Hello everyone,
Its been an issue for some time now that the African language Wikipedia's
are not doing as well as the vast majority of other Wikipedia's. Xhosa
Wikipedia, the language of more then seven million South Africans, has only 125
articles <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias>, making it the
272nd largest wiki. About half the size of
Inuktitut<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuktitut_language> Wikipedia.
I contacted the head of the African languages department at the University
of Cape Town and had a meeting with him yesterday to discuss it. It seems
like it went very well and I have already been contacted by 9 Xhosa
language specialists in the Western and Eastern Cape who are very
interested in attending a workshop to learn more about editing Wikipedia.
I would like to know if anyone would be interested in helping me host any
workshops in Cape Town the near future? It would be nice to have another
Wikipedian around to help coach people during the workshop. Since this is
still very early days yet we have not set a date yet for the workshop but I
would like it to take place within the next month or so, or even sooner
then that. I would also be interested in getting your feedback on the
idea. Right now the objective is just to train a few Xhosa language
Wikipedians and make it known to them how free and easy it is to edit
Wikipedia and contribute. As well as to expand Xhosa language Wikipedia by
translating articles from well written English Wikipedia articles. So far
all the people that have contacted me are either academics that specialise
in Xhosa studies at the Universities here in Cape Town or are from
government.
Best,
--
Douglas Ian Scott
司道格
Skype: douglas0scott
UK mobile number: +44 (0)755 452 5277
Chinese mobile number: +86 1 364 330 7351
South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727