Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
On 20 April 2014 04:46, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: I'd say that Scots Gaelic could be a good test (Wikimedia UK help needed!). It's a language with ~70k of speakers and if it's possible to achieve 100 active editors per month, we could say that it could somehow work in other cases, as well. Err they are about to have a referendum on independence -- geni ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliation in username
Silly technical remark: Everybody, please stop doing this with parentheses. It breaks in right to left languages. Gary-WMF is just as readable, and doesn't have this problem. Thanks for the attention. בתאריך 20 באפר 2014 02:17, מאת Gryllida gryll...@fastmail.fm: On a second thought, do we want to add an optional affiliation field to the signup form, so the affiliation goes at the end of username in braces? - DGarry (WMF) - Fred (DesignSolutionsInc) - David (MIT) - ... So the signup form would look like this: - | | | [ Username preview in large green font ]| | | | Username: | | ___| | Password: | | ___| | Password 2: | | ___| | Email (optional): | | ___| | Affiliation (optional; if your editing is related to work): | | ___| | | - I.e. - | | | [ Gryllida (FOO) in large green font ]| | | | Username: | | _Gryllida__| | Password: | | ___| | Password 2: | | ___| | Email (optional): | | ___| | Affiliation (optional; if your editing is related to work): | | _FOO___| | | - Gryllida. On Sun, 23 Feb 2014, at 1:25, rupert THURNER wrote: hi, could wmf please extend the mediawiki software in the following way: 1. it should knows groups 2. allow users to store an arbitrary number of groups with their profile 3. allow to select one of the groups joined to an edit when saving 4. add a checkbox COI to an edit, meaning potential conflict of interest 5. display and filter edits marked with COI in a different color in history views 6. display and filter edits done for a group in a different color in history views 7. allow members of a group to receive notifications done on the group page, or when a group is mentioned in an edit/comment/talk page. reason: currently it is quite cumbersome to participate as an organisation. it is quite cumbersome for people as well to detect COI edits. the most prominent examples are employees of the wikimedia foundation, and GLAMs. users tend to create multiple accounts, and try to create company accounts. the main reason for this behaviour are (examples, but of course valid general): * have a feedback page / notification page for the swiss federal archive for other users * make clear that an edit is done private or as wmf employee this then would allow the community to create new policies, e.g. the german community might cease using company accounts, and switch over to this system. this proposal is purely technical. current policies can still be applied if people do not need something else, e.g. wmf employees may continue to use sue gardner (wmf) accounts. what you think? best regards, rupert --- swissGLAMour, http://wikimedia.ch ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliation in username
Amir, this is the first time that one's been brought up. I'll chat with OIT about potentially changing moving forward. pb *Philippe Beaudette * \\ Director, Community Advocacy \\ Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. T: 1-415-839-6885 x6643 | phili...@wikimedia.org | : @Philippewikihttps://twitter.com/Philippewiki On Sat, Apr 19, 2014 at 11:39 PM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Silly technical remark: Everybody, please stop doing this with parentheses. It breaks in right to left languages. Gary-WMF is just as readable, and doesn't have this problem. Thanks for the attention. בתאריך 20 באפר 2014 02:17, מאת Gryllida gryll...@fastmail.fm: On a second thought, do we want to add an optional affiliation field to the signup form, so the affiliation goes at the end of username in braces? - DGarry (WMF) - Fred (DesignSolutionsInc) - David (MIT) - ... So the signup form would look like this: - | | | [ Username preview in large green font ]| | | | Username: | | ___| | Password: | | ___| | Password 2: | | ___| | Email (optional): | | ___| | Affiliation (optional; if your editing is related to work): | | ___| | | - I.e. - | | | [ Gryllida (FOO) in large green font ]| | | | Username: | | _Gryllida__| | Password: | | ___| | Password 2: | | ___| | Email (optional): | | ___| | Affiliation (optional; if your editing is related to work): | | _FOO___| | | - Gryllida. On Sun, 23 Feb 2014, at 1:25, rupert THURNER wrote: hi, could wmf please extend the mediawiki software in the following way: 1. it should knows groups 2. allow users to store an arbitrary number of groups with their profile 3. allow to select one of the groups joined to an edit when saving 4. add a checkbox COI to an edit, meaning potential conflict of interest 5. display and filter edits marked with COI in a different color in history views 6. display and filter edits done for a group in a different color in history views 7. allow members of a group to receive notifications done on the group page, or when a group is mentioned in an edit/comment/talk page. reason: currently it is quite cumbersome to participate as an organisation. it is quite cumbersome for people as well to detect COI edits. the most prominent examples are employees of the wikimedia foundation, and GLAMs. users tend to create multiple accounts, and try to create company accounts. the main reason for this behaviour are (examples, but of course valid general): * have a feedback page / notification page for the swiss federal archive for other users * make clear that an edit is done private or as wmf employee this then would allow the community to create new policies, e.g. the german community might cease using company accounts, and switch over to this system. this proposal is purely technical. current policies can still be applied if people do not need something else, e.g. wmf employees may continue to use sue gardner (wmf) accounts. what you think? best regards, rupert --- swissGLAMour, http://wikimedia.ch ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliation in username
