The Armenian Association for Academic Partnership and Support (ARMACAD) has announced a discussion session on Wikipedia in Armenian language. The meeting will take place on 8 June 2010. The Association has invited all interested parties to participate.
During the meeting, questions concerning the content of Wikipedia in Armenian as well as the materials about Armenia and Armenians in foreign languages will be discussed. The administrators and the authors of Armeniapedia will also participate and present their insights.
For further information and participation, please click here.
Challenges Ahead
The issue of the Armenian presence on Wikipedia was recently raised by the members of a civil campaign against the government’s decision to reopen foreign language schools in Armenia.
In its statement, via ArmeniaNow online magazine, the group emphasized the need to implement a large-scale national program to “raise the competitiveness of the Armenian language”. Such a program would include massive translation of world literature into Armenian, creation of computer-based and online translator programs, and development of Armenian online resources on Wikipedia and similar platforms.
For a country that has announced ICT as one of its strategic development paths towards a ‘knowledge-driven economy’, the current generalized lack of interest in knowledge, the poor state of online resources in Armenian as well as the limited scope of computer and internet use in the country are surely anomalous.
The prices of computers and the Internet connection are surely part of the problem but they will be solved sooner or later. The government can surely play a major role in promoting better education and research systems, and is rightly being criticized for its ignorance and inaction.
However, the lack of public interest is a fundamental cultural problem that will be difficult to tackle. It is not hard to notice that the Armenian public, including the youth, in contrast to its obsession with cars and mobile phones, seems rather uninterested in computers and the Internet.
One of the manifestations of this apathy is the poor state of Armenian presence in cyberspace, including in leading online platforms such as Wikipedia.
Not Exactly a Eurovision-type Performance
On 29 May 2010, with 3,306,572 articles, English ranked first in the global ranking of 272 languages that are present in Wikipedia. With 9,045 articles, Armenian ranked 96th; after Tajik and before Yoruba.
The low ranking of Armenian became more apparent and troublesome when I considered other main languages spoken in the region:
Rank / Language / No of Articles
During the meeting, questions concerning the content of Wikipedia in Armenian as well as the materials about Armenia and Armenians in foreign languages will be discussed. The administrators and the authors of Armeniapedia will also participate and present their insights.
For further information and participation, please click here.
Challenges Ahead
The issue of the Armenian presence on Wikipedia was recently raised by the members of a civil campaign against the government’s decision to reopen foreign language schools in Armenia.
In its statement, via ArmeniaNow online magazine, the group emphasized the need to implement a large-scale national program to “raise the competitiveness of the Armenian language”. Such a program would include massive translation of world literature into Armenian, creation of computer-based and online translator programs, and development of Armenian online resources on Wikipedia and similar platforms.
For a country that has announced ICT as one of its strategic development paths towards a ‘knowledge-driven economy’, the current generalized lack of interest in knowledge, the poor state of online resources in Armenian as well as the limited scope of computer and internet use in the country are surely anomalous.
The prices of computers and the Internet connection are surely part of the problem but they will be solved sooner or later. The government can surely play a major role in promoting better education and research systems, and is rightly being criticized for its ignorance and inaction.
However, the lack of public interest is a fundamental cultural problem that will be difficult to tackle. It is not hard to notice that the Armenian public, including the youth, in contrast to its obsession with cars and mobile phones, seems rather uninterested in computers and the Internet.
One of the manifestations of this apathy is the poor state of Armenian presence in cyberspace, including in leading online platforms such as Wikipedia.
Not Exactly a Eurovision-type Performance
On 29 May 2010, with 3,306,572 articles, English ranked first in the global ranking of 272 languages that are present in Wikipedia. With 9,045 articles, Armenian ranked 96th; after Tajik and before Yoruba.
The low ranking of Armenian became more apparent and troublesome when I considered other main languages spoken in the region:
Rank / Language / No of Articles
10 / Russian / 541,434
19 / Turkish / 144,922
33 / Persian / 93,921
50 / Georgian / 40,797
53 / Azeri / 34,634
88 / Kurdish / 12,910
It was interesting for me to note that Armenian, despite being a state language, ranked even lower than Kurdish which has official status only in Kurdistan province of Iraq and remains banned in other countries with Kurdish population.
