[Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

Wed Jul 27 15:12:51 UTC 2011

Hi, Achal

I was sure you would do something special when i translated [1] some 
note on the launching of this project for Brazilians. And i wasn't 
wrong. Congrats!

Yes, we are saying the same thing, except perhaps for your last 
sentences (sorry if i didn't get your point). Despite of its italian 
origin, pasta is very important for some anglophones countries. How 
about Brazilian "caldo de sururu", which is missing on en.wiki (and also 
on pt.wiki)? It's surely a lack for pt.wiki, but maybe not for en.wiki, 
as some projects are not missing the articles on every Lady Gaga's song. 
On wikipedias, people doesn't look for other discussions (AfD) on the 
same article in another language before deleting an article for lack of 
notability. So you can expect that some valid unit of knowledge in one 
language is not surely (or automatic) valid in another. Each community 
makes its own discussions. Unless we create global AfD valid for all 
languages, this will not happen. And in which language it would be? In 
which project?

And English is not that 'global lingua franca'. As we talk in English on 
this list, many people that could have something interesting to say us 
just can't do that. If 5% of the world speaks English, then English is 
the most spoken language (in some criteria), but it is still a small 
part of the whole world. Let us not generalize,  'whole' and 'majority' 
are not the same thing. Even if 95% of the world could read and write in 
English (and this is not true), the language barrier would keep 
existing, and the English wouldn't the a perfect solution. In Brazil, 
99% of the people speaks Portuguese, but for some people here, even the 
Portuguese language is a true barrier.

Castelo

[1] http://br.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:%C3%81gora#Achal_Prabhala

Em 27/07/2011 10:05, Achal Prabhala escreveu:
> Hallo (responses inline)
>
> On Wednesday 27 July 2011 06:02 PM, CasteloBranco wrote:
>> And why does the people who speaks Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi need to
>> write in English in order to have those oral citations published?
> Yes, we don't. We have Sepedi, Malayalam and Hindi Wikipedias to work
> on. Which is exactly what we did and are doing.
>> English is not as universal as some people think. I guess we need to
>> find an answer in their own language, so the solution won't be another
>> barrier.
> Certainly, which is why the main scope of this project has been to
> create audio interviews in Sepedi, Malayalam and Hindi for use as oral
> citations on the Wikipedias that correspond to these languages.
>> Also, the escope of this project is much more important for the
>> projects on these languages, and for speakers of these languages, rather
>> than the English Wikipedia or its readers.
>> But that's just me.
> Well, a valid unit of knowledge in one language is surely valid in
> another? Perhaps not every single unit of knowledge transfers as easily
> (there was a really funny incident where certain Indian language
> Wikipedias got hit with a large number of articles on Lady Gaga by
> misguided machine translation some time ago). But by and large, this
> holds true: assuming that every culture in the world wants to know about
> every other culture, and assuming that English is a global lingua franca
> - to the extent that we are speaking in it, on this list, now.
>
> en:wiki would be weaker if every article on pasta resided solely on
> it:wiki - and all we're saying is the same thing, in the context of the
> oral citations project.
>
>
>> Castelo
>>
>>
>> Em 26/07/2011 16:16, whothis escreveu:
>>> Looks like an excellent waste of effort.
>>>
>>> Maybe the problem of publishing non-publishable oral sources occurred to
>>> someone on the team. Anyway the english wikipedia seems to be the
>>> appropriate place for your original research. I can't wait to read all about
>>> it.
>>>
>>> I still think a research project in emesis in the global south or something
>>> would have suited english wikipedia better but that's just me.
>>>
>>> Your fan
>>>
>>> Elizabeth
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 2:38 PM, Achal Prabhala<aprabhala em gmail.com>    wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear friends,
>>>>
>>>> At the beginning of 2011, a group of us began working on a project to
>>>> explore alternative methods of citation on Wikipedia. We were motivated
>>>> by the lack of published resources in much of the non-Anglo-European
>>>> world, and the very real difficulty of citing everyday aspects of lived
>>>> reality in India and South Africa.
>>>>
>>>> We are now at a stage where the project is almost complete, and we'd
>>>> like to share our work with the broader movement, especially within
>>>> India and South Africa.
>>>>
>>>> There are three languages we worked within: Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi.
>>>>
>>>> The project page documents the process and logistics employed, as well
>>>> as the findings and results:
>>>>
>>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Oral_Citations
>>>>
>>>> A film made on the project is available here:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv?withJS=MediaWiki:MwEmbed.js
>>>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People-are-Knowledge.ogv
>>>> or
>>>> http://vimeo.com/26469276
>>>>
>>>> There have been discussions on oral citations for some time now within
>>>> the language communities we worked with for the duration of the project.
>>>> At this stage, we are really interested in *your* feedback, either on
>>>> this list, or on the Discussion section of the project page.
>>>>
>>>> There are still some things to come, namely:
>>>>
>>>> - Updates on events, meetings and discussions held around the project
>>>> (as they happen)
>>>> - Updates on articles created in Malayalam, Hindi and Sepedi as a result
>>>> of the project (as they happen)
>>>> - English transcripts of the interviews and a full English subtitle track
>>>> for further translation (we could use some help here).
>>>>
>>>> We would be very grateful to hear your feedback, and begin a broader
>>>> discussion.
>>>>
>>>> Best wishes,
>>>> Achal
>>>>
>>>>
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