How to create content for small Wikpedias?
The fastest way is "translation".
Premisses:
*Most people need a starting point to "create" so we must give them to
all these potential editors.
*People have different interests so also that content must be different.
*We have loads of, for example, African languages that need "help".
*People do not have a stable internet access.
*People in, for example, African countries could work offline on Linux
systems and things could be uploaded.
*Many would like translations to be proof read and have "reference
material" to look up sentence structures and terminology immediately.
Well ... actually translations are mostly done by copying the contents
from one wikipedia to the other and then start translating. People use
paper dictionaries or workarounds - search for terminology over and over
again.
Now there's that neat software allowing for Computer Assited
Translation: OmegaT (http://www.omegat.org/omegat/omegat.html)
Example
*You save the contents of one Wikipedia in OpenOffice.org (.odt) format.
*You have a terminology list from English to Bambara
*You have .tmx files (translation memories) from former Translations
from English to Bambara
*You create a new OmegaT project and select the files to be translated -
well then you should close the project again (this will be better in one
of the future versions)
*Copy your glossary + old translation memories in their place
*Open the project and start to translate
*While translating you will see similar sentences that were already
translated before in the translation memory match window (the so-called
partial matches - these can also be inserted automatically in the target
sentence so that you only need to modify what is different)
*While translating you will see the words of the sentence that are
present in the glossary in the glossary match window and this helps you
with your translation since you will not need to look them up in a
dictionary
In future the glossary function will be connected to Ultimate
Wiktionary, or WiktionaryZ, through a reference implementation - and
this means that all terminology that is in WiktionaryZ is also at
disposal for translations.
Well there are always thoughts about machine translation around: well
this is the way translators work - we are "helped" by the computer to do
our jobs ... now if we take these techniques and show them to many
people who can work offline as well and if these people exchange
translation memories and then their glossaries with WiktionaryZ this
means that "small" Wikipedias can have a lot of general contents quite
fast.
The next step is then: any translation can be proofread before uploading
it to the wikipedia - so the article can be worked on offline quite easily.
Upload can be done with the help of the bot (pywikipediabot) - and this
can be done by anyone - even by people who don't know the language. In
this way online and offline communities, for example of African
languages, where people cannot always access the Internet, can work out
really well.
Of course an offline-readable wikipedia would then make a lot of sense
in these languages and also some particular way to organise the project
(pages need to be marked as "being translated by" etc.) that can then be
organised also by a non native speaker.
Well so who would like to try out OmegaT for the translation of
articles? (btw. I am doing that to translate from Italian and other
languages to Neapolitan - and of course for my "ordinary work" into
German :-)
Best, Sabine
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I guess for me the difference was probably not so much about NPOV and SPOV
but rather between the Brockhaus in one volume and in 30 volumes.
And I think there's another important issue: I must admit that I feel
somewhat reluctant to delete another article and to replace it with my one.
Although I may be an expert in a field, how can I be sure that I'm going to
write a better (easier to read and understand, more accurate,...) article on
a topic than somebody else?
I think this is what is at the heart of my previous suggestion: Allow
multiple entries and let readers judge what constitutes a good article.
Best,
Troas
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I can confirm what Manuel is saying here. I know Dr Geoff Hull of the National Institute personally and he has told me a similar thing.
Given that East Timor is the newest nation on Earth, I really hope that something can be done for them to get a wikipedia up and running in one of their main national languages. One can't understate what such a venture would do to the self-esteem of a whole people. It will take a while to get going, given their problems with basic infrastructure, but I am certain that it would eventually succeed. There is also likely to be a thriving community of Tetum speakers in nearby Darwin, where they are likely to have better infrastructure - it's just a case of getting the message through to them.
All the best!
Pippu d'Angelo
wikipedia-l-request(a)Wikimedia.org ha scritto:
Message: 7
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 00:46:49 -0000
From: "Manuel de Sousa"
Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia in Tetum
To:
Message-ID: <200601150046.k0F0kmoK016051(a)mail.tvtel.pt>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Mark,
There is no problem with this. As I said, it will be Tetum, the national and
official language of East Timor, with a standardised orthography established
by the National Institute of Linguistics (INL) of East Timor.
The official Tetum, derives from the dialect of the capital city, Dili,
known as "Tetum-Dili" or "Tetum-Praça" (or "Prasa").
As you may know, in the territory of East Timor there are another 15
languages with the status of "national language". But this Wikipedia would
be in the official Tetum of East Timor.
Could anyone inform me what must be done in order to setup the Tetum
Wikipedia?
Thanks & regards,
Manuel de Sousa
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Could someone please confirm whether a Wikipedia in Tetum has recenlty been set up, or whether it is about to be set up? Thanks!
pippu d'angelo
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I understand some Spanish, but I really have difficulties in wiriting.
As much as I understand on wicodatos.org they want to create some kind
of wikipedia in Columbian dialects. Well I cannot follow up this because
my Spanish is simply not good enough and I have already too many
different tasks around.
Is there someone within wikipedia who is interested in having a look and
maybe see if it would make sense to consider this project for a future
inclusion in Wikipedia as well as maybe helping the admin to go the
right way to create good contents?
I suppose that this project was created because there was not enough
support within the community - well: I cannot follow up everyting ... so
I am asking you if someone is interested.
Thanks!!!