Armenian ranked even lower than languages spoken by many ‘small nations’ such as Icelandic that is spoken by approximately 320,000 people (ranked 60 with 28,495 entries) and Chuvash, the official provincial language of Chuvashia (Russian Federation), spoken by 1,640,000 people (ranked 92 with 11,286 entries).
Again, remaining in our region, Armenian ranked slightly higher than Ossetian (ranked 105 with 6,937 articles) and Abkhazian (ranked 211with 430 articles).
Articles Concerning Armenia
As for articles written in English on Armenia, the Armenian inertia is, once again, striking. I did not search articles written in Russian or other languages.
Following some random search for Armenian higher education related topics, I realized that there were no entries for ‘higher education in Armenia’ (there is only an article on ‘education in Armenia’) or ‘the Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia.’ As for the Armenian universities, there were articles on the following 11 HEIs only:
American University of Armenia
Armenian State Institute of Physical Culture
Eurasia International University
Russian-Armenian State University
State Engineering University of Armenia
Yerevan State Linguistic University
Yerevan State Medical University
Yerevan State Musical Conservatory
Yerevan State Pedagogical University
Yerevan State University
Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction
Most of these articles were very brief, poorly edited and documented. Under ‘Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction,’ for instance, this is what was written:
“YSUAC is a university, located in Yerevan, Armenia.
History
A technical school opened within the newly-established Yerevan State University in 1921, graduating its first students in 1928. In July 1930, the Armenian Construction Institute, which by this stage had departments of Architecture and Construction, Hydrology and Chemical Engineering, was established with prominent architect Mikayel Mazmanyan as its first director.
It grew and developed until on 11 January 1989, the Institute was renamed the Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction by the Armenian SSR Council of Ministers. Its first rector (1989-2005) was Arest Baglaryan, since which time Professor Hovhannes Tokmajyan has been the rector.
Its 7 faculties contain 23 departments”.
The entry for the ‘Armenian Academy of Sciences’ was equally weak, inaccurate and incomplete.
Armeniapedia: Even Worse
The purpose of creating Armeniapedia, ‘the online Armenia Encyclopedia’ – a totally separate initiative from Wikipedia - is unclear to me. Probably, yet another manifestation of Armenian reclusiveness. As for its impact, I think it would be safe to say the project has clearly failed.
On 29 May 2010, it contained 5,670 articles only. Quality-wise, entries in Armeniapedia were even weaker than Wikipedia articles concerning Armenia.
I searched for the same entries on Armeniapedia. Here again, there was nothing on ‘higher education in Armenia’ or ‘the Ministry of Education and Science,’ and even ‘the National Academy of Sciences’ had no entry. Moreover, most Armenian HEIs were absent.
Instead, it was interesting to see entries for foreign HEIs such as Arizona State University and University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. I thought there had surely been good reasons to include such institutions on Armeniapedia; for instance, having departments of Armenian Studies or partnerships with Armenian HEIs.
Under ‘University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee,’ however, I discovered the following short and strange text:
“Dr. Christina Maranci, Professor of Art History
Dr. Bert Vaux, Professor of Linguistics”
19 / Turkish / 144,922
33 / Persian / 93,921
50 / Georgian / 40,797
53 / Azeri / 34,634
88 / Kurdish / 12,910
It was interesting for me to note that Armenian, despite being a state language, ranked even lower than Kurdish which has official status only in Kurdistan province of Iraq and remains banned in other countries with Kurdish population.
Armenian ranked even lower than languages spoken by many ‘small nations’ such as Icelandic that is spoken by approximately 320,000 people (ranked 60 with 28,495 entries) and Chuvash, the official provincial language of Chuvashia (Russian Federation), spoken by 1,640,000 people (ranked 92 with 11,286 entries).
Again, remaining in our region, Armenian ranked slightly higher than Ossetian (ranked 105 with 6,937 articles) and Abkhazian (ranked 211with 430 articles).
