Celtic Knot Conference 2022/Online program/Discussions notes

Templates in the Incubator

Name of the convenor: Ghanaian Pidgin Community

👥 Participants

• Joris Darlington Quarshie
• Luca Martinelli [Sannita] -- Neapolitan Wikipedia
• Faisal Ali (Ghanaian Pidgin Wikimedians Community)
• Sadik Shahadu (Dagbani Wikimedians User Group)
• Glory Onwuka

🖊️ Notes, links, key points

• Templates
• Difficulties in getting volunteers for documentations
• Lack of standardization of the Ghanaian Pidgin
• Not taught in schools in Ghana
• Pronunciations of words between Neapolitan

🎯 Conclusion, recommendations and next steps

• Direct focus to international and foreign institutions for professionals in languages
• Community should decide how to standardize the community by the help of an expert in linguistics
• Use of dictionaries for reference

Why is it hard to create Wikipedia articles on language(s) that are not native to one, even when the person know the language very well

Name of the convenor: Bonaventure Okpara

👥 Participants

• Goodness Ignatius
• Caoimhim ÓDonnaile

🖊️ Notes, links, key point

1 It was made clear that it is not that hard to publish articles on other languages, using English language as a reference.

It's just that as a new user, Wikipedia would not just allow you to start publishing articles because they presume you do not know much about publishing articles yet. That you just have to start with editing other people's work.

That it is advicable that whenever you want to start creating articles you start with articles not related to humans, maybe your local dishes, culture and others. And when you decide to write about humans, be cautious with living persons because Wikipedia would be held responsible if you say something not true about the person.

Also, articles should have proper references and one should avoid spam in referencing his/her articles. Once you meet all these requirements and was able to get six or seven of your articles approved, you will start having most of your articles approved with ease.

🎯 Conclusion, recommendations and next steps

1 Get one or two mentors who you would always contact to help you check articles you have created before you publish.

Schools

Name of the convenor: Richard

👥 Participants

• Richard Nevell
• Valentine Badu
• Gabriel Amuzu
• Hussein m mmbga
• Rukaya Hamidu
• Omo Yoobá
• John Joy
• Yemifestus
• Daria Cybulska
• Léa Lacroix
• Sadik Shahadu
• Abdul Rahman Hamidu

🖊️ Notes, links, key points

• "If we impart wiki knowledge into children, they will grow with it"
• Challenges around internet access - lots of people use phones or don't have internet access
• Opportunities to work with Wikipedia and Wikidata
• "With the little bit of information I have heard, pupil turn to vandalize Wikipedia which I think generated this IP blocks, so the discussion should be how do you teach pupil so they don’t vandalize articles on Wikipedia"
• Key question: how do we best education students about what Wikipedia is about? This applies to teachers and headteachers
• Have to win over teachers and especially headteachers
• Key issue: what will interest people about Wikipedia? Has been a challenge before
• Universities and colleges may be easier to work with
• Important to help university students understand that Wikipedia is voluntary (ie: you don't get paid for editing)
• Differening opinions on younger students because we may not get good content from them, but we may be able to educate them about how Wikipedia works and how to use it
• Looking to inspire people to write; train people to edit, and incentivise them to keep going. Credit is a good way of doing that.
• Kiwix as a useful resource for learning how to use Wikipedia: https://www.kiwix.org/
• Hussein: first of all tell them how its wikipedia about by using the 5 pillars. then introduction about how interest mybe example create a gifs on wikicommon or other and then choose who are interesting. that i think can help
• Sadik: teachers are a vital part of the Dagbani Wikipedia - estimated 70% of the community are teachers. Focusing on high school level.
• When pupils leave school, they know there's a Wikipedia for them that they can contribute to

🎯 Conclusion, recommendations and next steps

• There will be different challenges with working with schools compared to universities
• Should explain to people that Wikipedia editing is voluntary service
• There is a difference between how to use Wikipedia and how to edit Wikipedia
• Skills from learning about Wikipedia: referencing
• Important to choose a focus
• Make the point that working with Wikipedia/Commons/other projects helps a large number of people because they can then access that information
• Photographers get credit for their work
• Helps people understand about copyright
• Explain the importance of Wikipedia and open knowledge
• Useful activities: setting students homework to assess Wikipedia

Localising the Global goals on our local Wikis

Name of the convenor: James Popoola & Godstime Elijah

👥 Participants

• Godstime Elijah
• James Moore200
• Kingaustin07
• Rhoda James
• Major Lyte
• Issah iddris
• Kambai Akau
• Ngangaesther

🖊️ Notes, links, key points

We taked about the importance of localising the Global goals on our local Wikis. Not being limited to English Wikipedia only but also bridging the content gap as regards the local Wikis.

🎯 Conclusion, recommendations and next steps

Kindly join this group for further conversation: https://chat.whatsapp.com/L3bm3TuNkAV8sDCiw6madA

Sharing technical tips for small Wikipedias

Name of the convenor: Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle

🖊️ Notes, links, key points

The group didn’t really get underway very well. There were two or three participants from Africa, but one person’s sound was very bad - kept breaking up - so that I had difficulty making her out, and another person’s battery went flat and he had to leave.

Before he left, he told me that he lived in Nigeria, which had about 300 languages, and that the three main languages had Wikipedias. They had established spelling systems using the Latin script. They (or at least his language) used diacritics, and he had run into the same problem as we had in Scottish Gaelic before we managed to get it cured, namely that the default sort order for Wikipedia categories is a computer binary sort, which places letters with diacritics at the end of the alphabet instead of in their proper order.

🎯 Conclusion, recommendations and next steps

It would be good, I think, if the default sort order, for all Wikipedias was changed to Unicode sort order rather than binary sort. A few (like Swedish and Welsh) will need their own particular sort order, but for the vast majority, Unicode sort order will be adequate, and much better than binary sort.

Failing that (or in the meantime, while we are waiting), a lot of small Wikipedias need some help with customising their sort order for categories.

language Wiktionary in incubating status what ways is strategic to push it out

🖊️ Notes, links, key points

Languages in incubating status can leave it's status with continuous building of the language vocabularies, with the correct grammar, pronunciation and photos so as to encourage non native speaker who actually like or want to access words in the language to get full understanding of what they are actually looking for accompanied with the pronunciation and photos which points the exact thing to the readers imagination. But one of the challenges of language Wiktionary is it needs a competent native speaker who is also a linguistics expert to be able to render the correct grammar of the language .Non experts can only contribute only on the pronunciation and adding of photos.

🎯 Conclusion, recommendations and next steps

... language needs expert in it's Wiktionary development but minors to it's supply of pronunciation and photos