Amir E. Aharoni, 20/04/2014 08:39: Silly technical remark: Everybody, please stop doing this with parentheses. It breaks in right to left languages. Gary-WMF is just as readable, and doesn't have this problem. Thanks for the attention. Your suggestion works against the built-in assumptions of MediaWiki for disambiguations. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Pipe_trick Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
Hi Milos, at the same time when you are concerned about the collection / preservation of thousands of languages, I will briefly introduce a project that currently takes place in Austria together with the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This project has the same goal direction, which you mention, even if we might go another way. Our way is at first the acquisition of languages, micro languages, language varieties and dialects. The basis of this work it will be, by a software (which has yet to be made ) to capture the regional characteristics of the language. written as a word, as a phrase, and then of course the regional peculiarities in pronunciation, using and producing audio files. Subsequently, there will be regional wikis to bring on a simple level, people to represent their knowledge. This is important especially in the german Wikipedia, because now it is almost impossible to enter de:WP as a freshman. The claims are completely covered, we lose an enormous number of authors and win hardly newones. In the meantime, it is already partially so that even the articles are no longer readable because they just follow an off-hook academic claim, not the demands of most of our readers. You are speaking about languages, Milos , of which you accept that it is as a official standard language with an appropriate written version. Here you will (and we will) encounter the first boundaries. The most important part for me of your writing is that you're worried about the fact that we constantly lose authors. So you're absolutely right. In our projects we often ignore the fact that knowledge is not necessarily a knowledge of the educated class alone, we find knowledge even in places where you least expect it. Currently it is so that access to Wikipedia, especially in the developed versions with 100,000 articles, already excludes many people to participate. The challenge is simply too difficult. Language does not stand alonefor itself, language is strongly tied to the culture. And this culture is often - I am referring to the German-language Wikipedia - already in a kind of elitist form of us even reproduced and filtered. But why should a language and word-collecting software make it possible to attract new authors and to enable new areas of knowledge acquisition? By being brave and just go new ways!Wikipedia is 13 years old and has not changed in its basic concept. But this basic concept is, in my view, in many ways no more purposeful in order to meet the requirements for different classes of readers and writers. Though I know that language does not stands on its own, so I also know that culture is not just a part of everyday life of humans, the life is the culture itself. But this isoften perceived by the elitists not as culture but as folklore. Just as we perceive dialects as a language of the subordinate social classes and as such also denote such languages as dialectsso that the apparent superiority of a so-called high-level language can be brought to the fore. When we talk about knowledge, then we always talk about written knowledge in a standardized form. However, we lose a large part of the knowledge by the fact that our culture is changing , our tools, our traditional professions. But that also disappears the diversity of our culture. If you look at the tools of a cobbler, then you will find there a piece of steel which is called in german Kneip. It is for the shoemaker, the most important of all tools in addition to the hammer. Today we no longer findshoemakers. Until a few years ago there were shoemakers in every street, in every small town. Probably in serbia or Belgrade, you will find more than we have here in Vienna, Austria and Germany together. And because this piece of steel , Kneip, wich is so extremely efficient and above all extremely cheap, it was formerly in every private toolbox. Together with a grindstone . Today it is called the Stanley knife, but it can not compete at least with the quality of Kneip. But we still have the word Kneip. And as long this word exists and people know what it means, as long this tool exists. If only in our consciousness. But when the word disappears , then the tool is finally gone. And thus also a part of our culture. This is just a small example of how important it is to preserve the language in its diverse form. The same applies to languages. Each language is significant because it is originated in and out of a very special cultural situation. If this culture could retain without influence from outside, eventually it will become a own language,because it is different from the more changing main language. If you understand Yiddish - which is understood as a separate language - then you know about how people may have spoken German several hundred years ago. Although, of course, Yiddish has also evolved. And even the main spoken language in Vienna, wich is in parts
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
Am 20.04.2014 08:38, schrieb geni: On 20 April 2014 04:46, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: I'd say that Scots Gaelic could be a good test (Wikimedia UK help needed!). It's a language with ~70k of speakers and if it's possible to achieve 100 active editors per month, we could say that it could somehow work in other cases, as well. Err they are about to have a referendum on independence What do you want to say with that? That it is thus no longer necessary, gaelic to lead as an example? Wikipedia does´nt end at national borders! Hubertl ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
On 20 April 2014 09:32, Hubert Laska hubert.la...@gmx.at wrote: What do you want to say with that? That it is thus no longer necessary, gaelic to lead as an example? Wikipedia does´nt end at national borders! Wikimedia UK however does. There is also the issue of changing political status. While Westminister may not be overly concerned with regards to Gaelic we can't predict how an independent Holyrood would react. -- geni ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
