There's an en-wiki project I'm getting involved in that is planning "outreach" to smaller wikis. Would you like me to give you a ping when we launch?
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 12:45 PM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote: > 2010/7/18 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>: > > Amir, we talked about issues with right to left languages at Wikimania in > > Gdansk, that is another can of wurms where we need people to pick up the > > slack. At translatewiki.net we are looking for developers who are able > and > > willing to help solve technical issues that have to do with allowing > > structures commons to languages. Examples are multiple plural forms, > > addressing people by their gender, addressing people in a formal or > informal > > way. > > OK. This is certainly important and i am willing to hear more thoughts > about that. Another significant technical issue about which i would > want to read is how do such outreaching wiki-activists cope with poor > or non-existent network infrastructure in such places. > > But i am particularly curious not about the technical issues, but > about people's experiences - if there are any - with the actual > content. > > For example, i can quite easily imagine teachers in some countries > saying: "Why should we write encyclopedia articles or textbooks in our > local language? Textbooks should be written in English / Russian / > French / Spanish / Portuguese." Did anyone have to cope with that? > > I am not even talking about countries where it is a question of > language preservation; for example, in regions of Russia such as > Tatarstan or Sakha most people know Russian and many know Russian > better than their regional language. In this case, writing a Wikipedia > in Tatar is not an immediate educational necessity, because Russian > textbooks are accessible to people. It is rather a question of > preserving the local culture; i strongly support that, but there are > worse cases. > > I am rather talking about countries in, for example, Africa, where > people don't necessarily know English or French well, but where > education nevertheless functions mostly in a foreign language. Do > people there even imagine that it's possible or desirable to write an > encyclopedia in their language? Given all the technical tools and > support, will they actually think that it's worth doing it? > > These are the challenges about which i am most curious. > > There are, of course, many other issues, technical and non-technical: > lack of words for modern and foreign things, lack of standard > orthography, low literacy rates, etc. I am willing to hear about all > the aspects. > > -- > אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי > Amir Elisha Aharoni > > http://aharoni.wordpress.com > > "We're living in pieces, > I want to live in peace." - T. Moore > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l