Cape Town has won the bid to host the Wikimania 2018 conference‚ a
gathering of volunteers from around the world who will discuss how to
improve the diversity of knowledge on Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites.
It will be the first-ever gathering in sub-Saharan Africa of the annual
event and will bring together more than 700 people.
ˇ§Wikimedia is ˇK looking to expand its non-Western topics‚ where there is
still not enough locally relevant content about Africa‚ particularly that
which is gathered from African perspectives or shared in African languages‚ˇ¨
the company said in a statement.
ˇ§The same could be said for indigenous knowledge and local knowledge from
many places outside the Global North‚ much of which is still missing. South
Africa has active Afrikaans and isiXhosa Wikipedia editions‚ but most of the
other indigenous languages from the continent are either missing or do not
have regular contributions on Wikipedia.ˇ¨
Wikipedia is a collaborative collection of knowledge‚ open for anyone to
edit. It is available in more than 45 million articles across nearly 300
languages and is read more than 15 billion times a month.
Volunteer editors from around the world‚ or Wikipedians‚ come together to
write and update Wikipedia articles in real time‚ aiming to ensure that the
information is based in reliable sources. Each month‚ more than 200 000
people edit Wikipedia.
The conference will be attended by open-knowledge advocates‚ academics‚
teachers‚ heritage specialists and members of the global Wikimedia movement‚
including volunteers who edit articles‚ create bots or organise events and
projects to draw more content onto Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects.
ˇV Source:
www.timeslive.co.za |