Milos Rancic, 20/04/2014 05:46: Why should we do that? The answer is clear to me: Because we can. Can we? There is no evidence that our minuscule wikipedias have had any influence whatsoever on unofficial languages like, say, the alleged lumbard (lmo) dialect. It's probably more effective to just publish/polish/distribute (on Wikisource or Wiktionary) ONE book which had an actual effect on that language, like (for Italian dialects) Porta's and Belli's. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
On Sun, 20 Apr 2014, geni wrote: On 20 April 2014 09:32, Hubert Laska hubert.la...@gmx.at wrote: What do you want to say with that? That it is thus no longer necessary, gaelic to lead as an example? Wikipedia does´nt end at national borders! Wikimedia UK however does. There is also the issue of changing political status. While Westminister may not be overly concerned with regards to Gaelic we can't predict how an independent Holyrood would react. If Scotland votes for independence, it will not become a separate country until March 2016 at the earliest. Until such time WMUK is the local chapter for Scotland. It may continue to be after that time, as details of what happens to WMUK in the event of a yes vote are at present undefined, but continuing as one organisation covering both countries is a possibility. Even if it doesn't, a project started by WMUK now could easily be handed over to a Wikimedia Scotland - not unlikely with the same people at the helm. Chris McKenna cmcke...@sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart Antoine de Saint Exupery ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliation in username
On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote: Amir E. Aharoni, 20/04/2014 08:39: Silly technical remark: Everybody, please stop doing this with parentheses. It breaks in right to left languages. Gary-WMF is just as readable, and doesn't have this problem. Thanks for the attention. Your suggestion works against the built-in assumptions of MediaWiki for disambiguations. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Pipe_trick Then Gary, WMF? Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
imo there are a whole bunch of organizations and projects much better aimed and developed towards this question; I'd rather map them and contact the most developed ones instead of reinventing the wheel. Cheers, Balazs PS: This because we can reasoning is very very thin btw. (source?) 2014-04-20 5:46 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: There are ~6000 languages in the world and around 3000 of them have more than 10,000 speakers. That approximation has some issues, but they are compensated by the ambiguity of the opposition. Ethnologue is not the best place to find precise data about the languages and it could count as languages just close varieties of one language, but it also doesn't count some other languages. Not all of the languages with 10,000 or more speakers have positive attitude toward their languages, but there are languages with smaller number of speakers with very positive attitude toward their own language. So, that number is what we could count as the realistic final number of the language editions of Wikimedia projects. At the moment, we have less than 300 language editions. * * * There is the question: Why should we do that? The answer is clear to me: Because we can. Yes, there are maybe more specific organizations which could do that, but it's not about expertise, but about ability. Fortunately, we don't need to search for historical examples for comparisons; the Internet is good enough. I still remember infographic of the time while all of us thought that Flickr is the place for images. It turned out that the biggest repository of images is actually Facebook, which had hundred times more of them than the Twitpic at the second place, which, in turn, had hundred times more of images than Flickr. In other words, the purpose of something and general perception of its purpose is not enough for doing good job. As well as comparisons between mismanaged internet projects and mismanaged traditional scientific and educational organizations are numerous. At this point of time Wikimedia all necessary capacities -- and even a will to take that job. So, we should start doing that, finally :) * * * There is also the question: How can we do that? In short, because of Wikipedia. I announced Microgrants project of Wikimedia Serbia yesterday. To be honest, we have very low expectations. When I said to Filip that I want to have 10 active community members after the project, he said that I am overambitious. Yes, I am. But ten hours later I've got the first response and I was very positively surprised by a lot of things. The most relevant for this story is that a person from a city in Serbia proper is very enthusiastic about Wikipedia and contributing to it (and organizing contributors in the area). I didn't hear that for years! (Maybe I was just too pessimistic because of my obsession with statistics.) Keeping in mind her position (she said that she was always complaining about lack of material on Serbian Wikipedia, although at this point of time it's the encyclopedia in Serbian with the most relevant content) and her enthusiasm, I am completely sure that many speakers of many small languages are dreaming from time to time to have Wikipedia in their native language. Like in the case of a Serbian from the fifth or sixth largest city in Serbia, I am sure that they just don't know how to do that. So, it's up to us to reach them. English Wikipedia has some influences on contemporary English language (citation needed, let's say). It has more influences on languages with smaller number of speakers, like Serbian is (Cyrillic/Latin cultural war in Serbia was over at the moment when Serbian Wikipedia implemented transliteration engine; it's no issue now, while it was the issue up to mid 2000s). But it's about well developed languages in the cultural sense. What about not that developed ones? While I don't have an