On 11/16/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote: [snip]
relating to their own cultures. It may be interesting to translate into a minority language information about the latest discoveries in nuclear physics, or the politics of nations on the other side of the globe, but that has nothing to do with the soul of that language.
[snip]
A language can not live without useful material being both available in it, and being actively written in it.
That said, although it is a laudable goal, I do not believe that preserving dying languages should be part of Wikimedia's mission.
If the output of our efforts can be used by others to help preserve languages... If they can translate the content in the major Wikipedias or if we can find a little space on our servers for them to run Wikipedias in their languages, all the better. If our efforts to archive the past knowledge of the world in wikisource, and our efforts lower the real cost of sharing knowledge through Wiki technology causes the preservation of languages as a side effect then thats fantastic!
But preserving languages should not be our mission.