Nordic Wikimedia/Yearbook 2011/Page 10 Nobel interviews, Internet Sweden Project, The Saami project
Nobel laureates interviews
editWikimedia Sweden got accreditation by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science to interview the Nobel laureates in Science. Brian Schmidt, Thomas J. Sargent and Dan Shechtman were interviewed in December 2011 and video films of the interviews were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and duly incorporated in articles on the Nobel laureates in Swedish, German and English. The interview with Dan Shechtman has also been included in the Hebrew version of Wikipedia.
Internet in Sweden Project
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Inspired by a successful project with the British Museum, Wikimedia Sverige joined forces with the Swedish Internet Foundation (.SE), who handles the Swedish internet top domain. The project goal was to increase the number and quality of the articles on the subject area of Internet in Sweden. An editorial project was organized with a professional, hired project manager, Also, a number of autmatic tools were created for updating tables of article quality status and page view statistics. Due to the project, there will be easy to set up similar processes for other subjects. Useful experiance was gained on avoiding pitfalls and how to select the most promising low hanging fruits to grasp. The project results was reported in satisfaction to .SE. A presentation of the project was also made at Wikimania 2011 in Haifa.
Promotion of the Saami version of Wikipedia
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The Saami people is the smallest ethnic group in the Nordics, numbering some 50-100,000 people altogether. They are divided between six main dialects, speaking a finno-ugric language of local descent. Hence, their languages – first of all grouping into Northern Saami and Southern Saami – are among the most threatened languages in the Northern hemisphere. The Northern Saami (Sámegiella) speakers have their own Wikipedia edition, counting close to 5,000 articles.
In 2009, Wikimedia Norway got state funds to support a writing campaign among the Northern Saami. The Norwegian Sami Parliament granted up to 350,000 NOK for the strengthening of Northern Sami Wikipedia. During the first half of 2011, the local Wikimedia chapter started training Saami students from the local college in Kautokeino, both locally in Finnmark – and in Oslo. Eight female students, eager to start preserving their language through Wikipedia, got thorough training in the disposition, writing, and photo enrichment of articles. The training also included the use of sources, references, and rules of notability and privacy. Morten Haugen, municipal librarian and project manager, initiated the project by creating a comprehensive list of missing articles that was progressively filled.
As a result of the project the number of articles in Northern Sami and the quality of the articles has increased substantially, from around 3,000 to around 4,000 within 2011. By September, 2012, the number of articles had turned 5,600.