In what ways do the Wikimedia projects currently alienate "local language" readers and potential contributors, by providing an experience that seems foreign or non-local?

In what ways do the Wikimedia projects currently alienate "local language" readers and potential contributors, by providing an experience that seems foreign or non-local?

In what ways do the Wikimedia projects currently alienate "local language" readers and potential contributors, by providing an experience that seems foreign or non-local?

Dafer4520:58, 19 November 2009

The open content movement is still relatively young in the United States and other countries where the projectas are flourishing; in yet other countries the idea is not even in its infancy. Fostering the movement and working with partner organizations in other countries to that end will help bring in more contributors. -- ArielGlenn 04:38, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Dafer4520:59, 19 November 2009
 

Likewise we are stil battling the "expert knowledge cannot be produced by non-experts" view, which is very entrenched in some regions among the very people we would reach out to first to contribute, including academics. -- ArielGlenn 04:38, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Dafer4520:59, 19 November 2009
 

I think the free content idea is not accepted enough, i've encoutered users who wrote (quite good) articles wrote in the all rights resereved to... and when i explained about the free content idea they where "alienated" and didn't contribute more. Islam which is the main religion in the have a good approach to this issue (some even would say that certain aspects of IP contradicts with the principles of Islam but they are a really small minority) and we might play this card. --Histolo2 23:17, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Dafer4521:00, 19 November 2009
 

One vital aspect of this foreign experience is the lack of localisation for many of the languages that we support. It is really fortunate that languages like Macedonian, Sinhala and Indonesian are REALLY making a big effort .. Some top 50 languages like Hausa have made a start but are not really moving forward.

Obviously, localisation is only one, be it a vital aspect, of the experience that makes it a local project. What we find is that people who indicate not knowing a language are botting articles in wikipedias like Swahili. Consequently the subject matter hardly coincides with what local people are interested in. There is also a group of people who find it necessary to impose their morals and values on other communities.. a good example is the notion of quality. While quality is important, a wikipedia needs to evolve and the first need is to get to the inflection point where a project is no longer dependent on individual editors.. Thanks,

GerardM08:49, 20 November 2009