View source for Activities/Proposals/Support UK indigenous minority languages

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Support the devlopment Wikimedia projects in UK-indigenous minority languages

== Outline ==
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Wikimedia UK could provide prizes to people who create "Good Articles" in the following projects:

{|class=wikitable
! Language !! Project !! Current articles
|-
| Welsh || WP || 23,000
|-
| || Books || 21
|-
| || Source || 250
|-
| (Irish) Gaelic || WP || 8,000
|-
| || Quote || 0 (locked)
|-
| || Wiktionary || 1,600
|-
| || Books || 0 (locked)
|-
| Scottish Gaelic || WP || 7,000
|-
| || Wiktionary || 140
|-
| Scots || WP || 2,600
|-
| Cornish || WP || 1,700
|-
| || Wiktionary || 46
|-
| || Quote || 0 (locked)
|}

We could also support future projects in [[wikipedia:Ullans|Ullans]].

Funding may be available from:
* The [[wikipedia:National Assembly for Wales|National Assembly for Wales]]
* The [[wikipedia:Northern Ireland Assembly|Northern Ireland Assembly]] - see [http://www.u.tv/News/%C2%A320m-deal-to-protect-Irish-language/b771a609-f7b4-462a-b642-318b63cae967 £20m deal to protect Irish language]
* The [[wikipedia:Scottish Parliament|Scottish Parliament]]

See [http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfx97r9v_86d6scftjx] for how Wikimedia Norway helped the Sami Wikipedia, which has 3,000 articles, using a £33,000 grant from the Sami Parliament.

Another approach is to encourage the translation of the Mediawiki software messages via [http://translatewiki.net translatewiki.net] - see [http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Group_statistics this page] for the current status of translations.

== Benefits ==
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== Requirements ==
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== Volunteering ==
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== Discussion ==
It's definitely worth supporting those projects, but is giving prizes for getting an article to "Good Article" status the best approach? Bear in mind that a "Good Article" can vary in quality between different projects. I'd have thought the main thing would be to raise the profile of the projects, so some sort of limited competition might be a good approach; possibly in the case of Wikisource it might be more useful to source and digitize works (possibly provide finances for the digitization step) such that they can be proofread on wiki.

BTW, what's the story behind the "locked" projects? [[User:Mike Peel|Mike Peel]] 22:19, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

:To some degree, such prizes may be useful, but only if done as a PR stunt. There is no point just giving prizes to people that are already contributing to the project. Another thing we could try is partnerships with publications in those languages. I imagine there are some weekly or monthly magazines/newsletters in them, it would be great if we could get a Wikipedia article (on a local topic, most likely) published in each edition. It would directly further our goal of getting information out there but would, more importantly, be excellent publicity. --[[User:Tango|Tango]] 03:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

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[[Category:Initiatives]]