Eventually of course we wish to have a thriving independent pure-Lingala site. No one doubts this. The question is: what's the most effective way to get there?
Here's a quote from this month's National Geographic:
"Few countries [snip] coffee planatations run wild."
These quotes all refer to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are two Congos these days, the one to which these quotes refer is the one which was ruined by the notorious Mobutu Sese Seko. The other one is the Republic of the Congo, with its capital at Brazzaville, which wasn't ruled for half a century by a despot.
What _is_ the most effective way to get there?
Surely, not by having it so that the sole administrator is the user with the worst Lingala out of the three?
I don't know what action needs to be taken, but I'm pretty sure that something should be done.
How about letting the people who are working there continue their work, and let's make some kind of a concerted effort to get more help for them. I wonder if we can't find a dozen or so academics who are fluent in Lingala and French (or Lingala and English).
Again, let's take a look at the people who are "working" there:
User:Bombo, lists himself as ln-0, likes to post articles in French, has made almost no contributions that could even be argued to be helping ln.wiki; User:Moyogo, lists himself as ln-1, is responsible for most of the interface but has made some significant good contributions with actual Lingala; User:Themalau, lists himself as ln-3, is responsible for the handful of articles which are completely or mostly in Lingala, and is probably the best contributor to that Wikipedia.
Which of these people is the one who so desparately needs the French interface? Surely not Themalau, who seems to be able to read and write satisfactory Lingala? Moyogo himself recently said on the Village pump that the interface should be 100% Lingala, so it's surely not him. Perhaps it is Bombo, who likes to copy articles verbatim from the French and English Wikipedias?
Bombo himself said on one talkpage, and I quote, "je ne parle pas le lingala".
If anyone needs to use a French interface, remember that they can choose it in their personal preferences, or even by adding something to the end of each URL (uselang=fr).
- when confronted about these facts by an anonymous user, the
administrators stated that it's important that French is in the interface because most of the contributors have poor Lingala. Keep in mind that there are only 3 active contributors, one of whom seems to speak pretty good Lingala.
It should be left up to them to determine the best way forward, lacking some really compelling evidence that this is problematic.
"Up to them" -- it makes sense to leave such decisions up the local community in most cases, but in cases like this, the local community is little more qualified than are you or I -- Bombo, one of the three active users, doesn't seem to know any Lingala at all. If he gets to decide, why can't I? What if I start posting heaps of French articles, does that mean that suddenly I get to help with the decision because now I'm part of the community?
Neither Themalau nor Moyogo seem to be in favour of keeping the etrefas bilingual, and they're the only two users with very good Lingala.
Mark