Being a founding sysop of the Cantonese Wikipedia and a member of WMHK, I've had experience handling skepticism towards regional language Wikipedias.

Where speakers of that language (both first and second) are concerned, I think it is the chapter's duty to promote the project rather than feed the skepticism. It is important for the chapter to make clear to the public the Wikimedia movement's position about regional languages and projects in those languages.

On Sep 28, 2011 2:26 PM, "Fae" <faenwp@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I agree with Tom that WMUK supports open knowledge across all the
> projects, that includes the Tamil Wikipedia as well as the Welsh and
> Scots one.
>
> As a trustee I'm keen that we can demonstrate our commitment to
> diversity and international collaboration. That's one of the reasons
> we were excited to have bragging rights for the Derby Museum articles
> existing in 100+ languages and for the V&A museum to involve live
> collaboration in multiple languages in multiple countries.
>
> As part of the GLAM UK task force I am also interested in developing a
> sustainable GLAM network of e-volunteers. As there is significant
> interest in Welsh, Scots and Gaelic (Scottish and Irish) these are
> specific opportunities to support new Wikimedians for local languages.
> Rather than being tempted to pre-judge importance based on whether any
> particular language version of Wikipedia being currently weak, I
> suggest we prioritise our support based on genuine community interest.
> If more people living in the UK come forward wanting to do an exciting
> project on the Somalian Wikipedia, that will probably get more of our
> attention and be more of a priority for any funding than a proposal
> for a Welsh project with only one supporter.
>
> I agree that the Scots Wikipedia needs improvement, that makes it a
> great opportunity for a spontaneous proposal for funding from a group
> of Wikimedians with Scots language skills which the board can then
> judge on its own merits, I can assure you that all the trustees would
> love to receive such proposals.
>
> Cheers,
> Fae
> --
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