June 2014 African Wikipedia and Wiktionary update


This weekend sees the first Wiki Indaba, a gathering of African Wikimedians. Since my last look at the state of African language Wikimedia projects was in May 2013, and my last look at Wiktionary (the dictionary project, not as widely-known as its more popular sister, Wikipedia) was way back in 2011, it’s time for an update.

African Language Wiktionaries

Language 3/8/2009 30/5/2010 15/5/2011 17/6/2014
Malagasy 142 4,253 – 3,191,393
Afrikaans 14,128 14,669 14,731 15,792
Swahili 12,956 13,000 13,027 13,885
Wolof 2,675 2,689 2,693 2,310
Sotho 1,387 1,389 1,398 1,343
Zulu 127 131 510 586
Rwandi 306 306 306 366
Swati 31 371 377 290
Oromo 186 218 264 269
Amharic 311 319 377 204
Tsonga 358 359 363 92

The startling progress of Malagasy is most notable, and here it seems bot activity is primarily responsible. Malagasy is one of the more interesting languages linguistically, so it’s not surprising it’s attracting interest. Afrikaans and Swahili also showed some activity in the last year, while other languages are static, with many showing a reduction in the number of articles due to cleanups.

What about the Wikipedias?

African Language Wikipedias

10,3792,757
Language 11/2/2011 13/4/2012 9/5/2013 17/6/2014
Malagasy 3,806 36,767 45,361 47,144
Afrikaans 17,002 22,115 26,752 31,756
Yoruba 12,174 29,894 30,585 30,910
Swahili 21,244 23,481 25,265 26,349
Amharic 6,738 11,572 12,360 15,968
Egyptian Arabic   8,433 12,440
Somali 1,639 2,354 3,646
Lingala 1,394 1,816 2,025 2,077
Shona     1,421 2,077
Kabyle     1,503 1,876
Kinyarwanda   1,501 1,817 1,832
Wolof 1,116 1,814 1,161 1,201

Afrikaans continues to show the most consistent growth and the healthiest community. Yoruba overtook Afrikaans thanks mostly to a burst of bot activity, but Afrikaans has now once again overtaken it. Malagasy, again thanks to bot activity, is well ahead, but the consistent growth in Afrikaans means it is closing the gap, and has higher quality articles.

Of the other African languages, Amharic, Egyptian Amharic, Somali and Shona are all showing reasonable activity, so the signs are good.

Focusing on South Africa specifically:

South African Language Wikipedias

Language 19/11/2011 13/4/2012 9/5/2013 17/6/2014
Afrikaans 20,042 22,115 26,754 31,756
Northern Sotho 557 566 685 691
Zulu 256 483 579 630
Tswana 240 490 495 510
Swati 359 361 364 400
Xhosa 125 136 148 333
Tsonga 192 193 240 303
Venda 193 190 204 209
Sotho 132 145 188 197

I’ve discussed the success of the Afrikaans Wikipedia above, and the other language showing good progress has been Xhosa, which survived the proposal to close it in 2013. Wikimedia ZA announced in their April newsletter that they were diverting resources away from Xhosa, after numerous failed attempts to activate the language.

However, in March, the Xhosa Wikipedia started to show signs of life. For a small Wikipedia, all it takes is one or two active editors, and Xhosa has found one, so the article count, as well as the article quality, has jumped noticeably. Xhosa has leapt from last place (excluding Ndebele, which is the only South Africa official language not to have its own Wikipedia) to sixth, above Tsonga, Venda and Sotho.

The other Wikipedias are still only showing flickering signs of interest, and have only a small number of new articles.

Related articles

Image from Wikimedia Commons

3 comments

  1. Interesting about the progress of Xhosa. It seems though, that the intent is there, but the content is still lacking in places.

    I was immediately interested in ‘inyanga’ (months of year) – but the pages just appear to have multiple repetitions of the name, like https://xh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyesilimela

    Categorisation into months is a start. But truly speaking, at least 12 of those 333 articles are just place holders so far. I wonder how many others are.

    See: http://www.wildcoast.co.za/xhosa_calendar

  2. I’ve heard one of the high schools here in Cape Town is having weekly gatherings for isiXhosa Wikipedia editing .

  3. Jeff, yup, many of the articles are little more than stubs, but it’s a lot better than it was in February. If your Xhosa is up to it, feel free to dive in.

    Michael, do you know details about the school? At the moment there only seems to be one reasonably active editor, so it doesn’t look like that’s happening any more.

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