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(a)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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