Reports

Translatewiki and Edit-a-thon for Anufo Language Wikimedians (ID: 22989845)/Final Report

Part 1: Project and impact

Translatewiki Participants underwent training on Translatewiki.net on how to localize MediaWiki (Most Used/Most Important) messages to Anufo Language. Participants after being granted translation rights involved in edit-a-thon. Along the way (getting to 50% of translation), Four(4) prolific translators completed and review the translation to ensure consistency and reliability. At the end, 587 messages representing 100% of the MediaWiki (Most Important) messages and MediaWiki core messages: 390 representing 10% messages (check completion: https://codelookup.toolforge.org/cko) on translatedwiki.net were translated.

Wikimedia Incubator Participants were introduced to the wikimedia incubator and assisted to create their accounts and their user pages. They were also guided on how to translate, insert databox, reference and general editing of articles to get them to standard articles comparable to its English language versions. The edit-a-thon was the centerpiece of the project to allow participants to contribute earnestly. Fifty nine (59) articles were selected for the edit-a-thon contest which spanned for 4 weeks (15th May - 15th June 2025), during which participants were encouraged to create or improve Wikipedia articles around themes such as Regions in Ghana and their capital towns, selected landmarks, High profile people and articles of their choices. After the contest, fifty nine (59) representing 100% of the selected articles were created to standard articles on the wikimedia incubator by 30 editors.

Strategies that supported in achieving results were follow up and engagement strategies including and not limited to the following, Real-time support via WhatsApp, Phone calls to assist struggling volunteers, Mails to encourage participants, Peer mentorship: Pairing experienced editors with new ones and Progress tracking dashboards: Allowing participants to see their contributions and milestones.

Important Links of Project

Important social media posts Surveys and their results Infographics and sound files Examples of content edited on Wikimedia projects Project page on Meta-Wiki https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translatewiki_and_Edit-athon_for_Anufo_Language_Wikimedians

Dashboards and tool: https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Anufo_Language_Wikimedians/Translatewiki_and_Edit-athon_for_Anufo_Language_Wikimedians/students/overview

Some photos: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOdf3exsa_c4FX2rmutCu4ofrz7B32CX3_jHKDKld4cCZzjtatOw0RU7w8ZTUwv_g?pli=1&key=WGJRUFBoU3ZselRuTmxSMWFSTU04WTE1YnI5bHlR

Wikimedia Incubator: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/cko/Launch_of_Anufo_Language_Wikimedians_and_edit-a-thon_CONTEST

Translatewiki progress: https://codelookup.toolforge.org/cko

Training materials and guides https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xf7WGcuV4iPOkGvUDt5xpsBvlbz2uHOu/view?usp=sharing

Presentations and slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xf7WGcuV4iPOkGvUDt5xpsBvlbz2uHOu/view?usp=sharing

Work processes and plans:: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j2VIsQLnigV0NnmHrC9ACC6y7A0C9h_GsN7Aq0IhFHY/edit?usp=sharing

Goals achieved

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to... A. Bring in participants from underrepresented group B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups D. Encourage the retention of editors E. Encourage the retention of organizers F. Increased participants' feelings of belonging and connection to the movement

Part 2: Learning

What I learnt was that there exist a passion that inspired participants to contribute to the project so that Anufo language can join other languages that have been preserved on the digital space through wikipedia and its sister projects. Reading and writing barriers are the main challenges hindering participants contributing to the free knowledge. Most participants want to contribute but they can neither read nor write in their indigenous language. The translate team working on the translatewiki have strategized to localize unfamiliar/scientifc messages into Anufo language by collaborating with the indigenous Anufo Speaking people, the elderly and experts to unravel closer meanings to the words/phrases that do not exist in the Anufo language The incubator just a any word processing application, has been designed to suite wide range of people, from the expert to the novice. It is user friendly using the incubator.

Infuture, these learning will help by Harnessing on the passion of participants to encourage them to contribute more to the preservation of their cultural heritage, Organise an orthographe to train passionnante Anufo language speakers to be able to read and write in Anufo language. Encourage more collaboration and research to improve upon the quality of translations in both translatewiki and wikipedia, Encourage participants to continue to edit, the constant practice in the incubator allows editors to be familiar with the unfamilier features of the incubator

Unexpected Happenings

It is very difficult having all the volunteers to join a scheduled meeting at a time. The reason being that each of the volunteers have their own schedules. It is therefore very difficult to be able to estimate the number of participants who could make it for an online training. Moreso, internet instability is also a challenge. Online meetings could be postponed a number of times due to network challenges. This could reduce the interest of joining the meeting whenever it is organized. Last but not least, organizing volunteers to passionately contribute to projects of this sort is not an easy one. Taking time out of one’s busy schedule to organize and speak to the minds of volunteers to stand up for the promotion of their language is a task that cannot be underestimated. Participants also sparing their busy or leisure time for voluntary work is also to be recommended.

Some of the participants needed child care support in order to squeeze time for the project, next time, I will consider supporting the hardworking volunteers with child care support. I will next time find an appropriate medium (social media and local media) to advocate for the project to bring more people on deck for smooth execution of the project. A lot of people misconstrue our activities as online marketing platforms or network business as such they pay less attention to our advocacy. I would spend some time on advocacy and sensitizing on the need to be part of promoting our indigenous languge.

Plans to Share findings

The plan to share project learning and results to other community members will be done through general meeting and on whatspp groups for community members to add their inputs for necessary discussion and wayforward.

Part 3: Metrics

	Target	Results	Comments and tools used
Number of participants	50	50	The total number of participants were 50, due to network issues, most participants were unable to register on the google form designed to take attendance
Number of editors	20	30	https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Anufo_Language_Wikimedians/Translatewiki_and_Edit-athon_for_Anufo_Language_Wikimedians/students/overview 30 participants collaboratively contributed to the project
Number of organizers	4	4	four (4) participants were the core organisers for this project

Wikimedia project	Target	Result - Number of created pages	Result - Number of improved pages
Wikimedia Incubator	40	56	3
Translatewiki	4000	587	390

Anufo Language Wikimedians
(Promoting Wikimedia projects in Anufo language)
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