2008/12/3 Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru:
Only after a while did it become apparent that he was talking of the English Wikipedia. Some surprised librarian asked "are you now talking of the English Wikipedia?" His answer was something like "yes, the Swedish is almost completely useless" (for advanced astronomy). In the undergraduate astronomy classes he was teaching, all literature is in English. This seemed like an unknown planet to the Swedish librarians. And I guess that their surprise came as an equal surprise to the astronomer.
After eight years of teaching physics at a Dutch university and active participation in scientific activities all over the country, I am still to see a scientific talk given in Dutch.
en:wp is very much an international Wikipedia, not just for English native speakers at all. This leads to some difficulties (apparently infinite supplies of nationalist POV-pushers in some conflicts, for example), but is almost certainly good for NPOV.
This is no reason to neglect the other Wikipedias - English just happens to be the current lingua franca and may not be in 100 years.
- d.