Great stuff are just about to happen. Carry on with the good work!!
I think if we would like to go forward with "Wikipedia Takes Nairobi",Brand
Kenya should also be involved cause they would be in a position to assist
us in identifying great places(some of which many of us might not know
of). They also are working together with various government agencies and
different stakeholders in the country. And don't forget, their core
purpose is to showcase Kenya. I see like they would be an excellent
addition, especially in assisting in developing content.
Thanks for the update. Much appreciated.
Thanks for the update! This all sounds great!
Some thoughts:
- Producing spoken versions of Wikipedia articles is an excellent idea.
Bear in mind producing good audio versions takes a lot of time.
Therefore, it would make sense to put in that time only for articles that
are already quite good and comprehensive (like Featured Articles on
English Wikipedia).
- At the same time, if there's a basic article that we would like to see
as a spoken article as well, it may be very motivating for the Swahili
Wikipedia editing community to see a template on that page saying
something like: "A spoken version of this article is being planned.
Before we record it, it would be great if the article could be improved
in the following ways: A, B, C", where A, B, C are specific problems with
the article, e.g. missing information, bad grammar, etc.
- Re Wikipedia Takes Nairobi -- perhaps there are additional groups to
partner with. E.g. does Nairobi, or Kenya in general, have a historical
society of some kind? If so, perhaps they would be willing to send a
representative who could brief the participants about worthy,
lesser-known sites?
- Re museums, I recommend that as a first step, care be taken to ensure
that the English and Swahili Wikipedias have entries about these museums.
Even basic ones. (A basic entry is a good thing to show to a museum and
explain we want to broaden the article and enrich it with content from
the museum's holdings.)
That's it for now. Excellent work!
Asaf
On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 9:27 PM, Abbas Mahmoud abbasjnr@hotmail.com
wrote:
Hi guys,
As you were aware, Alex and I went to the ICT Board office today morning
for a follow-up meeting.
In attendance:
-Kaburo Kobia, Project Manager: Digital Local Content;
-Abbas Mahmood;
-Alex Wafula.
I started by debriefing Ms. Kobia on what a Wikimedia chapter is all
about, how many we were, our objectives and most importantly, our
projects -- both current and in the future. The following are some of the
projects that we discussed/proposed:
Wikipedia Takes Nairobi -- this is a
project/competition/whatever-you-may-call-it that will entail
participants taking pictures of monuments, buildings, celebrities (and
anything else) from Nairobi. The pics will be uploaded to Wikimedia
Commons and to their relevant Wikipedia articles (if any). This will help
in improving the quality of the pre-existing Wikipedia articles. This
project is not new in the Wikimedia community: several other chapters
have done this as well e.g Wikipedia Takes Manhattan[1]; Wiki Loves
Monuments[2], etc.
Wikipedia For The Disabled -- This will be a project that will focus on
adding audio/spoken articles to Wikipedia. This project is aimed for
those who are blind and therefore rely on their hearing aid for most of
their day-to-day life. A magnificent example of an article that has
Spoken Wikipedia in it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Tree_Frog. Unfortunately, I do
not know of any article on the Swahili Wikipedia that has audio in it.
So, we suggested that a plausible launch for the above two projects would
be in May/June. The ICT Board shall assist us in looking for sponsors,
launching the project, press & advertising as well as fundraising.
Other projects that we discussed, although to be taken at a later date
were:
I also told Ms. Kobia about Wikisource; and the fact that the Rome
Statute on the International Criminal Court[4] was there but the new
Kenyan Constitution[5] was not. So again, there was a lack of local
content on 'Source as well. Ms. Kobia said that she was going to talk to
the Kenya Law Society and see what she can do about that.
Basing on the fact that there is a GLAM[3] bazzazz in the Wikimedia
community at large, I also suggested that we should partner with Kenyan
Museums (there are 27 museums, counrtywide) & the Kenya National
Archives. We could also partner with Kenya Wildlife Services and come up
with, ermm... I dunno...a project about taking pics of wildlife (I mean,
the game reserve is what Kenya is known for:-))
Swahili Wiktionary -- I also suggested partnering with KTN Leo so that we
could increase the Swahili vocabularies online. FYI - KTN usually shows a
new Swahili word everyday in the middle of the 7 o'clock news bulletin.
Notes:
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan/Spring_2008
[2]http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments
[3]For more info about GLAM, check
out:http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/GLAM-WIKI and
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM
[4]http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Cou...
[5]http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Kenyan_Constitution
Another followup meetinng is scheduled in the next few weeks.
Cheers,
Abbas
Feel free to contact me:
Abbas Mahmood
Tel: +254722215101
Facebook: abbasjnr@hotmail.com
Skype: abbasjnr
Wikimedia Kenya Member
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's our commitment."
Please donate: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate/Now/en
[
WikimediaKE mailing list
WikimediaKE@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediake
--
Asaf Bartov asaf.bartov@gmail.com
_______________________________________________
WikimediaKE mailing list
WikimediaKE@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediake