Jake Nelson wrote:
Which is what this is, and I didn't see until I wrote that last line- censorship. What's being suggested in the argument that the different languages of Wikipedia should have different content is that some people, because they don't think speakers of my language would be interested in a topic, block our access to information on it.
Jake, I have to just say bluntly that this bit is just complete nonsense. No one is talking about censorship nor about blocking access to information. I frankly don't know where you get off suggesting such a thing.
What we are talking about is whether we should expect that, ideally, every individual-language article in wikipedia will be essentially a translation of every other language. I say no, we shouldn't expect that, even while we expect the totality of the encyclopedias to contain essentially the same information.
The reason is that issues of presentation and emphasis to take proper account of reader backgrounds and interests will naturally lead us to organize things slightly differently in different languages.
That's not to say that we should keep secret from Jake the political reasons why France gave the Statue of Liberty to the U.S., but merely that the way that information is presented may differ significantly (NOT in terms of bias, I don't mean that) for French readers versus American readers.
Sorry if I sound grumpy, but after all that we do around here to preserve openness, I don't like to be accused of advocating censorship when nothing I'm saying could even remotely plausibly be construed as an advocacy of censorship.
--Jimbo