Sorry, but to me this just sounds like FUD. Do you have any information to
back up your claims about small wikis deteriorating? Don't forget, these are
WIKIS we are talking about. In WIKIS everyone can change the content, and
even though people may add bad content, they may also add good content (and
believe it or not, there is functionality that makes people able to remove
bad edits!). You're applying the problems of the large wikis to the smaller
ones, which is not really appropriate, because they are on completely
different levels. Sure, the smaller wikis have problems as well, but they
are very different from the problems enwiki and dewiki are having.
2008/12/1 Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman(a)hotmail.co.uk>
Have you forgotten that these are WIKIS we are talking about? It's not just
a matter of translation: the technology isn't there to do it automatically
and we don't have the manpower do it manually. Even if the technology were
there, it's a WIKI. Unlike your friend's translations, our content can
drastically deteriorate and become useless overnight if nobody's watching
it.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:58:54 +0100
From: gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com
To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
Hoi,
EMC2 is a company who sells storage solutions to big companies. I was at
a
presentation of their documentation manager. He
informed his audience
that
the people who buy their products invariably
state that they prefer the
English documentation. They always get the translations as well. The
benefit
to EMC2 is that they sell more products. The
translation of their
documentation adds pennies to the pound in costs, costs that are easily
offset by the increased sales.
The point is that people understand things better when they are addressed
in
their own language EVEN when they can read the
language that is foreign
to
them.
Thanks,
GerardM
2008/11/30 geni <geniice(a)gmail.com>
> 2008/11/30 effe iets anders <effeietsanders(a)gmail.com>om>:
> > Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented
work
> of
> > human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we
already
> > had encyclopediae and dictionaries of
good quality. Wikipedia is
better
sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine
that you are
living
in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky)
there is very little
material
available... and now there is an encyclopedia...
In YOUR language!
English is an official language of Botswana. Quite a lot of African
countries move to English or French for education above a certain
level.
Even if
it only contains 1000 articles,
~102 articles currently.
you can already learn a lot from it. You can
improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the
western world.
What is Tswana for mass spectrometry (looking at the translations for
that term across European languages is mildly amusing) ? There are
large areas where if you don't speak english you can't operate in that
area. There is nothing wikimedia can do about this. Highly
questionable if we would even want to.
This doesn't mean we should give up on many languages but it does mean
that we have to accept that the educated people from those countries
may not want to use them and there is a significant risk of them
becoming POV forks.
--
geni
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