Hello,
I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word "small" anywhere near Bengali, for example.)
Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in "The Truth According To Wikipedia". They are very inspiring, but very small.
Were there any people that, for example, worked with schools that function in underprivileged languages and tried to teach students there to write Wikipedia articles in their language? If there were, can i read, hear or watch their experiences anywhere?
Hoi, I have blogged often about this subject.
If you want to create a level playing field for languages (the topic of my presentation at Wikimania) you have to make sure that there is a level playing field. While MediaWiki supports many languages there are issues that we have not addressed. Many of these have to do with Unicode needing updates of fonts that do not support the characters needed for a language.
Amir, we talked about issues with right to left languages at Wikimania in Gdansk, that is another can of wurms where we need people to pick up the slack. At translatewiki.net we are looking for developers who are able and willing to help solve technical issues that have to do with allowing structures commons to languages. Examples are multiple plural forms, addressing people by their gender, addressing people in a formal or informal way.
Once we are able to properly address people either in the user interface or in the text will we get to the stage where outreach becomes realistic and feasible. Otherwise you tell people that their language and effectively their culture is secondary because this other language is so good. Thanks, GerardM
On 18 July 2010 10:43, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Hello,
I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word "small" anywhere near Bengali, for example.)
Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in "The Truth According To Wikipedia". They are very inspiring, but very small.
Were there any people that, for example, worked with schools that function in underprivileged languages and tried to teach students there to write Wikipedia articles in their language? If there were, can i read, hear or watch their experiences anywhere?
-- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni
"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
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2010/7/18 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Amir, we talked about issues with right to left languages at Wikimania in Gdansk, that is another can of wurms where we need people to pick up the slack. At translatewiki.net we are looking for developers who are able and willing to help solve technical issues that have to do with allowing structures commons to languages. Examples are multiple plural forms, addressing people by their gender, addressing people in a formal or informal way.
OK. This is certainly important and i am willing to hear more thoughts about that. Another significant technical issue about which i would want to read is how do such outreaching wiki-activists cope with poor or non-existent network infrastructure in such places.
But i am particularly curious not about the technical issues, but about people's experiences - if there are any - with the actual content.
For example, i can quite easily imagine teachers in some countries saying: "Why should we write encyclopedia articles or textbooks in our local language? Textbooks should be written in English / Russian / French / Spanish / Portuguese." Did anyone have to cope with that?
I am not even talking about countries where it is a question of language preservation; for example, in regions of Russia such as Tatarstan or Sakha most people know Russian and many know Russian better than their regional language. In this case, writing a Wikipedia in Tatar is not an immediate educational necessity, because Russian textbooks are accessible to people. It is rather a question of preserving the local culture; i strongly support that, but there are worse cases.
I am rather talking about countries in, for example, Africa, where people don't necessarily know English or French well, but where education nevertheless functions mostly in a foreign language. Do people there even imagine that it's possible or desirable to write an encyclopedia in their language? Given all the technical tools and support, will they actually think that it's worth doing it?
These are the challenges about which i am most curious.
There are, of course, many other issues, technical and non-technical: lack of words for modern and foreign things, lack of standard orthography, low literacy rates, etc. I am willing to hear about all the aspects.
There's an en-wiki project I'm getting involved in that is planning "outreach" to smaller wikis. Would you like me to give you a ping when we launch?
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2010/7/18 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Amir, we talked about issues with right to left languages at Wikimania in Gdansk, that is another can of wurms where we need people to pick up the slack. At translatewiki.net we are looking for developers who are able
and
willing to help solve technical issues that have to do with allowing structures commons to languages. Examples are multiple plural forms, addressing people by their gender, addressing people in a formal or
informal
way.
OK. This is certainly important and i am willing to hear more thoughts about that. Another significant technical issue about which i would want to read is how do such outreaching wiki-activists cope with poor or non-existent network infrastructure in such places.
But i am particularly curious not about the technical issues, but about people's experiences - if there are any - with the actual content.
For example, i can quite easily imagine teachers in some countries saying: "Why should we write encyclopedia articles or textbooks in our local language? Textbooks should be written in English / Russian / French / Spanish / Portuguese." Did anyone have to cope with that?
