Hi Asaf
That's interesting news. The challenges though will be quite different
to the Swahili event. Swahili is widely-spoken across numerous
countries, and had a sizeable Wikipedia community beforehand. Afrikaans
isn't as widely spoken, but has a relatively lively Wikipedia and active
community. However, finding 35 judges from within the community will not
be possible - there were only 24 active editors in April -
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaAF.htm
For both Tswana and Zulu, the Wikipedias are barely functional, with no
active editors.
It does provide an opportunity though to kickstart some activity, create
awareness, and make some progress towards building a community. I would
be wary though, after the Swahili experience, of bringing in lots of new
people for a competition in the absence of an active community. I
believe the Swahili community had some challenges integrating the new
editors and articles, and doing so in a vacuum might be trickier.
I'm happy to assist, though I'd like to discuss more with Google their
aims and expectations, and give them a better idea of the situation as
it is.
ian gilfillan
On 13/06/2011 22:53, Asaf Bartov wrote:
Hello, everyone.
Following the success of the Google Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge
<http://www.google.com/events/kiswahili-wiki/>[1] in 2009, the WMF has
been in touch with Google's Nairobi office about a "Wikipedia
Challenge" to be conducted in the languages Setswana, isiZulu, and
Afrikaans, to be held from early August 2011 to early October 2011.
This is basically a writing competition (translations are allowed) of
articles, with a proposed grand prize of a sponsored trip to Wikimania
2012 (in Washington D.C.), and several smaller prizes.
The competition is now at the planning phase, and we would very much
like to involve some of you at WMZA on several fronts. The first and
most pressing is finding volunteer judges for the articles that would
be submitted. Google wants 35 judges per language, expecting each
judge to need to put in 2-3 hours a week for the duration of the
competition. Are you able to begin interesting your local communities
in these languages and enlisting volunteers for this?
And generally, could you identify an appropriate contact person? (or
one per language?)
This could be a very energizing program for your chapter to engage
with. Google are doing most of the heavy lifting, funding-wise.
Thanks,
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation
[1]
http://www.google.com/events/kiswahili-wiki/
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