Hi all,
I have only had minimal success in sending out e-mails about inactive Wikipedias.
But then, most of the people I e-mail, I don't know.
I figure that if each of us knows two or three people who speak languages of inactive Wikipedias, and we each tell all of these people that we know that there is a Wikipedia in their language, the effect would be much greater.
So, if you know anybody who speaks one of the following languages, please tell them.
By continent/country...
Africa -- Botswana: Tswana Burundi: Kirundi Congo: Kongo, Lingala Djibouti: Tigrinya Ethiopia: Amharic, Tigrinya, Oromo Ghana: Akan Kenya: Gikuyu Lesotho: Sotho Madagascar: Malagasy Nigeria: Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Fulfulde Rwanda: Rwandan Senegal: Wolof Somalia: Somali South Africa: Ndonga, Shona, Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu Swaziland: Swati Uganda: Luganda
Eurasia (including Pacific islands) -- Afghanistan: Pashto (Afghan) Aromania (Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia): Aromanian Assyria: Assyrian (not an independent nation) Azerbaijan: Azerbaijani Bangladesh: Bengali Bhutan: Dzongkha (Bhutanese) Burma: Myanmar (Burmese) Cambodia: Khmer Fiji: Fijian France: Breton (in Brittany), Corsican (in Corsica) French Polynesia: Tahitian Georgia/Abkhazia: Abkhaz Greenland: Greenlandic Guam: Chamorro (Guamanian) Hawaii: Hawai'ian India: All major languages Kyrgyzstan: Kyrgyzstani Laos: Laotian Maldives: Divehi Isle of Man: Manx Marshall Islands: Marshallese Nepal: Nepali Pakistan: Sindhi Papua New Guinea: Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu Russia: Avar, Abkhaz, Bashkir, Chechen, Komi Samoa: Samoan Sri Lanka: Sinhala Switzerland: Romansh (in the canton of Graubunden) Tahiti: Tahitian Tajikistan: Tajik Tibet/China: Tibetan Tonga: Tongan Turkmenistan: Turkmen Uzbekistan: Uzbek Vanuatu: Bislama
Americas (includes Carribean; in Latin America the languages are more widely spoken) -- Bolivia: Aymara, Guarani Canada: Cheyenne, Cree, Inuktitut, Inupiak, Ojibwe Chile: Quechua Ecuador: Quechua Greenland: Greenlandic Haiti: Haitian Creole Mexico: Nahuatl (Aztec) Paraguay: Guarani Peru: Aymara, Quechua USA: Choctaw, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Cree, Creek, Inupiak, Muscogee, Navajo, Ojibwe
Mark
Mark Williamson (node.ue@gmail.com) [050605 10:25]:
I have only had minimal success in sending out e-mails about inactive Wikipedias. But then, most of the people I e-mail, I don't know. I figure that if each of us knows two or three people who speak languages of inactive Wikipedias, and we each tell all of these people that we know that there is a Wikipedia in their language, the effect would be much greater. So, if you know anybody who speaks one of the following languages, please tell them.
India: All major languages
All major languages of India?!
That's ... amazing. (As well as wrong and bad.)
Free software has enough interest for organisations to form (FSF India). Perhaps FSF India would be a good place to drop a line about this to.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
All major languages of India?!
That's ... amazing. (As well as wrong and bad.)
Free software has enough interest for organisations to form (FSF India). Perhaps FSF India would be a good place to drop a line about this to.
The Indian language wikis suffer from the fact that most of the people in India with Internet access speak English. In fact, according to this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1719346.stm
...most keyboards in India have a US layout, and keyboards designed for Indian languages are unstandardized. Choice of language is a political issue, see e.g.
http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2004/langnewsfeb2004.html
I think the production of content accessible to less well educated people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with Wikipedia's mission. Much closer to our mission than a producing a species database, in any case. Perhaps there might be funding available for generating content in these languages.
I think it would be great if Wikimedia could ignore distracting grant opportunities to provide content for already well-resourced populations, such as biologists or American 10 year olds, and concentrate on its core premise. We have a method for cheap content generation, now how can we use that method to do the most good? How can we use scarce funds as leverage?
