4.7 M 9 M 6 M Size rank 102 111 78 103

Wikipedia articles 114 k 225 k 325 k 213 k Size rank 23 13 11 14

July 2009 page views 14.7 M 21.5 M 59.8 M 49.7 M Traffic rank 25 23 12 14 Annual growth +18 % +11 % +19 % +2 %

Views/speakers 2.4 4.6 6.6 8.3 Articles/spkr .019 .047 .036 .036 Spkrs/article 53 21 28 28

Length of article on Michael Jackson before his death 18 kB 20 kB 41 kB 20 kB Current length 70 kB 26 kB 60 kB 44 kB Views in July 72 k 58 k 175 k 136 k Views/speaker .012 .012 .019 .022

When compared to Swahili or Yoruba, all of these North European languages of Wikipedia have been very successful, having more page views in a month than speakers of the language, and much higher traffic rank (12-25) than language size rank (78-111). But the interesting aspect is the differences within such a group, that presumably should have been even more homogeneous.

The German language has 105 M speakers, 942 k Wikipedia articles, and 846 M page views in July 2009, i.e. 8.0 views/speaker (as high as Finnish), but only .009 articles per speaker of the language (half of Danish). The German Wikipedia is generally considered to be successful, yet it has a low number of articles per speaker of the language. So maybe articles/speaker is a useless metric.

If the Finnish Wikipedia can get 8.3 page views per speaker of the language with only 213 k articles, then perhaps their articles are better (more informative, more useful) than the larger number of articles in the Swedish Wikipedia, which only attract 6.6 page views per speaker of the language.

The German article on Michael Jackson got 2.1 M page views during July, or .020 per speaker of the language, similar to the Swedish and Finnish Wikipedia articles. Why did the Danish and Norwegian articles get only 12 page views per thousand speakers?

-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hoi, One of the reasons why Danish has been sluggish may be that the localisation of Danish was not optimal; in Februari 83.66% of the MediaWiki messages and 14.11% of the WMF used extensions were localised. This has improved to 100.00% and 59.30% respectively ... compare this with Norwegian 100.00% 96.92% Nynorsk 100.00% 84.81% and Swedish 100.00% 99.33%.. Thanks, GerardM

2009/8/20 Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se

Andrew Gray wrote:

...

For those curious as to overall statistics, that's about 270 language editions of Wikipedia, now. (The various lists seem to disagree slightly, and it's a little lower if we omit two "empty" projects).

I think we need to get away from counting articles and languages, as if all were equal and more were better. Some languages are far more successful than others. Some articles are far more useful than others. Perhaps some languages and articles should be considered as failures and not be counted among our achievements.

Of these 270 languages of Wikipedia, only 41 have more than 50,000 articles and only 69 had more than 1 million page views in July of 2009. The 69th most used Wikipedia is Swahili. This East African language has 50 million speakers, which is huge, but less than 13,000 Wikipedia articles. Can poverty and illiteracy alone explain why the Swahili Wikipedia is so far behind?

But Swahili is far from the worst. Swahili has twice as many speakers as the West African language Yoruba (50 vs 25 M, both are huge languages) and twice the number of articles (13 k vs 6.3 k), but the Swahili Wikipedia had 6 times as many page views (1.0 M vs 172 k). Somebody with knowledge of Africa should study this in more detail. For the speakers of these languages, in which proportions do they read (newspapers) or listen (to radio broadcasts) to get news and knowledge? Do they ever use (printed) encyclopedias?

People who speak Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Norwegian are very similar in wealth, education, living conditions, and computer literacy. Yet, the Danish Wikipedia is far smaller and less visited than the other three. How can that be? Traditionally, Danish is the more literate of these four cultures. If we can find out what holds the Danish Wikipedia back, and find a remedy, perhaps it can be applied to other languages as well.

Language Danish Norwegian Swedish Finnish (Bokmål) Speakers 6 M 4.7 M 9 M 6 M Size rank 102 111 78 103

Wikipedia articles 114 k 225 k 325 k 213 k Size rank 23 13 11 14

July 2009 page views 14.7 M 21.5 M 59.8 M 49.7 M Traffic rank 25 23 12 14 Annual growth +18 % +11 % +19 % +2 %

Views/speakers 2.4 4.6 6.6 8.3 Articles/spkr .019 .047 .036 .036 Spkrs/article 53 21 28 28

Length of article on Michael Jackson before his death 18 kB 20 kB 41 kB 20 kB Current length 70 kB 26 kB 60 kB 44 kB Views in July 72 k 58 k 175 k 136 k Views/speaker .012 .012 .019 .022

When compared to Swahili or Yoruba, all of these North European languages of Wikipedia have been very successful, having more page views in a month than speakers of the language, and much higher traffic rank (12-25) than language size rank (78-111). But the interesting aspect is the differences within such a group, that presumably should have been even more homogeneous.

The German language has 105 M speakers, 942 k Wikipedia articles, and 846 M page views in July 2009, i.e. 8.0 views/speaker (as high as Finnish), but only .009 articles per speaker of the language (half of Danish). The German Wikipedia is generally considered to be successful, yet it has a low number of articles per speaker of the language. So maybe articles/speaker is a useless metric.

If the Finnish Wikipedia can get 8.3 page views per speaker of the language with only 213 k articles, then perhaps their articles are better (more informative, more useful) than the larger number of articles in the Swedish Wikipedia, which only attract 6.6 page views per speaker of the language.

