Dear Anthere,
As for the articles coming from the South Ossetian
teachers, I get
them by e-mail and put them to WP (after wikifying; they come as a
simple text file or a Word file).
<<Just a side comment. Perhaps you should mention in the comment box the
name of the original author.
I would see two benefits
First it is more honest toward the author, who is credite is work.
Second, it is good image to show several people are contributing.>>
Sure, you are right!
Thank you for the idea: I've been thinking about creating a Category
or a Template for the purpose, but finally considered mixing content
with authorship a not so good idea. But putting a name into the
comment line is both easy and really useful.
Or should I register a special account to post all the articles
created in the project? That will make searching them very easy, etc.
What do you think?
The journalist informed the locals about the
"first encyclopedia in
Ossetian"; some of them got interested. Neither computers, nor
Internet are widely available in S.Ossetia -- so the interest could
rest just the interest, but then the bright idea appeared... :)
<<Nod. Both arguments are fair. I would like to know whether these
teachers have themselves good internet access ? Presumably quite limited ?>>
As for the only teacher, who is working already on her 3rd article
now, she has some limited but free access to a Win98-computer at her
school. There she types her text in MS Word format and brings it on a
diskette to the South Ossetian journalist, who sends the text to me
via e-mail.
The same journalist also shows her the result of her work at the
Wikipedia. Her first article (about the writer Nafi Jusoity) is now
the elected one, its part is on the first page, and as far as I know
the teacher is very proud about the fact.
I don't think it's a good idea to involve manuscripts: if a person
can't use a computer at all, this person probably can't imagine
electronic text (moreover hypertext) and its specialities. That's why
we are most of all interested in younger teachers and students of
Ossetian-related specialities (future journalists and teachers).
Besides the texts for WP we achieve another purpose: raise the
prestege of the language, showing that quality texts in it are needed
and can be paid.
Among our further plans is looking for such people in
the villages of
North Ossetia, where exists at least one highly literate group: the
teachers of the Ossetian language. But most of them are not at all
good computer users... So we have many interesting challenges.
<<Perhaps a collaboration with computer offer ?>>
Can you tell more about your idea? I didn't get it.
We are also planning to meet authorities of the North
Ossetian State
University in order to organize presentations of Wikipedia at several
faculties. The future Ossetian philologists and journalists might get
much experience from writing texts in WP. Still such a presentation
does not seem possible in the nearest future, for it's not easy for me
to go to Vladikavkaz now. Born there, I live in St.Petersburg at the
Baltic Sea at the moment.
<< Can you tell me more about the reasons why this does not seem possible
in the nearest future ? I think your experience sounds very.. >>
Well, at least because the study year is over by the end of May. The
best time for such presentations at the local universities is
October-November or February-March, when the students are not
frightened by the nearing exams and have time to participate in
projects like WP.
Slavik/Amikeco
--
Esperu cxiam!