Hi Lourie Yep, I'm with you. I think this is a great project, and - as you mentioned to me offline - really accessible for people to take part in and contribute. Some cool ideas also around it - we could organise an upload party where we could have a stall somewhere (at a university or shopping centre on a certain day) where we could help people upload their pics there and then.
I'm also happy to chat - maybe we could get together on skype even? Kerryn * * * * Kerryn McKay The African Commons Project 082 334 6165 skype: kerrynmac twitter: kerrynmckay On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 11:21 AM, Lourie Pieterse <[email protected]>wrote: > Hello Maarten > > It is nice hearing from you again! It sounds to me like a wonderful idea, > and I am sure that there will be some South Africans who would like to > participate in this competition. What do the others from Wikimedia ZA > think? I would definitely be interested to meet up with you and discuss the > possibilities. When are you again in the Cape Town area? > > Kind regards > Lourie > > ------------------------------ > *From:* MADe <[email protected]> > *To:* [email protected] > *Sent:* Tuesday, February 14, 2012 9:23 AM > *Subject:* Re: [Wikimedia ZA] Pictures from Saturday's Xhosa Wiki Workshop > > Hi all, > > Very nice to see all the activities on the smaller South African language > wikis! Hopefully this means a start for those projects. I have another idea > to get some more things happening. > > In Belgium I started the "Wiki Loves > Monuments<http://www.wikilovesmonuments.be/>" > competition. The goal for the participants was to take a picture of a > heritage site and to post them on Wikicommons. The best images were > selected and they could win a variety of prices (Belgium: iPad). It was > part of a bigger European contest <http://www.wikilovesmonuments.eu/> (18 > countries). The goal was to attract new contributors to the wiki projects, > and for Belgium to gather some wikipedians to start our own Belgian wiki > chapter. > > The competition itself was fairly simple to organise. The European > organisers provided tools, a website, logos, a dedicated Wiki Commons > upload > tool<http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&uselang=wikilovesmonumentsbe>, > ... and also funding (10,000 ZAR). We made the translations (Belgium alone: > five languages), we searched for our own jury, we searched for Belgian > prices, and we got into contact with government organisations that helped > us with a venue for the price ceremony and some more practical things. > > The result was fantastic. 170.000 new images in Europe, of which 6000 in > Belgium. Lots or media attention for the competition. At least 50 (!) new > Belgian members that started working on Wikicommons or Wikipedia itself. A > solid group of people that wanted to work on our own chapter. We > established good contacts with government organisations that suddenly > understood Wikipedia is not a black box but made by real people. Nice media > coverage on the competition. > > The European competition will be organised in September of this year. They > would really enjoy SA to join in, and I'm sure WMF can help us with most of > the funding. I think this is an easy way to get the attention of new > people, especially from poorer regions (if we provide the necessary > translations). > > Who is interested to get more information, or to help with the > organisation? We can meet in Cape Town, Durban or Johannesburg (I'm almost > everywhere for my current job) > > > Grtz, > Maarten > > BE: +32 475 21 38 35 > ZA: +27 71 491 31 38 > Skype: mdeneckere > > 2012/2/14 Douglas Scott <[email protected]> > > 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 > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikimediaZA mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza > > > > _______________________________________________ > WikimediaZA mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza > >
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