The German article on Michael Jackson got 2.1 M page views during July, or .020 per speaker of the language, similar to the Swedish and Finnish Wikipedia articles. Why did the Danish and Norwegian articles get only 12 page views per thousand speakers?

-- Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Kaare Olsen wrote:

What I think is the primary reason for the Danish Wikipedia being much smaller than the "neighbouring" languages is that Danes generally are internationally minded and pride themselves on being good at English - people may simply prefer to use/edit Wikipedia in that language (even I did that when first attracted to Wikipedia).

I find it hard to believe that this would be a major difference between Denmark and Sweden. But it would be really interesting if we could somehow trace the use of the English Wikipedia to users of various mother tongues (for Northern Europe, country or IP address range might be a good enough approximation for mother tongue). Perhaps Swedish users stay on the Swedish Wikipedia to read about sports, but go to the English to read about music.

For each IP address range, we could (well, Domas could) analyze which language of Wikipedia those users primarily go to. If users from 130.236.xxx.yyy mostly visit the English and Swedish Wikipedia, we can assume that it constitutes a Swedish-speaking community. If no conclusive pattern is shown on the /16 (class B) range, each /24 (class C) net can be analyzed individually.

Hoi, We are not talking about bootstrap usage. The Danish Wikipedia is obviously way past that point. We are talking about usability and the acceptance of MediaWiki as a proper platform for a language. Basically usage is not the same as being accepted as an environment that provides proper functionality for a language. Ask people who deal with usability the importance of internationalisation and localisation and you will learn that the notion of "bootstrap usage" is exactly that. Thanks, GerardM

2009/8/21 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com

How many messages need to be translated to make mediawiki basically usable? My own belief was that you only needed a few dozens to make the software basically usable, at least enough to bootstrap usage.

Hoi, Given that on Februari first 96.07% of the most used messages were localised, it is clear that some of the most used messages were not even localised. Consequently your puh puh reaction that only the rare messages are affected is not correct. Thanks, GerardM

2009/8/20 Kaare Olsen kaare@nightcall.dk

On Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:14:14 +0200 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:

...

One of the reasons why Danish has been sluggish may be that the localisation of Danish was not optimal; in Februari 83.66% of the MediaWiki messages and 14.11% of the WMF used extensions were localised. This has improved to 100.00% and 59.30% respectively ... compare this with Norwegian 100.00% 96.92% Nynorsk 100.00% 84.81% and Swedish 100.00% 99.33%..

Gerard, that reasoning is rather far-fetched. As you know, MediaWiki contains many messages which regular users will never be exposed to. Even with admin (and more) access, I rarely come across anything needing translation. We would surely have complaints galore if missing interface translations turned people away from the Danish language Wikipedia, and I've never seen a complaint about that.

I have a hunch why there is/was a comparatively low number of Danish MediaWiki message translations, but am not going to open old wounds. Old wounds aside, another reason could be that people focus on other aspects; since most message translators to Danish are from the Danish language Wikipedia, they may not care much about messages/extensions not relevant in Wikipedia, as they feel Wikipedia is their project, not MediaWiki or Translatewiki.

What I think is the primary reason for the Danish Wikipedia being much smaller than the "neighbouring" languages is that Danes generally are internationally minded and pride themselves on being good at English - people may simply prefer to use/edit Wikipedia in that language (even I did that when first attracted to Wikipedia).

-- Regards, Kaare

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

2009/8/21 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com:

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

...

Hoi, Given that on Februari first 96.07% of the most used messages were localised, it is clear that some of the most used messages were not even localised. Consequently your puh puh reaction that only the rare messages are affected is not correct.

Not all of the messages which are not included in "most used" are rare, and not all messages that are in the "most used" messages pile are ones that beginning editors are bound to encounter.

So I do think Kaare is spot on to suggest it is an extraordinary claim that lack of localizations is driving away Danish editors, and as such requires extraordinary proof! Have there been beginning Danish wiki-editors complaining about the poor localization level?

I am would not claim myself to be a "beginning Danish wiki-editor", but I am certainly complaining about the localisation of the Danish MediaWiki. If it wasn't obvious spelling mistakes, it was often odd direct translations from English, without much consideration of context.

If I were a beginning Danish wiki-editor, I would see this as unprofessional - something which I already do in my current position - and as a result, probably leave, or contribute less than I had intended.

It's unfortunate to see less and less Danes taking Danish serious enough, with English's slow integration into the Danish language. Many things can be translated, but not necessarily everything should.

It's a balance.

/Svip

Furthermore, I think Carthage must be destroyed.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

2009/8/21 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com:

Just to clarify, are you saying that in your view, too few messages are translated to Danish, or are you saying that too many messages are translated to the Danish language?

Unfortunately; neither. Messages that shouldn't be translated to Danish, have unfortunately been, while messages that should have been translated to Danish, haven't.

But that's without mentioning the horrible state of the localisation in general: Wrong context translations, just wrong translations and many spelling errors.

The Danish Wikipedia itself is in a pretty bad state to. Too many articles on it are close to laughable, and you can often find better articles on Danish subjects on the English Wikipedia than the Danish one.

I my mind, the combination of the poor localisation and the bad state the Danish Wikipedia is in, scares many Danish editors off.

And it should be mentioned, that many Danes have a pretty good conception of English, and the interest in Danish is unfortunately lessen as well.

I am trying to do my part, by translating the pages on Meta wiki and the Strategy wiki to Danish.

