Submissions/What is the smallest community that can support a Wikipedia?

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2017.

Submission no. 7025 Subject - C8

Title of the submission: What is the smallest community that can support a Wikipedia?

Type of submission (lecture, panel, tutorial/workshop, roundtable discussion, lightning talk, poster, birds of a feather discussion): roundtable discussion

Author of the submission: Vogone, Ijon, and MF-Warburg

Language of presentation: English

E-mail address: mfwarburggooglemail.com

Username: see above

Country of origin: Germany and Israel

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): Language Committee

Personal homepage or blog

Abstract (up to 300 words to describe your proposal): The question from the title came up in recent Language Committee discussions. What is the smallest community that can support a Wikipedia? - The background behind this is that there are many languages today with a small number of speakers and/or other difficulties (e.g. low percentage of internet access among the speakers) where some volunteers might want to start a new Wikipedia but the creation of an own Wikipedia eventually is delayed by a lack of other users or the Wikipedia is created but then the initial contributors leave and it becomes inactive and slowly outdated. Do the Language Committee's language proposal policy criteria work to prevent such situations? Or are they maybe too strict? We want to look at some examples from Wikipedias that were created in the last years. What can be done to help such projects? Can we identify criteria that show Wikipedia in a certain language is viable in the sense of having a community that can sustain activity to keep Wikipedia up-to-date and also attract a community that actually uses this Wikipedia to access the world's knowledge? Is there a useful conclusion/advice we can give to interested users, drawing from experiences of previous volunteers?

What will attendees take away from this session?: Attendees will learn about some problems that users who want to start a new language version of Wikipedia will face; about different language communities' challenges; gain insight into some small(er) Wikipedia communities and ideally take away some useful conclusion/advice as outlined above.

Theme of presentation: WikiCulture & Community

For workshops and discussions, what level is the intended audience?: Flexible, everybody is welcome.

Length of session (if other than 25 minutes, specify how long): 55 minutes, but we'd be happy with a shorter length if it fits better into the conference program

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes.

Special requests: none

Is this Submission a Draft or Final?

This is a Completed submission for Wikimania 2017 ready to be reviewed by a member of the Programme Committee.

Interested attendees

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Benoit Rochon (talk) 15:10, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Ziko (talk) 13:48, 18 March 2017 (UTC) - creation of new wikis, my topic :-)[reply]
Frhdkazan (talk) 14:05, 22 March 2017 (UTC) - active around m:Wikipedias in the languages of Russia[reply]
Filipinayzd (talk) 20:53, 23 March 2017 (UTC) - has a submission entitled Bikol Wikipedia: its Impact as a Local Resource[reply]
Amir É. Aharoni (talk) 18:39, 8 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
--Gereon K. (talk) 21:26, 10 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
GastelEtzwane (talk) 18:20, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
DerHexer (talk) 10:50, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Psubhashish (talk) 10:58, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Jorid Martinsen (WMNO) (talk) 09:30, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
--Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE) (talk) 08:07, 17 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
--Vsuarezp (talk) 13:39, 12 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]