Africa | Catbusters | Translating Dashboard Notes | Mozzies Mentors 2005 | Welcome Wagon à la World/Italiano

Africa - Adopt-a-Category

Project Africa? The first words that come to mind: Fun! Everyone! Everywhere! Good cause! We're all connected!

The project was unique in some ways, especially as it emphasized the ongoing globalization of ODP. I doubt anything we did was unique in itself, but the combination of doing them all in one project was unusual. It was very much a grassroots project, with anyone interested welcome to contribute in whatever way they felt appropriate. The forum thread was used to share ideas, but there weren't any specific jobs or goals assigned. If 90% of life is just showing up, then perhaps the remaining 10% is "and don't worry about what you'll do when you get there - there'll be enough people there to help you figure it out for yourself." One terrific result of the project was that we all had the opportunity (and fun!) of working with editors we didn't know before.

Not only did Project Africa include an entire physical continent with its varied cultures and history, but all its languages as well. Many African countries have more sites in non-English languages than in English, and many sites are multilingual - we want and need to include them all. Fortunately many enthusiastic and hard-working World editors joined the project and made it a success in that dimension. Google's translate function made communication possible (if sometimes inadvertently hilarious!) even for those not fluent in particular languages. Sometimes we split up the jobs of finding sites and describing sites so we could leverage more editor talents. Local editors know which sites are "for real", and English-as-first-language editors know how to fix the small grammar and spelling errors that can pop up - team editing makes for a productive, efficient combination. I think we all became more aware of how helpful it can be to send copies of multilingual sites to the appropriate World categories. It's like shaking hands with your friends in cyberspace - not a requirement, but it's a nice thing to do and it makes life more enjoyable for everyone.

In another dimension, the relationship between Topical and Regional, the project attracted editors of Topical categories such as Colleges and Universities, Ethnicity, international sports such as Soccer/Football, and various Issue categories - found in Regional as @links and rellinks. Everything's connected, even if indirectly, just as in Real Life. Team ODP may be a loose collection of individuals, each concentrating on their own interests and talents, but we're still a team. We can't say "not my job" and pretend our favorite cats exist in isolation from the rest of the Directory. And why would we want to, when other editors are working in areas that complement what we're doing? Sharing is good.

The project wasn't just about running through greens trying to get the counts down, although that was certainly part of it. It was about making ODP Africa a truly excellent and comprehensive resource for anyone interested in finding "good stuff" on the web about the continent - and everything related to it. That's a pretty big project, but fortunately improvement can be an iterative process. There´s no requirement that each editor has to do everything for each site, or even each subcat, at once. Some editors helped out by going in first and deleting duplicates, fixing redirecting urls and host changes, and sorting through unrevieweds to make sure they were in an appropriate category. These "first pass" efforts made life a lot easier for later editors trying to focus on a particular subcat, and were much appreciated. Other editors looked for good sites to add which no one had ever thought to submit, some improved descriptions to help users save clicks, others normalized structures among countries so a user moving from one to another wouldn't be confused. Altogether these separate efforts added up to a sum much bigger than its individual parts. That's a pretty good definition of success, even for an ongoing project.

I would suggest a proverb for cyberspace, as inspired by this project:

You don't have to think outside the box if you don't draw the box in the first place

- glippitt

Catbusters

The catbust in Business/Consumer_Goods_and_Services/Sporting Goods was successfully terminated in March. In May the catbusters spontaneously joined the Africa - Adopt-a-Category initiative and turned it into a large-scale multilingual catbust. Next in line is Business/Consumer_Goods_and_Services/Toys and Games, sunkist is already busy preparing the surroundings. A second future candidate is Science/Technology/Manufacturing/ - the preparation discussion can be found here. Time to get to your starting positions, everybody!

Mozzies Mentors

Mozzies Mentors was relaunched in April, with a new set of rules for signing up:

A dedicated tool, programmed by jtaylorj, helps students and mentors to find each other. A big advantage of this matching tool is its adaptability for a variety of mentoring systems: several World teams with own specific mentoring programs use it to keep track of mentor-student matches.

The next steps on the to do list for Mozzies Mentors:

• further improvements of usability of the matching tool
• active matching of current students and mentors

Translating Dashboard Notes

Did you notice the new standard text at the bottom of the dashboard note?

An international editor team led by tuisp developed a workaround to provide translations of the presently english-only dashboard note: Each language has a dedicated Test category, in which all new notes are listed and translated. So far, 21 languages have joined up. A big bunch of flowers for all translators who help to keep the translations up to date!

- chris2001

Welcome Wagon à la World/Italiano

The World/Italiano team has developed a new form of welcome wagon: each time a newbie is approved, the approving meta starts a name thread with a welcome. A experienced editor posts a standard intro into ODP which includes info, good reads and a link to the Mozzies Mentors tool. Any passing editor may add a welcome. When the newbie logs into the forum the first time, he finds his personal welcome thread, he can ask his first questions in homely surroundings and if he likes he can hop over to Mozzies Mentors and request mentoring. A common thread is reserved to reinstated editors. Each time an editor is reinstated this thread can be used to welcome him again if no dedicated thread is found.

World/Espanol has in the meantime adopted the World/Italiano system. This welcoming system seems to be especially suitable for branches and World teams with a high percentage of active, experienced mentors.

Find more info in Italian language:

• World/Italiano New Editor Forum
• The Planning Thread
  

- weppos & chris2001