Wikivoyage:Go-between reports/Portuguese/Portuguese Wikivoyage Report for 2 March 2006

Progress in general
Although we had 7 people signed up to help with with the Portuguese Wikivoyage Expedidition, only two of them (myself included) have in fact answered to that call and started working on pt:, even though I've sent them e-mails and left messages on their user pages. Nevertheless, significant progress has has been achieved in this first month of this language version of Wikivoyage.

We have put a lot of effort into creating the the basic set of guidelines for the contributors' work. This means translating important bits of the manual of style (including templates) and setting up some of the most relevant policies. If you check our help page you'll see that a lot of stuff already has its Portuguese version. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much discussion about those pages, which we expect to get when pt: achieves a larger user base.

Copyright has also been a major issue: lots of people tend to copy-and-paste articles from Wikipedia and/or other websites. We'd probably benefit from having more users that understand Wikivoyage's copyleft in this case too.

New contributors
We currently have 41 registered users and counting. Only 4 or 5, however, have been contributing on a more or less erratic basis. Apparently there are no regular anonymous contributors.

Focus during the next month

 * Translate/set up more policies (including image deletion), help pages and so forth
 * Promote pt: - we understand that more collaborators should lead to a better guide
 * Try to get someone to run a bot to upload country templates and flags (or will those be placed in Wikivoyage Shared soon?)

Special issues

 * In the footer where it says "Based on work by Wikivoyage user(s)", the names that come after this bit are conected by the English word "and" (Evan and Rmx and...) instead of Portuguese "e". I've tried changing the "and" entry on Allmessages to "e" but that didn't work, so I don't know how to solve it.

Conclusion
Portuguese wikivoyage seems to have great potential for organised growth but won't go too far if we don't get more people working on it.

Comments
Your comments and suggestions will be appreciated. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 14:02, 2 March 2006 (EST)


 * First, pt: has been having a fantastic first month -- I'm really excited about it.


 * As for flags, I'm going to try to upload the OpenClipart.org flag collection to shared real soon now.


 * For getting more contributors, all I can suggest is looking at Project:Ways to promote Wikivoyage, being patient, and keeping momentum going. I also might point out that having some time to acclimatize new members is a good way to build a sustainable community.


 * As to the "and" thing... I'll take a look. Changing pt:MediaWiki:And should work, but... oh, wait, now that I think of it, it may not. I'll see if I can fix things on the server end. --(WT-en) Evan 14:22, 2 March 2006 (EST)


 * OK, I think it's fixed. Let me know. --(WT-en) Evan 14:25, 2 March 2006 (EST)


 * Fixed it is. Thanks for your comments and encouragement. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 14:30, 2 March 2006 (EST)