I am not even talking about countries where it is a question of language preservation; for example, in regions of Russia such as Tatarstan or Sakha most people know Russian and many know Russian better than their regional language. In this case, writing a Wikipedia in Tatar is not an immediate educational necessity, because Russian textbooks are accessible to people. It is rather a question of preserving the local culture; i strongly support that, but there are worse cases.
I am rather talking about countries in, for example, Africa, where people don't necessarily know English or French well, but where education nevertheless functions mostly in a foreign language. Do people there even imagine that it's possible or desirable to write an encyclopedia in their language? Given all the technical tools and support, will they actually think that it's worth doing it?
These are the challenges about which i am most curious.
There are, of course, many other issues, technical and non-technical: lack of words for modern and foreign things, lack of standard orthography, low literacy rates, etc. I am willing to hear about all the aspects.
-- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni
"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hoi, Do you have an URL for this project ? Thanks, GerardM
On 18 July 2010 15:45, Oliver Keyes scire.facias@gmail.com wrote:
There's an en-wiki project I'm getting involved in that is planning "outreach" to smaller wikis. Would you like me to give you a ping when we launch?
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2010/7/18 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Amir, we talked about issues with right to left languages at Wikimania
in
Gdansk, that is another can of wurms where we need people to pick up
the
slack. At translatewiki.net we are looking for developers who are able
and
willing to help solve technical issues that have to do with allowing structures commons to languages. Examples are multiple plural forms, addressing people by their gender, addressing people in a formal or
informal
way.
OK. This is certainly important and i am willing to hear more thoughts about that. Another significant technical issue about which i would want to read is how do such outreaching wiki-activists cope with poor or non-existent network infrastructure in such places.
But i am particularly curious not about the technical issues, but about people's experiences - if there are any - with the actual content.
For example, i can quite easily imagine teachers in some countries saying: "Why should we write encyclopedia articles or textbooks in our local language? Textbooks should be written in English / Russian / French / Spanish / Portuguese." Did anyone have to cope with that?
I am not even talking about countries where it is a question of language preservation; for example, in regions of Russia such as Tatarstan or Sakha most people know Russian and many know Russian better than their regional language. In this case, writing a Wikipedia in Tatar is not an immediate educational necessity, because Russian textbooks are accessible to people. It is rather a question of preserving the local culture; i strongly support that, but there are worse cases.
I am rather talking about countries in, for example, Africa, where people don't necessarily know English or French well, but where education nevertheless functions mostly in a foreign language. Do people there even imagine that it's possible or desirable to write an encyclopedia in their language? Given all the technical tools and support, will they actually think that it's worth doing it?
These are the challenges about which i am most curious.
There are, of course, many other issues, technical and non-technical: lack of words for modern and foreign things, lack of standard orthography, low literacy rates, etc. I am willing to hear about all the aspects.
-- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni
"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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It's currently at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:IShadowed/Outreach; we only started work on putting it together a couple of days ago.
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi, Do you have an URL for this project ? Thanks, GerardM
On 18 July 2010 15:45, Oliver Keyes scire.facias@gmail.com wrote:
There's an en-wiki project I'm getting involved in that is planning "outreach" to smaller wikis. Would you like me to give you a ping when we launch?
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
2010/7/18 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Amir, we talked about issues with right to left languages at
Wikimania
in
Gdansk, that is another can of wurms where we need people to pick up
the
slack. At translatewiki.net we are looking for developers who are
able
and
willing to help solve technical issues that have to do with allowing structures commons to languages. Examples are multiple plural forms, addressing people by their gender, addressing people in a formal or
informal
way.
OK. This is certainly important and i am willing to hear more thoughts about that. Another significant technical issue about which i would want to read is how do such outreaching wiki-activists cope with poor or non-existent network infrastructure in such places.
But i am particularly curious not about the technical issues, but about people's experiences - if there are any - with the actual content.
For example, i can quite easily imagine teachers in some countries saying: "Why should we write encyclopedia articles or textbooks in our local language? Textbooks should be written in English / Russian / French / Spanish / Portuguese." Did anyone have to cope with that?
