[Foundation-l] Waste of money, Wikipediacentrism. - Brazil

[Steven Walling]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton <
rodrigo.argenton at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear all,
> Well as you know, Brazil is a priority, but when spending is a waste.
> We have a volunteer group that operates in Brazil since 2008 in direct
> contact with the problems of Brazil, know much about the free national
> culture, know a lot about education in the country, and their projects,
> they
> can tell the reasons why Brazil has poor performance on Wikipedia.
> Wikimedia
> Foundation conducted several interviews with the group, I was interviewed
> three times and had several conversations with several different employees.
> Also recently a person was hired to do a search on this, already operating
> in
> Brazil.
> And yesterday they announced the arrival of two more employees to ask only
> that, again. [1] They already have the answer to these interviews, what
> they are asking again?
>
> And what I find worse is the fact that there is a prohibitive message for
> explanation of other Wikimedia projects. As for the local group that
> Wikipedia is not central. And there will be an office of WMF, only to
> activities for Wikipedia. And many Brazilians criticize the model of the
> WMF,
> and that centralization in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is only the tenth seventh
> most
> visited site in the country. Need better, yes, but the problem is the
> community that is not healthy, and that the WMF does not interfere on
> that. So
> it's skating, and spending resources unnecessarily.
>
> Several staff members say the Wikipedia impact is larger than the other
> projects.
> Which has more impact for you?
> "The Movement Wikimedia projects through education, created free
> educational resources available in Wikibooks, and classes on Wikiversity,
> this could change the lives of thousands of poor children" or
> "The Movement Wikimedia succeeded in creating an encyclopaedia in
> Portuguese high quality "
>
> Unfortunately I live in a country that 38% of teens lives in extreme
> poverty [2], how they want to create a program just with universities, to
> share knowledge if people that never walk inside one university? Or not be
> able to read the contents of Wikipedia because they were not properly
> literate. I'm not talking to literate Brazilians, I'm talking to create
> free
> educational resources, and create classes, and encourage businesses
> and organizations
> to do that change, this is a collaborative work.
>
> With the money spent to keep three people six days in Brazil from the
> U.S.A.,
> we could fund a fellow to start a social work with teachers to create this
> material.What is the interest of the WMF on this? "Our priority is
> Wikipedia
> "
>
> *Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.
> *
> I'll keep imagining, and having to push myself very hard to see this world.
> That will never be reached by Wikipedia alone.Especially in Brazil.
>
> If it were to promote Wikipedia as a site, it would be best to hire a
> company,
> not a Foundation, if that way selected, do things as a Foundation.
>
> Sorry for my English, I'm tired and I didn't review.
>
> [1]
>
> https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Esplanada/geral/Wikip%C3%A9dia_Encontros,_Brasil_%2824jan2012%29
> [2]
>
> http://noticias.r7.com/brasil/noticias/adolescentes-sao-mais-pobres-que-restante-da-populacao-20111130.html
>
> --
> Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton
>

Hi Rodrigo,

I am going to keep my replies on Portuguese Wikipedia going forward.
However, I'll try to make a short answer here too...

We want this to be very different than past staff meetups or interviews
that have happened in Brazil. We are not interested in the university
program, the chapter, the Brazil office, or the fundraiser. That is not
what Maryana and I do in the movement.

We only care about hearing from the authors of Portuguese Wikipedia about
what their community is like. To lump together all the projects in that
discussion would be unfair, because it assumes that Wikipedia, Commons,
Wikibooks, and Wikiversity are all the same. I don't have to tell you they
are very different, and I think it would be impossible to talk about all of
them in just a few hours at a meetup. That is why we suggested that we most
want to hear about Portuguese Wikipedia and why we posted our meetup
information on Portuguese Wikipedia, not any other project.

If you feel it's a waste of time to get together with us and other
Wikipedians just to talk about Portuguese Wikipedia, then that's okay. I
don't feel that way, and I think people will be glad to have a meetup where
we can focus on the encyclopedia, instead of anything else.

Best regards,

Steven