On 28 June 2016 at 12:24, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 6:01 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Milos, I read the points you are making in your initial post, and I
cannot
tell what actions you are seeking. I am not even really clear on what
the
problem is that you are "reporting". The best I can make of it is that
you
don't think there are enough articles in the Wikipedias of the languages
of
the Indian subcontinent, and that somehow it is the WMF's fault.
Yes, it's WMF's fault and the fault of us as a movement. We are not promoting social diversity in Indian part of our movement and if we are not doing that, we are cementing the problems they have.
I've written inside of my first email that there were no representatives of the lower classes of India on Wikimania. That's something both WMF and the movement can solve by taking care about diversity. However, Wikimania participation is just a tip of the iceberg.
Erm....there were few representatives of the "lower classes" of any language at Wikimania. This should not surprise you. The "lower classes" (i.e., the economically disadvantages) of all nationalities and linguistic heritages are disadvantaged on Wikimedia projects, simply because it is nearly impossible to edit without financial/economic resources: ability to purchase electronics, to pay for an internet/mobile phone connection, to have reliable internet access, or to have time when one is not carrying out activities to ensure basic survival, etc. It is a reality that in most European, Australasian and North American contexts, a significant majority of the population is able to overcome the financial and economic barriers to participation, and that there are sizeable portions (although perhaps not a majority) who are able to overcome these barriers in some areas of Asia and South/Central America. We know that there are huge swaths of Asia and Africa in particular where the majority of the population are not able to cross those four barriers I identified.
In many cases and many regions, the first challenge is more likely to be making the information accessible to people. If they can't even read Wikipedia, they're certainly not going to edit it.
Risker