On Feb 8, 2008 11:49 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I would like to ask the community: Are the preservation of cultural diversity and minority languages (secondary) Wikimedia goals?
The WMF really shouldn't get into this kind of thing because it's too much. As Pathoschild mentioned, the WMF cannot pursue every noble goal. However, if people are truly interested in preservation of language, a separate foundation could be set up for that purpose. Something like "Wiki Language Preservation Society". Likely, a deal could be brokered between such an organization and the WMF to share server resources, although the later group would be responsible for maintaining the preservation projects, the associated domain names, pay for the bandwidth, contribute to operating the servers, contribute to paying the technical staff, etc. Such a group could probably actively pursue grants to capture and preserve dieing languages, which means there wouldnt be a competition between WLPS and WMF for donations.
forgive me for brainstorming out loud. But, if people want to pursue goals which are tangent to the WMF's goals, they should really consider creating a new organization to pursue them, instead of trying to tack them on to the WMF's mission statement.
--Andrew Whitworth