David Gerard a écrit:
Stirling Newberry
(stirling.newberry@xigenics.net) [050523 12:18]:
On May 22, 2005, at 8:24 PM, David Gerard wrote:
Found it! http://www.radioopensource.org/2005/05/16/pilot-3-the-wikipedia/
The program in question is Christopher Lydon's new show "Open Source". Mr. Lydon is one of the most ardent advocates of the change that is taking place in our society, of which wikipedia is a part.
Yep. It's a good show and Lydon's very clueful about the issues.
- d.
I personally would not call particularly clueful a journalist exclusively interested in the english speaking part of our project.
It strikes me as ... being a bit "short". But well, I suppose we can disagree on this.
I fear a bit being called anti-american for what I will say below, which would *really* be missing what I try to convey. So I hope you will do me the favor the read my comment with fairness.
My experience with the american press during the past year has been extremely unpleasant. If you listen to all the radio shows interviewing editors, it has been strictly restricted to english-speaking editors, so usually only reporting on english experience, which is not necessarily the only representation *we* have of the project.
You might answer me "yes, but it would be a very bad idea to record a non-english editor, as likely, the audience would not understand well".
I agree. This is a very good point, and this is one of the explanations I got. But unfortunately, the english restriction is largely true in written articles as well. At best, journalists interview you, but put nothing in the article; at worse, they are just not interested in non english at all.
A couple of times, I tried to insist a little bit, trying to explain how our project international was, and how reducing it was to only talk to only one of our local community, while so many editors are able to speak enough english to be understood (I am not too good and I guess I would not be very understandable on a radio stuff, but others non-english do really have high quality language, and these guys were recommanded... but not contacted). I regret to say that the answer I generally got was "yes, but talking of the other languages do not interest our audience".
What would you answer to that ?
It is just a vicious circle. The journalist does not talk about something because he thinks no one will be interested. But since no one knows about it, no one even imagine he could be interested.
The consequence of this is essentially a very non neutral report, a very unfair description of what our project really is in most english-speaking press. The worse for me I think in the past year, has been to hear a french journalist telling me "but what does a french person do on the board of an english project ???". That day, I thought "God, are we SO bad in conveying WHAT we are doing and WHO our editors are ? Should not we HIRE a communication specialist ???"
Press may essentially report on two issues. Sometimes, they focus on our goal. But most of the time, they focus on trying to understand and make understood how we are organised to be able to build this resource together.
For those who talk about the goal : I think our goal is largely missed when press forget the non-english. It is missed because what we try to do is to build up a resource to be usable by the largest number of people on Earth. And *this*, we can in particular do in "talking" (writing) to people in their *mother* language.
So, press talking of our goal without explaining how the project is being built in other languages, or how we succeed to coordinate as a multilingual project, IS JUST MISSING THE POINT.
For those who talk about the community and how it works : Talking about our organisation in one project is one approach. But a little one. There is also the whole challenge in all working together as a multilinguistic community. There would also be the interest of talking of wikicommons, or how all languages share the same room together.
*We*, as a global community, made huge progress in having all languages collaborating in the past months. Internally, we did a great job.
Externally, it is just plain bad. We are not perceived as we should be perceived.
I regret that deeply. I tried to work on this, but I fear I just met a wall :-(
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And David, in case you tell me "but he mentionned we are a multilingual project", yes, it is true. 30 mn radio show never fails to take 5 seconds to mention it. 7 pages articles such as the wired article never fails to use up a line to mention it. I doubt it has much impact on the listener or the reader in most cases.
So... while the interviews are really good (and you were indeed), I am not so certain Lydon is very clueful about "the issues".
Anthere
Jeee, I feel better now that I said that... because it weighted on my stomach very much :-)