Articles Concerning Armenia
As for articles written in English on Armenia, the Armenian inertia is, once again, striking. I did not search articles written in Russian or other languages.
Following some random search for Armenian higher education related topics, I realized that there were no entries for ‘higher education in Armenia’ (there is only an article on ‘education in Armenia’) or ‘the Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia.’ As for the Armenian universities, there were articles on the following 11 HEIs only:
American University of Armenia
Armenian State Institute of Physical Culture
Eurasia International University
Russian-Armenian State University
State Engineering University of Armenia
Yerevan State Linguistic University
Yerevan State Medical University
Yerevan State Musical Conservatory
Yerevan State Pedagogical University
Yerevan State University
Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction
Most of these articles were very brief, poorly edited and documented. Under ‘Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction,’ for instance, this is what was written:
“YSUAC is a university, located in Yerevan, Armenia.
History
A technical school opened within the newly-established Yerevan State University in 1921, graduating its first students in 1928. In July 1930, the Armenian Construction Institute, which by this stage had departments of Architecture and Construction, Hydrology and Chemical Engineering, was established with prominent architect Mikayel Mazmanyan as its first director.
It grew and developed until on 11 January 1989, the Institute was renamed the Yerevan State University of Architecture and Construction by the Armenian SSR Council of Ministers. Its first rector (1989-2005) was Arest Baglaryan, since which time Professor Hovhannes Tokmajyan has been the rector.
Its 7 faculties contain 23 departments”.
The entry for the ‘Armenian Academy of Sciences’ was equally weak, inaccurate and incomplete.
Armeniapedia: Even Worse
The purpose of creating Armeniapedia, ‘the online Armenia Encyclopedia’ – a totally separate initiative from Wikipedia - is unclear to me. Probably, yet another manifestation of Armenian reclusiveness. As for its impact, I think it would be safe to say the project has clearly failed.
On 29 May 2010, it contained 5,670 articles only. Quality-wise, entries in Armeniapedia were even weaker than Wikipedia articles concerning Armenia.
I searched for the same entries on Armeniapedia. Here again, there was nothing on ‘higher education in Armenia’ or ‘the Ministry of Education and Science,’ and even ‘the National Academy of Sciences’ had no entry. Moreover, most Armenian HEIs were absent.
Instead, it was interesting to see entries for foreign HEIs such as Arizona State University and University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. I thought there had surely been good reasons to include such institutions on Armeniapedia; for instance, having departments of Armenian Studies or partnerships with Armenian HEIs.
Under ‘University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee,’ however, I discovered the following short and strange text:
“Dr. Christina Maranci, Professor of Art History
Dr. Bert Vaux, Professor of Linguistics”
3 comments:
You 're being unfair to the creator of Armeniapedia - Raffi Kojian, a diasporan from California who developed this site (and its sister site www.cilicia.com ) largely on his own at a time when there literally was no interest in the web by Armenians.
Thank you for your comment. I am sure Raffi Kojian, the founder, and his friends Richard Sevadjian, Vicken Khachadourian and Hagop Bedrossian, their financial supporters, and most of the contributors of Armeniapedia have had good intensions, and they have put a lot of hard work and dedication in building and maintaining the site. I didn’t question these, and didn’t want to personalize the issue.
However, considering our scarce resources, I questioned the purpose of replicating Wikipedia, in a smaller scale, four years after its launch. True, at the beginning, Wiki was not multilingual but it became one later. At that point, I think, Armeniapedia should have revised its strategy by focusing on a narrower and more specific body of information such as Armenian Studies, Armenian art, etc.
I also discussed the outcome – the quantity of articles and the quality of most articles. Here again, based on the nature of such sites, their success or failure depends on the quality and quantity of participants and their contributions. I have explained in the article what and who I blame for the lack of all these.
But I would like to know your analysis of the Armenian presence on Wikipedia and your assessment of Armeniapedia (not the founders’ intensions but the outcome).
Thanks for the analysis. I'm glad you also touched on the Armenian reclusiveness, which is a danger lurking to take us even more down the list if we don't watch out.
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