[Wikimedia-l] Global East

[Anders Wennersten]

Yesterday Yuri, ED of WMUA (and my college in FDC) was interviewed in 
the main morning program on Swedish Radio re the ua.wp contra ru:wp in 
Ukraine and of Kazak WIkipedia

The 8 minutes report is half in Swedish and half in English so a bit 
hard to listen to [1]

The most interesting parts are
*The Kazak dictator is making all academics in this country to update 
the Kazan version of Wikipedia, perhaps to get it POV but mostly so they 
will not be dependent of ru:wp, ie he sees it as a must to have a decent 
Wikipedia version in order to be independent of the culture from Russia
*In Ukraine the former education minister (pro eu and pro Ukrainian 
language) actively promoted the ua:wp so not be dependent on ru:wp. The 
current minister have the opposite idea and has made Russian  an 
official second language in the eastern part of Ukraine
*It seems the university students make it as almost a political choice 
if to use ua:wp or ru:wp, and then in western Ukraine choose ua:wp

The central role of Wikipedia in theses vital political issues I have 
not heard of from our ordinary "western" chapters/language versions (or 
is catalonian/Amical an example)

And reflecting on this, I also think, even if independent,  of the 
dramatic increase of use of arabic and indonesian wikipedia [2] . Also 
of Vietnamese wikipedia which has a tremendous increase in number of 
article  by intellegent use of bots. Also of the very interesting 
development in India, with their many different language versions.

We here very little (nothing?) from these interesting developments, 
where we all probably can have a lot to learn

Asaf talks of the problem of getting Global South started as there are 
very weak/missing wp communities. But are we as a movement doing enough 
to support the active communities and developments in the Global East? 
(I can not help also think of Sues words re elections within the 
movement. Do these processes conserve our existing dominance in Board 
and groups of representatives coming from western world?)

Anders


[1] 
http://sverigesradio.se/api/radio/radio.aspx?type=db&id=4725418&codingformat=.m4a&metafile=asx
[2] http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htmtic 
increase of use of arabic wikipedia