Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

As noted many times before, Ethan Zuckerman gave a keynote presentation at ROFLCon II that pointed out how 'Makmende' was deadpooled on both KYM and Wikipedia not because it wasn't worthy but because we the users weren't familiar with it so therefore it didn't exist.

This is a problem. So how do we address it?

How do we understand and verify non-Western memes?

How do we get the KYM community to take the time to look into whether these submissions are notable without flooding the comments with "-1 Deadpool"?

Make a group of KYM's foreign users to check on these things.

Or ban +1 DEADPOOL.

One way to address it is to find the large foreign internet hubs, such as 4chan and ED are for the more english speaking part of the world, and add to the article How to search for an origin and order them by main countries/languages.
https://knowyourmeme.com/forums/meme-research/topics/2599-how-to-search-for-an-origin
It would both give people an easier way to check the large hubs and research, and it would give researchers a much easier time verifying the memes.

Just ban every one that does not speak english.

I don't think it's that much of an issue.
While Makmende has become the first Kenyan meme, compared to the entire web, it remains kind of niche.
It's more likely that we can be stuck while researching for foreign memes, either because of language barrier or because some pieces of information are missing, lost in translation.
That's why some research groups were brought up on the forum. I'm of course talking about Japanese memes, which helped writing entries for many Japanese memes, some of them already confirmed.
Inspired by it, a Brazilian work in progress version is underway.
While Watcher's idea can be quite useful, I don't think it's that necessary.
We just have to make it very clear that we don't leave non-English memes behind.

Besides, there are active non-English members that are always ready to help concerning specific languages and foreign-countries-related localized memes.

But, if something has to be done, I think that the best would be to encourage the creation of single-language-research topics like the Japanese and Brazilian ones.

Why not carry one with a Chinese one and a Russian one (2 big countries), for example, and then create one everytime we can witness an increase in memes related to a token foreign country ?

Concerning websites oustide of KYM, I don't know if we can't be of any help to make people reconsider about foreign memes, other than simply highlighting it everytime it can be necessary.
But on the other hand, Christopher is right : there ARE foreign memehubs, even if they aren't as well-known as the english ones. I'm thinking about Uncyclopedia, which seems to gather decent information concerning Spanish/Portuguese related memes, or also about the existing Russian version of LurkMore. I then suppose that we can find useful material on these two sites.
There must be more out there.

for a few days I'm considering submitting an entry for a meme that is only (mostly) in Greece. It's called "Don't Do It Phedon". Should I submit it?

Yes.

i agree that there should be a sub-forum for brazilian memes, since brazil is fastly becoming a meme-hub(if it isn't one already)

I'm reviving this pearl from page 10.
No, seriously, I read another Ethan Zuckerman's article from ROFLcon and, in that one, he is talking about the "Global Voices playbook" as a source for filling up Makmende's article and also stated "[…] and hope perhaps for a GV/KYM alliance where we source and research global memes.".

I still don't think it's not that much of an issue, as far as I'm concerned, but is it something planned ?
I don't really know Global Voices' system well but, if it can allow people to easily consult blogs and articles from every corner of the world, it's definitely something that can be helpful as a research tool.

Language/nation-specific subforums?