/Svip

Hoi, At translatewiki.net many of the messages include information about the context. The coverage of this information has been improving steadily. This information is not available when messages are localised on the local wiki.

So there are two places where localisations can originate; local and translatewiki.net. There is still a problem with localising at translatewiki in that localisations do not become available in a timely fashion. The LocalisationUpdate extension that is currently being assessed by Brion will fix that problem. It will reduce the amount of time before localisations become available to maximally two days.

Once this is done, it is important to remove as many local localisations as possible because they override the messages provided from translatewiki.net. The only local localisations should be the ones that provide local information like policies. Thanks, GerardM

2009/8/21 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 1:36 AM, Svipsvippy@gmail.com wrote:

...

But that's without mentioning the horrible state of the localisation in general: Wrong context translations, just wrong translations and many spelling errors.

Contextual errors I can understand, figuring out all the right contexts for a message can be tricky.

How were the spelling errors and wrong translations introduced?

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Svip wrote:

2009/8/21 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com:

...

Just to clarify, are you saying that in your view, too few messages are translated to Danish, or are you saying that too many messages are translated to the Danish language?

Unfortunately; neither. Messages that shouldn't be translated to Danish, have unfortunately been, while messages that should have been translated to Danish, haven't.

But that's without mentioning the horrible state of the localisation in general: Wrong context translations, just wrong translations and many spelling errors.

The Danish Wikipedia itself is in a pretty bad state to. Too many articles on it are close to laughable, and you can often find better articles on Danish subjects on the English Wikipedia than the Danish one.

I find your comments very significant. This suggests to me quite strongly that it may in fact be that emphasizing the *quantity* and *completeness* of localizations, over the _quality_ of the same, can be a double edged sword.

The thought also is hard to escape, that there is a definite "late mover disadvantage" to the creation of a wikipedia. Anyone who has experience of the growth process of a LOTE-wikipedia (to borrow a four-letter acronym from a different free content context -- 'Language Other Than English'), will inevitably recognize the feeling of seeing something better written on the en-wikipedia than at their own language version, and as the en-wikipedia matures, this disadvantage is not going away, or losing effect, sadly.

I could write more on these subjects, but in the interest of briefness, choose not to, but will instead mull my thoughts over and reflect...

I my mind, the combination of the poor localisation and the bad state the Danish Wikipedia is in, scares many Danish editors off.

And it should be mentioned, that many Danes have a pretty good conception of English, and the interest in Danish is unfortunately lessen as well.

I am trying to do my part, by translating the pages on Meta wiki and the Strategy wiki to Danish.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

2009/8/21 Ole Palnatoke Andersen palnatoke@gmail.com:

I assume that your contributions have been made under another username or anonymously, as I do not recall seeing anything from Bruger:Svip.

My username on all Wikimedia wikis is "Svippong". Svip was unfortunately taken.

2009/8/21 dex2000 sir48@lite.dk:

The merits of localization aside, making localization for the Danish Wiki a reason for its lagging behind the other Nordic Wikis is really beside the point. As an old-timer on da:, I can confirm that meeting untranslated or bad messages on the Danish Wikipedia is a very unusual experience.

Well, I did some time ago run into a very strange writing "the bot" (which translated as "botten", which made it make even less sense if it hadn't been translated) and a word like "start" was misspelt as "stard".

For the record, the Danish Wikipedia is doing fine. I¨m sure that it¨s level of "ridiculous articles" is in no way different from any other Wikipedia. A Danish newspaper recently made an informal comparison between the "official" encyclopedia "Den store danske" on the internet and the Danish Wikipedia, where Wikipedia came out on top.

While I realise, the specific chosen articles in that article did relatively fine, the Danish Wikipedia is lagging in areas where it could be a lot better. Articles about Danish geography and famous writers is severely lagging.

But just because there are a lot of stubs is not the real concern. I remember reading an article on Skagen on the dawiki, and the article explicit said that in 5400 years, the sands around it would have reached Sweden. This is obviously a single example, but unfortunately it is not extraordinary.

I recommend anybody really concerned about the state of the Danish language and/or the state of the Danish Wikipedia to write and correct articles. It will pay off better than doing localization.

Allow me to suggest that some explanation for the lag in article numbers and contributors is the fact that Danish summers are more sunny and winters less severe than is the case in our northern neighbourhood :-) .

From a linguistic point of view, Danish is different in treatment

compared to Icelandic, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish. The latter four get a lot of localisation treatment themselves, such as having foreign words and loanwords being corrected for their respective lexicon.

Danish, however, simply takes the original loanword and only in rare cases changes its writing. The influence of English in Danish should thus be obvious to anyone speaking the language. As a result, it is common for Danes at times simply to revert entirely to Danish, and as a result, I believe that Danes are in a larger aspect contributing to enwiki than dawiki.

Which is most unfortunate.

The merits of localization aside, making localization for the Danish Wiki a reason for its lagging behind the other Nordic Wikis is really beside the point. As an old-timer on da:, I can confirm that meeting untranslated or bad messages on the Danish Wikipedia is a very unusual experience.

For the record, the Danish Wikipedia is doing fine. I¨m sure that it¨s level of "ridiculous articles" is in no way different from any other Wikipedia. A Danish newspaper recently made an informal comparison between the "official" encyclopedia "Den store danske" on the internet and the Danish Wikipedia, where Wikipedia came out on top.

