Two other African languages, Somali and Kabye, are also closing in on the milestone, both having moved quite quickly into the 800’s, passing the relatively stagnant Igbo and Kikongo.

Swahili remains the largest African-language Wikipedia, and is moving rapidly ahead...]]> A sixth African-language Wikipedia has reached the 1000 article milestone, with Wolof now sitting at 1068 articles.

Two other African languages, Somali and Kabye, are also closing in on the milestone, both having moved quite quickly into the 800’s, passing the relatively stagnant Igbo and Kikongo.

African Language Wikipedias

Swahili remains the largest African-language Wikipedia, and is moving rapidly ahead. Having passed Afrikaans in August 2009, it’s now almost 3000 articles ahead, while Afrikaans remains on a steady trajectory.

Swahili also benefited from a Google project to create more Swahili content, focusing on the Swahili Wikipedia. Google initially targetted 7 East African universities, and sponsored prizes. Contributers had between November and January to write new articles, and the contest resulted in a 30% increase (by words) in the size of the Swahili Wikipedia for that period. New articles were up to 35 a day (up from 9 in October), but it appears this was a temporary boost, as rates have dropped off to 5 or 6 new articles a day since, below the Afrikaans average of about 9.

So, the African language Wikipedias show steady progress, what about Wiktionary?

African Language Wiktionaries

Many of the languages have stagnated, with the possible exception of Malagasy, which at first glance appears to have taken off and is now the 3rd-largest African language Wiktionary. In March though, the Malagasy Wikipedia stood at 6119 articles, so it appears a large number were not article quality, or were spam, and have been deleted. Article count is not a good indicator of quality, as it’s quite easy to create large number of low quality stubs, which isn’t indicative of a vibrant project.

On to the South African languages in particular:

South African Language Wikipedias

* – yes, one article has been created since I started writing this.

** – The Northern Sotho Wikipedia is going great guns in the incubator, but it appears no closer to becoming an actual project, even though it would easily be second to Afrikaans. The missing criteria is “having an active community”, a criterion most of projects still in the main space would fail.

Besides Northern Sotho, and of course Afrikaans, there’s been some minor activity in Venda and Swati, but otherwise the other South African language Wikipedias have all failed to come to life yet, with Sotho even reducing in size as spam articles are cleaned out.

And how about the Wiktionaries?

South African Language Wiktionaries

Again, outside of Afrikaans, and a notable spurt from Swati that seems mainly to have been contributed by one person, nothing but the most superficial of progress.

Overall, only two languages, Swahili and Afrikaans, could be called success stories, but there’s some progress overall with some of the larger African languages.

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African Language Wikipedias – number of articles

Full list of Wikipedias

So while Swahili has raced ahead with great momentum (it grew by four in the course of writing this article), and Afrikaans continues solidly, the pace has slowed somewhat for Yoruba, Amharic and Lingala...]]> The Swahili Wikipedia has just passed the Afrikaans Wikipedia to become the largest African-language Wikipedia by number of articles.

African Language Wikipedias – number of articles

Full list of Wikipedias

So while Swahili has raced ahead with great momentum (it grew by four in the course of writing this article), and Afrikaans continues solidly, the pace has slowed somewhat for Yoruba, Amharic and Lingala. The Wolof Wikipedia is also approaching the 1000 article milestone, and, currently on 969 articles, should reach it this year.

I haven’t specifically looked at the African-language Wiktionaries before, outside of the South African languages. Here, Afrikaans still leads. Yoruba and Lingala don’t feature at all, while some languages show surprising interest relative to their Wikipedia size; Malagasy, Oromo, Sotho and Tsonga, for example. I wonder if a relatively more active Wiktionary shows more linguist interest in the project rather than community interest. Outside of linguists, most people would tend to gravitate to the much more exciting task of writing an encyclopedia rather than writing a dictionary.

African Language Wiktionaries – number of entries

Full list of Wiktionaries

So while at least a few African languages Wikipedias show progress, besides English and Afrikaans, it’s the same old refrain for the South African languages. All have shown short bursts of energy, mainly due to individual editors, there’s not been much progress.

South African Language Wikipedias – number of articles

* – incubator

Besides Afrikaans, none of the other languages have shown any progress at all. Northern Sotho still remains stuck in the Incubator and is unlikely to emerge with current levels of activity. Articles bemoaning the undervaluing of the humanities and the related disastrous effect on the general standard of education still appear regularly in the local media, and many South Africans are still unable to communicate effectively in any language. First languages, with the exception of English, and mainly for historical reasons, Afrikaans, are not well-served, and people are not learning them properly, instead being encouraged to communicate in a second-rate English.

