Submissions/Different countries, different languages, one history - The Imperial Council of Austria as chance for a widespread project

From Wikimania 2013 • Hong Kong

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2013.

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Submission no.
3053
Subject no.
W1
Title of the submission

Different countries, different languages, one history - The Imperial Council of Austria as chance for a widespread project

Type of submission

workshop

Author of the submission

Geiserich77

Country of origin

Austria

Affiliation

Wikimedia Austria

E-mail address

michael.kranewitter@wikimedia.at

Username

Geiserich77

Personal homepage or blog
Abstract

The Imperial Council was the parliament of the Cisleithanian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but at the moment only few of several thousand important politicians have an article in one of the affected Wikipedias. As there is no basic work which comprehensive describes all of these persons life but information is available at least in their mother tongue, a multilingual project with wikipedians from different Wikipedias may help to fill the biggest gaps. The workshop should now initiate a process, how such a project could be organized.

Detailed proposal

The Imperial Council was the parliament of the Cisleithanian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was a bicameral legislature and existed from 1867 to 1918. After the First World War Cisleithanian disintegrated, whereby Cisleithania is nowadays spread over the countries of Austria, , Croatia, Czech Republic, Italia, Slovenia, Polen, Romania and Ukraine. In addition to it the former Members of the Imperial Council were of many different mother tongues, especially Italian, Croatian, Czech, German, Serbian, Slovenian, Slovakian (?), Polish, Romanian, Ukrainian and Yiddish. The members of the Imperial Council played not only an important role in the political system of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they often played an also important role in the successor states.

From these several thousand important politicians only few have an article in one of the affected Wikipedias. As there is no basic work which comprehensive describes all of these persons, it would be nearly impossible to get these articles into Wikipedia. However, for most of the Members of the Imperial council information of their life is available at least in their mother tongue and so a multilingual project with wikipedians from different Wikipedias and different countries may help to fill the biggest gaps.

During the workshop I would like to discuss with previously addressed people (interested in politics or like to translate articles or literature into one of the mentioned languages) and other interested people the possibility of implementing such a project. The discussion should include the following questions:

  • What literature is available about these persons in the different languages and who has accesses to the most important books?
  • What would be the best way to coordinate the work? Do we need a certain platform?
  • Should biographical information be translated into English first or what would be the best way to offer information for the different languages of the authors and Wikipedia’s?
  • How could we handle the distribution material free from copyright?
  • Do we need a budget for scanning books, buying books or translation?
  • etc.
Track
  • WikiCulture and Community
Length of presentation/talk
25 Minutes
Language of presentation/talk
English
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

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  1. Jeromy-Yu Chan, COIC (talk) 14:13, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Asaifm (talk) 07:05, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Man77 (talk) 20:00, 17 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Plani (talk) 10:00, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Ijon (talk) 22:55, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I could not attend. But this topic is amazing! Sj (talk)