On 11/29/08, Andrew Turvey <raturvey(a)yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
michael west said:
> A board seat for a representative of
indigenous non English speakers
> would Ipresume only represent a member of the Celtic language speakers.
> The facts are that non-indigenous people who contribute to the WMF who
> speak languagesat home or in prayer outweigh those whose languages are
> official languages of the UK. It just seems bizarre.
The reason why I think Wikimedia UK should focus more on, say, Sottish
Gaelic with its 50,000 speakers than, say German, with its 500,000 speakers
in the UK, is that we already have a German chapter which can promote German
language projects.
Here, here. I'm not saying that you should turn away or 'forward'
German-speaking UK residents, for obviously if I move to the UK (which
is not altogether unlikely and depends on 3*20 minutes in
mid-december), I'd join and participate in the UK chapter as well, it
being not viable to go to Switzerland for many chapter
events/projects.
However, it is unreasonable for the UK chapter to publish, say,
leaflets about Wikipedia in German, there being three chapters who can
and should do this. Same for French, Italian etc.
Michael
We are the only chapter which could ever promote
Scottish
Gaelic, and, as I said before, we may be able to unlock public funds in
order to do so. I don't remotely agree that this is racist.
There is clearly a danger that Wikimedia UK will end up just being Wikipedia
London; recognising the diversity of UK Wikimedians - across projects,
languages and the constituent countries, would I think be a positive step.
My suggestion of 2 had in mind a board of around seven. Of course it would
be fewer if there were fewer board seats.
From: Andrew Turvey <raturvey(a)yahoo.co.uk>
To: wikimediauk-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Saturday, 29 November, 2008 0:40:35
Subject: Re: Election Rules (non-english speakers)
Q5: Is there any way that you think the election should be run differently
to the election of the interim Board?
I wanted to answer one of the questions I put with a suggestion regarding
minority languages.
Most of the people active in Wikimedia UK seem to be active in the english
Wikimedia projects. However, there are some other smaller Wikimedia
languages where UK editors form a vital part of the editing and readorship
base. I'm thinking particularly of the native languages of the UK such as
Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and maybe Irish, Scots/Ullans, Cornish, Manx etc.
As well as recognised the diversity of the Wikimedia community, there are
also significant public funds available for promoting these languages which
could be used by us to support these projects.
The Board has already reached out to these projects by asking if the
newsletter could be translated into these languages. My suggestion is we set
aside two reserved seats on the Board for people who actively contribute to
at lease one wikimedia project in a minority language of the UK.
What do you think?
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com