Strategic Planning

Talk:Emerging strategic priorities/ESP 2 key questions

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Latest comment: 13 years ago by Fr33kman in topic Questions related to Arabic language Wikimedia projects
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Since the beginning of the strategic planning process, users of this wiki have been asked to identify questions related to Wikimedia's future direction and to treat it as a brainstorming question (no discussion, just questions). Over the past few months, users have built a Fact base to describe where Wikimedia is today, identified a set of Emerging strategic priorities related to achieving Wikimedia's vision "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge," and defined Task forces that will dive more deeply into making recommendations for how Wikimedia should grow in the future.

Now it's time for users here to move from brainstorming questions to providing input. Please read the questions below and discuss them on the talk pages. Discussions there will inform the work of the task forces and provide guidance as we, together, go about writing the strategic plan for the Wikimedia movement.


The following questions relate to "Expand reach within mid-size connected and under-connected populations"

Latest comment: 13 years ago19 comments5 people in discussion
How will Internet use in the Middle East and North Africa change over the next 5 to 10 years?


  1. It will continue to drastically increase, see here --Shipmaster 03:40, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. In the next 5-10 years Internet usage in the whole world including the Middle East and North Africa will become the leading edge of a Net-only society. Technically, TV, the telephone, library, radio etc., are already obsolete; they just haven't died yet. In many parts of Africa, one can access the Internet via Pay-as-you-go mobile phone even when they have no credit left on the phone. Skype and other technologies are making historically organized telecommunications systems endangered species, except with this one no one wants to save it. Certainly in 10 years the telephone will be an oddity. With a 2nd generation iPod touch I can sit in a McDonalds and speak to my sister-in-law in Canada for the price of a coffee; and it's not even a telephone! fr33kman -simpleWP- 05:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Will more non-English language speakers gain access to the Web?


  1. Of course, the first language is Arabic. --Shipmaster 03:41, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Yes. Cheaper and cheaper access to the Internet via mobile device driven by Chinese manufacturing will occur. At some point more people will have access to the network than will have televisions. fr33kman -simpleWP- 06:00, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
Will increases in Internet use come primarily from increases in mobile devices or computers?


  1. It will probably be both, as MENA countries continue to invest in infra-structure, along with the proliferation of mobile device ownership. --Shipmaster 03:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Mobile devices! The devices we know now as "computers" with a case, screen, mouse and keyboard will cease to be in majority use by the year 2021. I have sat in people's homes where people are already not speaking to each other or even watching TV but off in their own world via a smart phone. 10 years from now will be unrecognisable. fr33kman -simpleWP- 06:03, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
What is the demand for Arabic Wikipedia?


  1. The Arabic Wikipedia is one of the very few sources available on-line that provides moderately reliable material on topics like history, art and science for people that do not speak a second language. So I'd say the demand is pretty high. --Shipmaster 03:48, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
What does the online landscape for reference information in Arabic look like?


  1. Bleak. Arabic language is severely under-represented. The vast majority of Arabic reference text available online is religious in nature, to find any useful information you have to be bi-lingual most of the time. --Shipmaster 03:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Arabic is underepresented no doubt, there is almost no commercial reference sites and most of the efforts are made in publishing PD texts (e.g. alwaraq, maktaba alarab, etc...). i'm not aware of any reference site made by university etc... and i never saw a commercial reference site. We DO have excellent news sites (usually associated with a newspaper or a TV station) and many TV stations like alarabiya aljazeera etc.. publish transcripts of their talkshow which is a good reference in many times. I think this is a part of a wider poor cultural scene in the arab world right now (lack of state support unlike in the 1950s/60s and in the other hand the "intellectual indusry" isn't very developed due to low profit margins). --Histolo2 22:43, 18 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
How can Wikipedia increase participation in Arabic Wikipedia?