I am not even talking about countries where it is a question of language preservation; for example, in regions of Russia such as Tatarstan or Sakha most people know Russian and many know Russian better than their regional language. In this case, writing a Wikipedia in Tatar is not an immediate educational necessity, because Russian textbooks are accessible to people. It is rather a question of preserving the local culture; i strongly support that, but there are worse cases.
I am rather talking about countries in, for example, Africa, where people don't necessarily know English or French well, but where education nevertheless functions mostly in a foreign language. Do people there even imagine that it's possible or desirable to write an encyclopedia in their language? Given all the technical tools and support, will they actually think that it's worth doing it?
These are the challenges about which i am most curious.
There are, of course, many other issues, technical and non-technical: lack of words for modern and foreign things, lack of standard orthography, low literacy rates, etc. I am willing to hear about all the aspects.
-- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni
"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
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
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2010/7/18 Oliver Keyes scire.facias@gmail.com:
There's an en-wiki project I'm getting involved in that is planning "outreach" to smaller wikis. Would you like me to give you a ping when we launch?
Yes, certainly. Thank you.
Hello,
I am also very interested by this topic, mainly about Hindi and Gujarati among other Indian languages.
Please keep me in touch.
Regards,
Yann
2010/7/18 Oliver Keyes scire.facias@gmail.com:
There's an en-wiki project I'm getting involved in that is planning "outreach" to smaller wikis. Would you like me to give you a ping when we launch?
Will do. I did suggest Urdu as a "test run", but it didn't quite conform with our early requirements. I'm going to push for it again when we've worked out if this project can work.
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 6:11 PM, Yann Forget yannfo@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
I am also very interested by this topic, mainly about Hindi and Gujarati among other Indian languages.
Please keep me in touch.
Regards,
Yann
2010/7/18 Oliver Keyes scire.facias@gmail.com:
There's an en-wiki project I'm getting involved in that is planning "outreach" to smaller wikis. Would you like me to give you a ping when we launch?
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
But i am particularly curious not about the technical issues, but about people's experiences - if there are any - with the actual content.
When I became involved with English Wikipedia it had fewer than 50,000 articles, and many of them were stubs. [[Special:WantedPages]] was very useful in finding things to write about. It is currently disabled, and has not been updated since last October. It counted the number of red links to a title, and listed the 50 with the most links. Wikifying, was an important task for any editor; they were encouraged to create links to anything that might reasonably be expected to have an article. This feature should be made more prominent in the smaller wikis.
For example, i can quite easily imagine teachers in some countries saying: "Why should we write encyclopedia articles or textbooks in our local language? Textbooks should be written in English / Russian / French / Spanish / Portuguese." Did anyone have to cope with that?
It's not just teachers. Some governments and religions have actively suppressed minority languages. In Canada the residential school system was nothing less than cultural genocide. The practice has stopped, but its effects remain. The dominant colonial languages are still seen as the means to make a better life for oneself. To those who hope to feed their families cultural matters take a back seat.
I am not even talking about countries where it is a question of language preservation; for example, in regions of Russia such as Tatarstan or Sakha most people know Russian and many know Russian better than their regional language. In this case, writing a Wikipedia in Tatar is not an immediate educational necessity, because Russian textbooks are accessible to people. It is rather a question of preserving the local culture; i strongly support that, but there are worse cases.
For some languages the script that was developed by anthropologists a century ago was more suited to the needs of anthropologists trying to impose Greco-Roman grammatical concepts where they didn't belong.
I am rather talking about countries in, for example, Africa, where people don't necessarily know English or French well, but where education nevertheless functions mostly in a foreign language. Do people there even imagine that it's possible or desirable to write an encyclopedia in their language? Given all the technical tools and support, will they actually think that it's worth doing it?
Our techies can easily solve questions of tools for writing these languages. We need to ask the people what is important to them about their language. Forget about translating the details of nuclear physics or modern mathematics; if native English speakers have difficulties in these subjects in their own language it won't be any easier in these other languages. An article about basic agricultural techniques may be more to the point.
