Saturday, August 4, 2012

Wikipedia World - 3 weeks later

There has been a lot of interest in the Wikipedia World Project.  Most are obviously not involved in the group but still rooting for it to be a big success.

We are now about 3 weeks out from TAM 2012 when I announced this project.  And I think an update would be welcome about now.

We now have 13 language groups formed; English, German, Norsk, French, Turkish, Dutch, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, Espanol, Danish, Farsi and Swedish.

The IIG Randi Beard photo has gone worldwide with it included on these pages...

English
German
Turkish
French
Spanish
Russian
Dutch
Portuguese
Norsk

Our next project is to produce a Jerry Andrus page in each language.  After that page is done we will be able to branch off onto more pages.

The English page re-write is almost done and just waiting for me to spend a week in Eugene, OR gathering more interviews and photos.

The Portuguese and Dutch pages for Andrus are about a forth of the way complete. 

We have identified 7 videos that show Jerry performing or just show his illusions.  These 7 videos have very few words and no need for captioning, they are ready to go.

We have 5 videos that discuss Andrus and need to be captioned first in English and then in all the other languages.  We have 3 of these done in English, and 1 in Portuguese and 1 in Dutch.

I'm really enjoying doing the English captioning, at first it was confusing to me and took a long time.  Now I've got the hang of it and its like a video game of sorts, but with an actual purpose.  I've done several others in my video library but only the 3 for this project,  I will focus on improving that number this weekend.

We have have several Andrus videos that are already in a language other than English.  Those are ready to go onto pages as is.

Several of the language groups have done a cursory look at what lies ahead for us.  From what we can discover we have our hands full.  Nix Dorf provided us with a good overview of the Portuguese and Spanish Wikipedia pages on this blog.

We are making to-do lists in many of the language groups, and of course the individual editors are free to work on whatever projects/pages they want.  Several have already expressed the desire to work on homeopathy in their native language.  Niels is very interested in creating this page in his language, MusiCure.  Apparently it is big news in Denmark.

My goal is to also really focus on creating pages (or improving pages) for people and groups that are specific to that language.  We get so focused on English speakers being the big-wigs in the skeptical movement that we forget there are skeptical spokepeople all over.  Each language group will need to identify who/what these are and make a plan.

We have had many glitches, most of Wikipedia World team are brand new editors, we are stumbling through this together as so far the editing screen is exactly the same in English and all languages.   Kind of like using an ATM with a different language on the screen, you just hopefully push the right buttons.

On Portuguese Wikipedia apparently you can't use YouTube videos as a citation unless you get the URL on the "whitelist" first.  That was interesting, but we managed to work through that.

I usually make a user page for myself on the different WP language pages.  On one I instantly received a "welcome to Wikipedia" kind of notice, and then seconds later a notice for speedy deletion of my user page.  It is still there but that was a bit unnerving.  Rian also got the same notice when she created a page on the Dutch WP.  We never figured that out.  Its been interesting, but we are starting to get the hang of this. 

As usual we really do need your help.  We need 20 times the amount of editors we have now.  Its an exciting time to be doing this, and an exciting project.  Even if you don't have a second language, we can help you find your way to helping out with this project.

Please write to me at susangerbic@yahoo.com



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