Perhaps the answer in the Indian case is with advertising, promotion and lobbying. We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of the advertising.
-- Tim Starling
Perhaps the answer in the Indian case is with advertising, promotion and lobbying. We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of the advertising.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling's proposal makes a lot of sense. I feel we should seriously consider it. Not just for India, but Africa as well.
Walter van Kalken wrote:
Perhaps the answer in the Indian case is with advertising, promotion and lobbying. We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of the advertising.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling's proposal makes a lot of sense. I feel we should seriously consider it. Not just for India, but Africa as well.
The same conditions exist in many developing countries -- the rich people have Internet access and English skills, and the poor people don't have either. Those rich people might be moved to write in their native language if we can convince them that they will be doing a great service to the non-English speakers in their country, and that we will be able to distribute the content to at least some of that audience.
The statement above is mostly speculation though, targeting is a question for market research.
-- Tim Starling
We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of the advertising.
The same conditions exist in many developing countries -- the rich people have Internet access and English skills, and the poor people don't have either. Those rich people might be moved to write in their native language if we can convince them that they will be doing a great service to the non-English speakers in their country, and that we will be able to distribute the content to at least some of that audience.
Spend over 10000 US$ on advertising Wikipedia to the rich, in the hope they will be moved to write articles for the poor. This might work in India, but in Africa, that seems a total waste of money to me. I might be stating this a bit too harsh, but... First of all, where are you going to advertise? Second, I think many rich (the ones who can afford internet at home) in Africa don't give a frack about African languages, they speak French or English and they think it's ridiculous to educate children in their native language. Third, Africa people are not used to work for free if it's not for someone within their extended family.
I think providing internet to small community centers in poor areas under the condition they add something to Wikipedia - you can set up contests to see if it could work, or to simply directly pay for every article of sufficient size (give out a buck, so you'll have 10.000 articles at the end, if you'll forget about overhead costs...) is much more cost-effective. Once there are a 1000 articles in a Wikipedia it will easily advertise "itself". Sending out mails will be much more effective than when there is nothing...
Guaka a écrit:
I think providing internet to small community centers in poor areas under the condition they add something to Wikipedia - you can set up contests to see if it could work, or to simply directly pay for every article of sufficient size (give out a buck, so you'll have 10.000 articles at the end, if you'll forget about overhead costs...) is much more cost-effective. Once there are a 1000 articles in a Wikipedia it will easily advertise "itself". Sending out mails will be much more effective than when there is nothing...
I remember something someone told me once. He said :
do not just bring computers to our villages. Bring computers with ideas of how to use them, make them alive. Show us something that we can transform ourselves from an education or economical point of view. Please do not come with computers and a cd rom of wikipedia, which will only tell us "we made this for you, now use it", rather bring computers, plus a wiki installed, a system to post articles by mail and a line good enough to send mails and download articles from time to time.
ant
Anthere wrote:
Guaka a écrit:
I think providing internet to small community centers in poor areas under the condition they add something to Wikipedia - you can set up contests to see if it could work, or to simply directly pay for every article of sufficient size (give out a buck, so you'll have 10.000 articles at the end, if you'll forget about overhead costs...) is much more cost-effective. Once there are a 1000 articles in a Wikipedia it will easily advertise "itself". Sending out mails will be much more effective than when there is nothing...
I remember something someone told me once. He said :
do not just bring computers to our villages. Bring computers with ideas of how to use them, make them alive. Show us something that we can transform ourselves from an education or economical point of view. Please do not come with computers and a cd rom of wikipedia, which will only tell us "we made this for you, now use it", rather bring computers, plus a wiki installed, a system to post articles by mail and a line good enough to send mails and download articles from time to time.
I just put my hand on a collection of essays by Ivan Ilich, "Celebration of Awarenes", published in 1971. I looked at one in particular: "Planned Poverty: The End Result of Technical Assistance." Among other things that he says: "the plough of the rich can do as much harm as their swords." "As the mind of a society is progressively schooled, step by step their individuals lose their sense that it might be possible to live without being inferior to others." "The counter-research on fundamental alternatives to current prepackaged solutions is the element most critically needed if poor nations are to have a liveable future." "We must seek survival in a Third World in which human ingenuity can peacefully outwit machined might. The only way to reverse the disastrous trend to increasing underdevelopment, hard as it is, is to learn to laugh at accepted solutions in order to change the demands which make them necessary."
