[Foundation-l] New projects opened

[Erik Zachte]

Marcus Buck wrote:

> 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. 

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:

> I am of course thinking about the list of 1000 articles
> each wikipedia should have. Just completing a
> significant part of that list is an accomplishment for
> a tiny pool of editors, but is within reach, and
> can serve as a useful incentive.

> BTW, I understand there is some work being done
> currently to define a tinier subset of that list, which
> could be even better for projects with fewer contributors,
> which would define what the really really really core
> encyclopaedia articles are.

Here is the url
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_articles_every_Wikipedia_should_have

I also think Wikimedia could do more to reach out to undeveloped/developing
countries
by reaching the hundreds of millions (billions?) of people who do not happen
to speak a second language 
where we do well, like English or Spanish or .... I hope one the outcomes of
the strategic 
process will be that Wikimedia starts to invest more actively in outreach to
parts of the world 
that are in need. 

The current 'laissez faire' / 'trickle down' policy where we wait till
people start helping themselves 
has not been very productive for some parts of the world. 

I would favor active encouragement of content development in those large but
wiki-weak languages.
Maybe pay for translation of a basic set of articles to any language with
more 
than 1 million speakers, which is deemed in need of support, per yet to be
defined criteria?

This could serve as incentive, show that we really care, serve as example of
what could follow, 
it would make our content also appear in Google in that language,
which for many of us already involved has been a starting point.

I do however think that the 1000 articles deemed essential (see url above)
completely miss the point. 
The current 1000 articles are partly high brow culture, with a focus on
first and second world.
Partly good general knowledge, but not of direct help to anyone in less
privileged parts of the world.
Few Africans or Indians would feel an incentive to contribute if they find
Wikipedia has content
in their language about Sarah Bernhardt, Le Corbusier, Dialectic, 
and about 800 (give or take) other topics on that shortlist.

They might see the immediate relevance of articles about food, hygiene,
health, basic technology, and the like.
I recognize there is a minority of people in Africa with internet access, 
and that minority probably has better than average education, and might be
interested in high brow culture. 
However that better educated minority (who are more likely to use our larger
Wikipedias) 
might not be direct beneficiaries themselves, but be grateful to have good
educational 
content to print and distribute, and thus help to get the ball rolling.

Of course there are practicalities to consider. Who guards the 100 essential
articles in a language until a community self-organizes?
We might need a variation of the current policies for new projects, where
now an active community is a prerequisite.
Instead we might publish those 100 article as a protected showcase with
different procedures to open up the wiki for general editing.

Erik Zachte