Monday, July 14, 2008

The srn.wikipedia

The Wikipedia in the Sranang language was created in the last batch of new projects. It does feature more then the minimum localisation, it does have a sufficiently large number of articles and people who know the language attested that the language is indeed Sranang.

To my amazement I received the request to close the srn.wikipedia down. The language is not according to how Sranang should be written, it is called insulting to the people of Suriname. A good reason to close the Wiki ? Maybe a website but a wiki can only be improved when it is online. I have asked the gentleman who complained, to fix the localisation at Betawiki and collaborate on the srn.wikipedia.org

When I looked a bit further I found to my amazement on the Wikipedia in the Dutch language problematic Babel templates for the Sranang language.. They are all wrong as they used the wrong code. The person who decided that a template was in order used the wrong codes, used text in the Dutch language and was not willing to fix it.. so I did fix the codes I do not know the language ...

In a way, I am pleased that there are people who take offence when their language is not well presented. When they take the consequence and fix things, when they lead by example it means that a project gets a life. Wikipedia is not only a place where you can express your language it is also the place where you have to express your language well. When I look at it from another perspective, with more people involved in a Wikipedia there will be more content. It will make the language more visible and in the end this is exactly what the Sranang Wikipedia needs.. I think that this is a positive development..
Thanks,
GerardM

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