French language outreach, WikiTravel debate, and HighBeam reloaded

Language has never been the subject of public policy in Anglophone countries, so it might come as a surprise to English-speakers to learn that in some countries there is a tradition of state support and intervention on language issues. This is particularly so in France, where the tradition stretches back for more than three centuries: there, it has been seen as an important part of building the nation state and, during the 20th century, of binding together French-speakers worldwide. Among notable policies have been several laws to resist the contamination of French with English words, and controversial moves to suppress the teaching in schools of minority languages in France – reverted by a 2008 law providing greater acceptance of multilingualism and support for such teaching.

Adrienne Alix, the director of programs at Wikimedia France, has posted a report on a collaboration between the chapter and DGLFLF, a unit in the French Ministry for Culture and Communications that is dedicated to furthering government language policy. Adrienne told The Signpost that aside from French itself, more than 50 languages fall into the ambit of the Ministry: "some of them are regional languages like Provençal and Corsican [minority languages spoken in France itself]; others are from the overseas territories – an astonishing 27 languages just in new-Caledonia, and more than 20 creole and Indian languages in French Guyana, a small country in South America".

Adrienne says, "last May, the DGLFLF asked the chapter to write a report about French on Wikimedia projects. The report was well received, and as part of a larger report on the French language was distributed among all deputies in the national parliament. The Ministry frequently cites the document to show the importance of the internet in sustaining languages."

Chapter representatives then attended by invitation a major conference in French Guyana last December to explain the significance of WMF projects to both French and the minority languages. "The DGLFLF was very interested in the philosophy and work of the Wikimedia movement, and discussions after the conference resulted in an ongoing collaboration to publish a Wikibook on the event (in French, in progress). The Wikibook publications are designed to promote language issues and contain many links to WMF projects such as Wikipedia and Commons. She points out that "content about French overseas territories and native languages is not so good and this combined effort by government and chapter is really promoting better contributions." A bonus is that a year ago, the DGLFLF decided to release content under a licence similar to CC-BY.

Some 10 employees of the Ministry are involved in contributing to the Wikibook project and making Wikipedia edits. The Signpost asked whether such close involvement by the state employees might lead to the political slanting of content, against the independence and neutrality so keenly guarded by the Wikimedia movement. Adrienne says the chapter has been "very careful to train the people from the Ministry to be real contributors in terms of neutrality and sourcing; they're identified by a userbox on their userpage and have no special rights. We don't have any problem at this time."

Significantly, the collaboration is likely to lead to further joint work: "We're thinking about other projects for francophone areas that have poor internet access, with the DGLFLF and with some other institutions including the World Organization of Francophonie." Adrienne will present a paper to Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC (July 12–14) entitled What place for the "small languages" on Wikimedia projects?. There, she will discuss the chapter's experience in the light of key questions for the movement as a whole – among them, the best way to create a Wikipedia or a Wiktionary in a language that has no fixed writing system and the best way to work with a local administration regarding questions of language.

A debate on whether to integrate WikiTravel, or parts of it, into the Wikimedia universe unfolded over the last week on Meta and the Wikimedia-l (I, II, III). The project aims to create a free collaborative travel guide, and its main language version, English, provides around 25,000 articles. Another possibly affected project could be Wikivoyage, a longstanding WikiTravel fork run by the German community.

The proposal is backed by significant parts of the WikiTravel-community, including the project founders Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins, as well as Stefan Fussan, the chairman of the board of the Wikivoyage association. It also commands some support in parts of the Wikimedia-community, led by Doc James. Proponents of the idea argue that taking WikiTravel on board would be mutually beneficial, since Wikimedia would broaden its scope of educational material on the one hand and the possible new member of the family would benefit from improved software (the project currently runs on an older version of MediaWiki), as well as new funding environment.

However, to date there has been no official statement addressing the points raised in the discussion from Internet Brands, the entity which owns the trademarks to and runs WikiTravel. Additionally, several commenters on wikimedia-l raised concerns in regard to the neutrality of the content, and questioned the purported educational nature of travel guides in principle. Another aspect discussed was possible new forms of conflicts of interest (WP:COI) that might come from adopting such a project format.

A roadmap of the process of evaluating the workability and technical aspects of merging between now and June is outlined on Meta. The case is being discussed as the new Sister Projects Committee (see Brief notes) gets off the ground with discussing procedures affecting the possible merger.

• Article Feedback Tool, Version 5 update: A discussion has now been opened addressing the Article Feedback Tool, Version 5 and how Edit Filters would best be applied to feedback received using the tool. The community has been encouraged to participate in the discussion, which will influence the design of the new version of the tool when it comes into use later in the year. Interested editors can sign up for the here. (See the proposed AFT-v5 at Article Feedback Version 5 @ Mediawiki)
• HighBeam 2.0: The first round of handing out free HighBeam accounts to the community for one year (Signpost coverage) ended on April 9. The partnership-project handed out several hundred of the originally agreed 1000 accounts so far. Accordingly, a second round of applications will open on Monday, April 16, with the same requirements – a one-year-old account with 1000 edits – as the first round. Editors interested in scientific sources may also be interested in a project hoping to facilitate access to JSTOR, which the Foundation is working on together with Raul654.
• Terms of Use update: The efforts to update Wikimedia's Terms of Use (Signpost coverage) will reach a new phase on April 20 as the newly updated version will be legally announced. The new terms will not come into effect until the notice period has finished. The accompanying statement can be read on the Foundation wiki.
• Sister Projects Committee: The creation of a new Sister Projects Committee, aimed at improving the regulation of the new project process and located on Meta, was announced on April 10.
• WMF March report: The Wikimedia Foundation's activity report for March 2012, highlighting Mobile, Arabic outreach and MediaWiki development, has been published on Meta.
• IRC office hour: The log of the first IRC office hour held by the WMF's chief of finance and administration, Garfield Byrd (on April 12), which tackled issues such as donations in different currencies and the preparations for the new Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), has been published on Meta.
  

