[Wikimediaau-l] Chapter activity ideas

[Peter Ansell]

----- "John Vandenberg" <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 2:45 PM, private musings
> <thepmaccount at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We've got rather extreme 'thread spillage'! (as far as I can tell
> this is
> > sort of being discussed in three separate threads now?!) - maybe the
> mailing
> > list can be complemented by some traditional 'wiki work' on a meta
> page? -
> > I've created this;
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/Activities/Aboriginal_Language_Wikipedia
> >
> > I'd encourage all to sign up, and maybe centralise some discussion
> there. My
> > goal in this is likely to be quite simple - I'd like to help in the
> creation
> > of an aboriginal language wikipedia - sign up if you can help!
> 
> I have commented there, but feel that it is important enough to echo
> here:  Please please please do not give people false hope that this
> is
> likely to happen.
> 
> It will take a _lot_ of hard work to initiate a new project in any
> Australian Aboriginal language, and even then it is quite possibly it
> wont happen.  Language proposals with populations 1000 times the size
> of the average Australian Aboriginal language have been discarded,
> and
> projects that have been started with populations of 1000 times the
> size have been subsequently closed down due to inactivity.
> 
> If we can do something positive here, it will be great to see, but it
> wont happen because it is a good idea with white fella "inertia".  As
> Brian has pointed out, any project in an Australian Aboriginal
> language _must_ be 100% run by native speakers of the language, esp.
> as Australian Aboriginals are tired of giving away their culture for
> white fellas to exploit.  Most Aboriginal culture is being archived
> and maintained in dedicated cultural centres where access is
> controlled by Aboriginals.  Even transcribing _English_ published
> public domain texts can have unintended effects here, as often those
> English works are considered to be "stolen" culture.  Many Australian
> Aboriginal stories are only supposed to be known to certain people -
> spreading them because they are PD is blatant disregard and/or
> disrespect for their culture.
> 
> We can do more good in this area by a little restraint.  By letting
> Australian Aboriginals tell only as much as they want to, we will all
> learn more than if we try to tell it for them.

Are you implying it is a lost cause? That we shouldn't try to help because we will actually hamper their internally organised effort? If they don't want their culture spread around then they really aren't compatible with a GFDL wiki as you imply, but as that is the only real goal that wikimedia has, what else are we supposed to propose? Why don't we stop before we even start if there are going to be that many issues? Closed culture isn't compatible with free culture.

Peter