Objective: Catalan culture in all editions of Wikipedia

  • New contest hopes to encourage new editors to participate from all over the world

VilaWeb
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16.03.2014 - 11:59

La premsa lliure no la paga el govern, la paguen els lectors


Fes-te de VilaWeb, fem-nos lliures

Today is the 13th birthday of the Catalan edition of Wikipedia, whose inaugural entry was the first ever in any language other than English. Today, there are 423,844 articles in the Viquipèdia, or Catalan edition of Wikipedia, a remarkable 17th highest in the world, despite the fact that Catalan is the 79th most spoken language, with about 11.5 million native speakers. Viquipèdia gets around 34 million visits a month.

In honor of Viqipèdia’s birthday, Amical Wikimedia, the Catalan Wikipedia club, is holding a contest in order to translate 50 biographies of important Catalans into as many languages as possible. Included in the list of noted Catalans are world-renowned architect Antoni Gaudí and painter Joan Miró, as well as Catalans who may be new to the world, like Ildefons Cerdà, the urban planner responsible for the central layout of Barcelona and its characteristic chamfered corners, Antoni Ramallets, FC Barcelona footballer in the 50’s and 60’s, Francesc Ferrer, an education activist (executed after having been found responsible for instigating Barcelona’s Tragic Week in 1906), Lola Anglada, a writer and illustrator, and Federica Montseny, the first woman Minister in the Spanish government.

With this new project, Amical Wikimedia explains that “Our primary mission and goal is for the sum of all human knowledge to be available in Catalan and for all knowledge about Catalan culture to also be available in every language. This project is just one of our first international steps.”

The project, which begins today and runs through April 16, is open to whomever wishes to participate—in any language—as long as they have a named account on Wikipedia, and have signed up in the Participants section. You don’t have to know how to edit Wikipedia to join in: Amical says even Word files and emails are welcome. ‘We are hoping to get as wide a response as possible,’ said Amical’s Àlex Hinojo. ‘Nobody should feel like they have to edit or translate an entire article. If someone wants to write just two lines, that’s a great start.’

Amical is offering prizes to the ten editors with the most points, including subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, collections of books, movies, and t-shirts.

This is not Amical’s first contest. It also ran Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 which resulted in the uploading of more than 12,000 photos of important Catalan monuments by 120 different participants. Wiki Loves Public Art in 2013 saw 225 participants upload more than 9,250 images of public artwork. 57% of these were first time editors.

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