Brief description

Moore is a language spoken by the mossi people in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Niger, Togo, Mali, Senegal and other countries in West Africa and Africa at large. More than 6 million people speak the language across Africa. Unfortunately, despite the proportions of people speaking the language and the rapid rate at which the language grows across the length and breadth of Africa, the language has been unpopular in cyberspace and unprivileged to be introduced to any global computer network system or platform. This created a dire concern to digital language preservation activists and the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group who provide support to indigenous language communities in Ghana to onboard their languages on Wikipedia platform.

Exposure of moore language to Wikipedia

As part of Dagbani Wikimedians User Group efforts to supporting indigenous Wikipedia languages, especially the Mabia language, provided technical support and also requested for a new language for the Moore language. Moore Wikimedia Community was then founded aimed at promoting awareness of Wikimedia projects related to Moore languages in Ghana, Burkina Faso and all Moore speaking people across West Africa, Africa and the world at large. Moreover, the community is geared towards establishing the development of Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary for Moore language via the Wikimedia incubator, and nurture them to become full projects. Aside from that, it is to promote the development of structured data for Moore language, utilizing Wikidata, so that the language can become more digitally usable and visible on the internet. Moreso, the community aims at promoting editing of Wikimedia projects by organizing events and activities, and recruiting new editors and last but not least, is to equip editors of projects in Moore language with the skill and ability for the continuous development of Wikimedia projects.

Community team members

Moore Wikimedia Community constituted a vibrant team championing its noble course to ensuring that the aims and objectives of the community materialize. The team’s dedication is a testament to their hard work, talent, and commitment to task. From the planning stages to the final implementation of the test wiki project, every person involved played a crucial role in bringing this project to a fully fledged Wikipedia site.

Inclusiveness

Social media platforms were harnessed to advocate for volunteers, language experts and digital language activists to help transition the language onto the digital platform. Most volunteers were contacted on social media platforms through direct message contact and sharing of passionate appeal flyers for all and sundry to join hands on deck. Some volunteers living in Ghana were contacted physically at public places and social events. The effort is to involve as many native mossi people as possible irrespective of their gender, location, disability or any variable capable of influencing discrimination amongst the group. The initiative is inclusive primarily to broaden and diversify the scope of the project and to synchronize perfectly with wikimedia principles in achieving excellence.

Translatewiki

The group of voluntary contributors were trained on various video conferencing platforms to introduce them to Wikipedia and its sister projects. A number of them were enthused and got involved with zeal and passion. Through Zoom video conference platform, Amir and representatives from Dagbani Wikimedia User group trained a group of volunteers to translate the Most Used/Most Important messages on Translatewiki.net. Under close guidance, the volunteers translated to localize all (check completion) the MediaWiki interface to Moore Language.

Wiki test project

Moore Wikimedia Community poised to work assiduously by a massive editing campaign to make the test project very active and vibrant for possibly being approved as quickly as possible. Series of campaigns and projects were embarked upon to add quality and unambiguous content to the moore language incubator. These projects saw a tremendous contribution from the mossi community across Ghana and Burkina Faso.

Manual of style pseudo-namespaces conflicting with Moore Wikipedia

Beyond the whopping contribution on the test project, the Manual of Style (MOS) pseudo-namespaces conflicted with the moore language interwiki prefix that triggered discussion among the developers on Phabricator and request for new language sites. Upon series of conversations and deliberations amongst Wikipedia developers, it came to conclusion that there should be a point of compromise. Mos was finally dedicated as prefix to Moore language interwiki subdomain and eventually the proposal to create the Moore language. The developers worked tirelessly and sleepless to make that a reality.

Approval and creation of Moore Wikipedia

Based on the momentous contributions, the Board of Trustees and language committee have considered that there is satisfactory grounds to create the moore language project. The community is overwhelmed with pleasure upon the good news on Moore language approval on the 12th of September, 2024 and subsequently the big news of mos.wikipedia.org creation. This crucial achievement is as a result of a combined effort of both inactive and active contributors who played a pivotal role through the journey.

Special appreciation

This milestone would have been thorny without the unwavering support of the following people.

Sadik Shahadu (User:Shahadusadik)
Fuseini Musah (User:Musahfm)
Abdul Rafiu Fuseini (User:Alhaj Darajaati)

Their contributions, expertise, expériences, guidance and enthusiasm were instrumental in driving this project forward.

Conclusion

The approval and subsequent creation of Moore Wikipedia has paved the way for content of Wikipedia to be accessed in Moore version. Aside from that, content of both tangible and intangible unique cultural heritage of the indigenous mossi people could also be accessed on the Moore wikipedia. This milestone achievement is dedicated to the over 6 million Mossi people across Africa and beyond. As the community and the mossi people at large celebrate this victory, it is also cognizant of the challenges faced along the way. However, through perseverance, diligence and teamwork, the obstacles were overcome. The experience garnered will strengthen the community enthusiasm and motivate them to continue striving to document the unique cultural heritage of the mossi people and promote the culture to the world. It is exciting to see the positive impact that the Moore wikipedia will have. Going forward,the ultimate goal is to sustain the zeal of voluntary contributors and also advocate for promising volunteers to persevere in passionately contributing to preserving the Moore language through adding quality, authentic and verifiable content to the wikipedia and also its sister projects like wikidata, wikimedia commons and the whole shebang of wikimedia projects. This verily would go a long way to enriching the global landscape of knowledge dissemination and access to open data. The community raises a glass to celebrate this extraordinary accomplishment and the bright prospects that lie ahead.