Tell us about Czech Wikipedia

This page belongs to the project Tell us about your Wikipedia.

Questionaire

Following content added by me was discussed in the Czech Wikipedia community. Miraceti 11:21, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Contributors

• Wikimedia Statistics can be difficult to interpret. What is your impression, how many steady contributors do you have?
  • About 100.
• Are your contributors mostly native speakers?
  • Yes, only several editors are not (sk, de, vi).
• Where do your contributors live (regions/country)?
  • Almost all contributors live in Czechia, only a few of them live abroad.
• How common is it that your contributors meet in real life?
  • Meetings are held several times a year, most often in Prague. About 20-30 people participate actively and repeatedly.

Other Wikipedias

• Do you have special contacts with another Wikipedias (maybe in related languages)?
  • Yes, with Slovak Wikipedia. The language is very similar (very little language barrier) and connection is also given by historical and cultural consequences. There are also special projects running between cs and sk (copyvio solving, translating). People from one wiki quite often comment on the other one.
• Do you translate a lot from other Wikipedias? Which ones?
  • Yes, mostly from English, German and Slovak Wikipedias. Other Wikipedias are translated less often. Articles from the third languages are sometimes translated in cooperation with people from sk.

Organization and support

• Is there a Wikimedia chapter in your country? How does your language relate to it?
  • Yes, Wikimedia Czech Republic was established in spring 2008. Language is related to it by historically natural connection of the Czech language and a territory of Czechia. Most of the members are active editors of cs wikiprojects.
• Are there work groups in other organizations about Wikipedia?
  • There are several university projects concerned with systematic writing of articles (examples: geography, translations from English).

Your Wikipedia and the linguistic community

• Is there a language institution for your language, like an Academy, or a club of people interested in your language? Do you have contact with them?
  • Yes, there is the Czech Language Institute of Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. It provides free consulting service to public; editors sends the Czech language related questions to the CLI occassionally.
• Who (else) supports you?
  • Nobody.
• How looks your public outreach for your edition? Do you have fliers, give lectures, trainings etc.?
  • Several flyers in a form of press releases have been issued. No lectures or trainings are arranged. Wikimedia Czech Republic considers organizing a local conference with workshops.
• Do you get feedback from readers?
  • Yes. Many people use the Czech Wikipedia as the first information source. It is used also in media and schools. Feedback is both positive, and negative. Negative feedback results often from an extremely short experience with Wikipedia and misunderstanding of its fundamental principles.
• What other encyclopedias exist in your language?
  • There is a lively tradition of Czech encyclopedias began with F. L. Rieger's encyclopedia in 1860. The high standard was then set up by Otto's encyclopedia at the turn and first half of the 20th century; it has even been compared to Encyclopedia Britannica, including that Otto's encyclopedia is still used by editors of the Czech Wikipedia as a source of detailed and reliable information. During the Communist regime, several smaller general encyclopedias with arguable qualities were issued, starting with Four-volume Příruční slovník naučný published between 1962–1966 is the most notable. Several translations of foreign encyclopedias appeared during and after 1990's.

Content

• Does your edition concentrate on certain topics, like your region and language, or Latin Wikipedia on Roman history and Christianity?
  • There is no official specialization (and some efforts to counter "Czecho-centric bias") but editors naturally systematically cover many Czech topics.
• Does your edition enjoy text donations, for example from older encyclopedias?
  • Editors can use out-of-copyright parts of Otto's encyclopedia. Several Czech websites have released their content in license compatible with GFDL so that Wikipedia can use them, often directly for import into it. School works are donated every now and then. The donations are problematic due to their arguable direct usability.

Language

• Is there a generally accepted norm about your language (spelling, dictionary, pronunciation)?
  • Yes, the CLI codifies orthography, dictionary etc.; there is no language law. However, there have been several spelling reforms in the 20th century (affecting mostly words of foreign origin); not all of them were received favourably which led to allowing a number of doublets.
• How do you deal with different spellings, dialects etc. (like B.E. lift and A.E. elevator)?
  • It was a hot topic around 2005in early stages of cswiki's development when a couple of editors refused ortography codifications made during last 100 years. This resulted in a mandatory rule which prefers opinions of experts from the CLI. Nowadays, we have only problems with translation or transcription of foreign names (Czech language traditionally uses its own suitable transcriptions) and gender-marked suffixes in foreign names (we generally use them although exceptions exist). A specific argument exists around the name "Czechia" - Česko which is not accepted by all editors. (See Names of the Czech Republic. There are no problems with dialects since the norm of the Czech language is widely respected as the "best".