  1. I think we should focus on parts of population who have access to both internet and knowledge, we should initially identify them and focus on increasing their participation in wikipedia, later we will be able to extend the participation of other groups. One goroup that comes to mind is college students. arabic wikipedia has very few contributors and college students might be our best bet. This can be done by local advocacy in colleges and by making special days to increase awareness (i.e arab wikipedia day, maybe writing contests etc...) also we should try to cooperate with universities for instance by writing an article as an assignment of certain courses etc... --Histolo2 22:55, 18 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Event's like Wikimania 2008 certainly helped, but I think that the whole community and the world has to stop thinking of Wikipedia as a Western idea. As such we may have to adjust our view of policies and guidelines to reflect the cultures that are relevant to the Arabic (and other Middle Eastern) Wikiprojects. Most WMF projects take their policy or guideline cues from either enwiki or metawiki. These are West-centric wikis for the most part. Encouraging the Arabic and Middle Eastern wikiprojects to make environments that work for them, yet recognize the basic WMF philosophies is the way forward in my opinion. fr33kman -simpleWP- 06:15, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
How can Wikipedia increase awareness of Arabic Wikipedia?


  1. Raise awareness in Arabic speaking countries, possibly via mediums such as Al-Jazeera doing interviews with Jimmy or Sue. Developing a high-profile partnership with the library in Alexandria would be excellent. fr33kman -simpleWP- 07:17, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply
What lessons can be learned from other successful on line arabic language communities?


  1. [...] Answer here, please...
What tools and support are necessary to further build Arabic Wikipedia's contributor base?


    • In Egypt, The vast majority of contributors are university students. Also student activity & projects in many faculties are widely reached according the vast number of people in university (about 100000 student in Cairo University alone). Thus, I think that if we coordinate a large student campaign based on volunteers to teach them about the use & how to contribute & edit wikipedia especially Arabic one it may increase the contributors base hugely. By The Way, University staff may also be reached with this campaign. and if it is large enough and can gather enough volunteers it may also attract media. --Essam Sharaf 07:11, 23 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. i agree, more of such activities should be made in other countries as well. --Histolo2 22:56, 18 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
What is the potential role of other Wikimedia projects in Arabic?


  1. As a former admin of arabic wikisource my answer is obviuosly wikisource :). arabic is an old language and classical arabic from 1500 years ago is still widely understood by educated people. In the golden age of arab culture many books from various cultures (greek, persian, hindo, etc..) were translated into arabic and many other books were written in arabic. The arabic PD library is quite huge many of which are already digitized and can be added to wikisource (the arabic wikisource database is one of the top 5 wikisource projects) the problem with wikisource is lack of contributers willing to edit the books and wikify them etc... but i think this project has great potential. --Histolo2 23:03, 18 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
What are the 2-4 strategic opportunities for investment to propel growth in Arabic-language Wikipedia?


Who is needed to support this strategy (e.g., Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, individual volunteers, external partners), and what do they need to do?


  1. Could organizations such as Engineers Without Borders (http://www.ewb-international.org/) be intrested in organizing translation groups? They probably are technologically oriented and understands the importance of knowledge. Their members are probably able to learn the basics of editing a Wikipedia easily and could help in organizing groups and provide technical support to translators. The translators could either be people that know an under-represented language or native speakers. It would make it easier for people that wants to contribute but lacks computer knowledge to help out, and might fit well together with the organizations educational projects.
  2. I will add we need a local chapter somewhare in MENA, most likely it'll be in Egypt since it has the larger organized group of wikimedians. in my own opinion having a chapter would make it easier to organize events, cooporation with universities etc.. it will also help improve the press coverage of wikipedia (i think arabic wikipedia is not covered enough, most of the press coverage is translated from western sources about western wikipedias) and will increase the awareness about wikipedia (through press releases etc...). --Histolo2 23:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!


local language projects

Latest comment: 13 years ago24 comments9 people in discussion
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?


    • 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.
    • 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)Reply
  2. 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)Reply

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

Are there Wikimedia policy and procedures that inhibit the development of local language Wikipedias?


  1. Yes, the language committee will not consider projects that do not have an ISO language code. I am very active in the Simple English Wikipedia and am so because Wikipedia being the encyclopaedia anyone can edit infers (greatly) that it is also the encyclopaedia that anyone can read. Just as we have instruction creep so to do we have article creep. This is where over time an article become more and more complex because of finer and finer tuning and more and more advanced research. Not everyone has a university degree in physiology and so can't understand all of this article. I support simpler versions of wikiprojects in all languages. fr33kman -simpleWP- 06:24, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

How can mature Wikipedias like English and German support the development of local language Wikipedias?


