Talk:Manual for small and new Wikipedias/Archive 1

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Printing, bot created articles

As to Neapolitan: I created printouts of articles and put them on the blackboards here in Maiori (now my time is limited and I can't do this anymore, but it got me quite some more readers, even if offline). Another way is take an article and send the article (not just the link) to your friends who then distribute it. What needs to be looked at here: originality is all. I also wrote newspaper articles which linked to the Wikipedia (I still do this every now and then since it seems to be the most effective way for now). When I uploaded articles with the bot what turned out to be interesting were the cities - the calendar is less interesting. I know that people are against bot uploading, but: it is more likely to get people edit when they see already a sentence than seeing nothing. Many start by adding photos and links - so: it is good when you have plenty of articles. What IMHO is irrelevant is the lengths of an article. Most languages don't have an encyclopaedia and so having an article about any subject with just one or two sentences is more they ever had and we should be happy about each of those pages. I hope this helps :-) you can find some posts about such themes on my blog. --Sabine 13:27, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, in fact there is a difference: bot created articles about your own region.--Ziko-W 15:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Level 3 in language mastery

What is "level 3" in regards to language mastery? Are you referring to the babel userboxes (en-, es-, fr-, it-, de-, ...; followed by 1, 2, 3, ...) that say "This user speaks X at an beginner/intermediate/advanced level"? These numbers are just arbitrary. Maybe the text should clarify what "level 3" means? − Twas Now ( talkcontribse-mail ) 13:39, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, good idea, also because this differs between e.g. Meta and some Wikipedias.--Ziko-W 13:54, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

A problem with wording

I recommend you reword the part about inactive Wikipedias, which "do not look impressive, and it seems that those Wikipedians have wasted their time". This wording suggests that it is the editors' duty to keep the site well-maintained. But this is not the case; surely, any positive edit has been useful to some degree. Generally, these Wikipedias have few speakers, or at least few speakers with Internet access (and, furthermore, with Internet access, and awareness of Wikipedia, and interest in contributing to Wikipedia), which makes it difficult to maintain a comprehensive Wikipedia. Also, the purpose of Wikipedia is not to look impressive (nor is its purpose, really, to be impressive)—it is to provide information.

The text also tells editors what they should and should not do. They should concentrate on the Wikipedia of their language, rather than on projects like Wikisource; They should not create many stub articles, and instead should focus on creating a few well-developed articles. It is way out of line to tell editors what they should and should not focus their energy on. Some editors prefer to edit one way, and other editors prefer another way. Both approaches have their merits: creating many stubs gives a starting point for other editors to build on, and developing a few good articles obviously provides good coverage of a subject.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and the corollary to that might be that anyone can not edit Wikipedia, if they so choose. Let the editors decide how and what they edit. − Twas Now ( talkcontribse-mail ) 14:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, the wording could be more friendly. But on the other hand, it already happened that language editions had been closed, that is a warning.--Ziko-W 15:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Understood. I think a more effective way to promote contributions is to challenge people in some way. Maybe new Wikipedias could encourage its editors to create one new article every other week (with 20 dedicated editors, this amounts to at least 520 new articles in a year). Also, provide a warning that certain Wikipedias have been closed in the past (and provide specific examples of which ones were closed down) − Twas Now ( talkcontribse-mail ) 15:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

A few comments

Hi Ziko, here are a few comments about your manual-in-the-making.

You write: 'You should at least have 20 people who really master the language, at least at level 3 [...].'

Twenty? All small Wikipedia's I've looked at (and I focus on regional language Wikipedias) typically have about two to six active contributors at a time; maybe one percent of all people who sign up. That's to say, in a given month, A and B will be active, the next month B has taken a break and A is active together with C and D, while in the third month, it is mostly B and D that are active and E pops round a few times.

The Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia was set up essentially as a result of the persistent efforts of one person, who got some support in the build-up to the Wikipedia's launch, but (mostly) not from the same few persons who ended up contributing to it. The Wikipedia has grown steadily, has its own features and 'personality', and has always stayed on top of (sometimes daily!) vandalism, with a minimal number of contributors. True enough, you need a few tenacious aficionados who spend a lot of time on the Wiki. ;-)

You write: 'When an earthquake hits Greece, you can write about earthquakes or Greece.'

You can do that, but within the Wikipedia environment, I would only bother to read about an earthquake in Greece (or about Johann Sebastian Bach) on the English-language Wikipedia, or on the German-language one in the case of Bach. I believe one of the surplus values of small language versions, apart from stimulating the use of the language in question, is the coverage of subjects that are interwoven with the language and the area it is spoken in. There is a mountain of information that is poorly covered or inaccurately presented on, or wholly absent from, the big language editions. It is these overlooked parts of our culture, our history, our world, that the small language Wikipedias are sensitive to.

