Are any of your students Ossetic speakers, or for that matter speakers of other Russian Federation languages? Even if you don't know if any of them speak it, it would be a very nice thing to mention. When Wikipedia is spread from these students to their friends, it would be nice if in addition to "Russian free encyclopedia which anybody can edit", they will go to a Chuvash friend and say "Free encyclopedia which anybody can edit, with even a version in Chuvash waiting to be built". I think that in this respect, if people were to mention this more such wikipedias would have more contributors. When Danny or Jimbo or Eloquence or Angela or whomever presents the concept at a conference, as far as I know they either 1) don't mention languages except in passing, 2) mention that it's multilingual and that there are, for example, German and Japanese versions or 3) mention the fact that it is available in the national language. If a presentation is being made in Spain, I think it is important to say "Not only is it available in Castillian, but there are also Wikipedias in Asturian, Aragonese, Galician, Catalan, and Basque". Some people may not think it is notable, but to give a local example drives home that Wikipedia is very diverse. If you are presenting in China, please don't forget to mention that we have places for people to build Wikipedias in Yi, Zhuang, Tibetan, Uyghur, and many other languages. If you are in Indonesia, please don't forget to mention that there are, in addition to the Indonesian Wikipedia (which is for whatever strange reason separate from the Malay Wikipedia), Sundanese and Javanese Wikipedias, and that Balinese, Timorese, Acehnese, or any other Indonesian languages will be welcomed on Wikipedia. If you are in India please don't forget to mention that we have a Wikipedia for every single one of the languages mentioned in India's constitution - not just Hindi, but Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Kashmiri, Assamese, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Oriya. The population that speaks these languages is not especially relevant. Even in Hawai'i please mention that we have a Hawai'ian Wikipedia (if I were in Hawai'i for a conference to speak about Wikipedia, I would also meet with Hawai'ian language activists to discuss Wikipedia with them, but obviously and understandably such issues are not as important when your focus is not linguistic diversity), in Phoenix mention that we have a Navajo Wikipedia, in Calgary mention that we have Cree and Inuktitut Wikipedias, in Denmark mention our Faroese and Greenlandic Wikipedias. Mark On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 10:43:54 +0300, V. Ivanov <amikeco(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Mark Williamson a écrit: Nod... I do not know about how they present Wikipedia but for Jimbo. And Jimbo mentions it is multilingual. I several times had that opportunity, either to talk in a conference, or several times per month at journalists, and my moto is free, free and multilingual. (just always nice to see that I am never listed as one of those speakers, but well... getting used to it months after months, thanks for the cheer up Node). But, I thought the opportunity (your mail) was too good not to mention my latest blog, since for the first time I wrote in english rather than french. So, if many french wont be able to understand it, some might. http://anthere.shaihome.net/index.php I often disagree with you Node, but really, in this case, I am fullheartedly with you. I recommand you read my little story at the end of my post in particular. PS : my heart is a bit bleeding that yesterday, for the first time, I wrote in english on my blog. PPS : My blog is dedicated to Daniel Pink and his latest article on Wired by the way.

I think that, as long as you are careful to say "even available in minority languages" rather than "there are also versions in the other major languages of China" (which they really are - all of the languages I mentioned have over 1m speakers in China), and as long as you don't mention Tibetan by itself. On a side note, I forgot to include Mongolian. Mark On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 13:00:14 -0500, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:

There is no specific number. Of all the officially-recognised minority nationalities, there are large ones (over 6 million), and there are small ones (under 1000). Mark On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 03:17:48 +0000, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab(a)gmail.com> wrote:

It should, however, be noted that while music and written material in "dialects" is never censored, there has been a high-profile case where Tom and Jerry were dubbed in, I believe it was Wu, and it was banned from airing, although I believe the DVD will still be distributed. What's ironic about the whole fiasco is that in the original English, Tom and Jerry were both silent. Mark On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 11:59:08 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan <felixwiki(a)earthsphere.org> wrote:

Daniel Mayer wrote: This is not the whole truth. For economically less developed countries such as Russia, or heavily taxed countries such as Sweden, this amount of voluntary fundraising (per capita) is uncommon. In Russia, the common question might be "does so much money even exist?" and in Sweden the common question would be "I paid all my money in taxes, so why doesn't the government pay for this?" (The idea, right or wrong, that the government does spend its money wisely is very common here, otherwise the high level of taxation would never work.) The students in St Petersburg should be glad that they are invited to an open potluck party, where some people bring money and other people bring their brains. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se