[Wikipedia-l] BBC Radio Wales 'Mousemat' interview done

[David Gerard]

This morning I went into BBC Television Centre and did a remote radio
interview for BBC Radio Wales 'Mousemat', which is to be run in this
Sunday's programme - 5pm Sunday, repeated 6pm Wednesday. If you're not
in Wales, you can pick it up on Sky TV channel 0117, or on the website
for a week after broadcast:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/shows/mousemat.shtml

I covered how Wikipedia works, how we keep it from turning to rubbish,
how good it is ("it's not perfect, and we're painfully aware of its
problems, but it's *pretty good*"), the millionth article (how you can
get so much good detail out of an unremarkable suburban railway
station) and I did a *big* push for Welsh speakers to get in on the
ground floor of cy.wikipedia - en. has 1,000,000 articles, but cy. has
4,000 and there's endless room to work on a really *good* Welsh
encyclopedia. The Welsh language is undergoing bit of a revival -
everyone there speaks English, but learn Welsh first, it's popular
with its ethnicity, it's something people feel they *should* know if
they're Welsh and of course kids learn it so their parents won't
understand them, and the parents learn to keep up with them ;-)

They recorded about 15 minutes, of which they'll probably use 5 or 6.

And I'm apparently to receive a small payment for my trouble. :-O Just
as well since I'm presently not on a contract. (Gi's a job!)


- d.