That said, of course it's also a good thing for small language Wikipedias to cover universally important subjects, if only to demonstrate that the languages in question are flexible enough to express anything we want to say.

Ni'jluuseger 14:23, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

About the number of contributors: I intentionally named a high number because I heard that for example Nynorsk Wikipedia has 20 regular contributors. This is tricky, of course, and what worked a couple of years ago can be approached now differently. About the earthquakes in Greece: I did not think about an article about "Earthquakes in Greece" but two articles, "Earthquakes" and "Greece". Maybe the wording should be more clear? In general, there are the "universal" articles to inform about the world and show that the language is capable to express everything, and on the other hand a focus on "our region".--Ziko-W 15:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Wording

Thanks to Fughitaboutit for some very necessary corrections on my "simple" English! But there are some words that might be a little bit difficult for non native speakers, like "precipitously".:-) --Ziko-W 15:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Liest sich sehr gut!

Hello Ziko, this is a nice written manual! Thank you very much for your efforts concerning small wikis. --- Schöne Grüße, Melancholie 14:58, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks!--Ziko-W 15:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Good work! I would like to use printed articles as a promotional tool. Any suggestions as to how to optimally do this? RAM
I added something... :-)--Ziko-W 17:58, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Some issues not covered?

Many thanks for your effort! Would you consider emphasising, even adding a section on how readers tend to read on-line material, how to structure text to reduce redundancy (which is no problem for projects with lots of hands, but punishes exactly smaller wikis, which are constantly out of resources). Yury Tarasievich 11:17, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I did not think about writing about content or the shape of article. Maybe that is a useful subject, could you elaborate?--Ziko-W 17:25, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
The primary concern of smaller wikis is conserving resources. Having a primer on wiki-text, it's only logical to give some insight on what "ought" and what "oughtn't" go into the article. The goals would be, e.g., better structuring and reduction of content duplication. Yury Tarasievich 19:37, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
You mean, when Wikipedians take text from older sources (with permission) and put it into Wikipedia, how to wikify and reduce it to a Wikipedia article? We had that kind of problems in Esperanto Wikipedia, with the old Encikledio de Esperanto, and needed some time to figure out how to conserve AND make evolution possible.--Ziko-W 20:46, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Using Simple English Wikipedia as a starting point

Hi, welcome from Simple English Wikipedia! On our Main Page you will see the following statement: "These pages can help people learn English. You can also use them to make a new Wikipedia to help other people, if you change the words to your own language." Therefore, perhaps you might like to mention somewhere in your guide that a good way of creating articles is to check if a suitable article on the subject is available at Simple Wikipedia, then translate that article into the language of the new Wikipedia. It will usually be easier to translate Simple English Wikipedia articles rather than English Wikipedia articles as Simple English Wikipedia articles intentionally use simpler English. — Cheers, Truth'soutthere 17:16, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes indeed, that might be a good starting point. I'll see how to put it in!--Ziko-W 17:27, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

New wikis

I have already created a manual for new wikis at incubator:Help:Manual. That page is not yet complete, but I anyway don't want to have duplicate help pages. So I'd like to propose to leave User:Ziko/manualnsw for small wikis, and develop the manual for new wikis at Incubator (I'd like to have more activity about new wikis on incubator rather than at meta). There are some things not really correct: e.g. you should first get a ISO 639 code before you are going to start a wiki. And it's quite Wikipedia-focused. Greetings, SPQRobin (inc!) 15:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Ha! I did not know that manual at incubator, thank you very much! How to create a new edition, I gladly leave that to the Incubator, because that is kinda different thing. I have made a link and deleted some now unnecessary information here. / This manual here is about WikiPEDIAs, yes, not wikis or Wikimedia projects in general. I believe that other projects are better served with a manual of their own.--Ziko-W 16:04, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Prescriptions

I understand this is all meant in good faith, yet... I still have to see a policy that fits all mankind. I find this approach way too prescriptive, somehow religious in nature. I made a few corrections but I think you miss the main point: when people start a wiki they are ALONE, they are breaking a new unexplored territory, and there is very little that can help them from previous, alien experience. They have the one and only available information that can help them: they belong into their culture and know how to deal with it. Filling them up with techy prescriptions will only made their burden heavier. Anyway, most of them will never use or even just read guidelines, so I don't think that publishing them here can make any harm. I myself couldn't read more than a couple of sections. It's simply too long. You could have written a good article on something in instead, but okay... writing guidelines is a killtime as another (including writing articles for a wiki), so there's no reason to blame guideline writers for that :) Good luck! --92.112.47.214 13:37, 28 August 2008 (UTC)