That's something worth pointing out.
Whenever I try to get people involved in Wikipedia, I always say "project to build a free [language] encyclopaedia", and describe the basic concept of Wikipedia later. The exception is the Linux community; for example e-mailing the Maldivian Linux User Group about the Divehi Wikipedia, I explain the concept up-front.
Mark
On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 21:02:37 +0300, V. Ivanov amikeco@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 13:00:14 -0500, Henry Tan-Tenn wrote:
Another is the assumption that should en: fail (or be judged to have failed), one can safely assume smaller and less active editions will also fail.
It's not exactly the fact.
While the larger language Wikipedias compete with commercial encyclopedias (and the larger language speakers have the choice), the smaller language Wikipedias are _unique_, the speakers of such language don't have much choice -- and Wikipedia appears to be the only _try_ to create an encyclopedia. It also can become the main source for a future "official" encyclopedia, which might be too expensive for a not so large people, if all the authors are paid.
So, Wikipedia might exist as a set of _relatively good_ sources for the languages, which do not have large choice. E. g. I am not sure if there had ever appeared any Ossetic text on the Laplandian War before the "translation of the week" has been done (though there are certainly lots of texts, including large novels, on the WWII in Soviet territory).
Wikipedia for a nation of 500 thousand to, say, 5 million seems to be the best way of writing an encyclopedia in their language. And even if the English WP fails, that will not mean the idea is all wrong for every language on the Earth.
Sl.
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