Best, Sabine
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Wicodatos e-mail
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 08:38:19 -0500
From: DGDIC <webmaster(a)amigosdelbambuco.zzn.com>
To: SabineCretella <sabine_cretella(a)yahoo.it>
ya hemos hecho cientos de mejoras para una mejor portada y otra suerte de servicios, asi que te invito muy amablemente a pegarte de nuevo una pasadita por nuestra wiki wicodatos.org
suerte
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--- wikipedia-l-request(a)Wikimedia.org wrote:
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:27:15 -0700
> From: Mark Williamson <node.ue(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia
> To: wikipedia-l(a)wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <849f98ed0601130027ufdf1101j(a)mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=WINDOWS-1252
>
> Why, then, can't a Neo-tokavian Wikipedia unite Bosnian, Serbian,
> Croatian, Montenegrin, Metohijan, and Hercegovinian, Muslim,
> Catholic, and Orthodox?
>
> Mark
Because they don't want to be united. The word balkanize isn't named after the Balkans for no
reason. Yugoslavia broke up after communism for a reason. And it has been going on like this for
centuries. In the 20s and 30s during the Depression, my grandfather (Slovene) played baseball
all around the country. He couldn't understand why two of his teammates, one Serb the other
Croat, would not speak to each other. He would harass them saying, "You are both born here in
America! You are Americans! You're on the same team!" I doubt Wikipedia is going to solve their
self-inflicted problems and I honestly think it is a waste of everyone's time on this list for
them to come here and try to ask foreigners to solve their problems.
.s
Mark Williamson wrote:
>Hi,
>The conflict at the Moldovan Wikipedia has reignited.
>A new user made a page called "Alegeri" (elections).
>It starts with him espousing his POVs.
>The requirements of the vote are:
>1) You have to speak Romanian/Moldovan "adequately". Whether or not
>your skills are "adequate", is to be judged by this particular user
>himself.
>2) You have to have at least 25 contributions on the Moldovan
>Wikipedia... OR the Romanian Wikipedia!!!
>Now, that strikes me as inherently unfair. Romanian Wikipedians are
>allowed to vote, sort of like a free pass? But no other Wikimedians??
>It's not the ROmanian Wikipedia after all, it's the Moldovan
>Wikipedia!
>You may argue all you want about whether or not Moldovan and Romanian
>are a single language, whether or not that Wikipedia should exist, but
>to let everybody from one Wiki vote for the future of another one, but
>nobody from any other wikis may participate, seems inherently unfair.
>The same user has been very... shall we say, "headstrong". He moved
>dozens and dozens of pages from Cyrillic titles to Latin titles
>(instead of creating brand-new pages in Latin), and replaced their
>entire contents with direct copy from ro.wiki, systematically. He
>obviously didn't even review his work, because many images were broken
>because the image tag for ro: ([[imagine:...]]) doesn't work on
>mo.wiki (you have to use the default, [[image:...]]).
>Now, so far, of all the people who voted, the vast majority are
>Romanians. How is that fair? Romanians get to decide the future of the
>Moldovan Wikipedia, but no *other* foreigners may weigh in?
>Well, maybe some Romanians don't see themselves as foreigners, but in
>the eyes of the world, they are. And besides, very clearly, there are
>two separate subdomains. Whether or not Romanians are Moldovans and
>vice-versa, very clearly most ro.wikipedians are NOT mo.wikipedians,
>though a few are.
>Your thoughts, please?
>Also, I encourage everybody to vote. I explained it at the enwiki
>village pump--news.
>Mark
Hi Mark!
Not a thought, actually. Just an observation: We've got around 200 Wikipedias here and this is the one that's got issues every few weeks that obviously can't be solved internally. The 'mo' edition of Wikipedia is but a tiny one and still we keep hearing more about it here than about most of the really big ones.
Another thing everybody who reads this list could easily observe in the recent weeks and months is that the vast majority of users from both Moldova and Romania seem to be pretty unhappy with the current modus operandi (to tell the truth I can't remember a single user from the area telling us he or she likes the current arrangement and wants to keep it).
With this in mind I believe the only way we can assure that there will be less fuss about that Wikipedia here in the future is to listen to the users who are most concerned by it.
Best wishes
Arbeo
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I have followed the progress (or rather the lack of
it) on the Serbo-Croatian wikipedia since its
unlocking and I have to say that almost all of the
"contributions" there were actually verbatim
copies of articles from Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian
Wikipedias done by 1-2 users. The articles were then
left untouched, in many cases with empty picture links and
original unopened red links for categories,
while their originals on the other three
wikis were changed, improved, re-categorized etc.
The wiki has about 2400 articles today with almost no
original articles longer than about a sentence.
Also, the other three Wikipedias which cover this same linguistic
territory (Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian) have grown
significantly in the past six months and now have a combined
total of about 35,000 articles with many active contributors
writing about topics as diverse as genetics, jumbo jets,
Native American peoples, short-lived Roman emperors etc.
Wikipedia users who want to contribute in any of the three
languages turn to either Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian wikipedias
by default. The Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia hasn't really added
any new active users since August or so. Many of the people
who support it admit openly that they do so for
ideological reasons but, as many Wikipedians know,
encyclopedias are built by those who love encyclopedias and
knowledge, not those who love ideologies.
To sum it up, I think that Wikipedia in Serbo-Croatian
should be re-locked and then removed after an appropriate
period, simply to remove interference with other projects
when doing a Google search or similar.
Elephantus
from Croatian Wikipedia
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