  

• New Page Triage update: New Page Triage (NPT) is working on NPT list view which they hope to deploy in the next couple of weeks. This deployment will be of a prototypical nature only, and will occur on the English-language Wikipedia, as promised by the Community Liaison, Product Development in his engagement strategy. It will run in parallel to the existing Special:NewPages so people can improve and get used to the system, but will not yet replace the current system. Currently, 96 editors have signed up to receive the NPT newsletter. Users with any other ideas for engagement are still able to suggest them on Wikipedia talk:New Page Triage. (See the project proposal at New Page Triage @ Mediawiki). The log for the latest office hour on 2012-03-22 for NPT is posted on meta here.
• New administrators: The Signpost welcomes our newest administrator, ItsZippy (an editor who focuses on philosophy- and theology-related articles) at the second attempt. According to one co-nominator, Steven Zhang, "the key skill he brings to the table is experience in dispute resolution". Although the successful result means that two admins have been promoted within a fortnight – only the second time that has occurred this year – ItsZippy's promotion does little to stop the continuing drought engulfing RfA, which could see as few as fifty editors promoted in this calendar year.
• Milestones: The following Wikipedia projects reached milestones this week:
  • The Lithuanian Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles.
  • The Cheyenne Wikipedia has reached 200 articles.
  • The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 400,000 articles.
• New England Wikimedia General Meeting: On April 22, Wikimedians in New England will be holding a meetup at the Boston Public Library which will be an opportunity to plan for the future of the local community, raise awareness about real-world outreach and discuss the possibility of forming a new Wikimedia chapter in the area. All are encouraged to come.

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For the record, the comment about the Terms of Use jumped the gun a little bit. The actual announcement will be on or about 4/20, with the implementation one month after that. You won't miss the announcement - we'll be using site banners to do it. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 22:01, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

thanks for the update Philippe, i fixed the note accordingly, regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 23:11, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Language has never been the subject of public policy in Anglophone countries" -- what about Wales in the 20th and 21st centuries... come to think of it, and particularly appropriate given the focus of the section, what about modern Canada? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:04, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Many, if not most, US states have policies on language. e.g. In California, elementary and high schools must offer courses taught in the language of the students - even if that means teaching courses in many, many languages. In Florida, government information must be offered in Spanish and English. Mathew Townsend (talk) 01:18, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What was meant, I think, was content of a language, rather than choice among languages. For example, the French and Quebec governments have separately fought against the introduction of English words into the French language (Franglais), while the United States government could not care less should a previously non-English word become au courant in the English language. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:43, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

John, you hit the nail on the head. If there's a better way I could have expressed it, please let me know. Tony (talk) 06:05, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I read the updated Terms of use (wow, rather scary) which include provisions against "Harassing and Abusing Others". How will they determine what is "Engaging in harassment" if they don't consider content? Mathew Townsend (talk) 03:22, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please repeat that question at meta:Talk:Terms_of_use. You won't receive a proper response by asking it over here. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 11:53, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have the impression that a lot of Web/tech/new media terminology catches on first in Quebec and then is eventually recognized by the French government. I could very well be wrong on that. This looks like an interesting collaboration, anyway, I'll be interested in seeing if the various regional language and editing perspectives can cooperate. OttawaAC (talk) 04:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• Re New Page Triage; no, users should suggest them on the WP:NPT talkpage. Suggestions being emailed to me completely undermines the point of holding this process in the open :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 17 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• For example, the French and Quebec governments have separately fought against the introduction of English words into the French language (Franglais), while the United States government could not care less should a previously non-English word become au courant in the English language. — Such as the word CHAUVINISM, for example. Carrite (talk) 15:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC) nerk! nerk![reply]

Hello. Is there any chance that this news column could cover significant changes to the Manual of Style? This document impacts many editors, so a summary of revisions would be helpful. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 01:22, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible, I suppose, but first, are there many significant changes nowadays? Second, it's probably not regarded by many readers as newsworthy. What kind of changes did you have in mind (say, over the past six months)? Tony (talk) 03:06, 22 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• A regular update of major MOS changes would be useful. quarterly? I have no idea what changes would be included because .. I have no idea what changes have happened. Signpost, please educate me. ;-) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:47, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm slightly surprised to read that "Language has never been the subject of public policy in Anglophone countries". There are plenty of interesting counterexamples; such as the current controversies over Spanish language use in the USA [1], some interesting quirks of Britain's colonial policies in the past, a can of worms in Canada, the Welsh Not, and even the origin of the King James Version of the bible, or the Book of Common Prayer... bobrayner (talk) 09:55, 23 April 2012 (UTC) (Disclaimer: Both my inlaws are anglophone teachers in a country where the language of instruction has been surrounded by controversy, up to and including riots).[reply]