Ray
Hi Amir,
As you might know Malayalam is not a big language. It has roughly 30 million speakers. There are some efforts from Malayalam Wikipedia community to reach to public. Here are some
1. Our wikipedia CD - read the story here - http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/creating-malayalam-wikipedia-cd/ 2. Distribution of the above CD to 60,000 teachers of kerala. Read the story here - http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/07/malayalamwikipedia-success-story... 3. http://schoolwiki.in A wiki run by the IT@school http://www.itschool.gov.in/department of Kerala. This wiki is used for creating the database of all the schools of Kerala and the article about each school is maintained by the children of the respective schools. Malayalam Wiki community have helped the IT department Government to setup this wiki. Many school children in Kerala is aware about the wiki software, wiki editing, and Malayalam typing due to the efforts by IT@school.
And many more initiatives are going to come in the next few months.
Shiju
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 2:13 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
Hello,
I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word "small" anywhere near Bengali, for example.)
Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in "The Truth According To Wikipedia". They are very inspiring, but very small.
Were there any people that, for example, worked with schools that function in underprivileged languages and tried to teach students there to write Wikipedia articles in their language? If there were, can i read, hear or watch their experiences anywhere?
-- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni
"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 4:43 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Hello,
I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word "small" anywhere near Bengali, for example.)
Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in "The Truth According To Wikipedia". They are very inspiring, but very small.
Something that's standing out in my mind, but might not be exactly what you're looking for, is Ziko's "Tell us about your Wikipedia" project, where Ziko and others tried to get different Wikipedias to share details about themselves and some tough things that they experienced. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia
That was a first step to a lot of the stuff you're talking about.
Were there any people that, for example, worked with schools that function in underprivileged languages and tried to teach students there to write Wikipedia articles in their language? If there were, can i read, hear or watch their experiences anywhere?
Different chapters and other groups have held "Wikipedia Academies" and outreach events like that, which try to teach people how to contribute to Wikipedia (and why they should). I'm pretty sure Wikimedia Argentina has also spent some time trying to promote Wikipedia in the native languages of Argentina. Patricio, maybe you can say more about that?
The stuff you're asking about seems like it falls under Frank's job description (he's "Head of Public Outreach" for the Wikimedia Foundation), so maybe he can help provide some other examples and general tips for people doing this type of think. (CC'd)
2010/7/18 Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org:
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 4:43 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Hello,
I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word "small" anywhere near Bengali, for example.)
Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in "The Truth According To Wikipedia". They are very inspiring, but very small.
Something that's standing out in my mind, but might not be exactly what you're looking for, is Ziko's "Tell us about your Wikipedia" project, where Ziko and others tried to get different Wikipedias to share details about themselves and some tough things that they experienced. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia
That was a first step to a lot of the stuff you're talking about.
Actually i started reviving this project a few weeks ago: I translated its main page into Russian so that people from Wikipedias in the minority languages of Russia who don't know English will be able to contribute to it. Thanks for reminding me to advertise it in those Wikipedias' Village Pumps.
Versions in French and Spanish may be useful for Africa and Latin America.
Hello Amir, hello Casey,
Actually I am currently interested in policies of different language versions (article deletion, sources etc.), and thought about reviving the "Tell us" project for that. Most Wikipedians are busy only in one or two Wikipedias thoroughly, and hardly anyone knows how much the language versions have drifted apart (or not).
Kind regards Ziko
2010/7/19 Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il:
2010/7/18 Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org:
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 4:43 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Hello,
I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word "small" anywhere near Bengali, for example.)
Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in "The Truth According To Wikipedia". They are very inspiring, but very small.
Something that's standing out in my mind, but might not be exactly what you're looking for, is Ziko's "Tell us about your Wikipedia" project, where Ziko and others tried to get different Wikipedias to share details about themselves and some tough things that they experienced. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia
That was a first step to a lot of the stuff you're talking about.
Actually i started reviving this project a few weeks ago: I translated its main page into Russian so that people from Wikipedias in the minority languages of Russia who don't know English will be able to contribute to it. Thanks for reminding me to advertise it in those Wikipedias' Village Pumps.
Versions in French and Spanish may be useful for Africa and Latin America.
-- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni
"We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
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