It makes me wonder whether the latest Blair/Bush declaration to eliminate the debt of impoverished countries is really just a palatable way of announcing a round of welfare payments to bail out the banks. :-)
You make a very strong point. You don't bring progress to poor countries by bringing them truckloads of rice, but by encouraging them how to grow the rice. ... not by selling them high tech goods, but by letting them have the opportunity to develop more advanced goods without the restrictions of the arcane intellectual property rules of the rich. You don't tell them that the recipes that have nourished them for centuries, and crowned their feast and celebrations are not encyclopedic You don't belittle their efforts by telling them that the only local high school which houses their future hopes is somehow not notable.
Sorry if this seemed a little rantish. ;-)
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I just put my hand on a collection of essays by Ivan Ilich, "Celebration of Awarenes", published in 1971. I looked at one in particular: "Planned Poverty: The End Result of Technical Assistance." Among other things that he says: "the plough of the rich can do as much harm as their swords." "As the mind of a society is progressively schooled, step by step their individuals lose their sense that it might be possible to live without being inferior to others."
Time for a plug of my own. The most enlightening book on poverty that I've read was "Age of Consent" by George Monbiot. He puts the blame squarely on the financial system, explaining that it has been engineered to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. He kind of lost it towards the end, IMHO, preconditioning his clever and plausible solution for third world debt on an apparently ludicrous environmental scheme. Oh well, still a good read.
I think Wikipedia's role is to educate, so that the people living in abject poverty may be able to understand their condition and begin to formulate ways to correct it. According to Monbiot, the political will for such action must come from the poor countries themselves, since the democracies of developed countries are dominated by self-interest.
I think it is horrible to equate ignorance with individuality. We're not running some sort of anthropological zoo, where cultures must be preserved in their present state for the amusement of Western tourists. Let them decide how they want to live their life, and give them what they need to make that decision rationally.
Now I'm ranting against a point you didn't really make... I'll stop here. Except to say that the above paragraph was partly inspired by Polly Toynbee's essay in the book "On the Edge".
-- Tim Starling
A guy actually said that to you?
I think that his request should be granted :)
mark
On 07/06/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Guaka a écrit:
I think providing internet to small community centers in poor areas under the condition they add something to Wikipedia - you can set up contests to see if it could work, or to simply directly pay for every article of sufficient size (give out a buck, so you'll have 10.000 articles at the end, if you'll forget about overhead costs...) is much more cost-effective. Once there are a 1000 articles in a Wikipedia it will easily advertise "itself". Sending out mails will be much more effective than when there is nothing...
I remember something someone told me once. He said :
do not just bring computers to our villages. Bring computers with ideas of how to use them, make them alive. Show us something that we can transform ourselves from an education or economical point of view. Please do not come with computers and a cd rom of wikipedia, which will only tell us "we made this for you, now use it", rather bring computers, plus a wiki installed, a system to post articles by mail and a line good enough to send mails and download articles from time to time.
ant
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 07/06/05, Guaka guaka@no-log.org wrote:
We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of the advertising.
Spend over 10000 US$ on advertising Wikipedia to the rich, in the hope they will be moved to write articles for the poor. This might work in India, but in Africa, that seems a total waste of money to me. I might be stating this a bit too harsh, but...
I think it may be relevant at this point to remind everybody of the Firefox advertisement in the New York Times.
Specifically, a free project can have an occassional advertisement and create a lot of publicity about it. The market share Firefox gained from people seeing the advertisement is probably much less than that gained from the hundreds of articles about it in newspapers and news sites.
I do not mean that this would be beneficial for the aim of the campaign (to encourage editing in minority language) but that it could generate a large amount of publicity "on the side". After all, the news articles would not reach urban areas in Africa, but only be publicised in the developed world.
Incidentally, I myself felt the whole Firefox thing was a waste of time. Why donate to the New York Times?
Tomer Chachamu (15)
Hi,
Le Sunday 5 June 2005 16:11, Tim Starling a écrit :
David Gerard wrote:
All major languages of India?!
