My two cents on the whole discussion: 1. Why can't we just talk to them (EL) in English? I'm pretty sure most of the people speak at least limited English (would be hard being on the Internet otherwise;) Just say "sorry, my Spanish isn't good enough for that". 2. Then, it could either be Jimbo talking to them, which might look funny, as he is the big bad company boss himself trying to lure the Spanish into his capitalistic trap ;) or Lee, as the author suggesting the new software for starters. 3. Offer access to the wikipedia.org server for the one running the EL server, in a way that he can get a database dump any time. So, if we go AOL or M$, the database of the day before would still live free. 4. The EL could become the first read-only wikipedia, with the edit links pointing to es.wikipedia.org. That would give some ground to compromise on. I'm sure all of that has been mentioned before, I just forgot ;-) Magnus

On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 09:15:30AM +0100, tarquin wrote: Well, *one* of the two groups is going to have to speak the other's language. Why not use English as the common language? -- Khendon (Jason Williams) khendon(a)khendon.org.uk http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/

On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 10:29:36AM +0100, tarquin wrote: Because if you have to pick one, it makes sense to pick the one that people are most likely to know. There's no bigotry involved, it's simple numbers. Or would I be wrong in thinking that the proportion of Spanish-speaking people who also speak English is much higher than the proportion of English-speaking people who also speak Spanish? -- Khendon (Jason Williams) khendon(a)khendon.org.uk http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/

Maybe the least contentious way to solve the problem is for native English speakers to write in English, then to have that translated into Spanish, and for native Spanish speakers to write in Spanish, then to have that translated into English. I'm sure we have enough bilingual people who could help with this. One thing that's important for us to find out (whether by asking directly, or some other way) is what needs to be changed before they'll come back. It's entirely possible that the reason they don't want to rejoin the project is simply that they (or this "vocal minority" we hear about) find the idea of being associated with a project hosted on a U.S. server to be odious--period. If so, there's not much point in negotiating with that "vocal minority" in particular. But the reason could be, instead, that there is still some lingering doubt that advertising will be started. That was the most important sticking point, I thought, that led to the departure in the first place. In *that* case, Jimbo could make a statement to the Spanish community (translated, of course) to the effect that he hereby declares that there will never ever be advertising on Wikipedia as long as his servers are hosting the project. (Of course, he's already said something to that effect a few times, but it wouldn't hurt to say it again, explicitly as a part of a kind invitation to come back.) Other sticking points could be explicitly addressed in like fashion as part of an invitation to come back. For example, we will go out of our way to make sure that Wikipedia generally is not made U.S.-centric--that it remains fully an *international* encyclopedia. Another example: if anyone ever does become an employee of the project, it will have to be a result of community consensus that there really is a need for it; *no one* should benefit off the backs of volunteers. Another: you don't have to use the Wikipedia name as part of your logo; call yourselves anything you want. We can set up es.wikipedia.com so that it points to a more palatable domain name. In short, clearly and explicitly (and in Spanish) offer them everything they could possibly want, and couple that with a lover's "come back come back!" and we might just get them back. (I'm not holding my breath, but it could happen. We did get the Polish Wikipedia back into the fold, y'know...though their complaints weren't as hard-felt, and they never declared themselves separate from the project.) Two other points you might explain are the benefits of being part of the more general Wikipedia community (which are not slight), and the fact that we have no intention of ever removing es.wikipedia.com. Larry

At 09:15 AM 10/1/02 +0100, Tarquin wrote: Not really: the phonemes are plausible in English, and the letters are letters we use all the time. In Spanish, "w" and "k" say "this is a foreign word". Now, if we'd borrowed from (say) a Mexican language and come up with something like "Tloucixpedia", that would look and feel un-English. I wonder if "Huiquipedia" would be more familiar and comfortable to native speakers of Spanish. -- Vicki Rosenzweig vr(a)redbird.org http://www.redbird.org

The Cunctator wrote: In a broad sense, this is true. But they do not consider themselves a part of our project, nor should we expect them to. I don't respect all their reasons for breaking away -- but I do respect what they are doing... as an independent project. I think that's right. I'm not sure we can draw such a sharp distinction between "competing with EL" and "working them back into the fold". Either _outcome_ would be fine with me: they eventually quit their project and come "back home" to us, or they continue on their own separate noble effort with our best wishes. Linux and FreeBSD, perhaps. We can learn from each other, adopt each other's best practices, and proceed in parallel -- or we can become one big community. The main thing that I would be opposed to doing is shutting down es.wikipedia.com. I think that effectively says that Spanish speakers are not welcome in the wikipedia community. It'd be like Linux developers saying "Since FreeBSD uses technology X, we refuse to use it, and if anyone wants to use it, they should go away." Maybe that's not a perfect analogy. I think that the main thing is that there be no hostility between us. We wish them well, even the ones who hate us, to the extent that their mission involves more than hating us, at least :-). --Jimbo