Meta:Historical/Cherokee

If you can write in the Cherokee language, you can participate in the writing of ᏫᎩᏇᏗᏯ, the free Cherokee encyclopedia. Help make all the world's knowledge available in Cherokee!

ᏫᎩᏇᏗᏯ is part of the Wikipedia project. Wikipedia is the largest project of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit set up with the goal of making all information, in all formats and languages, as freely available as possible. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with articles on more than three hundred thousand topics in the English version, and more than half a million in all languages. Sister projects include the multilingual dictionary and thesaurus, Wiktionary, a compendium of primary materials, Wikisource, a collection of quotes, Wikiquote, and Wikibooks, the home of textbooks, field guides and a cookbook, among other projects. Possible projects not yet fully underway include repositories of detailed genealogical and biological information, as well as collections of teaching aids and lesson plans at the Wikiversity and a one stop source for freely usable images and other media files.

See http://chr.wikipedia.org to begin working on the Cherokee Wikipedia right now, or http://en.wikipedia.org for the English language Wikipedia, which has more detailed guidelines and suggestions. If you have any questions about how to begin a Wikimedia project in the Cherokee language, feel free to ask at the Cherokee outreach page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Outreach:Cherokee).

Why should you participate in Wikimedia projects in any language? And even if so, why a barely-spoken language like Cherokee? The most important reason to contribute, in any way one can, is the project's ability to fulfill the potential of the Internet by providing accurate, timely and comprehensive information in any subject and language. The open GNU_FDL_license (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) that all Wikimedia projects are released under further guarantees that every worthwhile addition will be permanently added to the repository of human knowledge by removing copyright restrictions on reproduction and distribution. One of the most essential and unique properties of Wikimedia's goals is that it be as totally accessible as possible, especially linguistically; one day, we hope that the lack of useful written works in Cherokee will not be one more cause of the language's slide into oblivion. By creating content and laying in place the groundwork that will encourage more content, you will be encouraging the use of Cherokee in ordinary, informal research and web use, to learn about anything from Japanese history to popular music to astrophysics.