That's ... amazing. (As well as wrong and bad.)
Free software has enough interest for organisations to form (FSF India). Perhaps FSF India would be a good place to drop a line about this to.
FSF India and local LUGs are usually well aware of Wikipedia.
The Indian language wikis suffer from the fact that most of the people in India with Internet access speak English. In fact, according to this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1719346.stm
...most keyboards in India have a US layout, and keyboards designed for Indian languages are unstandardized. Choice of language is a political issue, see e.g.
http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2004/langnewsfeb2004.html
I think the production of content accessible to less well educated people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with Wikipedia's mission. Much closer to our mission than a producing a species database, in any case. Perhaps there might be funding available for generating content in these languages.
I think it would be great if Wikimedia could ignore distracting grant opportunities to provide content for already well-resourced populations, such as biologists or American 10 year olds, and concentrate on its core premise. We have a method for cheap content generation, now how can we use that method to do the most good? How can we use scarce funds as leverage?
Perhaps the answer in the Indian case is with advertising, promotion and lobbying. We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of the advertising.
-- Tim Starling
I agree very much with Tim and I am very interested to work on this. I have started looking for language specialists in Indian universites and other local personal contacts which could act as local lobbyists. But it seems that the problem is even more complicated than explained by Tim.
Many people in India are still using old computers with Win9x which are not Unicode compliant. The majority of Indian language web sites are still using proprietary fonts which only work on Windows. This is a vicious circle: people can't switch to free software because their computer doesn't support it and/or because they can't read the existing web sites with it. These web sites are not interested to switch to Unicode, open standard and free fonts because they have a captive audience. It seems that most Indian language web sites using Unicode are not based in India (BBC, American universities, Wikipedia, etc.). Since there is very little Unicode content, users stay with non Unicode systems.
So a multi-step approach is needed. Lobbying both content providers and users. Providing users with an alternative which allows them to access Unicode content and proprietary system: live CD, double boots, etc.
Yann
Tim Starling wrote:
Choice of language is a political issue, see e.g.
http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2004/langnewsfeb2004.html
I think the production of content accessible to less well educated people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with Wikipedia's mission. Much closer to our mission than a producing a species database, in any case. Perhaps there might be funding available for generating content in these languages.
There are, of course, two solutions to this problem. One is to help less-well-educated people become better educated, which in India means learning English (or, to some extent, Hindi). The other is to produce content in less-widely-spoken languages of India.
As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought to be in the business of running political campaigns. Providing resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose, sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other languages isn't our place.
-Mark
Delirium a écrit:
Tim Starling wrote:
Choice of language is a political issue, see e.g.
http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2004/langnewsfeb2004.html
I think the production of content accessible to less well educated people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with Wikipedia's mission. Much closer to our mission than a producing a species database, in any case. Perhaps there might be funding available for generating content in these languages.
There are, of course, two solutions to this problem. One is to help less-well-educated people become better educated, which in India means learning English (or, to some extent, Hindi).
<big understatement>
I... do not think helping less-well-educated people become better educated... *means* --------> "teaching them English".
</big understatement>
The other is to produce
content in less-widely-spoken languages of India. As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought to be in the business of running political campaigns. Providing resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose, sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other languages isn't our place.
-Mark
Plus, I think two issues are at stake here
1) is providing content to readers 2) getting readers to contribute to build up a ressource
It's worth mentioning that there are a few languages which are new to the web that are mostly encoded in Unicode -- Amharic comes to mind. There is Amharic content produced both within and outside of Ethiopia in Unicode. As opposed to Hindi, for which there are a multiplicity of legacy encodings.
Encouraging Wikipedias in such languages may early may pay dividends, since it's likely that users that read existing content will be have fonts installed already (input is another issue).
-Patrick Hall
Ooh! Ooh! Georgian!! And Lao!! And Syriac (aramaic)!!!!!111 yay!~!11
Mark
On 05/06/05, Patrick Hall pathall@gmail.com wrote:
It's worth mentioning that there are a few languages which are new to the web that are mostly encoded in Unicode -- Amharic comes to mind. There is Amharic content produced both within and outside of Ethiopia in Unicode. As opposed to Hindi, for which there are a multiplicity of legacy encodings.
