[Wikipedia-l] The Borders of Language Variety Tolerance

[Delirium]

Chad Perrin wrote:

>On the other hand, I think it's worth noting that if promoting literacy
>and delivering encyclopedia content to the illiterate (worthy goals to
>be sure, but primary goals for other projects, or for the future after
>Jimbo's stated primary goal is already met) actually hinders the goal
>Jimbo has elucidated here, it's something that should probably be on the
>back burner.  The Wikipedia project can't be everything to everyone: we
>should ensure that it's successful at being something for someone,
>though, and that requires a certain narrowing of focus.
>  
>
This I agree with---we shouldn't try to become some vertically 
integrated organization that solves all the world's problems, but 
instead a focused grass-roots organization that does a good job at a 
narrow set of problems.

There are a number of problems in the world somewhat related to our 
mission---illiterate people can't read a written encyclopedia in any 
language; people in countries with no internet access can't edit 
wikipedia; people in poverty don't have time to work on a wiki 
encyclopedia; people living under oppressive governments can't edit 
wikipedia freely; etc.

I certainly don't think we should try to solve all those.  We can try to 
mitigate problems where it's not that hard to do so (e.g. by producing 
paper versions to distribute to non-internet-connected areas), but some 
of them---like solving the "digital divide" or world hunger, or 
overthrowing oppressive governments---are somewhat out of our areas of 
core competence.

-Mark