Wikipedia:Ukurasa wa jumuia/Wikiindaba 2014
Mawazo ya Kipala kuhusu Wikipedia yetu ya Kiswahili chini ya kichwa “Matatizo na mafanikio katika Afrika”
Naweka hapa muhtasari wake kwa Kiinereza kwa sababu nitapaswa kutoa michango kwa lugha hii.
The WikiIndaba 2014 meeting has the aim to consult about governance of wiki projects in Africa and how to build communities. The organizers put the stress on groups that prepare to form chapters. This is not really my line of interest.
- I will report on the development of sw-wikipedia, challenges, successes.
- The most important point for us is to make the community of Wikipedia editors stronger. We need to create more content and keep some level of quality. I have looked at statistics and see that the quality of African language wikipedias in general and also our sw-wikipedia is visible in the daily views (we have 95,000 at the moment which is not bad at all!).
- At the moment we have no real idea how to get more editors – except to carry on editing.
- It would be very helpful to get a few teachers at an institution which as internet facilities who would give their students assingnments to write entries for sw-wikipedia and do supervision of the quality of the entries, too. As it happens in a number of countries. Lets see if someone has an idea on that.
- The complicated structure of Wikimedia / Wikipedia is a problem for a small team like us.
- For small African language Wikipedia communities like ours I propose to assign someone as a “consul” (an advisor or facilitator), who helps us with the wiki-bureaucracy by forwarding requests to the right places and advising us how to go about it.
- Example: In 2012 we took a vote (4+, 0-, one neutral) to restrict article creation to registered users because we do not keep up with the workload of checking all new entries. I was hopeful to get something going – because English Wikipedia has exactly this policy because of the same problem!
I tried for 3 months to get someone in Wikimedia to accept that view. I did not find anybody and had no time to go to all the different places I was advised to contact. (I had contacted a steward at Wikimedia with he request to give me advice; he sent me to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org where I filed this thread: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42894 (see my comments #5 and #14)
Out of which came nothing over a debate of several months!– just a lot of contradicting advice which I did not have time to follow up. At that moment I felt like a minor chief somewhere in the British empire who tries to appeal to the Lords in Britain but who is not important enough to be taken seriously. I asked myself if this some kind of neocolonial structure in Wikipedia? Because why should a big Wikipedia like EN get that policy but we as a small Wikipedia cannot? Well, it surely is not neocolonial but the structure of power in Wikimedia obviously can have similar results.
If one of us took the time to fight his way through the jungle of Wikimedia bureaucracy he would not have to edit and write articles – which I think is more important. - A special experience was the “google-invasion of Swahili Wikipedia”. This includes the question how good or bad the idea of word-by word translation of articles from English Wikipedia is.. To some extent visible also in the ongoing creation of medical articles by an initiative which works from abroad, without having looked for communication with us. The outcome is in the worse case horrible stuff with the help of technical “kits” which nobody understands, in the better cases extremely complicated articles which in many cases none or vey few of the intended users will understand. Word by word seldom works because our context situation is different.
Mawazo yenu
haririSalaam. Fffrrr... Umetisha babu. Huo ujumbe wenyewe wataelewa changamoto tunazozipata! Kama nilivyosema hapo awali, sina wasiwasi na uwakilishwaji wako katika hili!!! Endelea tu, mzee wangu. Umefanya vyema kabisa.--MwanaharakatiLonga 13:13, 22 Mei 2014 (UTC)
- Hi Kipala, I support you as well. If you can get satisfactory answers to all that, we can make good progress! ChriKo (majadiliano) 20:47, 22 Mei 2014 (UTC)
- Same here - support for your well-compiled list of issues! One correction on point 8 - and I need to apologise upfront! That medical initiative is not working from abroad but is based at the translation office of Translators Without Borders in Nairobi which I helped to establish (or at least the Swahili side of it is - they work in many languages worldwide). So, they did contact at least me but I failed to communicate with you. My bad! Anyway, despite their translators receiving month-long training, some of their work still leaves something to be desired. However, I would not dump them in the same category as the Google challenge when a couple of hundred students with no training whatsoever inundated sw:wp with machine-translated articles. But that's just an aside. Hongera, mzee - utatusogeza mbele sana! Wasalaam, --Baba Tabita (majadiliano) 12:42, 23 Mei 2014 (UTC)