Encouraging Wikipedias in such languages may early may pay dividends, since it's likely that users that read existing content will be have fonts installed already (input is another issue).
-Patrick Hall _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Le Sunday 5 June 2005 23:06, Delirium a écrit :
Tim Starling wrote:
Choice of language is a political issue, see e.g.
http://www.languageinindia.com/feb2004/langnewsfeb2004.html
I think the production of content accessible to less well educated people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with Wikipedia's mission. Much closer to our mission than a producing a species database, in any case. Perhaps there might be funding available for generating content in these languages.
There are, of course, two solutions to this problem. One is to help less-well-educated people become better educated, which in India means learning English (or, to some extent, Hindi).
This is really NOT a solution. It may even be seen as a provocation. I believe that most of the education problems India has are because of poorly thought suggestion like this. People get thought in a foreign language and are illetrate in their mother tongue.
The other is to produce content in less-widely-spoken languages of India.
As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought to be in the business of running political campaigns. Providing resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose, sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other languages isn't our place.
Well, imposing a foreign language is a political choice, even if it is because this is not enough content in the local language.
-Mark
Yann
Yann Forget wrote:
As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought to be in the business of running political campaigns. Providing resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose, sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other languages isn't our place.
Well, imposing a foreign language is a political choice, even if it is because this is not enough content in the local language.
I don't see how that's "imposing" anything. As an English speaker, I provide content in English free of charge; people may choose not to use it if they don't like English-language encyclopedias. If speakers of other languages do not provide a similar amount of content, that's not because I imposed anything on them.
Providing tools to people to do what they want with them is non-political. Launching a $30,000 advertising campaign to promote the use of minority languages is overtly political, and something I would strongly oppose.
-Mark
Le Monday 6 June 2005 00:38, Delirium a écrit :
Yann Forget wrote:
As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought to be in the business of running political campaigns. Providing resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose, sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other languages isn't our place.
Well, imposing a foreign language is a political choice, even if it is because this is not enough content in the local language.
I don't see how that's "imposing" anything. As an English speaker, I provide content in English free of charge; people may choose not to use it if they don't like English-language encyclopedias. If speakers of other languages do not provide a similar amount of content, that's not because I imposed anything on them.
You didn't, but social, commercial and technical solutions have been imposed on them which prevent them to read and write in their mother tongue or other local languages. So saying that they have the choice not to use English content is false. They are forced to do so, because they don't have the means to work in another language.
Providing tools to people to do what they want with them is non-political. Launching a $30,000 advertising campaign to promote the use of minority languages is overtly political, and something I would strongly oppose.
Yes, providing tools is necessary, but not enough. It is also necessary to explain content providers (web sites, etc.), content distributors (cybercafés, universities, etc.) and users (writers, teachers, etc.) why using these tools are beneficial for the end users. No big money is necessary for that, only some well organised lobbying.
-Mark
Regards,
Yann
Delirium wrote:
As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought to be in the business of running political campaigns. Providing resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose, sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other languages isn't our place.
If I understand correctly, it's not a political issue in the sense of being controversial, it's a political issue in that polticians all want to do something about it. That's what I meant in my original post, anyway. The need for educational material in Hindi and regional languages is not controversial. Most schools in India will continue to use an Indian language in their classes, regardless of what we do.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling wrote:
Delirium wrote:
As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought to be in the business of running political campaigns. Providing resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose, sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other languages isn't our place.
If I understand correctly, it's not a political issue in the sense of being controversial, it's a political issue in that polticians all want to do something about it.
Well, it *is* a political issue in the sense of being controversial. What the proper arrangement of languages should be in India is quite a hot-button issue. For example, to what extent should the country have a common language, at least as a second or third language that people can use to communicate with each other? If there is to be some such language, should it be English or Hindi? A previous BJP government tried to expand the teaching of Hindi as a second language in non-Hindi-speaking areas, in order to help it supplant English as the common-denominator language, but met with fierce resistance from non-Hindi-speakers.
