I'd like to ecco (is that an eEnglish word..?) Michael Finney here. Most people who engage them self in a small language wikimedia projects will sooner or later participate in projects like en:wp and commons as well - and thus both learn more about the "facts of reality" as well as communicating with others in a (for them) foreign language.
They may of course also learn the not so pleasant fact of reality that native English speakers unfortunately sometimes come across as a rather arrogant lot (an attitude also unfortunately often also adapted by dutch/scandinavians etc who often are more comfortable using English than other language groups - I've been arrogant myself at times)
Finn Rindahl (mainly nowiki&commons)
2008/12/1 Michael Finney finney.md@gmail.com
Jimbo: Thank you for your comments. As a person who manages a small wiki project and two language forks from it, I found some of the comments very disturbing... almost frightening that such exist. Your comments re-affirm my confidence in the Wikimedia Foundation and its purpose.
Thanks.
Mike
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 1:24 PM, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia-inc.com wrote:
Geni wrote:
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world " first line of the mission statement. By actively promoting minority languages you lock more people into them which is not consistent with trying to empower them.
I wrote:
I do not share geni's views at all.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It doesn't seem that anyone does...
I should add at the same time that I think that it is a good thing for people to try to learn a relevant global language in addition to their local language, with the choice depending upon personal context.
In many parts of the world and for many people, English is an excellent choice of a second language. In other parts of the world (Francophone Africa for example), French is an excellent choice. Chinese might be good for some people. Russian for others. Hindi for others. There are many variables.
And I hope that Wikipedia is helpful to people both in learning about the facts of reality (usually most comfortably done in your mother tongue) and in learning another language. I don't see these goals as being in competition at all, but rather mutually reinforcing.
--Jimbo
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