- Naunga mkono tu. --Riccardo Riccioni 16:48, 23 Mei 2014 (UTC)
- Asanteni wenzangu kwa kunipa moyo wa kwenda huko kweli! (maana kutoka hapa ni safari ya masaa mengi kwa siku hizi chache..) Baba Tabita: asante kwa kunielimisha. Kwa kweli michango yao ni tofauti kabisa na zile za mashindano ya google! Niliangalia hapo mwanzoni sijafurahia mno maana makala nilizoona zilikuwa ndefu na lugha haikuwa rahisi, tena kufuata sentensi kwa sentensi makala za Kiingereza... Haya nitaondoa mradi huu katika mchngo wangu. Nitakuwa pia na mchango wa pili maana nilifanya utathmini wa wikipedia za lugha za Kiafrika. Ninavyoona Kiafrikaans ni bora kwa sasa waliotupita mwaka 2012 kwa namba pia kwa uzuri wa makala. Wana watu zaidi walio hai kuliko sisi. Lakini kwa wasomaji tuko karibu nao ingawa Tanzania kuna watu wachache wanaoingia intaneti. Na Kenya wasomaji wetu wachache sana. ILA TU kwa asilimia ya nchi ni SISI tulio juu kwa sasa. Maana kati ya watu wote wanaoingia wikipedia Tanzania ni sasa 5% wanaofungua Kiswahili. Hii ni zaidi ya mara mbili kwa Afrikaans na sanasana kulingana na Kiamhari, Kiyoruba. Hakuna wikipedia ya lugha ya KIafrika inayopata asilimia kubwa zaidi katika nchi yoyote. Pia Yoruba na Kimalagasi walio na makala mengi kumbe makala mengi yao yamepelekwa kwa programu ya bot kwa hiyo mengi ni sentensi 1-1 tu. Basi itoshe kwa sasa. Kipala (majadiliano) 19:25, 23 Mei 2014 (UTC)
- Kwa kweli takwimu hizo zinatutia moyo. Lakini zinapatikana wapi? Kweli kila siku watu 95,000 wanavinjari wiki ya Kiswahili? --Riccardo Riccioni
- Takwimu kuhusu watu wa kila nchi wanachoangalia wakifungua wikipedia unapata hapa: http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageViewsPerCountryTrends.htm Utaona ya kwamba Watanzania wengi wanafungua Kiingereza, lakini 5% wikipdia yetu ya Kiswahili na hii ni zaidi kuliko kila lugha nyingine ya Kiafrika katika kila nchi. Ila tu Kenya ! 0.3% pekee wanafungua sw-wikipedia. Labda tutumie Sheng zaidi?
- Takwimu kuhusu data za kimsingi za wikipedia kw alugha za Kiafrika ni hapa: http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN_Africa/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htm Kiswahili iko nguzo ya 10 katika jedwali. Utaona kuwa Aprili 2014 tulitazamiwa mara milioni 2.8, hii inamaanisha mara 95,000 kila siku.
- Ukitaka kujua hao watu 95,000 kila siku wako wapi? Basi utaona chini ya nusu wako Tanzania maana utatazama hapa: http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportPageViewsPerLanguageBreakdown.htm. (Nashangaa kidogo hapa Kenya ina 5% ya wasomaji wetu?). Wasalaam! Kipala (majadiliano) 11:13, 25 Mei 2014 (UTC)
- Kwa kweli takwimu hizo zinatutia moyo. Lakini zinapatikana wapi? Kweli kila siku watu 95,000 wanavinjari wiki ya Kiswahili? --Riccardo Riccioni
- Asanteni wenzangu kwa kunipa moyo wa kwenda huko kweli! (maana kutoka hapa ni safari ya masaa mengi kwa siku hizi chache..) Baba Tabita: asante kwa kunielimisha. Kwa kweli michango yao ni tofauti kabisa na zile za mashindano ya google! Niliangalia hapo mwanzoni sijafurahia mno maana makala nilizoona zilikuwa ndefu na lugha haikuwa rahisi, tena kufuata sentensi kwa sentensi makala za Kiingereza... Haya nitaondoa mradi huu katika mchngo wangu. Nitakuwa pia na mchango wa pili maana nilifanya utathmini wa wikipedia za lugha za Kiafrika. Ninavyoona Kiafrikaans ni bora kwa sasa waliotupita mwaka 2012 kwa namba pia kwa uzuri wa makala. Wana watu zaidi walio hai kuliko sisi. Lakini kwa wasomaji tuko karibu nao ingawa Tanzania kuna watu wachache wanaoingia intaneti. Na Kenya wasomaji wetu wachache sana. ILA TU kwa asilimia ya nchi ni SISI tulio juu kwa sasa. Maana kati ya watu wote wanaoingia wikipedia Tanzania ni sasa 5% wanaofungua Kiswahili. Hii ni zaidi ya mara mbili kwa Afrikaans na sanasana kulingana na Kiamhari, Kiyoruba. Hakuna wikipedia ya lugha ya KIafrika inayopata asilimia kubwa zaidi katika nchi yoyote. Pia Yoruba na Kimalagasi walio na makala mengi kumbe makala mengi yao yamepelekwa kwa programu ya bot kwa hiyo mengi ni sentensi 1-1 tu. Basi itoshe kwa sasa. Kipala (majadiliano) 19:25, 23 Mei 2014 (UTC)
- Naunga mkono tu. --Riccardo Riccioni 16:48, 23 Mei 2014 (UTC)
- Same here - support for your well-compiled list of issues! One correction on point 8 - and I need to apologise upfront! That medical initiative is not working from abroad but is based at the translation office of Translators Without Borders in Nairobi which I helped to establish (or at least the Swahili side of it is - they work in many languages worldwide). So, they did contact at least me but I failed to communicate with you. My bad! Anyway, despite their translators receiving month-long training, some of their work still leaves something to be desired. However, I would not dump them in the same category as the Google challenge when a couple of hundred students with no training whatsoever inundated sw:wp with machine-translated articles. But that's just an aside. Hongera, mzee - utatusogeza mbele sana! Wasalaam, --Baba Tabita (majadiliano) 12:42, 23 Mei 2014 (UTC)