On 6/7/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
For the record, and as I have said many times in the past, I do NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot imagine that we would want to do so.
This seems like a strange position to me.
It doesn't make any sense to me either, and it seems to directly contradict this exchange:
Mark Williamson wrote:
Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different cultures and peoples rather than languages? Are any existing Wikipedias considered in this capacity?
Jimbo responded:
In general, no, but there are many complications of course relating to ISO language codes, dialects, languages, etc.
Anthere responded:
Imho, it is not acceptable at all. We try to reach people in their mother language or at least a language they handle very well, but we should not provide different content based on any other specificity such as nationality, religion, political view point and such. By definition, since we try to stick to neutrality, the content provided should fit all.
Angela responded:
No it isn't. I agree with what Jimmy, Anthere, and others have already written in reply to this.
Jimbo claims he's said this many times in the past. I couldn't find any, but if anyone else can maybe I can better understand what he's saying. If Jimbo does "NOT think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias are accidental", then he must think they're intentional. That raises the question as to who intended these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended. I always thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with regard to culture. Maybe English is the exception?
Jimbo also writes "Anyway, if we were going to use a constructed meta-language, obviously it would be Klingon or Toki Pona. ;-)" This presumably was a response to "Yes, the original plan was to write all articles in Esperanto and then have them autotranslated to all the other languages of the world." This might point to some of the confusion, as my statement had NOTHING to do with constructed languages. I was thinking more along the lines of Wikipedia after the invention of the [[babel fish]].
If everyone in the world could write to everyone else in the world and be understood, would there still be a need for multiple language Wikipedias? Is Jimbo saying that yes, there would? If so, I'd LOVE to see some of the "many times in the past" he's talked about this, because it makes absolutely no sense.
Anthony