[Foundation-l] WMF 2015 strategic plan and multilingualism

[Casey Brown]

On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 4:00 PM, M. Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is my hope that these decisions are data-driven -
> http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/distribution.asp?by=size and the
> size of Wikimedia communities speaking a language as well as the
> (in)frequency of bilingualism in those communities are a good place to
> start.

Exactly.  As far as I understand it, the language priority list *was*
created based on these metrics.  However, it hadn't been updated for
years, and /that's/ why it was marked obsolete.  That particular list
was obsolete; no one was rejecting multilingualism or anything like
that.  It's actually the opposite:  we didn't try to figure out how we
should prioritize languages because we looked at them all as equal.

All translation work is done by volunteers, and who were we to say
"your language isn't as important, we'd rather you translate into X",
especially if we hadn't really researched how to make those priority
lists?  If you translate something into Hopi, Kunama, Irish, or
Pirahã, it'll get published just as quickly as if you translate
something into French, Spanish, German, or Chinese.

-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023