I recommend anybody really concerned about the state of the Danish language and/or the state of the Danish Wikipedia to write and correct articles. It will pay off better than doing localization.

Allow me to suggest that some explanation for the lag in article numbers and contributors is the fact that Danish summers are more sunny and winters less severe than is the case in our northern neighbourhood :-) .

/Sir48-Thyge

-----Oprindelig meddelelse----- Fra: foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org]Pa vegne af Svip Sendt: 21. august 2009 07:08 Til: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Emne: Re: [Foundation-l] New projects opened

2009/8/21 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com:

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

...

Hoi, Given that on Februari first 96.07% of the most used messages were localised, it is clear that some of the most used messages were not even localised. Consequently your puh puh reaction that only the rare messages are affected is not correct.

Not all of the messages which are not included in "most used" are rare, and not all messages that are in the "most used" messages pile are ones that beginning editors are bound to encounter.

So I do think Kaare is spot on to suggest it is an extraordinary claim that lack of localizations is driving away Danish editors, and as such requires extraordinary proof! Have there been beginning Danish wiki-editors complaining about the poor localization level?

I am would not claim myself to be a "beginning Danish wiki-editor", but I am certainly complaining about the localisation of the Danish MediaWiki. If it wasn't obvious spelling mistakes, it was often odd direct translations from English, without much consideration of context.

If I were a beginning Danish wiki-editor, I would see this as unprofessional - something which I already do in my current position - and as a result, probably leave, or contribute less than I had intended.

It's unfortunate to see less and less Danes taking Danish serious enough, with English's slow integration into the Danish language. Many things can be translated, but not necessarily everything should.

It's a balance.

/Svip

Furthermore, I think Carthage must be destroyed.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG. Version: 8.0.100 / Virus Database: 270.13.61/2312 - Release Date: 8/18/2009 6:05 PM

On Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:08:08 +0200 Svip svippy@gmail.com wrote:

...

So I do think Kaare is spot on to suggest it is an extraordinary claim that lack of localizations is driving away Danish editors, and as such requires extraordinary proof! Have there been beginning Danish wiki-editors complaining about the poor localization level?

I am would not claim myself to be a "beginning Danish wiki-editor", but I am certainly complaining about the localisation of the Danish MediaWiki. If it wasn't obvious spelling mistakes, it was often odd direct translations from English, without much consideration of context.

Have these been fixed? Could you give examples? A year or two ago it turned out that someone had contributed interface translations using Google Translate (or similar). I hope those were fixed, but you may have run into them when they first appeared, or into messages not yet fixed.

Besides, interface translations are only as good as their translators. As with Wikipedia itself, there's no control over who gets to contribute, and there aren't necessarily people available, or willing, to proof-read. As you know, the best way to get something fixed is to contribute yourself - this is how the free "something" world works.

If I were a beginning Danish wiki-editor, I would see this as unprofessional - something which I already do in my current position - and as a result, probably leave, or contribute less than I had intended.

Are there any live examples of this in the Danish language Wikipedia? If so, please point them out so they can be fixed (I looked through your local contributions without finding any pointers to such mistakes - did you fix it in Translatewiki?).

It's unfortunate to see less and less Danes taking Danish serious enough, with English's slow integration into the Danish language.

Nod.

Many things can be translated, but not necessarily everything should.

The last point is a matter of opinion which varies wildly. There's likely translations which have been adopted in the Danish language Wikipedia, and may seem odd to less frequent contributors until they get used to see a Danish word instead of the usual English one.

It's a balance.

Indeed.

Hoi, The only relevant local localisations are the ones that provide specific information about that project. All the other localisations are suspect because they often no longer reflect the original message. Regularly messages change their text, add parameters, are using new internationalisation features and without the FUZZY mechanism employed at translatewiki.net there is no way that you are even aware of this.

Local localisations do not deserve consideration and the only reason why they should not have been removed and outlawed is that we do not have a mechanism yet to bring you new localisations in a timely manner. When the LocalisationUpdate extension is finally activated for all the wikis of the Wikimedia Foundation there is no longer a valid reason to localise locally for standard messages.

Translatewiki.net allows you to proof read your localisations, so I urge you to work on the quality of your localisations and do it where this effort makes the biggest difference. Thanks, GerardM

2009/8/21 Kaare Olsen kaare@nightcall.dk

On Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:32:47 +0200 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:

...

Given that on Februari first 96.07% of the most used messages were localised, it is clear that some of the most used messages were not even localised. Consequently your puh puh reaction that only the rare messages are affected is not correct.

Does your statistics include local translations? No?

Again, I'm an actual user of the Danish language Wikipedia. I'm not making it up when I say that I rarely run into something untranslated. If I do run into something untranslated, I generally fix it, and this most commonly happens locally as I can't wait for the translations to arrive by other means (and yes, I know the delay is not your fault).

-- Regards, Kaare

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

2009/8/21 Kaare Olsen kaare@nightcall.dk:

On Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:32:47 +0200 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:

...

Given that on Februari first 96.07% of the most used messages were localised, it is clear that some of the most used messages were not even localised. Consequently your puh puh reaction that only the rare messages are affected is not correct.

Does your statistics include local translations?  No?

Again, I'm an actual user of the Danish language Wikipedia.  I'm not making it up when I say that I rarely run into something untranslated. If I do run into something untranslated, I generally fix it, and this most commonly happens locally as I can't wait for the translations to arrive by other means (and yes, I know the delay is not your fault).