  1. The most obvious way is by technical and information support. That means help about using sophisticated techniques, complicated templates, etc. and a coordinating project for local language editions, whose active users speak the larger language (German and English, as the question puts it). There is some positive experience in Russian language project ru:Википедия:Проект:Малые разделы Википедии на языках России (linked from the main page at ru.wiki). Amikeco 07:45, 1 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Projects in languages that have a relatively small size often translate articles from the larger projects in English, French, Spanish or German. I found that when I write an article at wp-en, it gets often translated in a couple of smaller languages within a year. Especially the English Wikipedia seems prone to this effect. The problem is that Wikipedia is not devoid of errors, and these errors get copied too with translation. Whereas the larger projects have plenty of users that will quickly address such errors, the translation at a small project will stay there for years or decades. To prevent this, larger projects should do more to rate and visualize the value of their content according to the pillars of Wikipedia. Such ratings are signals for translators from smaller projects, that show them weather the content they are translating is actually trustworthy/encyclopedic/neutral/etc. Woudloper 23:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

How can Wikipedians who do not speak local languages but have experience editing and building mature Wikipedias contribute to local language Wikipedias?

How can Wikipedians who do not speak local languages but have experience editing and building mature Wikipedias contribute to the development of local language Wikipedias(ex. developing templates, Wikipedia buddy system)?

  1. Even though many wikimedians experiensed with editing wiki content might not have extensive knowledge in any local language I think many might have contacts that do have. For example a wikimedian that knows someone that has been a volounter in a developing country but not has any experiense in editing wikis could help that person out to start translating articles. Translation groups could be formed that are headed by experienced wiki editors but where translation is done by people with knowledge in the particular language. The experiensed Wikimedian could create pages, provide support and further on to many translators. An opportunity that could arise from such collaborations if the group consists of people that has been volonters in developing countries would be that they can have contacts at the specific location that might be able to help with translation too, effectively localizing the translation to the country itself and creating an environment where actuall knowledgeproduction from within the area can eventually occur. --Dafer45 12:03, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Sometimes, a specialist user is only contributing to a small project, because that project is in his mother language. All specialist users that add good content are very valuable for Wikimedia projects, but the said type of specialist and his or her contributions often remain isolated and unrecognised because of the language barrier. Such users may be able to write understandable English or other major languages, but feel too insure in these languages to contribute to the major projects. Wikiprojects should not be created or operational locally, but at at meta, where all users with a specific field of expertise can join and communicate without having to be fluent in a particiular language. In this way specialist users at small projects can be pulled out of their isolation. Also, global wikiprojects will allow groups of users at several projects to cooperate in creating valuable content that can be added at several projects at the same time. Woudloper 23:49, 1 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  3. Unfortunately we lack skilled coders who would write applications to help with the technical stuff etc.. this is an aspect that needs (and can) be taken care off. There are technical users but too few with too little time. --Histolo2 23:23, 18 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
    1. What kind of technical stuff needs to be fixed? I have some experience in coding, mostly in low level c/c++ and not much webaimed languages but has to admit that it ain't clear to me at all in what way a coder could contribute to the project. Maybe because I haven't looked into it that much, but maybe it is not clear enough how coders can contribute. I mean, there is an edit tab at each page where contributors easily can edit articles, but if I want to help with the codebase, where do I go? I don't know if there is anything like a developer community, but if there is it maybe should be more openly advertised, and if not, maybe such a community should be created in some way. I am sure there is people who is willing to contribute in this way.--Dafer45 08:31, 19 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  4. Sadly, WMF projects have attracted a fair few people who don't, for one reason or another, wish us well. We have a lot of crosswiki vandals and some of them target small wikis with not a lot of daily activities seeing them as easy targets. Thankfully due to tools like CVN bots, the SWMT, global sysops, stewards and the kindness of the random stranger most of this gets dealt with. What experienced Wikipedians can do is maybe spend 15 minutes a week and look at some of the recent changes of the small wikis. Most vandalism is either gibberish, obvious or in a major language. Experienced Wikipedians can also help mentor new administrators and communities as they grow. This can be showing them the WMF wikiway but also encouraging them to develop their own community. fr33kman -simpleWP- 07:11, 12 March 2011 (UTC)Reply

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

What role should translation from mature language Wikipedias to local language Wikipedias play and what tools are needed to facilitate this role?


