The Cunctator wrote:
Unfortunately, voting is not really a good way of
running things. See
Meatball:VotingIsEvil.
I don't intend to put any more effort in a design when it's dubious that
a multilingual international page will ever get realized - and for knowing
this it is essentially to find out what a majority of people wants.
But it's not a way to find out what a majority of people wants. It's a way
to find out how many people there are who subscribe to the list, agree with
your way of defining the issues, and like putting X's in boxes.
And what's the point in finding out what a majority of people want? You
should want to do the right thing.
Elian and I both think that the "dynamic" multilingual page is the
/right thing/. We are pretty sure many other people on this list think
that as well. Elian is trying to back that up with numbers. Of course,
that might put an end to vague discussions. No wonder you're so scared
of votes ;-)
In the United States, the majority of people want
(according to polls) the
death penalty, more spent on education and other social services, fewer
taxes, more surveillance, bigger cars, cleaner air, war in Iraq, etc. So?
The alternative is doing what the cabal (R) says. Funny thing you've
become an elitist advocate.
That said, multilingualism is certainly crucial to the
central purpose of
Wikipedia, which is to build a complete encyclopedia.
And that is the perspective from which this issue should be considered.
It seems to boil down to one question: Is wikipedia a project of
encyclopedias in many languages, or a big English encyclopedia with
spin-offs in other languages?
Magnus