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X-Posted from H-NET List for African History and Culture <H-AFRICA@H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: Patrick Wurster <wurster@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> --------- Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 From: Don Osborn dzo@bisharat.net The "Wikimania 2006" conference in Cambridge, Mass. this past weekend facilitated some discussions among various people generally on the more positive side of debates over Wikipedia's utility for various purposes, such as classes and scholarship. One proposal that got some play in the press and may be of interest is actually for a "Wikiversity," a "project to create free online course material for all ages and languages" (see http://cnet.com.au/software/internet/0,39029524,40091580,00.htm), which also has broader long-term pretensions (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity ). Because I was not there I won't attempt to summarize the overall event or the relevance of its component parts to issues discussed on H-Africa, but will note that there were two scheduled presentations on African languages and Wikipedia, and some discussion (I followed some of these online): One by Martin Benjamin: "Huru na Bure: Swahili Collaboration and the Future of African Languages on the Web" http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:MB1 ... and another by Kasper Souren: "The Bambara Wikipedia, One Year Later" http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:KS2 Discussion concerned ways to encourage and support the development of Wikipedias in African languages and one outcome of that was formation of a new list on that subject, dubbed "AfrophoneWikis" at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/ . Naturally, anyone who is interested in this, either from the point of view of a particular language or that of larger issues of approach and impact, is invited to join.
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