Hello, everyone.
A couple of months ago I mentioned Google Nairobi's initiative to run
another Wikipedia Challenge in another African language. I asked for a
volunteer to train the judges and the participants, but then the project was
put on the back burner for a while. In the meantime I have had opportunity
to meet with the Google team at Nairobi, and have discussed our concerns
with the less-than-complete success of the Kiswahili challenge; we agreed
there would need to be better training on Wikipedia principles and
techniques, and that the training must be done by actual, experienced
Wikipedians.
So now it's back on, the dates are finalized, and the timeline is actually
pretty tight. The language chosen is Setswana, spoken in Botswana, and the
judges training will take place in Botho College on October 8th, with the
participant training taking place one week later, Oct 15th. The competition
will run 45 days. I apologize for not being able to give you more of an
advance notice, but things have been a challenge to set up and finalize, and
I didn't want to keep changing dates on you.
The judges training on the 8th will be done by a member of the Kenyan
Wikimedian group, a veteran of the Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge of 2009.
We'd like the participants training to also involve a volunteer from South
Africa.
So, we need _one_ volunteer who:
* can commit to flying to Botswana to deliver a one-day training session (in
English) on Oct 15th (WMF to provide tickets and accommodation).
* is interested in teaching people some basics of Wikipedia editing (the
interface, the syntax, talk pages, user pages) and core principles (Neutral
Point of View, references, avoiding plagiarism and copyright violations).
I can help with some training materials from the "campus ambassadors"
training on the Outreach wiki, but the exact contents and order of the
training is really up to you and the other trainer.
Note that the Setswana Wikipedia is completely inactive, and so this
Challenge is a good chance for it to breathe life into it. The up-side of
that is that there won't be much community interference in what the
participants do. ;) The down side, of course, is there would be no Setswana
Wikipedians _on the wiki_ to help them or give them instant feedback on what
they do. However, the participants will be able to get support for
technical or general questions in English, via IRC or a mailing list we'll
set up.
Please respond ASAP if you can make it.
Thanks!
Asaf
--
Asaf Bartov
Wikimedia Foundation