Wikimedia Indigenous Voices

Three ideas

1. Build a new language community2. Support an existing majority

language community3. Promote interests of a cultural

community in dominant languages

1. Build a new language community

New Wikipedias

A language community can create their own Wikipedia, using their own language if it has an ISO 639 code (http://enwp.org/ISO_639-3).The steps:1. Initialise an ‘incubator’ project2. Write a large set of articles – 1000 pages3. Build a consistent community of contributors

– 10 people

Example: Cham language

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cham_language– 1.5% of Cambodians

• No Wikipedia:– http://cjm.wikipedia.org/ – http://cja.wikipedia.org/

• No incubator projects:– http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/cjm– http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/cja

Example: Mon language

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon_language• No Wikipedia• An incubator project was initialised in 2009 by

‘Jose77’– http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/mnw

• But it has zero (0) pages ;-(

Example: Shan language

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shan_language• http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/shn• 40 articles– http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:PrefixI

ndex/Wp/shn• At least one consistent contributor– http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contri

butions/Saiddzone

Example: Sunda language

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundanese_language

• Wikipedia:– http://su.wikipedia.org/

• Statistics– http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaSU.

htm• Very low participation/growth

2. Support an existing majority language community

Existing majority languages

• Most national official languages have small sustainable Wikipedias, but they need help– http://km.wikipedia.org - Khmer– http://th.wikipedia.org - Thai– http://lo.wikipedia.org - Lao– http://my.wikipedia.org - Burmese– http://vi.wikipedia.org - Vietnamese– http://ko.wikipedia.org - Korean

3. Promote interests of a cultural community in dominant languages

English Wikipedia

The biggest wikipedia, with the highest impact.

So many rules!

Dragons be there. Prepare for this journey.

European language Wikipedias

Most European languages have a ‘chapter’, that you can collaborate with based on shared interests, such as:1. Colonial history and language

Archives of SE Asian colonial history often exist in the European GLAMs (Gallery, Libraries, Archives and Museums)e.g. Wikimedia France

2. Aid funding programse.g. a Scananavia funding NGO in Thailand might want to work with Scandanavian language Wikipedia in order to communicate with the granters core demographic.

Resources

• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Indigenous_Languages

• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Asia_Project/Cultural_Content_Exchange

• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Promoting_the_South_Asian_languages_projects

• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Promoting_the_Southeast_Asian_languages_projects