I much appreciate the effort. And it is possible that the Danish localisation is in better shape than last time I checked (which was a little over a year ago).

I'd love if the Danish Wikipedia was close or en par with the English Wikipedia. Not in quantity, but in quality. At least on the Danish specific articles. Unfortunately, there is a lack of motivation from potential Danish editors (like myself).

I guess I am too busy maintaining my own wiki as well. Maybe a choice to attract editors would be similar to that of the Swedish and Norwegian wikis. That, and I'd like to see more appreciation of the Danish language from the Danes themselves. I hear Dutch is under the same criticism from the Dutch themselves.

\Svip

-- Regards, Kaare

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hoi, I know that the information provided by Erik Zachte will provide ample information about that .... Thanks, Geard

2009/8/21 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com

Svip wrote:

...

I guess I am too busy maintaining my own wiki as well. Maybe a choice to attract editors would be similar to that of the Swedish and Norwegian wikis. That, and I'd like to see more appreciation of the Danish language from the Danes themselves. I hear Dutch is under the same criticism from the Dutch themselves.

This is interesting. My understanding is that even compared to the Danes, the Dutch are hugely internationally minded.

In Science Fiction fandom circles I have heard of an "8person rule of thumb" (though I admit the rule may hive more general application within Dutch society) - whereby within spoken communication situations, if there is one native English speaker present, there have to be at least 8Dutch speakers present, before even the most private comments by the Dutch speakers will be made in Dutch.

It would be a genuinely useful data point to see how the Dutch language wikipedia compares to any possible wikipedias of similar number of native speakers in terms of breadth and size, where the languages compared against do not have this strong tradition of internationalism.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

Svip wrote:

...

I guess I am too busy maintaining my own wiki as well. Maybe a choice to attract editors would be similar to that of the Swedish and Norwegian wikis. That, and I'd like to see more appreciation of the Danish language from the Danes themselves. I hear Dutch is under the same criticism from the Dutch themselves.

This is interesting. My understanding is that even compared to the Danes, the Dutch are hugely internationally minded.

In Science Fiction fandom circles I have heard of an "8person rule of thumb" (though I admit the rule may hive more general application within Dutch society) - whereby within spoken communication situations, if there is one native English speaker present, there have to be at least 8Dutch speakers present, before even the most private comments by the Dutch speakers will be made in Dutch.

I can speak from a bit of personal experience here. Between the Dutch chapter, Jan-Bart, and people on the technical team like Mark and Roan, the Dutch were well represented at the meetings in Berlin in April. At one point I decided to invade a table full of Dutch speakers, maybe not eight but close to that number, partly just to see what would happen. (Personally, despite speaking both German and English, and Dutch occupying a linguistic space vaguely between the two, I can barely make out the occasional word in spoken Dutch, although I have a little bit more ability to comprehend it when reading.) Anyway, everyone was quite willing to switch over to English without any trouble, although some Dutch was still used occasionally for conversations I wasn't directly involved in.

For the English language, I think the underlying problem is a bit different. Often we native English speakers never really learn any other language, and by reason of not learning how things are framed in comparison, end up neglecting the quality of our own language, though we use it constantly.

--Michael Snow

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 11:59 PM, David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com wrote:

(What's the next lingua franca going to be? When?)

It would have been Chinese if you could get a workable keyboard.

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:54 PM, Mark Williamsonnode.ue@gmail.com wrote:

I disagree. All languages that have had a chance of becoming world lingua francas - English, French, perhaps Spanish, are some recent examples - were not only the languages of economic or political powers, they were also the languages of vast colonial empires.

You're working on the assumption that China won't colonise anywhere. I have the feeling they're going to burst and spray their populace across the greater part of the continent at some point.

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 6:26 AM, Mark Williamsonnode.ue@gmail.com wrote:

Okay, now that's in the realm of pure speculation.

Indeed.

How do you think another country - or the world - would react to China's invasion of neighboring countries?

Somewhere on the spectrum of doing a weak press release saying "we don't like this!" and sending in nuclear bombs.

Why would they even do that?

Why has anyone ever colonised anywhere else? Expansion, economic gain, the dearly held belief of a leader that such would be a correct action. That's my point: there would be many reasons to do so. If we know one thing about world leaders it's that they don't seem to like just tending their garden, they're always looking outwards. Always wanting more.

It seems reasonable to suppose that China looks at America and thinks "Hey! They get involved overseas... we want some of that action."

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 8:22 AM, Mark Williamsonnode.ue@gmail.com wrote:

I doubt if any regional expert would put any stock in the idea of China doing a foreign policy 360 and invading a neighboring country at this point in its history or in the near future.

I was thinking more along the lines of decades than immediate futures.

Mind you, I would equally say we'll all be muslim in that timescope too.

We'll be chinese speaking islamists.

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Mark Williamsonnode.ue@gmail.com wrote:

I disagree. All languages that have had a chance of becoming world lingua francas - English, French, perhaps Spanish, are some recent examples - were not only the languages of economic or political powers, they were also the languages of vast colonial empires.

Is it likely that English would be the second working language of India without India's colonial past? Would French be the official language of dozens of African countries if they had never been ruled over by France? Chinese has a very large speaker population but the number of speakers outside of the Han ethnic group and/or the PRC is negligible. Almost all non-Han speakers of Chinese are ethnic minorities in the PRC, virtually all Chinese speaking people outside of the PRC are ethnic Chinese. Is this because Chinese is difficult to type (which it isn't, by the way, on modern computers)? Highly unlikely. People don't choose to learn or not learn languages because of the perceived ease of typing or even the perceived difficulty of learning that particular language, they do it because of the perceived level of prestige and economic and political power it will bring them.

