Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

WikipediA:

Empowering individuals and communities

Digital World Africa 2006 ConferenceICTs for Education and Development

12 - 13 september 2006

Florence Nibart Devouardanthere@wikimedia.org

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

Empowerment

Collaboration, sharing, mutuality

Strengthening the power of others rather than decreasing it

Being able to act on issues we define as important

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

Wikipedia’s radical idea

Imagine a world in which every singleperson is given free access to thesum of all human knowledge.

www.wikipedia.org

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

Imagine a bookshelf…

Wikipedia,The encyclopedia

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

1st lever: learning from others

+ Free as in free beer (“gratis”)

- Requires internet access

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

Few hits from Africa, Eastern Europe…

From Wikimedia projects access hits stats (summer 2005)

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

2nd lever: nurturing a critical mind

Neutrality of Point of View

• Readers are from diverse political, religious,cultural backgrounds

• Content represent all significant views fairlyand without bias.

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

3rd lever: reduce, re-use and recycle

Rights• Use the information without limitation• Distribute it in as many copies as desired• Modify it, reduce or add to it

Duties• All derivative work is to be kept free• The source must be mentionned

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

4th lever: teaching others

MediaWiki: a plateform for collaborative editing

• Requires a computer and aninternet connection

• Allows users to add or editcontent

• Scalable and multilingual

Mediawiki logo

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

Countries editing the english Wikipedia

From Wikimedia projects access hits stats (summer 2006)

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

5th lever: preserving linguistic diversity

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

• English: 1 400 000 articles (http://en.wikipedia.org)

Some Nigeria languages Wikipedias

• Yoruba: 55 articles (http://yo.wikipedia.org)

• Hausa: 14 articles (http://ha.wikipedia.org)

• Igbo: 11 articles (http://ig.wikipedia.org)

Digital World Africa 2006 Conference - 12 sept 2006 - Florence Devouard

“Everyone loses if one language is lost

because then a nation and

culture lose their

memory, and so does

the complex tapestry

from which the world is

woven and which makes

the world an exciting place.”

Vigdis FinnbogadottirUNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Languages