Wikipedia founder in SA

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 14 Nov 2007

The Wikipedia has branched out into Sesotho, Setswana, Zulu, Xhosa and Venda, in addition to Afrikaans. The free online encyclopaedia`s founder says they need to be nurtured and grown.

Speaking at an ITWeb and iCommons-arranged Innovation Series meeting, in Johannesburg last night, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales also lauded the Swahili Wikipedia, now 6 000 articles-strong, and Afrikaans Wikipedia, about 8 700 entries strong.

Wales said the idea driving the Wikipedia is that it should be a repository of all human knowledge and that it should be freely available to everyone, anywhere, in their own language.

"The Wikipedia has been written by thousands of volunteers in many languages. When people contribute to the Wikipedia, they contribute to the common pool of knowledge."

He added that although the English Wikipedia - at two million entries - is the largest in single-language terms, "lots of people don`t realise that`s less than a third of the work" in the ongoing online work.

Commenting on the Afrikaans Wikipedia, he said: "You might think 8 700 is not much, it is small, but it is a really healthy community." He noted that it compares well with the Hindi Wikipedia, with just 14 000 entries. Hindi is spoken by 487 million people and Afrikaans by 12 million.

Wales added that Swahili is rapidly catching up with Afrikaans and may overtake it as the leading African Wikipedia. As for the new Wikipedias, "those communities are going to need ongoing support. The idea is to get 'critical mass`."

The development of the Wikipedia in a new language is often stunted by contributors getting lonely. "That`s why it is important to build local language Wikipedia communities so that more people are encouraged to join the group and contribute together."

Wales noted that having an enemy in such a community is almost as good as having a friend, as it contributes to rivalry and intellectual rigour.

Ndesanjo Macha, considered by many the father of the Swahili Wikipedia, says he used to go to his village in Tanzania and ask the elders to tell him stories of African spirituality. But when he retold these stories to townsfolk, they would retort: "Where is it written?"

"Now I tell people to go to the Swahili Wikipedia 'where it is written`."