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(a)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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2009/9/15 WereSpielChequers
<werespielchequers(a)googlemail.com>om>:
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