[Foundation-l] small Wikipedia projects - follow-up to Jimmy Wales' talk

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
I have blogged often about this subject.

If you want to create a level playing field for languages (the topic of my
presentation at Wikimania) you have to make sure that there is a level
playing field. While MediaWiki supports many languages there are issues that
we have not addressed. Many of these have to do with Unicode needing updates
of fonts that do not support the characters needed for a language.

Amir, we talked about issues with right to left languages at Wikimania in
Gdansk, that is another can of wurms where we need people to pick up the
slack. At translatewiki.net we are looking for developers who are able and
willing to help solve technical issues that have to do with allowing
structures commons to languages. Examples are multiple plural forms,
addressing people by their gender, addressing people in a formal or informal
way.

Once we are able to properly address people either in the user interface or
in the text will we get to the stage where outreach becomes realistic and
feasible. Otherwise you tell people that their language and effectively
their culture is secondary because this other language is so good.
Thanks,
      GerardM

On 18 July 2010 10:43, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm writing this as the follow-up to Jimmy Wales' Wikimania keynote
> about small Wikipedias, or, as some people correctly say, Wikipedias
> in underprivileged languages. (It's strange to use the word "small"
> anywhere near Bengali, for example.)
>
> Is there some recorded body of knowledge about the existing attempts
> to engage small language communities? The only thing that i know is
> the parts with Ndesanjo Macha in "The Truth According To Wikipedia".
> They are very inspiring, but very small.
>
> Were there any people that, for example, worked with schools that
> function in underprivileged languages and tried to teach students
> there to write Wikipedia articles in their language? If there were,
> can i read, hear or watch their experiences anywhere?
>
> --
> אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
>  I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
>
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