Tell us about Ossetian Wikipedia

This page belongs to the project Tell us about your Wikipedia.

Name of the Wikipedia

Questionnaire

Contributors

Wikimedia Statistics can be difficult to interpret. What is your impression, how many steady contributors do you have?

3-4 editors do reappear, sometimes with larger contributions. There is also a couple of active technical helpers who do not know the language at all. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are your contributors mostly native speakers?

Those who write texts are mostly native speakers, except me (administrator, Amikeco) and some native Ossetes with Russian as their first language who use Ossetic Wikipedia to practice the language they learn. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where do your contributors live (regions/country)?

Large Russian cities (Moscow and Petersburg), North Ossetia and South Ossetia. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How common is it that your contributors meet in real life?

There was not a single real-life meeting dedicated to Ossetic Wikipedia until now. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Other Wikipedias

Do you have special contacts with another Wikipedias (maybe in related languages)?

Active contributors of the Russian wikipedia (and to an extent Esperanto wikipedia) help us much, mostly about routine work like categorizing, using bots, etc. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do you translate a lot from other Wikipedias? Which ones?

Mostly from the Russian (using others -- like en, eo, fr -- to find a good wording sometimes). Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Organization and support

Is there a Wikimedia chapter in your country? How does your language relate to it?

There was some work done to establish such chapter in Russia, but I do not know if it was successful. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are there work groups in other organizations about Wikipedia?

We hope to make Wikipedia be used in education for practicing written Ossetic. We are in touch with educational authorities in North Ossetia on this issue. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your Wikipedia and the linguistic community

Is there a language institution for your language, like an Academy, or a club of people interested in your language? Do you have contact with them?
Who (else) supports you?
What does the public outreach for your edition look like? Do you have flyers, give lectures, trainings etc.?
Do you get feedback from readers?

Yes, we often get comments that Wikipedia is a great idea and that... we probably should attract professional journalists and philologists, which is not the right way to write Wikipedia indeed. Those who right in Ossetic for their salary, have enough work without editing Wikipedia. We have to do much effort to tell people that every one of them may write in Ossetic too, not just speak it or use informally in chatrooms. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What other encyclopedias exist in your language?

No other, as far as I know. There appeared an Ossetic-Ossetic dictionary recently (only its first volume), which is not really an encyclopedia, but just a dictionary explaining meanings of Ossetic words in Ossetic (like PIV in Esperanto or Ozhegov in Russian). Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Content

Does your edition concentrates on certain topics, like your region and language, or Latin Wikipedia on Roman history and Christianity?

Not for purpose, but we take some texts from older books in Ossetic and from Ossetic press (the cited media permits such usage when the source is mentioned, we mark such articles with a template). Such "external" texts are often about Ossetia, Ossetian people, literature and culture. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did your edition enjoy text donations, for example from older encyclopedias?

Unfourtanately we don't have ready encyclopedic articles, but some articles from media and old textbooks may be reedited to make a good WP-article of them. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Language

Is there a generally accepted norm about your language (spelling, dictionary, pronounciation)?

Yes, but there is also a written tradition in Digor dialect. We mark Digor texts with a special category until we have a policy about Digor texts. The two forms are rather different to write an encyclopedia just mixing both. Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How do you deal with different spellings, dialects etc. (like B.E. lift and A.E. elevator)?

We mostly tend to use the language of modern Ossetic press. Different spellings of several words exist, but there is a firm norm and a spelling dictionary which help us much. There is no such a problem as lack of a standard language form in Ossetic, at least not in the written language (pronounciations vary from North to South). Amikeco 11:43, 29 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Links

Main/Front page of your Wikipedia: http://os.wikipedia.org