On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 1:15 AM, Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org wrote:
- "because we can" is indeed a very poor reason to do anything. We are
also probably the only global network that can ensure complete coverage of all Pokémon characters in 100 languages. That's far from proof that we should allocate active investment (as distinct from volunteer choices) to this.
It's easy to miss historical responsibility which one person or group have. We are living in the present and we often don't realize how important is what we are doing at the moment.
For few years we already did one historical job, which is about the biggest encyclopedia in the history of humankind.
There is no software piece, no image of a monument or a beauty of nature (or numerous things which we are doing at the moment) comparable to the fact that we can preserve not just languages, but many cultures.
I know that it's not precisely in our mission, but if we leave the strict interpretation of our mission, it could pass. There is no one else to do that and there is no time to wait for another global movement to do that.
I am not saying that we should start doing things indiscriminately and move the focus from the free knowledge to the language preservation. I agree that we should cover first those languages with the most chances to survive (among them, those with the most chances to have significant contribution to Wikimedia projects).
The point is that if we don't do that, nobody will. And that's not because nobody in the future won't be willing to do that, but because there are maybe ~50 years to do the job. That's not a lot. Wikipedia is 13 years old and 50 years is around for times more than that. We are simply living in one specific period and our size and focus are giving us specific kind of responsibility.