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[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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