Indeed.
If I recall correctly Jimbo once said something along the lines of Wikipedias for small, threatened, and endangered languages fit in well with the mission of the Foundation (though I may well be wrong, this may've been someone else, if that is the case please let me know), and I agree there.
I think Wikipedia could play a very significant role in bridging the gap between the "have"s and the "have not"s in many parts of the world. (ie acc'd to Hemanshu, in India there is a widespread belief that you have to know English to use a computer; perhaps this would change if there was a huge online encyclopedia in local languages; many people in many regions of the world could use the internet if they wanted but don't because they can't understand a single word of the content currently available)
For languages like Maori and Hawai'ian, an encyclopedic resource written entirely in them would undoubtedly provide a much-needed resource for their language nest movements (maori -> kohanga reo, hawai'ian -> punana leo). As of right now there is no Hawai'ian wikipedia but I'm sure it would be very easy to solicit Punana Leo educators (as well as educators from Hawai'ian-language primary and secondary schools) to come and build a wikipedia, and I bet they'd do it quickly too with that kind of motivation (as it is, they have nights where parents come in and translate textbooks paragraph by paragraph, pasting Hawai'ian translations on over the English paragraphs; imagine if a similar effort were applied to Wikipedia except in addition rather than on top of)
Similarly with a Gothic Wikipedia, the 400 or so children that are currently being raised in Gothic (some of whom may well not be children anymore, I'm not sure) as well as those to come in the future would have an encyclopedic resource which could be of tremendous help to them. Objections on the grounds that Gothic died too long ago are baseless unless you are also agaisnt the Cornish wikipedia because Gothic, although it died a really long time ago in Western Europe, persisted until maybe even into the industrial age in the Crimea, as long or maybe even longer than Cornish. And the Cornish wikipedia already has over 120 articles over a couple of weeks with only two active contributors and only one really active contributor. And Gothic, unlike Cornish, does not have the multiple varieties and the infighting.
--node
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 20:02:19 +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski taw@users.sf.net wrote:
On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 01:34:59PM -0400, Evan Prodromou wrote:
Mark Williamson said:
I find that horribly discriminatory.
I find it appropriately discriminatory. As a project, the Wikimedia Foundation has to apply some judgement about where to devote its physical resources and the time and effort of its volunteers. If we waste the time and energy of those volunteers for unimportant tasks, they won't come back.
You very well may disagree about what choices the Foundation makes. I'm just saying that it's a really big Internet, and that if you want to create a wiki that no one else wants, you can do that. You don't have to have the Wikimedia Foundation's machines and volunteers to do it.
I'm sure this discussion wasted a lot more machine resources and volunteers' time than establishing those few Wikipedias.
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