  1. Word-to-word translating is hard and painful process. Retelling, using facts and figures — that's the easier way for smaller Wikipedias. Amikeco 07:56, 1 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Translation of articles probalby is a great way to kick start a Wikipedia. A good idea might be to concentrate such translation on educational and technological (especially computer related) material because that would probably be the kind of material that is most likely to attract native users that are likely to themself contribute to the growth--Dafer45 08:25, 7 November 2009 (UTC).Reply
  3. There is a translation project that is trying to fill some gap in arabic wikipedia, using google translation toolkit to make translation easier but its still in its beginning and we ran in some problems, hope better and more accurate translation tools will be found in the future (right now you need to correct almost every sentence). --Histolo2 23:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  4. I found using table is more efficient and stable for translation across Wiki. This is because the table impose stright control on data structure. Another way is to use stock phases, ie. like what Wikipedia is using in their message. Example S1$ is a singer from S2$. Yosri 04:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
  5. [...] Answer here, please...

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

What lessons can be learned from the growth of the successful smaller language Wikipedias?


  1. Laŭ la sperto de kelkaj malpli grandaj vikipedioj en la lingvoj de eksa Sovetunio, mi rimarkas, ke la ĉefa grava bezono por aktivigi vikipedion estas apero de redakta komunumo. Nur post kiam tri redaktantoj aperis en la oseta Vikipedio, ĝi ekkreskis en decembro 2008. Homoj vidas redaktojn unu de la alia, kompletigas tiujn redaktojn, tio kreas la mondfaman vikipedian efikon. Amikeco 07:52, 1 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. [...] Answer here, please...

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

What strategies and tactics are successful in increasing awareness of Wikipedia projects in a specific geographic region and how can Wikimedia empower people to implement these strategies and tactics?


  1. [...] Answer here, please...

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

What tools and support are necessary to further build out local languages?


  • If someone wants to do a word by word translation today the procedure is to look up the original source and copy it, create a new page in the new language and paste the copied source. I think this process is enough to hinder a lot of possible contributors that are very able to translate but not are very used to computers and markup languages. Implementing an option where you by two mouse clicks (a translate link and then a choice of language) can go from an existing article to the edit page of a new article in another language with the existing articles source inserted could have a great impact. The translation option for a certain language could be made to disapear as soon as an article in that language alreaddy exists.--Dafer45 08:21, 13 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • Links should prefferably be auto translated to link to the corresponding local language articles too, so that the translator doesn't have to bother about finding the relevant article to link to. A problem would arise every time a linked article doesn't exist in the local language though, which would be expected to be very common for small language wikipedias. Any good idea about how this is solved would be good. Should the link be excluded and made into ordinary text, linked to the original language article or link to an empty page where auto translation of the link text is taken from some dictionary (when the linked article exists a dictionary translation ain't needed as the word can be translated into the corresponding article heading)?--Dafer45 12:49, 14 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  1. [...] Answer here, please...

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

What 2-4 primary strategic opportunities for investment in growth and community health would help to propel the creation and growth of local language Wikipedias?

(e.g., translation, local content creation, customization of look-and-feel and feature set, etc.)

  1. [...] Answer here, please...

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

Which "local languages" are top priority and why?


