[Foundation-l] Candidate statements

[daniwo59 at aol.com]

 Since there has been some talk about candidates' statements and translating them into multiple languages, I thought that I would toss my $0.02 into the fray.
 
 I recently finished writing a book (due for released in 2007). I was commissioned to write 25,000 words. It is a small book, but it is a complete book nonetheless. Based on the following categorization below, it would qualify as a novella:
 
 SuperPlus novel: 100,000 + words
 Plus Novel: 70,001 - 99,999 words
 Novel: 45,001-69,999 words
 Category: 30,000-45,000 words
 Novella: 15,000-29,999 words
 Quickie: up to 15,00 words
 (see http://www.ellorascave.com/about/length.htm)
 
 Accordng to Gmaxwell, the largest candidate statement is approximately 20,000 words, i.e., a novella. We have 17 candidates this election. If each one wrote a statement of that length, we would have 340,000 words to read, i.e., statements totalling several times the length of "War and Peace" or a standard Dickens novel. We are talking "A la recherche du temps perdu." 
 
 I suggest that the time of Wikimedians can be better spent than reading statements of this length by, for example, researching articles. I would suggest that the time of our translators could be better spent working on making high quality content available in all languages. 
 
 In the first election, I set a limit of 500 words on each candidate's statement. Despite the complaints back then, there was a reason for that.
 
 Danny
 
  
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