Lodewijk writes:
I had the impression that it would give a certain atmosphere where there would be a clear division in the community between the Spanish speaking people not speaking English and the English speaking people not speaking Spanish.
I don't see how you can say that making the conference accessible to non-English speakers somehow *creates* a division in the community. True, if an event is inaccessible to a different community, they won't show up, and no division will be visible.... but it exists even more strongly then.
WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@googlemail.com writes:
But I think the idea is great and fully inline with the idea that we are building a global encyclopaedia.
I found it delightful. And utterly appropriate, given that many local attendees were visibly more comfortable discussing Wikipedia in Spanish.
The tremendous global nature of the projects really doesn't come across to most people - not the first time they hear about it, or the second or third times either. Giving everyone access to the world's knowledge "in their own language" was an important idea... we shouldn't lose sight of it.
If as a community we didn't care enough about accessibility across languages to make a global, public event comfortable for the local wikipedians to attend, what would that say about the projects as a whole?
On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 8:18 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/9/15 WereSpielChequers werespielchequers@googlemail.com:
1 Which languages have to be covered at every Wikimania? The de-facto minimum is probably now host country plus English, but that might rise in future.
We've only had the host language (if not English) represented once, I wouldn't say that is a de-facto minimum. It might become so, but it isn't yet.
Perhaps in the 'full coverage' sense this is true -- but talks and posters in the local language have long been a part of Wikimania.
SJ