[Foundation-l] A Wikimedia sidebar box for wikipedia.org

[Aphaia]

On 9/29/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 9/28/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > What doesn't work about it?
>
> Let's start with the most obvious bit: WMF is an international
> organization, and we want volunteers to contribute as many
> translations as possible of key pages on the WMF wiki, no matter how
> few there are of them.

It would be wounderful, but not feasable I think. Most of
international organizations  limit their official language into a
number we can count by our two hands. Their regional branches issue
publifications in the regional languages, but those two - official
publification from the organisation itself and local publification
from its branch or sister organizations - are different matters.

Languages are not equally spoken on the globe. They are less equally
read and listened. Some are definitely required, others are cool if
available, but not critical if they are lacked, since speakers of
these languages could read other languages in most cases, if
necessary. As far as we are relying on volunteer based translators, I
strongly oppose to that we have "as many translations as possible of
key pages" type ideas as middle term goal (10y or so). There is no
enough incentives and from my experience, the most effective
publification & promotion of the Foundation is its projects in the
target language. Only a project reaches a critical mass, the
Foundatoin seem to have a good reason to have PR in that language. And
some projects, like German language Wikipedia community, lack such
motivations, even after it becomes the second largest project. Through
my Wikimedia experience, German has been one of the most difficult
language I can find translators.

And also, if we need to validate every content, the trustness issue
arise here; one cannot validate the content written in an unknown
language to him or her.

-- 
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *