We are a two days late but January 15 was a key anniversary for Wikipedia- it is now 21 years old!
The first edits to the wiki were made around January 15, 2001… and as typical, the history and archives of the wiki itself provide a trove of details to pick through. Because the UseMod wiki software Jimmy Wales first deployed did not have full backups, there are questions about what that first edit actually was
though it seems to be, no surprise, “Hello World” edited in at January 15, 2001 at 6:29pm.
If educators here ever want to have a chat on using [editing] Wikipedia as part of their courses, because of those ever-so-sweet evergreen assignments, I’m happy to help in that conversation!
Hello Alan and @Vahidm. Oops. My reply to this thread is a little late.
I really like the notion of renewable assignment. Put together this idea last year (2024). I DIG this idea of renewable assignments in vernacular languages even more. Here’s my first attempt at onboarding in Afrikaans
Hey Derek, it’s never too late for a reply here, the doors are always _ _ _ _.
That’s a nifty idea, so you would ask participants to translate into an additional language? Ideally as translations done by humans who know both languages? I do rely on the “machine” to give me an at glance view but would think for a 'pedia use you want accuracy?
Hi Alan. The way I see it working is for me to come alongside a respected person (academic, teacher etc) who is within a language community. Both of us would work on a translation of this tool. The techie would assist with the layout and code. The language practitioner would help with the words. Once we were happy with the system (tech and instructions) we both would then run a workshop with other people from this language community. And workshop participants would work through the steps and create their own profile (on Wikipedia) and start working on a wikipedia page and then submit it. In their own vernacular language. Here in Africa, the participants would either know the dominant languages French and English. And then they would also be able to do a human translation into vernacular. Machine translations in vernacular are getting better down here. But they still have a long way to go.