What could the motivations be for an aspiring professional in for example Congo be to learn Chinese? There are few and almost all of them are related to business dealings with China.

Hindi is in a similar position - it has quite a large number of diaspora speakers, but outside of a single country and/or national origin, it has virtually no reach.

Mark

On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Bod Notbodbodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:

...

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 11:59 PM, David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com wrote:

...

(What's the next lingua franca going to be? When?)

It would have been Chinese if you could get a workable keyboard.

There won't be new lingua franca. ~30 years is now very small amount of time for changing behavior of the global society, while it is very large amount of time for machine translators. (Translation engines between similar languages are very very good now.)

I suppose that our next stage is babelfish.

But, what's the stage after that? Probably, some more sophisticated babelfish... If one planet would be colonized with 50% of Dutch and 50% of Korean population -- assuming that relations between those groups are very well and without oppression toward young children -- the next generation will speak some Anglo-Dutch-Korean as a native language, which wouldn't be sanctioned immediately, but in a couple of generations. So, they'll still need babelfish to communicate with people from other colonies.

On 23 Aug 2009, at 09:50, Bod Notbod wrote:

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 8:21 AM, Milos Rancicmillosh@gmail.com wrote:

...

There won't be new lingua franca. ~30 years is now very small amount of time for changing behavior of the global society, while it is very large amount of time for machine translators. (Translation engines between similar languages are very very good now.)

The Google Wave demo shows real time translation as things are typed. I'm sure you'll inevitably end up with some of the very strange sentence constructions you get whenever you do an online translation but it's still quite a remarkable feat.

I was at a demonstration of Google Wave yesterday, and someone asked for a demo of the live translation robot. They weren't able to demo it; apparently it's been decommissioned by Google.

Mike

2009/8/23 Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com

I disagree. All languages that have had a chance of becoming world lingua francas - English, French, perhaps Spanish, are some recent examples - were not only the languages of economic or political powers, they were also the languages of vast colonial empires.

The only language that has become a world lingua franca to date is English, and although British colonialism was clearly the original reason for this, the dominant form of English over much of the world now is American English. The U.S. has never had a vast colonial empire, so surely the supremacy of U.S. English owes more to the economic and cultural dominance of the U.S. than any other factor. If, in the future, China becomes the dominant economic power in the world, then I don't think there's any doubt that Chinese will supplant English as the most widely used language in business and many other domains.

Chinese has a very large speaker population but the number of speakers outside of the Han ethnic group and/or the PRC is negligible. Almost all non-Han speakers of Chinese are ethnic minorities in the PRC, virtually all Chinese speaking people outside of the PRC are ethnic Chinese.

The numbers are small compared to English, but they're growing, and the Chinese government has made an effort to promote the spread of Chinese. A lot of people outside China are learning Chinese, though probably only a small proportion become proficient in it.

What could the motivations be for an aspiring professional in for example Congo be to learn Chinese? There are few and almost all of them are related to business dealings with China.

Another motivating factor could be to work for Chinese companies in Congo - maybe not likely now, but Chinese companies are becoming increasingly involved in African countries, and this may be more likely in the future if those companies get a more favourable reputation. Tourism is a further possible reason, though I doubt many Chinese tourists visit Central Africa just yet.

Hindi is in a similar position - it has quite a large number of

diaspora speakers, but outside of a single country and/or national origin, it has virtually no reach.

Hindi in a completely different situation since, apart from having fewer native speakers, it hasn't become the dominant language throughout the main country in which it is spoken, and AFAIK it isn't widely learnt as a second language in other countries. This could change in the future, though.

The main thing that could stop Chinese becoming a global lingua franca is the development of translation technology, which is advancing rapidly. Still, I think most of the arguments against it are based on misconceptions about why English is currently the dominant language, and often-antiquated stereotypes of China.

Richard

2009/8/23 Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:

Anyhow as I said before, language shift is very much related to attitudes and perceived language prestige. When doing business abroad, English is often the language of communication between Chinese companies and local employees and businesses. The day the Chinese begin to insist on doing business with only Chinese speakers is the day the world decides to learn Chinese. It is essentially a (bad) attitude of "We are better than you and so we do not need to learn your language, you should learn ours" that has resulted, I think, in the dominance of English.

"But Europe is filled with foreigners!"

Mark

Lars Aronsson hett schreven:

I think we need to get away from counting articles and languages, as if all were equal and more were better.

Whether languages are all equal, depends on the point of view. From a global point of view, Chinese is not equal to !Xóõ. Chinese has more than a billion speakers and !Xóõ only about 4000. From a global point of view Chinese is more important. But from an individual's point of view the languages _are_ equal. If !Xóõ is your native and only language !Xóõ means as much to you as Chinese to a Chinese native speaker. To a !Xóõ native all of Wikimedia is meaningless if we don't provide any !Xóõ content. If we start providing !Xóõ content we will most likely soon be the most useful !Xóõ resource existing.

