[Foundation-l] New projects opened

[Marcus Buck]

Chad hett schreven:
> I agree wholeheartedly. We need to get away from this idea that "more
> projects in more languages is better." It's not. It's lead to the issue we
> see now: dead projects lying around until somebody bothers to clean it
> up or close it.
>   
More projects in more languages _is_ better. They just need to be cared 
about. At the moment Wikimedia just sets up the wikis and waits for 
articles flowing in. The amount of work invested by the Foundation after 
the initial setup of the wiki is exactly zero. Languages of societies 
with much leisure time easily gained enough momentum by themselves. But 
other language versions from societies with educational and social 
hardships don't gain momentum by themselves. They don't reach the 
critical mass to sustain active wiki work. Therefore they need support 
by Wikimedia. Support like hiring somebody who is fluent in several 
African languages, sending him to Africa and let him promote Wikipedia 
participation at universities for example. Enthuse a handful of people 
and let them spread interest in Wikipedia collaboration. Perhaps soon 
you'll have a stable community. Even if my ideas may be naive, I don't 
know, at least the foundation could consider and explore projects like that.

I don't think that there are generally too few people interested in 
those languages. It's just hard to make the start. It's immensely 
frustrating to work on a wiki all alone, writing article for article, 
and after a year, you maybe have 100 or 200 articles and your Wikipedia 
is still just a little heap of disjunct articles with hardly any blue 
links and you realize that it will take years (or decades) until you 
have written enough articles to establish a resource, that is 
interconnected through blue links and covering all basic concepts. Most 
users won't stay for more than some months under circumstances like 
that. They realize, that they can't achieve the goal all alone and give up.
Therefore these projects need starting help. We should aid them until a 
little community is established and the basic articles are written. Once 
Rundi Wikipedia is at 100,000 articles, I'm sure, they won't need help 
anymore, cause at that moment it will be a useful resource, actually 
used by the people, and it will be fun for Rundi speakers to be part of 
the community and to add even more articles. Unlike the 38-article wiki 
we have now at which contributing is _not_ fun.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox