2023:Program/Equity and Community Health/7XETYC-Support for new and small wikis: from 2006 to 2023 and the future

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Title: Support for new and small wikis: from 2006 to 2023 and the future

Speakers:

Amir Aharoni

Born in Moscow in 1980. Living in Israel since 1991. Wikimedian since 2004. Volunteer Language committee member. translatewiki administrator. WMF Language strategist.

Pretalx link

Etherpad link

Room: Room 324

Start time: Fri, 18 Aug 2023 15:30:00 +0800

End time: Fri, 18 Aug 2023 16:00:00 +0800

Type: No (pretalx) session type id specified

Track: Equity, Inclusion, and Community Health

Submission state: confirmed

Duration: 30 minutes

Do not record: false

Presentation language: en

Abstract & description

Abstract

This talk makes a down-to-earth, realistic review of the history of creating new wikis and maintaining small ones in the Wikimedia world, and makes practical proposals of improvements for the future.

Description

In the Wikimedia world, there are now more than a thousand wikis. Their success and activity is a wide spectrum. Some of them are large, written by many thousands, and read by many millions. Some are middle-sized, and serve the people who speak the language in which they are written fairly well. But at the other end of the spectrum, there are some wikis that have almost no activity. And going even beyond the spectrum of already-existing wikis, there are also plenty of languages, in which there are no wikis at all. Many of the languages in which the wiki is barely active or doesn’t exist at all are spoken by millions of people, and as long as this is the situation, we are nowhere near our Vision of a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Some causes for this low activity are social and economic, while others are more technical, and can be overcome via manageable improvements that can be done by WMF teams and Wikimedia volunteers collaboratively. This presentation offers a view of the current situation that new wikis have to go through, and proposes some changes that can help make this process more convenient and efficient.

Further details

Qn. How does your session relate to the event themes: Diversity, Collaboration Future?

It relates to each of these themes! Making it easier to start wikis in new languages increases diversity. The proposed improvements increase collaboration across languages. And actually making the improvements will bring us into a future where diversity and collaboration increase.

Qn. What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session?

Everyone can participate in this session

Qn. What is the most appropriate format for this session?

• Onsite in Singapore
• Remote online participation, livestreamed
• Remote from a satellite event
• Hybrid with some participants in Singapore and others dialing in remotely
• Pre-recorded and available on demand