In other countries the issue is even more inflamed---consider, for example, the Tamil language in Sri Lanka, or the Tibetan language in China. I don't really think this is a mess we should wander into.
-Mark
Showing people how it could be benificial to create material in their mother tongue would hardly be the sort of thing to get gongchandang pissed off at you.
In fact, despite an existing policy of minority language education in China, there is usually a vast shortage of materials and they often have to use putonghua textbooks even though the kids may not know how to read them.
Mark
On 05/06/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
Delirium wrote:
As you noted, the choice is a political one, and I'm not sure we ought to be in the business of running political campaigns. Providing resources for anyone to work on a Wikipedia in any language they choose, sure; but to actively promote the use of particular languages over other languages isn't our place.
If I understand correctly, it's not a political issue in the sense of being controversial, it's a political issue in that polticians all want to do something about it.
Well, it *is* a political issue in the sense of being controversial. What the proper arrangement of languages should be in India is quite a hot-button issue. For example, to what extent should the country have a common language, at least as a second or third language that people can use to communicate with each other? If there is to be some such language, should it be English or Hindi? A previous BJP government tried to expand the teaching of Hindi as a second language in non-Hindi-speaking areas, in order to help it supplant English as the common-denominator language, but met with fierce resistance from non-Hindi-speakers.
In other countries the issue is even more inflamed---consider, for example, the Tamil language in Sri Lanka, or the Tibetan language in China. I don't really think this is a mess we should wander into.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Tim Starling wrote:
The Indian language wikis suffer from the fact that most of the people in India with Internet access speak English. In fact, according to this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1719346.stm
...most keyboards in India have a US layout, and keyboards designed for Indian languages are unstandardized.
I can confirm this based on chatting with a group of Wikipedians and potential Wikipedians when I was in India earlier this year. At the conference I was attending I hosted a special session on "Hindi Wikipedia" and people told me that there's a major obstacle in that typing Hindi on an English keyboard is quite difficult, and there is no standard Hindi keyboard which is widely available.
I think the production of content accessible to less well educated people who aren't connected to the Internet is a goal in line with Wikipedia's mission.
I agree completely.
I think it would be great if Wikimedia could ignore distracting grant opportunities to provide content for already well-resourced populations, such as biologists or American 10 year olds, and concentrate on its core premise. We have a method for cheap content generation, now how can we use that method to do the most good? How can we use scarce funds as leverage?
I agree with you although it is not clear to me what you mean by "distracting". I spend a lot of time talking to NGOs in Africa and about Africa. I will be going to Africa in November with a specific eye towards learning more about what we might usefullly do. I share with you the notion that this is one of our most important missions.
Perhaps the answer in the Indian case is with advertising, promotion and lobbying. We could start with a small budget in the $10-20K range, spent mostly on market research and promotion. Then we could use statistical measures of the success of that campaign to request the funding of a full-time administrative position and a continuation or scaling up of the advertising.
It is possible, but it is of course also possible to waste a lot of money for no good purpose.
Even so, yes, I think that we should understand that by *some methods* which we don't yet understand, it is likely to be necessary for us to spend money (which means, necessary for us to raise money) to make some solid progress in some of these areas.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote: [...] and people told me that there's a major obstacle in that typing Hindi on an English keyboard is quite difficult, and there is no standard Hindi keyboard which is widely available.
Make it a user preference to transliterate into and from ITRANS in the edit window.
Regards, Peter Jacobi
Not so much Hindi though, with over 1000 articles. Tamil and Kannada are also doing OK, and a couple of others have a couple of hundred articles but are inactive.
Mark
On 05/06/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Mark Williamson (node.ue@gmail.com) [050605 10:25]:
I have only had minimal success in sending out e-mails about inactive Wikipedias. But then, most of the people I e-mail, I don't know. I figure that if each of us knows two or three people who speak languages of inactive Wikipedias, and we each tell all of these people that we know that there is a Wikipedia in their language, the effect would be much greater. So, if you know anybody who speaks one of the following languages, please tell them.
India: All major languages
All major languages of India?!
That's ... amazing. (As well as wrong and bad.)
Free software has enough interest for organisations to form (FSF India). Perhaps FSF India would be a good place to drop a line about this to.
- d.
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