So if you want to "get away from counting articles and languages, as if all were equal and more were better", then don't count them. If we have a !Xóõ Wikipedia with an article count of exactly '1' and this one article is about Michael Jackson, then it is perfectly useful to a !Xóõ speaker searching for info on Michael Jackson. And on the other side, if you have an 841,000 article encyclopedia, it's still useless for a person searching for info about !Xóõ, if there is no article about !Xóõ.

What I want to say: please everybody get away from calling projects "failure", "worse", "weak" or whatever. It's all subjective. And it's entirely meaningless, whether Michael Jackson attracts 12 or 20 page views per 1000 speakers. If 988 people had no interest in looking up Michael Jackson, then that's okay. We still served the 12 who had.

Marcus Buck User:Slomox

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Lars Aronssonlars@aronsson.se wrote:

Marcus Buck wrote:

...

What I want to say: please everybody get away from calling projects "failure", "worse", "weak" or whatever. It's all subjective. And it's entirely meaningless,

I disagree, it's neither subjective nor meaningless.  Wikipedia has a mission to disseminate free knowledge.  It's an important mission and a powerful project.  The general public and mainstream media have a geniune interest in knowing how we are doing.  The 3 millionth article in the English Wikipedia was a global news item, as was the PARC research that showed Wikipedia might not be growing so fast anymore.  The problem is that both reports are based on article counts, as if all articles were equal, and they aren't.

For Wikipedia's future growth, we learned early on to use a wishlist, a list of red links to not yet existing articles.  But the items on that list are not equally important.  And the improvement of some existing articles can be more important than the addition of any new article.  We need better tools to help us understand which improvements are needed.  And we need to know how much we improved Wikipedia, even if no new articles were created. This is meaningful.

We might have to go out to the people in Nigeria (or New York) and ask them what knowledge they need, and what tools are best suited. Perhaps it's the English Wikipedia that is best for them.  Then we might conclude that the Yoruba Wikipedia was a failed attempt, that never even reached 10,000 articles, and instead of 270 languages we should only have 269 (or 41) languages of Wikipedia. Or on the other hand, we might discover some basic mistake that we did with the Yoruba Wikipedia, and once we fix that mistake its size and usefulness will start to grow faster.

...

If 988 people had no interest in looking up Michael Jackson, then that's okay. We still served the 12 who had.

Sure, but it's not likely that the interest for Michael Jackson is far lower in Denmark than in neighboring Sweden and Germany.  I still think the Danish Wikipedia has some trivial flaw that can be fixed.  I just don't know what it is.

--  Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se)  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

---

foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I agree wholeheartedly. We need to get away from this idea that "more projects in more languages is better." It's not. It's lead to the issue we see now: dead projects lying around until somebody bothers to clean it up or close it.

We tout the "Wikipedia in 270 languages" statistic quite often, and it's something that is seen as an accomplishment. I would rather see how many Wikipedias we have that are successes--measured in terms of growth and a supportive community (of both readers and writers).

What good is a Revised-Lower-Eastern-Phoenician Wikipedia if nobody uses it?

-Chad

Marcus Buck wrote:

I don't think that there are generally too few people interested in those languages. It's just hard to make the start. It's immensely frustrating to work on a wiki all alone, writing article for article, and after a year, you maybe have 100 or 200 articles and your Wikipedia is still just a little heap of disjunct articles with hardly any blue links and you realize that it will take years (or decades) until you have written enough articles to establish a resource, that is interconnected through blue links and covering all basic concepts.

I think in this situation a useful page that Danny Wool and a few of his friends thought up a few years ago, and has been improved upon subsequently by diverse hands, might help.

I am of course thinking about the list of 1000 articles each wikipedia should have. Just completing a significant part of that list is an accomplishment for a tiny pool of editors, but is within reach, and can serve as a useful incentive.

BTW, I understand there is some work being done currently to define a tinier subset of that list, which could be even better for projects with fewer contributors, which would define what the really really really core encyclopaedia articles are.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

Hoi, Lars I completely agree that the failure of a Wikipedia IS meaningful. But it is only meaningful if we are interested in learning what causes these failures, what we can do to remedy these situations and when we are willing to act upon our findings.

Interesting data points outside of Wikipedia entirely, are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den_Store_Danske_Encyklop%C3%A6di

and;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalencyklopedin

with a further interesting contrast offered by:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susning.nu

The Danish commercially published (but with direct funding subsidy from the government) Ensyklopedia did not excite the Danish public. It is very hard to credit this lack of interest 20 years before wikipedia came into existence to the lack of adequate MediaWiki localizations.

In contrast the Swedish Nationalencylopedin was gobbled up by the public at large, and even was able to pay back the government in full all the money loaned for the production as a guarantee against losses.

There must be some difference in national character or something else to explain this. But I certainly don't claim to have the answer, except to state that since this all happened before there was a Wikipedia, the "problem" must also predate Wikipedia.

A further wrinkle in the current situation is that currently Nationalencyklopedin (the Swedish one) is behind a paywall with the nearest competitor to Wikipedia in the "free as in beer" stakes being susning.nu, run by Lars Aronsson; while the Danish "Den Store Danske Encyklopaedi" has been liberated and can be freely accessed. Thus, quite unlike the current Swedish situation, Wikipedia and the formerly government subsidized but commercially published (and very professionally edited) encyclopaedia are nearly level pegging on the internet, in terms of amount of content and ease of access, as far as the Danish encyclopaedia reading public are concerned. This can't but have an effect.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Andre Engels wrote:

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Lars Aronssonlars@aronsson.se wrote:

...

