Diving into Wiki-Wonder-World

Today was the second day of this weekend’s unConference in Cape Town, and I must say that the numbers dwindled quite a bit compared to yesterday.

Ian Gilfillan was the first speaker at StarCamp today. Ian blogs at Greenman.co.za and is quite passionate (clearly!) about Wiki Media Projects. In his presentation he presented a few of the projects, some of which I never knew about before.

For those of you who don’t know, Wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian, and Wikis are fast becoming widely used as collaborative tools. Wikipedia is undoubtedly the most famous example to date. In my recent Web 2.0 training seminars I’ve been focussing quite a lot on Wiki implementation within companies and organisations. I’m currently reading Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams – an international bestseller transmitting the news about “how mass collaboration changes everything” – I highly recommend this book for anyone even remotely interested in the subject. Publishers Weekly reviews this must-have book:

“…here author and think tank CEO Tapscott (The Naked Corporation), along with research director Williams, paint in vibrant colors the quickly changing world of Internet togetherness, also known as mass or global collaboration, and what those changes mean for business and technology. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written, compiled, edited and re-edited by “ordinary people” is the most ubiquitous example, and its history makes remarkable reading.”

Wikipedia
Of course this is the most well known project, the online encyclopedia that is available in over 250 world languages. The English language currently boasts more than 2.1 million articles. Stats for other South African languages: Afrikaans at 8,731 – Ian said that he met some of the Afrikaans Wikipedia community at the Wikipedia Week in Jhb recently (Jimmy Wales was also in attendance), and he was quite impressed by them; Ian also met the “father of Swahili Wikipedia” – now at 6,387 articles (soon to surpass Afrikaans Ian thinks); Zulu trails at 121 articles; and Venda with 101.

Wikimedia Commons
There are over 2.2 million media files here. It’s the place to share photos, audio, and video. Ian recommends that if you have media files, post it here, not to Wikipedia articles.

Wikitionary
This is a “a collaborative project to produce a free, multilingual dictionary with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, sample quotations, synonyms, antonyms and translations.” There are currently 630,000 French articles, and 603,000 in English.

Wiki Books
The idea here is to have a free library of educational textbooks. The practical implementation of this is difficult though, because people are starting with certain books, but soon abandon the effort because the huge workload quickly becomes apparent. I think this is a good idea and will work well if there’s a strong and dedicated community.

Wikiversity
…was launched in August 2006. Going further than Wiki Books, it’s aim is collaborative learning materials, course outlines, etc. A big project and one which will only see fruits in the long term it seems.

Wiki Source
This is “an online library of free content publications collected and maintained by the community.”

Wiki Species
This is an attempt to catalogue every single species in the world. I think this one is amazing, especially for future generations. English currently stands at 114,000 articles – a good number for a growing work.

Wiki Quote
Daily quotes and wisdoms. I don’t think we can get away from wise words by wise men and women in our age and previous ages. Even when reading books, striking quotations often find a spot before each new chapter. Now the world can get together and compile a huge source of valuable quotations.

Wiki News
This is collaborative news writing at it’s best. Maybe it won’t work as well as Wikipedia’s encyclopedia because it requires timely updating. News is not news if it’s not fresh. Wikipedia articles can be created and then edited and expanded at any future date. English news articles currently stand at 10,800 in the news section.

Wiki Translate
A broad translation project, but a very tough one. Ian explained the difficulty in translating from language to language. This task is quite difficult for human beings, that’s particularly why computerised translating systems are not very effective.

That’s all for the projects. Well, for now at least…

Ian wants to create a local chapter of the Wiki Media Foundation in Cape Town. This will be quite interesting, and if it does kick off I’ll make it my duty to be one of the pioneers, because I truly believe that collaboration and participation can bring about huge differences in global learning.

Ian feels that Wikipedia is a “cultural snapshot of a particular community” – and these communities are roughly grouped by language, with location being basically irrelevant.