#Wikidata - #Suriname; its National Assembly

#Suriname has like so many other countries a parliament. Its National Assembly has 51 members and, its website provides basic information for all of them.

Dutch and Srananang are languages spoken in Suriname with a Wikipedia and both do not have articles for all the members of the National Assembly. At that it is not special.

For all the current members of the National Assembly a Wikidata item has been created. For all of them the electoral district they represent has been added. The Suriname electoral districts are different in that multiple people represent the same district.

With basic information about members of a parliament, it becomes possible to at least find them in Wikimedia Foundation projects. When people take an interest and flesh out the information about them, people may become informed about the people that represent them. What has been done for Suriname is basic but, it is a start.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The art of survival exhibition is until May 9

If you are able to go to the Maroon exhibition, please consider it, it is well worth it. If you are unfamiliar with marronage like I was, it is one of those uncomfortable subjects that turn out to be completely and utterly foreign. It is however utterly fascinating and the subject grows on you.

I spoke with Peter Weis about a picture and the Maroon. He found me this video.


Intro Marron exhibition from Jurgen Lisse on Vimeo.

We were talking about a digital restoration of this famous picture of John Stedman. His book about a "Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam" is a classic and was very influential in changing the British public opinion against slavery.

Preparing this blog post, I found yet another video new to me about the exhibition. It gives a nice impression of this major exhibition, an exhibition you really should see :)



Thanks,
     GerardM

Dutch is the official language of Suriname

Dutch is the official language of Suriname. Dutch is the tenth Wikipedia in size in terms of traffic. You would assume that the subject of Suriname is of a high standard. Sadly, this is not really the case. Given that Suriname is a former colony of the Netherlands, and that many people who came from Suriname live there, there is an additional reason why it is reasonable to expect quality.

The Dutch Wikipedia is a white men's game.. It would be good when the composition of its community was a reflection of the people that live in the Netherlands. When the Surinamese, the Turks, the Moroccans write the encyclopaedic articles that are important to them, Wikipedia as a resource will better reflect its aim; "freely share the sum of ALL knowledge".

In the Strategy wiki, the question is raised: "What ratio of contributors to readers should Wikimedia aim for?". I argued that this ratio is not really meaningful to me. After more considerations, I come to the conclusion that it is more important to have a community of editors that reflects the composition of its readers, the population they come from.

I wonder if the lack of coverage of subjects about Suriname, Turkey, Morocco explains this discrepancy. I wonder if people are looking for articles on these subjects.
Thanks,
GerardM

Kwi Kwi

The kwi kwi is an armoured catfish found in Suriname. The fish is eaten and like a chicken on the bone, it is to be eaten with all the senses.

I wanted to write some content about one of the rivers of Suriname because we want to make sure that one of the restorations we work on will come with quite a bit of information.

As I used to have this fish in an aquarium, I could not resist; I found a picture cropped it, uploaded the picture and finally I added it to the article of the genus Hoplosternum. It sounds really simple and easy ... except ...

Except that the picture I cropped from was part of the Category:Francis de Castelnau's expedition a French Wikipedian had uploaded loads of images. He did make it easy on himself and claimed copyright and put it in the public domain. At least I think that this is what he did.

What he did was build a collection that could have been part of a GLAM project. I do think that when we have the improved functionality we talked in Paris about, it should become available to our users for projects like this as well.
Thanks,
GerardM

Art of survival

Last Wednesday, the exhibition "Art of Survival" opened at the Tropenmuseum. It was a magnificent opening of an magnificent and important exhibition.

When two ministers of two countries, when a gaanman representing all the Suriname gaanmans is there for the occasion, there is more happening then just an exhibition. It turns out that this is the first big exhibition on the subject of marronage and, that the Royal Tropics Institute is involved in setting up centres in Suriname where much of the history of the Maroon and Suriname will be presented.

The first copy of a book with the same title was presented to the ministers of Suriname and the Netherlands at the opening and, it is a collection of articles that explain about the many aspects of the evolution of the culture of the Maroon. With separate articles on traditional religion and Christian religion, articles about music, education and city life it becomes clear that the Maroon cultures have been ever evolving like any other. The challenge is how will the Maroon people retain their identity in a globalising world.

Mr Aboikoni, the gaanman of the Saramanka said it quite eloquently; we need to record who we are and what we are. We do it for ourselves but mostly we do it for our children.
Thanks,
GerardM

The Maroon, a subject that deserves attention

When people are enslaved, they will do whatever it takes, whatever possible, to escape. Once they escape, they have to survive and remain free.

The Maroon are the Africans brought as slaves to America that escaped. Who had to build a life, a society in the jungles, the remote parts of what was a different world.

When the slaves in Suriname were made free in 1863, there were several different people living in the jungle. There are the Ndyuka, the Saramaka, the Matawai among others. All of them have their own culture, language and history.

When you read the history of the Maroon on Wikipedia, their stories are linked to the present day countries. There are however many clues that indicate that these borders are artificial; one of the languages is a creole of Portuguese or English or a war where some of the major players left Suriname and continued their struggle in French Guiana.

