On 10/11/05, Arbeo M arbeo_m@yahoo.de wrote:
Sadly, it's a fact that roughly half of all Wikipedias are clinically dead at present. Being enthusiastically
And I do think that right now, our _top_ priority should be to find ways to populate these barren WPs.
Some ideas:
- Find language activists, or people who have a website about the language - Find people on ICQ who claim to speak the language, and let them know about that WP - Let governmental or other official or authoritative organisations know about that WP - Get grant money to initially pay people to write good articles / translate articles, especially in countries with a low per-capita income (sub-saharan Africa, for example), and when a sizable article base has been established, it will be much easier to attract new editors. This includes having people write articles offline, and then typing it up yourself. - Depending on the size of the WP and the narrowness of its reader base, you can put a sitenotice up at one WP that another WP exists -- the Romanian WP did something similar for a proposal for a Vlax Romany WP, and it was relatively successful.
These are all things that have worked in the past. There are obviously many more possibilities.
Mark
-- "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin