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. On May 22, 2005, at 8:24 PM, David Gerard wrote:

David Gerard a écrit: (stirling.newberry(a)xigenics.net) [050523 12:18]: 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 :-( --------- 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 :-)

--- Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Good. Now something that will make you understand a little bit more: The US public knows very little, and is basically a bunch of industrialized farmers. The 5% that know what's going on know that English is just one of many languages. But they are not the audience of the NPR and regular news. NPR has this agenda (lofty I agree) to pull the unwashed masses out of their self-inflicted morass. Regular news are for-profit. Neither are targeting their news to the 5%. I would not be surprised to hear that NPR editors flesh out their stories by visiting wikipedia. (I have a sneaking suspicion they might). The typical American would be stunned to hear that there are more than 3,000 languages with more than 1,000,000 speakers each in the world today. The typical American is brutish, swift to revenge and slow to understand. This is why the news is watered down for them, otherwise they just turn away with a blank stare in their eyes. I get CCTV here, and their international news coverage is spectacular. (CCTV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Central_Television) Chris Mahan 818.943.1850 cell chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com chris.mahan(a)gmail.com http://www.christophermahan.com/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new Resources site http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/

We think highly of you, too. However, we refrain from posting mindlessly bigoted rants on mailing lists devoted to the process of building a free encyclopedia. -- Sean Barrett | Pone ubi sol non lucet. sean(a)epoptic.com |

Anthere wrote: I agree completely that it's a problem. I think you're experiencing a part of the larger evolution of traditional journalism into corporate propaganda, another vicious circle that I imagine will end up with the disappearance of much of journalism as we know it today, as people gradually stop paying attention to it. I don't think it's a coincidence that WP's "in the news" area got so strong that it was able to spin off its own project; there are all kinds of experiments with alternate channels for information right now, much of it motivated by dissatisfaction with the sad state of news handling. One of the big trends these days is "targeted marketing". In other words, instead of trying to interest a Bush-voting French-hating Houston suburbanite in WP's multilingualism, a very tough sell, go through a channel that gets to an architecture student about to spend a year of study in Paris, or an advertising agency contracted to pitch Las Vegas tourism in Malaysia. There are lots of English speakers deeply interested in the non-English-speaking world, the trick is to find them. I don't know the details myself, but media and marketing pros know all about that - it could be as simple as an email announcement to the right mailing list, or an article in a special-interest magazine. While it's very exciting and flattering to give interviews to mainstream media, I think you have to go in with pretty low expectations these days. Stan

Anthere (anthere9(a)yahoo.com) [050526 02:28]: One of the very first things he said was pointing out how many languages it was in, and the show featured a long segment with a South African contributor talking about contributing to both the English and Afrikaans Wikipedias and about the Wikipedias for other South African languages, and about cross-cultural issues. Reasonably speaking, what on Earth more than that are you demanding for an English-language radio show broadcast on an American radio station? - d.

Anthere (anthere9(a)yahoo.com) [050526 05:13]: I really don't see that you have much basis to declare him grossly uninformed based on the show as transmitted. I understand media was gathered for the whole project and was asking where it would be listed, as per the message I wrote way upthread. - d.

On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 03:56:09PM -0400, Delirium wrote: Good points. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I come across something written in a language I don't understand, I tend to pass over it and find something in a language that I do understand. Likewise, reference to the existence and extensiveness of the French Wikipedia is interesting, but beyond the mention of that and perhaps mention of other subjects that interest me directly and just happen to involve the French Wikipedia (such as intellectual property legislation), the doings of the French Wikipedia are of considerably less interesting to me than the doings of the English Wikipedia. The reason is simple: I can read English. All this talk of the US media this and the US public that, blaming all this supposed cultural imperialism on being a US citizen, is nonsense. Really. If the English Wikipedia is more commonly mentioned in discussion of other-language Wikipedias than other-language Wikipedias are in discussion of the English Wikipedia, it probably has something to do with the facts that: 1. Wikipedia was created by one or more English speakers, and initially was an English language encyclopedia. While this in no way limits future linguistic diversity, it is an interesting historical note and lends a little more reason to discuss the English Wikipedia in some circumstances than non-English Wikipedias. 2. The English language Wikipedia is the biggest. If that changes in the future, and the Klingon or Esperanto Wikipedia becomes the largest, I fully expect that the amount of focus in discussion and media treatments will swing away from the English language project and more toward the Klingon, Esperanto, or whatever, Wikipedia. That's just the way it is. 3. It is often the case that, though someone whose primary language is not English, he or she may also speak English. Meanwhile, it is less likely that an English speaker will also speak whatever pet language it is that you think the media is ignoring. Thus, there's likely to be greater interest in English language topics among non-English speakers than in non-English languages among English speakers, all else being equal. There were places and times where that was true of, for instance, French instead of English. Times have changed. Such is life. 4. Most Americans live in a very, very large contiguous span of English-speaking regions. There is little or no need for most US citizens to ever speak another language in day to day life. While this may or may not be a bad thing, it is a true thing nonetheless, and that being the case I'm not surprised if US citizens tend to pay little attention to matters that involve other languages most of the time. The same cannot be said so easily of other languages (with a couple of notable exceptions, perhaps): Europe, for instance, consists of a large number of countries, many of whom have their own associated languages largely distinct from the languages of their neighbors, and yet much of Europe would fit within the borders of one of the larger states in the US. This forces a certain amount of multilingual awareness on Europeans, whereas the opposite tends to be true of Americans, pretty much through no fault of their own. 5. Many US citizens are probably unmotivated to learn languages that are used regularly to call them imperialists, hicks, industrialized farmers, insensitive louts that don't address the needs of other languages, and so on. Frankly, I'm tired of seeing, again and again, references to how an English-speaking press catering to the news and entertainment needs of an English-speaking audience is somehow wounding others for failing to spend equal time on their own languages. I'm even more tired of hearing about how awful that makes Americans, or at least American culture. True, when a journalist says that Wikipedia has so-and-so many articles, and cites the number of articles in en.wikipedia.org rather than the total for all languages, that journalist has blundered. That being the case, it's a good idea to point this out and ridicule the individual for being obtuse. I guarantee, however, that journalists whose trade is practiced in other languages are just as often obtuse nitwits, though it's likely that the subjects of their stupidities are different. Regardless, there is NO NEED to start talking about how screwed up US culture is because some journalist biffed a reference. When Americans in the generic are mentioned in such complaints, I am to some degree included in that mention at least by some distant relationship to the target of the phrasing, and that's unjust. When you blame "American media" or "American culture" or "Americans" for something one, single, individual journalist has done -- even if he's the fourth such individual to do so this week -- you're doing essentially the same thing he did. Just as that journalist ignored the diversity of languages involved in Wikipedia, you have ignored the diversity of individuals that make up the American public. That, to me, is a strike against your credibility. Hopefully, you don't care what I think if you do this sort of thing regularly. In any case, this doesn't need to become a Major Issue every time some idiot says something stupid in his or her role as a journalist. Journalists do that all the time, regardless of their native languages. Get over it, and let the list deal with something of import. Send a letter or email to the journalist, maybe make a brief mention of that error (and others, if they exist), and move on. That's all you need to do. These pity parties over my linguistic imperialism got old before they started. -- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]

On May 26, 2005, at 3:50 AM, Anthere wrote: Not true. We (the USA) lack an *official* national language. Depending on the state, 1-5 languages are used. Compare to the EU. I'm a 'zonie too. Down in Tucson, Spanish skills were required where I grew up. mexican immigrants, some legal and some illegal; and many of them did not manage english well, or even not at all, as they only recently came in. Again, see the EU. You are creating an artificial separation, based on something trivial and meaningless as the language used. Does it matter? Try editing "Cuba". I think you miss the point. We are dealing with *many* cultures, *many* languages. The concept of the "chair" can be expressed in thousands of languages. Omitting one language, or culture's, concept of chair, is bad. -Bop -- Ronin Professional Solutions LLC 4245 NE Alberta Ct. Portland, OR 97218 678-522-1322/503-282-1370

On May 26, 2005, at 7:09 AM, David Monniaux wrote: Not true. See Telemundo, Univision. Why? Many ami's are bilingual, if not more. Even the shrub speaks spanish. Most americans speak in many dialects, and absorb words from other languages easily. Would you slam the EU because not all persons in all states speak all of the needed dialects? Visit more of the US. We have the same. You lived in tri-city Texas, IIRC, which is like saying "I lived in Nice, therefore, I have seen all of Europe". -Bop -- Ronin Professional Solutions LLC 4245 NE Alberta Ct. Portland, OR 97218 678-522-1322/503-282-1370

On May 26, 2005, at 8:17 AM, David Monniaux wrote: So, "France sucks". But Why? There are only "non-mainstream" channels in France, and the USA? What an odd argument. I think you might be confusing terms. Den you not up on dat. Point made. As the US grew, so will the EU. Many new languages and dialects will be a result. My friends pulling in 120K a year, while riding public transit, might disagree. There might be a different way of thinking involved. -Bop -- Ronin Professional Solutions LLC 4245 NE Alberta Ct. Portland, OR 97218 678-522-1322/503-282-1370

Delirium wrote: In fact, various interest groups that hate all this multilingualism have repeatedly pushed for legislation to declare English as the sole official language of the US, and (so far) have been unsuccessful. No pol wants to lose the entire Hispanic vote! :-) Stan

David Monniaux wrote: You're absolutely right about this. However, This is the same in all US cities of a size similar to Paris. There are radio stations in English and Spanish everywhere I have lived in the last 20 years, and newspapers in Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Spanish, etc., depending on the local population. (Chicago, San Diego, Tampa) Bay News 9 is the local 24 hour news channel in the area where Chad Perrin and I live (Tampa bay area, Florida), and it broadcasts 2 stations of news 24 hours a day -- one in Spanish, one in English. I have no actual opinion to offer about how intelligent or stupid the American public is, nor whether European stereotypes of America are generally valid. I'm just here to give some NPOV information. :-) --Jimbo

Hi Ant The "quickly integrated" kids you speak of aren't actually integrated so well. Although most have at least a "satisfactory" command of English, they prefer Spanish in all contexts, and at schools the Spanish-speaking kids tend to have a separate social life than the English-speaking kids, even though most of the Spanish-speaking kids are fluent in English as well. As far as the internet, if you go to "teen central" at the Burton Barr branch of the Phoenix Public Library (4th floor I think?), you will see that a good percentage of the kids are browsing the internet in Spanish, mostly checking e-mail at yahoo.com.mx (Mexican Yahoo!) though sometimes doing other things. I'm guessing that if they wanted to use Wikipedia, they would use the Spanish version if they knew it existed, although in a school context they might use English instead (sociolinguistic reasons: Spanish is, in many ways, seen by kids as not OK for any usage inside the classroom, so they will often use English even if there are two versions available). Mark (In Tucson right now) On 26/05/05, Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote: -- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

Timwi (timwi(a)gmx.net) [050528 08:23]: As has already been pointed out, the multilingual nature of Wikipedia was literally the VERY FIRST THING mentioned in the show. A ten-minute segment then discussed in some detail the problems of small Wikipedias for large numbers of people. Did you listen to the show before saying the above? - d.

On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 11:21:10PM +0100, Timwi wrote: Of course you have a right. Having a right and being right are not the same thing, however. I, for one, will pay more attention to stuff in and about a language I understand than in and about a language I don't. To expect otherwise of me is unrealistic, sadistic, and absurd. Likewise, I don't expect otherwise from others. I don't expect French news media, Arabic news media, or Serbian news media to spend more than a cursory bit on English, and I likewise don't expect English news media to spend more than a cursory bit on French, Arabic, or Serbian. Here's a hint: the exhortation to assume good faith is a good idea not because it's "nice", but because every person is an individual, and judging that person by the behavior of other people with the same nationality, native language, or geographical location is the opposite of an assumption of good faith. If you have a problem with a given journalist, contact the journalist and let him or her know. If you have a gripe with a particular interview or story, get in touch with whoever conducted the exercise. Don't generalize a few anecdotal examples as representative of the entire language-sharing demographic. By directing unjustified ire at an entire linguistic population is counterproductive in the extreme. -- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]

Puddl Duk a écrit: Insulted ??? I certainly did not insulted the program. If you felt I insulted the programm, or if you felt I insulted the interviewees, that was certainly not my intention. I said the interviews were good. I mostly tried to just give my feelings. One after the others, most programs only talk about one part of the project, and when they choose to talk about another, they choose to represent a very minor language. Again, I have nothing against a minor language, I was part of one once. But I just do not feel happy about that. And reading your answer, I do feel not only my concern is addressed but you do not even consider I have the "right" to be concerned. I had hoped we could talk like adults, without resorting to big words. Hmmmm, right. Finally, I will keep that big knot in my stomach. It was an error to just even mention the issue. All is well. I will not mention the topic any more. There is no issue. Issue closed.

Let me ask you this, Anthere. When you are interviewed by the French media on What wikipedia is (and not about the international nature of the project), do your interviewers always go out of thier way to include non-French wikipedians, like Radio Open Source went out of their way to find non-U.S. wikipedians? On 5/25/05, Puddl Duk <puddlduk(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Puddl Duk a écrit: I found you the link to one of my favorite article of the year :-) It was published in the central pages of Les Echos, as Les Echos innovation, which is published on wenesday. I stripped the pages during lunch hours, since this newspaper is received in my firm... This is one of the pages http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/fr/0/08/Les_Echos_-_Le_wiki_veut_lib%… This was written by Capucine Cousin et Laeticia Mailhes, both journalists at Les Echos. The first is located in Paris, the second is correspondant in San Francisco. If you look carefully at it, you should be amazed by the number of references (people they interviewed to make the article) and their diversity. There are several french undoubtely, but there is Lessig, Wales, Cunningham, Mayfield, Lessig, Benkler etc... The other page focused much more on legal issues, in particular with a long interview of Lessig. As far as I know, they decided on the article first and contacted all the people themselves. Laeticia called Jimbo, and he recommanded them to contact me. Quite funnily, they start with Wikipedia and Jimbo and they close the article with Wikipedia and I (with an error as it refers to wikimedia France). In business, this article had a great impact. Ant

Anthere: "From Public Radio International, I'm Christopher Lydon. This is Open Source. Wikipedia is the new knowledge phenomenon of the Internet age. It's an encyclopedia written and edited by its readers, a compendium in more than a 150 languages from Albanian to Zulu, of 1.3 million articles .." Jimbo: "All of the different languages ... It's a very international project .. progress in a lot of the smaller languages .. distributed world-wide to people who don't have Internet access .. available in many, many languages .." Radio Open Source contacted me, and they asked me for other contacts with the *explicit* comment that they were looking "especially for users outside the US." As Puddl has pointed out, they also went out of their way to contact someone from the Afrikaans Wikipedia on the wiki itself. Anyone who listened to the whole show and didn't remember the "multilingualism" aspect is, quite frankly, unlikely to be capable of understanding Wikipedia itself. The majority of the show focused on a relatively language-neutral aspect of the project, namely, the quality of the content and whether you can trust it. Most of the criticisms were eloquently wrong (faulting Wikipedia for the fact that students plagiarize it is pretty funny), and I would have liked them to dig a little deeper into our fact checking processes and future peer review plans. It's important to note that Wikipedia is a work in progress not just in its content, but also in its processes and technology. It reminds me of all those fancy predictions about blogs and their impact on journalism, none of them realizing that this entire sphere is subject to massive technological and structural changes. I wouldn't call the show biased, I would call it somewhat superficial in that respect. That they didn't focus more on the aspect of multilingualism was a conscious editiorial decision. Rather than do an "Oh, look how great Wikipedia is" piece, they wanted to try to give a balanced view of the project and its accomplishments. I would say that it's probably the least biased mainstream media presentation I've come across so far coming from outside the community. I hope you don't expect an American radio show to broadcast in French -- they would be taken over by right-wing militia within seconds. ;-) Erik