A visitor of the Maroon exhibition of the Tropenmuseum will get much information about these people. The book that goes with the exhibition will bring even more depth to this subject. The Tropenmuseum welcomes more attention to the subject of the Maroon on Wikipedia, people who are interested in writing on this subject can have access to the museum and, for those who demonstrate an effort on the subject a copy of the book may be available.
Thanks,
GerardM

Building up an exhibition on the Surniname Maroon

The exhibition on the maroon of Suriname is being build at the Tropenmuseum. The picture shows the physical building of the exhibition but there is so much more to do.

In the Netherlands the subject of the Maroon is not well known and, the English Wikipedia provides typically the best information on the subject but you have to look hard to find it.

To provide more and better information, the Tropenmuseum will publish a book to accompany the exhibition. It will bring a lot of information together, and it can serve as a source for new and improved Wikipedia articles.

The purpose of the book and the exhibition is to improve the knowledge on the Maroon, as the Internet is becoming increasingly important as a source for information, the Tropenmuseum made many pictures available and is now taking a next step by helping the Wikipedia community write about this subject.

• they will help improve the articles on the Suriname Maroon
• they are willing to give access to their library to people who want to write on the subject
• they are happy when the new book is used as a source for information in Wikipedia

Thanks,
GerardM

The Suriname material of the Tropenmuseum

As promissed, the material of the Tropenmuseum about Suriname and particularly the Maroon has been uploaded to Commons. When I look at the material, I find that it is spectacular for many reasons.

• it is not only photos, watercolours and prints, there are also large numbers of pictures of all kinds of objects
• the annotations are often quite big and are very informative

The picture on granman Jankoeso for instance shows the elected head of a people. And, the Maroon are not one big group but many different people with different languages and cultures. The most relevant thing the Maroon have in common are that they are black and are the descendants escaped slavery.

Many pictures of objects are included, what is quite extraodinary is that the Tropenmuseum wants to include quality pictures. Pictures with labels or scans of old dias have been excluded; they may be uploaded when a new picture is available.

An example of a scarf made of Cotton, one of many textiles in the collection ..

I hope you will enjoy this collection as much as I do.
Thanks,
GerardM

Uploading of material from the Tropenmuseum is underway

I am really happy to report that the first 2162 pictures of material of the Tropenmuseum are being uploaded at this moment to Commons.

These pictures while important in their own right are in preparation of more material that is to follow.

The pictures can be found here.. These pictures are about the Maroon of Suriname.
Thanks,
GerardM

Pictures about the Maroon

The Maroon of Surniname will be the subject of an exposition in the Tropenmuseum in November. As I did not know who they are, I had a look at the articles on the subject in several Wikipedias. I found that almost all the illustrations where taken in 1955 by the father of the man who uploaded the black and white pictures to Commons.

I contacted John Hill who lives in Australia and asked if it would be possible to get new scans in the highest resolution possible. He wrote me that he will see what he can do. I talked with people from the Tropenmuseum and, they are interested to learn what kind of material we can find on the Maroon.

Do you have material about the Maroon of Suriname or the Maroon in general? Please upload it to Commons and let me know.
Thanks,
GerardM

Gearing up

The Tropenmuseum is preparing for the upload of a selection of their collection to Commons. The aim is to upload images that relate to Indonesia. This is a huge collection estimated to be some 100.000 images.

This is a huge undertaking with many issues, to get a feel for the issues, the Tropenmuseum has decided to start with a much smaller collection, a collection about Suriname and slavery. There are several thousand images in this collection and, it coincides with a presentation on the subject.

A new issue is one of language; the annotations that go with this material is in Dutch. Some of the annotations have been translated into English and while the Tropenmuseum will welcome more translations, it does not have the capacity to provide these. The problem for Commons is that there are many museums in the world and it cannot expect them to provide all the categories in English.
Thanks,
GerardM

The srn.wikipedia

The Wikipedia in the Sranang language was created in the last batch of new projects. It does feature more then the minimum localisation, it does have a sufficiently large number of articles and people who know the language attested that the language is indeed Sranang.

To my amazement I received the request to close the srn.wikipedia down. The language is not according to how Sranang should be written, it is called insulting to the people of Suriname. A good reason to close the Wiki ? Maybe a website but a wiki can only be improved when it is online. I have asked the gentleman who complained, to fix the localisation at Betawiki and collaborate on the srn.wikipedia.org

When I looked a bit further I found to my amazement on the Wikipedia in the Dutch language problematic Babel templates for the Sranang language.. They are all wrong as they used the wrong code. The person who decided that a template was in order used the wrong codes, used text in the Dutch language and was not willing to fix it.. so I did fix the codes I do not know the language ...

In a way, I am pleased that there are people who take offence when their language is not well presented. When they take the consequence and fix things, when they lead by example it means that a project gets a life. Wikipedia is not only a place where you can express your language it is also the place where you have to express your language well. When I look at it from another perspective, with more people involved in a Wikipedia there will be more content. It will make the language more visible and in the end this is exactly what the Sranang Wikipedia needs.. I think that this is a positive development..
Thanks,
GerardM

Sranang Tongo

Sranan Tongo is a creole language spoken in Suriname. A request was made for a Wikipedia in this language and as it does have an ISO-639-3 code (srn), granting a conditional approval was a formality.

What is becoming a comfortable routine is requesting the great people at BetaWiki to support another language. People that know the language can now start with the most used messages. I wish the proposers for this new project well, and I hope to hear from them when they consider to be ready for the big time :)

Thanks,
GerardM