Hi Douglas and Ian That is tremendous, and I guess that there can't be massive activity leading from one workshop, especially given the lack of computer skill that you both note coupled with the apprehension to edit (all technical-related issues). Great that you are doing the follow-up because the only way to overcome that is by doing the follow up workshops so that people don't slip back; it's such a prevalent challenge in computer literacy training in general.
Douglas, your idea of 'embedding' some form of Wikipedia culture into a class scenario is very interesting, and wonder if some of these participants might consider it further down the line when they are more comfortable. Kerryn * * * * Kerryn McKay The African Commons Project 082 334 6165 skype: kerrynmac twitter: kerrynmckay On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 12:24 AM, Douglas Scott <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi, > > Ian is absolutely right. Although the workshops them selves tend to create > a number of articles creating a community of dedicated editors for > Xhosa language Wikipedia will be a very big challenge that I think will > take a long time. On the up side people are very eager and interested but > on the down side, as Ian has mentioned, there are still problems with basic > computer literacy and access to computers/internet. I suspect that it will > take a number of workshops followed by some sort of program such as one > (and this is only an idea right now) whereby teachers use Xhosa Wikipedia > to test their students translating abilities thereby creating a self > perpetuating process that continually exposes new people to editing that > wiki. > > As I mentioned to Ian on Saturday I think that a big part of creating a > healthy community of editors on Wikipedia is finding enough people with the > right type of personality that is at home using a computer. I think that > is as much a numbers game as anything else which means spending a long time > exposing as many people as possible to the idea and process of editing > Wikipedia. A process that is made harder by relatively low rates of > computer literacy. But then again we must start from some where I suppose. > Either way, more work and support is needed and so long as I have free > time and am in Cape Town I am happy help. > > P.S. Thanks for checking the stats Ian. To be frank I am delighted that > one extra substantial edit was made since the workshop on Saturday. That > in its self is a 0.7% increase! :-D > > > On 14 February 2012 00:02, Heather Ford <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Thank you so much, Ian. Appreciate it. >> >> On Feb 13, 2012, at 1:15 PM, Ian Gilfillan wrote: >> >> Great :) I'd be really interested to know whether people continued to >> edit after the workshop if you could share. >> >> To try answer Heather, the article count went from 125, which it has been >> stuck at since at least November 2011, to 131 during the class, and there >> has only been one substantial edit from any of the participants on the >> weekend (a new article, increasing the count to 132) since the workshop, so >> the answer seems to be no. >> >> The workshop was 2 hours, and, briefly, we hoped to teach creating a user >> account, creating or editing (via translation from English) an article, >> adding links, adding a picture, and I wanted to add interwiki links to the >> list as well. Everyone created or edited an article, and most, if not >> everyone, added links, though only some could create a user account due to >> IP limits, and very few got to adding an image or interwiki links. Douglas >> goes into more details in his post. >> >> It's more complicated to add links in Xhosa than in English due to the >> way prefixes are used in the language, so quite often an article may exist, >> but the link doesn't point to it, and there are already duplicate articles >> for this reason. >> >> There is still such a barrier with basic computer use, that I found a >> substantial portion of the class was showing people how to maximize and >> minimize windows, how to open a new tab or window, etc, and I got the sense >> that there wasn't always a real understanding of why the various steps were >> being performed, which reduces the chances of them being repeatable outside >> of the class. >> >> The one article that was created afterwards is an orphan, with no >> incoming or outgoing links. >> >> There was a lot of enthusiasm, so hopefully having a followup quite soon >> will keep the interest and momentum going, but I would expect there to be >> not much sustained activity as a result of the workshop alone. >> >> -- >> Ian Gilfillan >> www.greenman.co.za >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikimediaZA mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza >> >> >> Heather Ford >> www.ethnographymatters.net >> @hfordsa on Twitter >> http://hblog.org >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> WikimediaZA mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza >> >> > > > -- > Douglas Ian Scott > 司道格 > Skype: douglas0scott > UK mobile number: +44 (0)755 452 5277 > Chinese mobile number: +86 1 364 330 7351 > South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727 > > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikimediaZA mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza > >
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