example of the effects (anyone, please?), counting the amount of the written materials in some languages, Wikipedia will (or already has) become the biggest book, sometimes the biggest library in that language; in some cases Wikipedia will create the majority of texts written in particular language! While we think about Wikipedia as valuable resource for learning about wide range of the topics, significance of Wikipedia for those peoples would be much higher. If we do the job, there will be many monuments to Wikipedia all over the world, because Wikipedia would preserve many cultures, not just the languages. * * * There is the question How?, at the end. There are numerous of possible ways and there are also some tries to do that, but we have to create the plan how to do that systematically, well, according to our principles and goals and according to the reality. What we know from our previous experiences: * The number of editors has declined and, at the moment, without a miracle (or hard work, but I
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
2014-04-20 6:46 GMT+03:00 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: There is the question: Why should we do that? The answer is clear to me: Because we can. You'll be hard-pressed to find a lot of people who support the general idea more than I do, but precisely because of that I believe that we must be optimistic-but-realistic. Not realistic in the sense of all is lost, and at best we can save a few dozens of languages. Realistic in the sense of we can actually save quite a lot of them, but we cannot do it by ourselves. What can we do? We have software that is very friendly to Unicode, internationalization and localization. We have rather good translation tools. We have pretty stable and accessible servers. We have a good brand. The Foundation has some money and will to spend it on focused and data-driven projects. Obviously, the only remaining problem is the motivation of the people who would write in these small languages. Small not in the number of speakers, but in the online presence. The successful projects are not successful by themselves. For the most part they are successful because these languages are successful online outside of Wikipedia. I'll be the devil's advocate and I'll argue that the Hebrew Wikipedia is successful in number of articles per speaker not so much because of the outstanding motivation of the Hebrew Wikipedia editing community, but because Hebrew was pretty successful online before Wikipedia appeared. Millions of people were writing emails and Word documents and browsing forums and news sites in Hebrew before the Wikipedia in this language started in 2003. There were Linux clubs all over Israel at that time. It was possible to read printed encyclopedias in Hebrew (these days you can easily find these multi-volume sets in the trash around here), and to get complete school and university education in it. The Hebrew Wikipedia was just a natural outgrowth of that. A successful Wikipedia in a language that doesn't have these starting condition would be an extremely rare exception. Sure, we could say that Wikipedia already succeeded at reversing things. We had astounding success at reversing the process of publishing, which was established for centuries: for us publish first, revise later is a usual thing. But can we succeed at write Wikipedia first, establish Internet culture and public education later? I'm doubtful. Publish first, revise later worked because reasonably educated people in first-world countries realized that writing is not such a big deal. They had plenty of books to read in their languages to learn how it's done. Can it work for languages in which there are hardly any modern books, or any books at all? Languages that completely rely on textbooks in foreign languages - English, French, Spanish, Russian, Indonesian? Again, I doubt. Well there even be any motivation to want to *have* an encyclopedia in a language you *speak*, when the language in which you learn in school is different? Israeli, Russian and Dutch children google for homework solutions in their languages. Indian children google for homework solutions in English. I repeatedly hear Indians complaining that learning in high school in your own language rather than in English is one of the worst things to have on your CV. A lot of chicken-and-egg here. Back to the original question: Can Wikipedia save these languages? Not by itself. Wikipedia is only a part of a language's online presence; an important part, but I'm not sure that it's natural for it to be its first part. I'd say - get these people to write emails and Facebook statuses in their languages first. It will be much easier for a Wikipedia to come after that. And please don't let this email be Stop Energy - I'd love to be proven wrong. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliation in username
On 20/04/14 11:50, Liangent wrote: On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.comwrote: Amir E. Aharoni, 20/04/2014 08:39: Silly technical remark: Everybody, please stop doing this with parentheses. It breaks in right to left languages. Gary-WMF is just as readable, and doesn't have this problem. Thanks for the attention. Your suggestion works against the built-in assumptions of MediaWiki for disambiguations. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Pipe_trick Then Gary, WMF? Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe Removing the affiliation from the name itself and adding it as a group would allow the mediawiki to format the name and group in a way that makes sense for the given language. Keep to the parentheses for english and such, do other things for ones where that doesn't work or wouldn't be the norm. -I ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliation in username
On Sun, 20 Apr 2014, Isarra Yos wrote: Removing the affiliation from the name itself and adding it as a group would allow the mediawiki to format the name and group in a way that makes sense for the given language. Keep to the parentheses for english and such, do other things for ones where that doesn't work or wouldn't be the norm. That sounds like a good plan, although would need to be a plan to cope with duplicates, e.g. user:Whatamidoing and user:Whatamidoing (WMF) both exist. Chris Chris McKenna cmcke...@sucs.org www.sucs.org/~cmckenna The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart Antoine de Saint Exupery ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
