Anthere wrote:
My experience with the american press during the past year has been extremely unpleasant. If you listen to all the radio shows interviewing editors, it has been strictly restricted to english-speaking editors, so usually only reporting on english experience, which is not necessarily the only representation *we* have of the project.
What's wrong with discussing the English-language encyclopedia when talking to an English-speaking audience? The articles on Wikipedia in the German media focus on the German-language Wikipedia, which makes sense as well. Sure, from a sociological point of view it's interesting that Wikipedia serves many different communities, but if you're just trying to get information (which is, after all, the purpose of an encyclopedia), the most useful information is the information written in a language you can read.
I also think that the most revolutionary aspects of Wikipedia have nothing to do with multilingualism. Producing encyclopedias in multiple languages has been done before; collaboratively producing a wiki encyclopedia hasn't been. *Even* if it were only in one language (regardless of which language), it'd still be a revolutionary project.
-Mark