On 10/26/02 11:54 AM, "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske(a)epost.de> wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
<snip>
Elian and I both think that the "dynamic"
multilingual page is the
/right thing/. We are pretty sure many other people on this list think
that as well. Elian is trying to back that up with numbers. Of course,
that might put an end to vague discussions. No wonder you're so scared
of votes ;-)
I'm not scared of votes, they're just a bad idea. It's not a healthy
longterm policy.
In the United
States, the majority of people want (according to polls) the
death penalty, more spent on education and other social services, fewer
taxes, more surveillance, bigger cars, cleaner air, war in Iraq, etc. So?
The alternative is doing what the cabal (R) says. Funny thing you've
become an elitist advocate.
That's a false dichotomy. Rather, what we have now, if we're going to bring
up the "cabal" (TINC) bugbear, is cabal decision-making. Voting makes it
even more specific, by not even trying to make decisions that reflect the
consensus will of the entire community (which includes readers, future
editors, infrequent editors, future readers, etc.) but by making decisions
based on the formal agreement of about 10-30 individuals, given a finite
number of choices by a single individual.
That said,
multilingualism is certainly crucial to the central purpose of
Wikipedia, which is to build a complete encyclopedia.
And that is the perspective from which this issue should be considered.
It seems to boil down to one question: Is wikipedia a project of
encyclopedias in many languages, or a big English encyclopedia with
spin-offs in other languages?
There are other options: a big encyclopedia with entries in many languages,
a multinational coalition, etc.
Also there are many many ways of implementing each of these ideas.
In other words, coming to a consensus on the purpose of Wikipedia is
distinct from agreeing with a design change for
www.wikipedia.org. It would
be a good first step, though.
I'm sure we have different individual priorities for Wikipedia (what's
important to us individually) but I suspect that we share a common vision of
what Wikipedia at its core should be, whether or not we agree on particulars
of implementation.