On third floor of Sourn Sun Hotel in Cape Town is problem of Wikipedia obviously. In room "Montreal", Hinterschweren wooden doors and under shimmering chandeliers, almost 600 participants of this year's Wikimania conference sit. Discuss and program your laptops during desHackathons, an event where people Develop NeueSoftwareprojekte toger in a short time.
You, se are authors of online encyclopedia that came to Cape Town. And y are mostly male and white. Women and people of colour can be counted on two hands this morning.
The demography of Hackathon participants clarifies einKernproblem of Wikipedia: White men from Europe and North America write about 80 percent of entries of online encyclopedia. The WikimediaFoundation, foundation behind Wikipedia, are showing evaluations. In Europe and North America, re are twice as many people online as in African regions. Neverless, imbalance is likely to be keineswegsso large.
That's what characterizes content. For example, Wikipedia provides a wealth of information on American television series or European wars. Articles, for example, on African personalities in African languages are sparsely sown. Wikipediaenthält today has more than 46 million articles in almost 300 languages. If Dieseparitätisch were distributed, about 150,000 posts would be available in each language. But that is not case: five million articles alone are written in English, only about 275,000 contributions in African languages.
Only written sources count, audio and video recordings are notDouglas Scott, chairman of Wikimedia in South Africa, sees this as a threat to principle of neutral position; A derGrundprinzipien from Wikipedia. All relevant verifiable views solltenzu be represented on a subject, opinion. "This doesn't work without diversity among our authors," says Scott. In order to promote diversity and to attract African authors, Stiftungals venue for annual Wikimania meeting with Cape Town was chosen for first time EinenStandort in sub-Saharan Africa.
What prevents so many users outside Europe from writing articles for online encyclopedia UndNordamerikas? If you talk to people at Wikimania conference, you'll notice that concept of Wikipedia is far from being common to everyone. "Many Wisseneinfach do not want to be able to work on Wikipedia," says Reemal-Kashif, a lecturer at a university in Cairo. She tells IhrenStudentinnen and students about it and animates m to participate.
But a big problem is illiteracy. Every third person living south of Sahara cannot read and write as figures from United Nations (UNDP) developing programme show. Therefore, people not only not be able to write articles for Wikipedia. Nor can you write AnderenBeiträge on web that could be a source for an article in encyclopedia. and to date, sources in Wikipedia articles only come in written form.
In African context, however, oral history, oral transmission know, plays an important role. How to make se narratives available night to deal with several sessions at Wikimania conference. It is an oath to record oral history in sound or video recordings. So you could also show up at Wikipedia alsverifizierbare sources of information. That sounds simple, bisheraber is not common.
Date Of Update: 25 July 2018, 12:02
