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

[Casey Brown]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 4:43 AM, 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.

Something that's standing out in my mind, but might not be exactly
what you're looking for, is Ziko's "Tell us about your Wikipedia"
project, where Ziko and others tried to get different Wikipedias to
share details about themselves and some tough things that they
experienced. <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tell_us_about_your_Wikipedia>

That was a first step to a lot of the stuff you're talking about.

> 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?

Different chapters and other groups have held "Wikipedia Academies"
and outreach events like that, which try to teach people how to
contribute to Wikipedia (and why they should).  I'm pretty sure
Wikimedia Argentina has also spent some time trying to promote
Wikipedia in the native languages of Argentina.  Patricio, maybe you
can say more about that?

The stuff you're asking about seems like it falls under Frank's job
description (he's "Head of Public Outreach" for the Wikimedia
Foundation), so maybe he can help provide some other examples and
general tips for people doing this type of think. (CC'd)

-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023