It’s an indictment of South African universities that have local language departments that there’s been so little activity, and so little progress with integrating and raising the profile of the other nine languages.

Similarly, most of the South African Wiktionaries have had almost no activity this year.

South African Language Wiktionaries – number of entries

Still, although progress is slow, the dream of a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge is getting ever closer to reality.

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My version involved almost getting banned from Wikipedia...]]> I’m sure many people enjoyed an outrageous weekend. Going to a strip club, drinking too much, behaving outrageously and then getting banned from ever returning. That sort of thing.

My version involved almost getting banned from Wikipedia. Technically I’d broken a fundamental Wikipedia rule, reverting an article three times. Since I’m absolutely passionate about the goals of the foundation, which begin Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge, getting banned would be rather sad. The fact that my version of the article was much better than the alternative version wouldn’t have helped my defence!

Skipping forward to Sunday evening, Dorje, in the midst of winning at all costs, said something along the lines of I’m so full of love I love everybody, even baddies.

Wikipedia has a principle of assuming good faith. This very powerful principle implements the idea that by treating people well, they’re likely to treat you well. So, when a user makes a contribution that you deem is not constructive, instead of assuming that they’re an agent of the Illuminati out to corrupt Wikipedia, or some nutter who cons the gullible with their snake oil product, one can work with them. Perhaps the edit was a mistake, or perhaps they are simply well-meaning but not really seeing a perspective beyond their own.

After Dorje’s comments, I thought back to my weekend’s Wikipedia interactions, and loving the baddie I’d been bumping heads with. To my mind s/he was arrogant, aggressive and rude. Except that picturing somone in your mind as arrogant, aggressive and rude is hardly assuming good faith, or conducive to spreading the love. So, I returned, ready to try make peace with this person, even if I couldn’t agree.

I found, to my surprise, that many of their edits were generally constructive, and that I had been in the wrong. In my picturing them as a baddie, I’d overlooked their constructive contributions, and had once even reverted a constructive contribution of there’s under an assumption that it was no good. Since they were perhaps tired, stressed, or picturing me as a baddie too, we’d both been bumping heads, looking at the worst of each other’s activities.

Thanks to Dorje’s contribution, I’m humbled, and for now, all is peaceful again.

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Wikipedia – number of articles

* – incubator

The Afrikaans Wikipedia continues to develop well, shooting past the 10 000 milestone, and has a strong community...]]> I took a look at the South African language Wikimedia projects again today, to see whether there’s been much progress since May.

Wikipedia – number of articles

* – incubator

The Afrikaans Wikipedia continues to develop well, shooting past the 10 000 milestone, and has a strong community. The quality of the articles tends to be quite high as well, as there’s a preference in the community for quality over quantity.

Otherwise, Tsonga has also had some momentum recently. Last year it was the smallest of the official South African language Wikipedias, while now it’s up to 3rd, and closing in on Zulu.

The Northern Sotho project is still in the Incubator, and not an official project, although it seems to be doing quite well there, and would be second behind Afrikaans if it were an official project. Getting out of incubator status seems unlikely though, as the requirements have changed since the early free-for-all, and an active community, as currently interpreted, seems to set the bar a bit high.

With the low level of activity, statistics can be easily skewed by one or two contributers. The Tsonga Wikipedia has benefited from a particularly active contributor, while the Venda Wikipedia, which was the 3rd South African language to reach the milestone of 100 articles, has seen only 19 new articles in the last year.

Wiktionary – number of entries

The Afrikaans Wiktionary continues to thrive, and a Tswana Wiktionary has sprung, or rather, crawled, into existence, but everything else really has ground to a halt. The Xhosa project has been closed due to lack of activity, and moved to the Incubator.

Wikipedia – African languages

Afrikaans remains the largest African language Wikipedia (and 79th largest overall), remaining comfortably ahead of Swahili. At 2007’s growth rate, Swahili looked likely to pass Afrikaans this year, but 2008 has seen new momentum for Afrikaans. Yoruba though has seen rapid growth, and since Jan 2007, there have been more new articles in Yoruba than in any other African language. Amharic and Lingala are the only other African languages with more than 1000 articles.

It may seem like we’re a long way from achieving the dream of a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. But, perhaps, if we consider that of all the many years of human history, just 3 short years ago, an instant between the ticking of the galactic clock, most of these projects didn’t even exist, we’ll realise we’re doing quite well.

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Tags: wikipedia wiktionary wikimedia localisation