At 11:21 AM 10/1/02 +0100, Khendon wrote:
On Tue, Oct 01, 2002 at 10:29:36AM +0100, tarquin
wrote:
That is a very US-centric attitute (or
English-centric, your pick).
There are whole swathes of the internet which don't speak English.
And you've inadvertently demonstrated one of the reasons they split from
the main Wikipedia site.
Well, *one* of the two groups is going to have to speak the other's
language. Why not use English as the common language?
Then by the same argument, why not use Spanish?
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.
It may not be bigotry, but I suspect a certain amount of
English-centrism or simple laziness: it's easy to argue that other people
should use my language, rather than me using theirs, because that
will make my life easier.
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?
I have no idea. But it doesn't matter. In the real world of trying to solve
this, we *know* that the people who started EL are offended by the
English-centric approach. (By sheer numbers I could justify editing
all articles on the assumption that people are female, because a majority
of humans are.) They left because they felt excluded. We want to urge
them to rejoin. Demanding that they use English for a negotiation that
we want and they don't seem to won't accomplish anything useful.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr(a)redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org