On 10/26/02 11:10 AM, "elian" <elian(a)gmx.li> wrote: But it's not a way to find out what a majority of people wants. It's a way to find out how many people there are who subscribe to the list, agree with your way of defining the issues, and like putting X's in boxes. And what's the point in finding out what a majority of people want? You should want to do the right thing. In the United States, the majority of people want (according to polls) the death penalty, more spent on education and other social services, fewer taxes, more surveillance, bigger cars, cleaner air, war in Iraq, etc. So? One thing to recognize that people seem to be losing sight of is that Wikipedia's primary purpose is not as a language portal. I say this because http://europa.eu.int/ and esperanto.net/ are being used as comparative examples. The European Union is prima facie an international coalition. Esperanto was explicitly designed to be a synthetic international language. Wikipedia's primary purpose is not to be an international coalition, or to solve the issues of multilingualism. That said, multilingualism is certainly crucial to the central purpose of Wikipedia, which is to build a complete encyclopedia. And that is the perspective from which this issue should be considered.

The Cunctator wrote: Elian and I both think that the "dynamic" multilingual page is the /right thing/. We are pretty sure many other people on this list think that as well. Elian is trying to back that up with numbers. Of course, that might put an end to vague discussions. No wonder you're so scared of votes ;-) The alternative is doing what the cabal (R) says. Funny thing you've become an elitist advocate. It seems to boil down to one question: Is wikipedia a project of encyclopedias in many languages, or a big English encyclopedia with spin-offs in other languages? Magnus