  • The six official languages of the United Nations are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish; that should probably make Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish the top priorities. --Fasten (Wikinews: Aktion Deutschland Hilft asks for donations after the earthquake in Indonesia) 17:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • We could look at the official languages of the EU I suppose (among others). I'm actually reluctant to deprioritize any language group witha viable community that wants to work on increased reach.-- ArielGlenn 03:18, 22 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I don't think there is an answer to this question. Everyone has a reason to name his own several languages :) Amikeco 22:30, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • Can we come up with a good framework for evaluating our priorities? Obviously, interest level is one. If there isn't a community of people interested in their own local language wiki, then that may be an argument for not pursuing those languages. "Performance" or "potential" is another. For example, there are a large number of Chinese and Indian speaking people who have access to the Internet, and yet, those language Wikipedias are "underperforming." Are there other criteria for deciding which languages to prioritize? --Eekim 05:03, 3 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • How is low intrest level meassured? Low participation, or low trafic? Low participation could be due to low computer knowledge in the community, which hinders people with knowledge to contibute for technical reasons. Low trafic could be due to low information content on the wiki.--Dafer45 16:47, 15 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Extra effort into building lingua franca Wikipedias could allow translation from these into other local languages by local contributors. At least that narrows the list down to about fourty languages.--Dafer45 16:47, 15 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

Who is needed to support this strategy (e.g., Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, individual volunteers, external partners), and what do they need to do?


  1. Could organizations such as Engineers Without Borders (http://www.ewb-international.org/) be intrested in organizing translation groups? They probably are technologically oriented and understands the importance of knowledge. Their members are probably able to learn the basics of editing a Wikipedia easily and could help in organizing groups and provide technical support to translators. The translators could either be people that know an under-represented language or native speakers. It would make it easier for people that wants to contribute but lacks computer knowledge to help out, and might fit well together with the organizations educational projects.
  2. I will add we need a local chapter somewhare in MENA, most likely it'll be in Egypt since it has the larger organized group of wikimedians. in my own opinion having a chapter would make it easier to organize events, cooporation with universities etc.. it will also help improve the press coverage of wikipedia (i think arabic wikipedia is not covered enough, most of the press coverage is translated from western sources about western wikipedias) and will increase the awareness about wikipedia (through press releases etc...). --Histolo2 23:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

!!! Discussion continued at the Local Language Projects talk page !!!

off-line distribution of Wikimedia projects

Latest comment: 15 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
What is the incremental potential gain in reach for the Wikimedia projects, in offline readership?


  1. [...] Answer here, please...
What are the delivery mechanisms that are likely to drive an increase in offline readership? Who are the organizations and entities currently doing this work?


  1. An offline version of Wikipedia for mobile phones that is easy for any mobilephone developer to include in their application package. As mobile phones are more common than internet connection in some places this would enable many more to benefit from Wikipedia, further it would not require the user to have internet access from the phone. Cooperation and dialogue with mobile phone developers would help. Some questions related to this are; How much of Wikipedia can currently be stored on a typical mobile phone? How much storage are mobile phones expected to contain in some years, can a whole Wikipedia eventually be stored? And what content should be stored when that is not possible? A service that allows the user to update content if he has internet connection would be great too, but a preloaded phone would enable many that never has to also access the material.--Dafer45 08:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Wikimedia by moulin brings wikipedias in West-Africa (see their distribution), using USB sticks with source machines (see in action: video1 - video2) --Al Maghi, 01:17, 12 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
  3. [...] Answer here, please...
What 2-4 major strategic opportunities for investment would help to transformatively increase Wikimedia's readership among the five billion people who don't have internet access?

Which languages and regions are top priority?
Partner with the "One Laptop Per Child" initiative, to improve education in all nations.

What tools and support are necessary to make those strategies work?


  1. [...] Answer here, please...
Who is needed to support this strategy (e.g., Wikimedia Foundation, chapters, individual volunteers, external non-profit and for-profit partners), and what do they need to do?


  1. [...] Answer here, please...
Offline usage of the Wikimedia material inherently makes participation difficult. Are there ways to overcome this challenge, to enable offline readers of the Wikimedia projects to also make contributions?



Community submitted key questions

Latest comment: 15 years ago12 comments2 people in discussion

Questions here relate to Emerging Strategic Priority 2 and are transposed from the Key questions page, where their history can be found. Please feel free to add to this list.

What should we do to ensure our materials are available to people who don't yet have internet access, or who may never have internet access?

Should we support dial-up differently? #reach

Email interface with proper revision control

    • Dial-up users might appreciate an email interface with proper revision control and - possibly - non-mandatory locking. This might be a useful application the Wikimedia foundation could donate to OLPC and similar projects. The user would be able to read an offline Wikipedia but request current articles through email. One wouldn't even have to have full internet access and transmission of articles would happen conveniently through the email queue. A mail filter could remove received articles from the incoming folder and queue them for access by the offline reader. The articles should probably be XML formatted attachments to allow exact import into the database of the offline reader, which, given the size of Wikipedia, should be located on a school server or other server. --Fasten (Wikinews: Aktion Deutschland Hilft asks for donations after the earthquake in Indonesia) 12:02, 21 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • In which areas of the world are schools that do have computers but polling email through pigeon-post would still make sense for them? (No, not using RFC 1149) Reference projects with penguins pigeons might generate media attention and promote emulation, even if delivery by car might be (or become) more common. --Fasten 15:23, 10 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
What should we do to ensure our materials are available in developing countries, where many languages with a million or more speakers still have no flourishing wikipedia community?

#reach

  1. Indeed. But even professional translators can make mistakes when content is specialistic. Communication of some sort between such hired profs and expert users should be a point of attention. Woudloper 23:16, 1 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
    You mean the experts of the source wiki should be in contact with professional translators to maintain a quality the destination wiki is not going to support? Why not just leave it to the destination community to fix any potential mistakes made by professional translators? --Fasten 10:49, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
    Because such expertise isn't always present in smaller local communities. This would mean neither the local community nor the translator would actually understand thoroughly what is written at the local project. Contact with the experts at the source wiki would help in such cases. Woudloper 12:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply


Commons is effectively useless to people who do not speak English.

The big problem is how do you find your picture among the almost 5 million media files? #quality

    • w:Google Translate should be good enough for most short descriptions on Commons. Just add a link to it or to a similar service. --Fasten (Wikinews: Aktion Deutschland Hilft asks for donations after the earthquake in Indonesia) 12:25, 21 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • Somehow, the communication between commons and local projects is not optimal. Users at projects that do not encourage local file storage often feel as if they have no influence on the pictures their project uses. Pictures are (often with good reason) deleted at commons, without warning at the place where they are used. This could be helped by simply always having a bot putting warnings at all talk pages at all projects where an image is used 2 weeks before deletion. Woudloper 23:22, 1 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • 2 weeks are not long enough. It shouldn't be too difficult to improve the CheckUsage tool to show all incoming references on Commons automatically (without having to use a tool). Users or bots on commons could wait for the "downstream" community to react to a deletion request (or 3 month at most). A speedy deletion would only be done if the content was in violation of the policies of the downstream community. --Fasten 11:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
    Another way to get local users more involved in commons would be to post important messages/decisions/changes in the community and rules of commons at local noticeboards. This would (among users of local projects) increase the sense that they are involved in commons. Woudloper 12:46, 2 November 2009 (UTC)Reply


How do we increase participation and awareness of projects other than Wikipedia itself? How do we encourage the participation in and use of non-English Wikipedia projects?


Wikibooks in Proposal:Ebook shops could increase awareness for the Wikibooks projects. --Fasten 11:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)Reply
Why is there an assumption in ESP 2 that there will "eventually" be internet access prevalent, world-wide?

Why is it implicitly assumed that a solution which involves transfer of wikipedia edits, page-requests and pages themselves (over offline media such as USB memory sticks for example) would not be perfectly acceptable (and infinitely preferable to low-bandwidth and high cost of real-time internet access) to its users? #reach

  1. [...] Answer here, please...
Why is it assumed that "Opportunity equals number of literate, educated, internet-connected people"?

What is so wrong about solving the technical issue of indirect access, using offline storage media for the transfer of edits, page-requests and pages, that even the consideration of such has to be excluded from the ESP 2 process?

  1. [...] Answer here, please...



This page needs an introduction

Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

To quote a popular template at Wikiquote: "This page lacks sufficient introduction or links.... Without such information, it is hard to distinguish this topic from similarly-named topics." ~ Ningauble 14:09, 21 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

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