Of these 270 languages of Wikipedia, only 41 have more than 50,000 articles and only 69 had more than 1 million page views in July of 2009. The 69th most used Wikipedia is Swahili. This East African language has 50 million speakers, which is huge, but less than 13,000 Wikipedia articles. Can poverty and illiteracy alone explain why the Swahili Wikipedia is so far behind?

Poverty, or better said, lack of internet access, is probably the main factor. Here in Europe and North America, we are used to having fast internet from the home 24/7. In those countries it may well be (I am not sure, never having been there) that dial-up speeds paid per minute at some internet cafe is the norm. That would considerably lessen people's interest in writing the material, and if it is not written, people will not read it either.

But another issue could be a lack of expectancy of having material in the own language. I have heard this plays a role with the languages from India, and it may well have the same, or even stronger so, with the African ones: the daily language for speaking is the local language, but when one is writing or looking for something on the internet, one is more likely to use English (or in other parts of Africa, French). It may well be that many Swahili speakers use English when they are on the internet - either because that is the language they learned reading and writing in (although people for which that is true are probably not the generation using internet the most), or because they found that they can get so much more information (on the internet as a whole) in English than in Swahili, that it well outweighs the linguistic disadvantage. They come to the English Wikipedia, not the Swahili one, and when they find that here too there is much more in English, that's where they stick.

This explains the situation very well. In the case of languages not using the Latin alphabet, there is one more obstacle: you need a localized computer, i.e. for reading, at least the proper fonts are needed, and for writing an adapted keyboard is also needed. For what I have seen, this is rarely the case in India. Every computer is sold with an English keyboard only, and the fonts must be installed by the user himself.

In the case of Swahili there is yet another factor, namely that Swahili itself is rarely a mother tongue and much more often a second language. Because of that, the relative size of the disadvantage of using English is even smaller.

Right. This is also the case for Hindi, the second or third language for more than 200 M speakers (native Assamese, Bengali, Bihari, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Marathi, Oriya or Punjabi speakers and more).

Yann

...

But Swahili is far from the worst. Swahili has twice as many speakers as the West African language Yoruba (50 vs 25 M, both are huge languages) and twice the number of articles (13 k vs 6.3 k), but the Swahili Wikipedia had 6 times as many page views (1.0 M vs 172 k). Somebody with knowledge of Africa should study this in more detail. For the speakers of these languages, in which proportions do they read (newspapers) or listen (to radio broadcasts) to get news and knowledge? Do they ever use (printed) encyclopedias?

Taking a look at Wikipedia, I see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Nigeria and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Kenya. For Nigeria about 32 newspapers are given - from their titles, 80% seem to be in English. The 3 or 4 mentioned for Kenya are all in English, and although the articles mention some of the papers have Swahili sister publications, the English language newspapers seem to have by far the greatest market share. This I think confirms my hypothesis above, that another reason for African languages to do so poorly is that in the countries and regions where they are spoken, there is a large competition from the languages of the former colonizers - especially in the area of written communication.

Andre Engels hett schreven:

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 5:22 AM, Lars Aronssonlars@aronsson.se wrote:

...

Of these 270 languages of Wikipedia, only 41 have more than 50,000 articles and only 69 had more than 1 million page views in July of 2009. The 69th most used Wikipedia is Swahili. This East African language has 50 million speakers, which is huge, but less than 13,000 Wikipedia articles. Can poverty and illiteracy alone explain why the Swahili Wikipedia is so far behind?

Poverty, or better said, lack of internet access, is probably the main factor. Here in Europe and North America, we are used to having fast internet from the home 24/7. In those countries it may well be (I am not sure, never having been there) that dial-up speeds paid per minute at some internet cafe is the norm. That would considerably lessen people's interest in writing the material, and if it is not written, people will not read it either.

But another issue could be a lack of expectancy of having material in the own language.

Another important factor: If your language has no localized version of Windows, of Office, of Google or of equivalent softwares, this almost excludes all people not speaking at least one foreign language from using a computer. If understanding a foreign language is a prerequisite to using computers, there are no native-onlys - who have the most interest in native content - to write native content, and there are no native-onlys to read the native content. The bilingual people have less interest in creating content. And then in many societies which have bilingualism between the people's languages and a non-native official language, there is some amount of elitarism. Good knowledge of the official language and good education provide you a certain social status. Educating the native masses could endanger this social advantage. The more social and general insecurity exists in an area, the more elitarist are the educated.

And creating content for the benefit of everybody is a leisure time activity. Poor people rather try to earn money instead of writing content for free. And rich people in under-developed countries ususally won't contribute too, cause to become rich in a poor country, you must be rather callous and not be too "social".

I guess, it would be possible to greatly improve the number of contributions to several of our Wikipedias, if we established some kind of reward system, in which contributors get paid for their work. E.g. Burundi has a per capita income of less than 150 $ a year. If it would be possible to make some dollars a day by writing Wikipedia articles, you could easily gain some full-time editors with just a few thousand dollars. Rundi Wikipedia article count would surely skyrocket if the Foundation would provide let's say 100,000 $ for a project like that (of course a native Rundi project manager would be needed to ensure the quality of the contributions). Wouldn't it be great if the Wikimedia Foundation could go to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and say "Hey, with 100,000 $ you can help us to create a 100,000 entry encyclopedia for 10 million speakers of Chichewa, where before there was exactly _no_ encyclopedia-like content in that language!"?

Marcus Buck User:Slomox