First, I want to respond to the structural questions, among them some which I didn't mention: In short, we can because we have organizational infrastructure, capable to work with local people and bring them to edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. That's not the rocket science. Working with others: Of course! We are not the body which standardize characters, neither we are an academic institution capable to describe languages. However, standardization and language description are not the actions which create content in particular language, which makes languages living. It's about writing texts in those languages. Writing encyclopedia, books etc. is about creating content. Balazs, we are not reinventing the wheel; it doesn't exist. Sounds unbelievably? It sounded to me, as well, some five years ago. Besides loose connection between linguists on Linguist list, Ethnologue is the most important global institution. And it did nothing more than translating Bible and quite bad description of the main characteristics of the languages. Everything else is scattered all over completely disconnected university departments all over the world. Our civilization is pathetic? Yes, I know. Unbelievably, but we are the only global movement capable to do that. That's where our responsibility lies. We can, others can't. == Structural issues == But we have significant structural issues which we should address: * As I mentioned above, 1 active editor for a language with 10,000 of speakers and 10 active editors for a language with 100,000 of speakers is not enough. We need to raise participation for an order of magnitude. To do that, we can't rely on Internet hype. Even if miracle happens, it is not sustainable. We have to work with real people, to go all over the places where our chapters exist and show those people how they can contribute to Wikimedia projects. * After the initial hype, which is responsible for ~200 language editions of Wikipedia, during the best years we were getting ~10 new editions. If we want to cover 3000 languages, we'll need 300 years for the job. * If we switch the number above and say that we want to get 300 new editions per year and to finish the job in 10 years, it would mean that we'll have 25 new language editions of Wikimedia projects per month on average. That's possible in relation to the field work, while quite problematic for our own inertia. If we have 25 groups -- I am not talking here about chapters, but about sub-chapter groups as well -- which have one event per month in order to create one language edition of Wikipedia (that's not one time job, but we can wait for one year to start counting this), we could have 25 new language editions per month. And we have chapters or quite organized groups in many places where language diversity is significant enough: India, Indonesia, Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Russia. If we have two groups per each of those countries, we can do the job. And I am not counting possibility that we could get new chapters in other linguistically diverse countries, like Thailand, Nepal and Papua New Guinea are. At the other side, it would be significant strike to our capabilities to approve those projects. We have issues at every step and it usually takes a lot of time to get one project running. == Ideas and experiences == I would like that we are talking mostly about this topic. I think that some of the problems are not real problems and that others are serious obstacles. But whatever I think, whoever detects a problem, it would be good to start thinking how to solve it. Various experiences are also important. But I would like to get them in more generalized way. * We have the problem of declining number of participants. We could deploy various methods how to overcome them. There is no one particular reason for the declining number of participants. Some of the reasons are beyond our abilities (Facebook is more fancy), some of them are structural and hard to tackle (general trend of having more academic knowledge, harder and harder for newcomers), but some of them are realistic (people who don't know that they could participate in writing encyclopedic materials). And even I would think that it's possible to work on overcoming declining participation on German Wikipedia, Hubert has shown that it's possible. I used to count on Molotov cocktails, not on heavy artillery :) Hubert, there is hint for you: Few years ago Language committee has reserved all ISO 639-6 codes [1] as possible names of Wikimedia projects (triggered by usage of ten.wikipedia.org, which is, in fact, a valid ISO 639-3 code). While nothing in particular has been discussed, there is obviously a field for some types of Wikimedia projects based on dialects. * We have chapters in the regions where a lot of languages are spoken. What about incorporating inside of the next annual plan monthly visits to
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Indonesia and Humanitarian Open Street Map receive ALL VOICES GRANT
Hi Isabella, Great news! Congratulations to all of you :) In Argentina we are planning to build up a fundraising strategy this year. Is there somewhere we can take a look to the project? Thank you so much and congrats again! 2014-04-19 6:35 GMT-03:00 Nurunnaby Chowdhury n...@nhasive.com: Great news. Congratulations, WMID HOT OSM! On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 2:58 PM, Isabella Apriyana isabella.apriy...@wikimedia.or.id wrote: Hi Asaf, We will update the wiki page soon, including all budget and activity plans. We'll inform you the soonest! On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 3:08 AM, Asaf Bartov abar...@wikimedia.org wrote: Congratulations, WMID and HOT OSM! Where can one read more about the project? The link provided was not enough for me to get a sense for what the grant actually funds, and it would be interesting to learn from, and perhaps applicable elsewhere too. Thanks, Asaf On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 11:21 AM, Tomasz Finc tf...@wikimedia.org wrote: Congrats! Eager to see what great things are built. On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Isabella Apriyana isabella.apriy...@wikimedia.or.id wrote: Dear all, We are happy to inform you that Wikimedia Indonesia and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT OSM) just received the news that our proposal submitted to Making All Voices Count grant program was accepted. We got £ 31,000 worth of grant to work on growing open content in Kalimantan, Indonesia. The proposal was submitted last year and co-written by Wikimedia (Siska Doviana, Ivonne Kristiani, John Vandenberg) and HOT OSM (Kate Chapman and Yantisa Akhadi). We are so excited because this is our first big collaboration project together and out of 500 proposals worldwide (well, seven countries) only 28 received funding, and we are one of them. We also realized that we just became internationally competitive in grant seeking. Thank you to them, and back to work for us! Official page from Making All Voices Count: http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/project/open-content-in-kalimantan-wikipedia-openstreetmap-for-transparency/ Cheers, -- *Isabella Apriyana* *Wakil Sekretaris Jendral* *(Deputy Secretary General)Wikimedia Indonesia* Seluler +628889752858/ +6281213700084 Surel isabella.apriy...@wikimedia.or.id Dukung upaya kami membebaskan pengetahuan! http://wikimedia.or.id/wiki/Wikimedia_Indonesia:Donasi Support us to free the knowledge! http://wikimedia.or.id/wiki/Wikimedia_Indonesia:Donasi ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- *Isabella Apriyana* *Wakil Sekretaris Jendral* *(Deputy Secretary General)Wikimedia Indonesia* Seluler +628889752858/ +6281213700084 Surel isabella.apriy...@wikimedia.or.id Dukung upaya kami membebaskan pengetahuan! http://wikimedia.or.id/wiki/Wikimedia_Indonesia:Donasi Support us to free the knowledge! http://wikimedia.or.id/wiki/Wikimedia_Indonesia:Donasi ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe -- *Nurunnaby Chowdhury Hasive* Administrator | Bengali Wikipedia http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:nhasive Member | IEG Committee, Wikimedia Foundationhttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/People Social Media Interaction Expert | The Daily Prothom-Alohttp://www.prothom-alo.com Bangladesh Ambassador | Open Knowledge Foundation Network http://www.okfn.org Treasurer | Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) http://www.bdosn.org Task Force Member | Mozilla Bangladesh http://www.mozillabd.org fb.com/nhasive | @nhasive http://www.twitter.com/nhasive |
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
Interesting thoughts. I have a few brief comments, and will engage further (on Meta, perhaps) later: 0. because we can is indeed a very poor reason to do anything. We are also probably the only global network that can ensure complete coverage of all Pokémon characters in 100 languages. That's far from proof that we should allocate active investment (as distinct from volunteer choices) to this. 1. I contend our mission does not extend to language preservation via write-only encyclopedias. Language preservation is a fine a noble mission, and one I personally sympathize with a great deal. It is however not our mission. Our mission is to create and share free knowledge. 2. This does include free knowledge _about_ every last language of the world, so by all means: let us preserve all languages' written output on Wikisource, and let us document all languages' lexicons on Wiktionary (not their own Wiktionary, but active Wiktionaries with existing editing communities), but we should not unconditionally spend resources to ensure the availability of free knowledge _in_ every last language. I submit that our vision is satisfied by offering free knowledge in the languages people use to consume knowledge (a far _far_ smaller subset of even the 280-odd language editions we already have). 3. An example: some time ago, our colleagues in Chile wanted to spend (not a lot of) movement funds on printing the Welcome to Wikipedia booklet in Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui is (perhaps) spoken by fewer than 3000 people, no doubt mostly without facility with or regular access to the Internet. There is not, and there never will be, a Wikipedia that is a useful reference source in Rapa Nui. And that's okay, because there is also not, and never will be, a person on this planet who _needs_ free knowledge in Rapa Nui, that is, who cannot consume knowledge in another language (indeed, I dare wager fully 100% of Rapa Nui speakers not only _can_ consume knowledge in Spanish, but would _prefer_ to do so. In practical terms, I mean, e.g. if they needed medical information and had a page of Rapa Nui and a page of Spanish providing that information before them). 4. What does interest me, as a grantmaker, is where to draw the line between the Rapa Nui end of the spectrum and languages that, with some active promotion, could well become useful and much-needed reference sources in some cultures. In other words, *what are the prerequisites for a viable Wikipedia in a given language?* At least good odds for one. Instinctively, I think those prerequisites would be some combination of: - number of literate speakers with Internet access (audience) - number of literate speakers with Internet access, education, and spare time (prospective editors) - availability of secondary sources in that language - availability of news sources in that language - reasonable way to type the language into a computer Of these, only the last one is something we can do something about (and indeed have been doing). I would welcome some thinking from all interested, including the Language Committee, on what might a reasonable set of criteria be for a language we would consider it reasonable to promote a _Wikipedia_ in. Asaf On Sun, Apr 20, 2014 at 1:28 AM, Hubert Laska hubert.la...@gmx.at wrote: Hi Milos, at the same time when you are concerned about the collection / preservation of thousands of languages, I will briefly introduce a project that currently takes place in Austria together with the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This project has the same goal direction, which you mention, even if we might go another way. Our way is at first the acquisition of languages, micro languages, language varieties and dialects. The basis of this work it will be, by a software (which has yet to be made ) to capture the regional characteristics of the language. written as a word, as a phrase, and then of course the regional peculiarities in pronunciation, using and producing audio files. Subsequently, there will be regional wikis to bring on a simple level, people to represent their knowledge. This is important especially in the german Wikipedia, because now it is almost impossible to enter de:WP as a freshman. The claims are completely covered, we lose an enormous number of authors and win hardly newones. In the meantime, it is already partially so that even the articles are no longer readable because they just follow an off-hook academic claim, not the demands of most of our readers. You are speaking about languages, Milos , of which you accept that it is as a official standard language with an appropriate written version. Here you will (and we will) encounter the first boundaries. The most important part for me of your writing is that you're worried about the fact that we constantly lose authors. So you're absolutely right. In our projects we often ignore the fact that knowledge is not necessarily a knowledge of the educated class alone, we
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 1:15 AM, Asaf Bartov abar...@wikimedia.org wrote: 0. because we can is indeed a very poor reason to do anything. We are also probably the only global network that can ensure complete coverage of all Pokémon characters in 100 languages. That's far from proof that we should allocate active investment (as distinct from volunteer choices) to this. It's easy to miss historical responsibility which one person or group have. We are living in the present and we often don't realize how important is what we are doing at the moment. For few years we already did one historical job, which is about the biggest encyclopedia in the history of humankind. There is no software piece, no image of a monument or a beauty of nature (or numerous things which we are doing at the moment) comparable to the fact that we can preserve not just languages, but many cultures. I know that it's not precisely in our mission, but if we leave the strict interpretation of our mission, it could pass. There is no one else to do that and there is no time to wait for another global movement to do that. I am not saying that we should start doing things indiscriminately and move the focus from the free knowledge to the language preservation. I agree that we should cover first those languages with the most chances to survive (among them, those with the most chances to have significant contribution to Wikimedia projects). The point is that if we don't do that, nobody will. And that's not because nobody in the future won't be willing to do that, but because there are maybe ~50 years to do the job. That's not a lot. Wikipedia is 13 years old and 50 years is around for times more than that. We are simply living in one specific period and our size and focus are giving us specific kind of responsibility. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] How Wikimedia could help languages to survive
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 1:15 AM, Asaf Bartov abar...@wikimedia.org wrote: 4. What does interest me, as a grantmaker, is where to draw the line between the Rapa Nui end of the spectrum and languages that, with some active promotion, could well become useful and much-needed reference sources in some cultures. In other words, *what are the prerequisites for a viable Wikipedia in a given language?* At least good odds for one. Instinctively, I think those prerequisites would be some combination of: - number of literate speakers with Internet access (audience) - number of literate speakers with Internet access, education, and spare time (prospective editors) - availability of secondary sources in that language - availability of news sources in that language - reasonable way to type the language into a computer After a general response about can, here is more practical one. I have pretty good clue about what's reasonable to do and what's not. For my presentation in Haifa I did quite good work in data mining Ethnologue's database. During this week I'll familiarize with what I did previously and start to organize data. (Likely on a wiki which I'll create for myself, but the data could be easily transferred to Meta or any other Wikimedia project when we realize where the home of such project would be in the future; also, organizational work and discussion should take place on Meta, of course; also, should check relevant existing pages.) Basically, there are few groups which should be our focus: * Languages with more than 10,000 of speakers with positive attitude toward language and accessible electricity. (If there is electricity, some internet exists.) * Smaller languages with highly positive attitude among speakers. Although I am quite skeptical about languages below around 10,000 speakers, there are non-moribund languages with much less speakers. Electricity also counts. * Smaller languages inside of OECD countries. That could be about regional languages (continental continuum of Germanic languages is the most important example), but I am mostly thinking about native languages of countries like Australia and Canada are, as well as about remains of colonies of France, UK, Netherlands and US. Here we could get strong support from particular governments (like it's in WM FR case). The purpose of this brain storming is also to create targets. I don't think that WM ID should go into a random part of West Papua and try to make contact with native people. There are languages with more than one million of speakers without Wikipedia and those people live in areas with electricity and internet access. (From what I remember, the largest language has more than 10 millions of speakers, but Indian government treats it as a part of Hindi.) We'll need months or even a year to prepare things in the right way. We can create targets based on Ethnologue data, but their data are not that reliable. It should be checked... And then we could list the targets for the chapters. I wouldn't say that lack of sources or newspapers in particular should stop us from doing the job. I wouldn't say that lack of orthography should stop us, neither. We should list the obstacles and if we are not capable to do something alone, we should call other organizations to help us. It could be about resources -- including money --, it could be about expertise. If particular group has strong positive attitude toward their native language and they have technological minimums to work on Wikipedia, we should do our best to help them. I am also talking here not about Wikipedia as the necessary first project. Having good Rapa Nui dictionary on English Wiktionary is quite good solution for that case. Which, in turn, reminds me that we should adopt OmegaWiki. And, finally, I have to say that I really appreciate your input because of realistic approach. I do think that it's more possible than you think, but it's always good to have someone who is a bit more skeptical :) ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Indonesia and Humanitarian Open Street Map receive ALL VOICES GRANT
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:48 AM, Anna Torres a...@wikimedia.org.ar wrote: Hi Isabella, Great news! Congratulations to all of you :) In Argentina we are planning to build up a fundraising strategy this year. Is there somewhere we can take a look to the project? While the WMID team puts online their project documentation, I can provide a bit of background which will be useful to other chapters. The very short version, without buzzwords, is we will be creating OSM mapping data and Wikipedia articles of Kalimantan, training local groups and producing a training kit so they can continue to do it after the project funding finishes. Their will be project evaluation reports so that other regions and countries can assess whether they will be able to reproduce the outcomes of the project. The Making All Voices Count website isnt very informative about the program at the moment, as they have replaced most of the information about the program with details about the projects being funded. More information might be buried in their blog entries from last year. The first call for proposals for the innovations grant program needed to have impact in one of eight countries: Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/news/first-call-proposals/ Based on the history of the funding body, and entities backing the funding body, it was obvious that any innovation in the area of citizen participation in open government was the broad theme. It is always difficult knowing precisely what is going to succeed in a first round for a new grant program. Now that they have selected a group of proposals to fund, it is easier to see what types of projects will be successful in the next rounds. http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/news/28-cutting-edge-projects-to-boost-government-accountability-citizen-engagement/ The next round (it should be opening soon) will be for Bangladesh, Mozambique, Pakistan, and the Philippines. One of the requirements is that there is a local organisation as part of the grant proposal. The local organisation doesnt need to be a well established organisation with lots of capacity. The bulk of the work can be done by a foreign partner, but they want to see a formal partnership exists between the two (i.e. a signed agreement as an appendix). It is a great opportunity for a bigger chapter to help a smaller chapter attract external funding and complete a project which will have real impact in their country. Or for a chapter to partner with another organisation in their country. Wikimedia is known to be good at crowd sourcing and citizen engagement. Those skillsets needs to be wrapped into a project concept that will have measurable impact in the real world (i.e. outside of the wikiverse), and then sold so that funders can see that using wikis is an innovative component *with* a key strength being that using wikis ensure that others can continue to build the project after the funding runs out. Some of the other requirements for the application: * focus providing a voice to minorities (esp. people with disabilities) * 500 word executive summary * A detailed budget * complete resumes of four key people in the project * biographies of the participating organisations The three Asian countries for round two (Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines) are the 'easiest', all having very active local wikimedia groups that are well connected to the International community. Mozambique is a challenge. ;-) Portuguese Wikipedia has a few contributors living in Mozambique. As well as the 'Wikipedians in country' category (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8645200), more wikimedia people can be found using searches like https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+intitle:user+Mozambique https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+intitle:Usu%C3%A1rio+Mo%C3%A7ambique As example, one of the Portuguese speaking chapters could partner with an advocacy group in Mozambique to write Wikinews stories on Portuguese Wikinews about a topic which usually isnt covered well in traditional media. e.g. Interviews with people with disabilities, from people in villages through to their first two Paralympians? (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1442458) Or Wikimedia South Africa may be able to partner with a group in Mozambique to help build Tsonga/Xitsonga Wikipedia, which currently has less than 300 articles after many years, and was even proposed for closure. There are other languages of Mozambique that do not have a Wikipedia yet. Would a $40,000 funded project be sufficient to build/regenerate a new Wikipedia language community? Or work with a relevant peak body/Quango/NGO to put one of their existing books on Wikibook, translate it to minority languages and distribute it. e.g. Marie Stopes International Distributing Wikipedia via Kiwix may also meet open government development goals, if the content is of sufficient quality, (or $40,000
