Whoops, I owe an apology to the Swedes: the Swedish Wikipedia is bigger than the Icelandic, even if you take the number of speakers into account.
I also wanted to say that I agree that gerard Meijssen's point is very important: The wikipedias are indeed culture-bearers for their respective populations, and not just for humanity as a whole!
The Esperanto wikipedia is a good example of just this. You'll find plenty of articles there with information which might be considered vanity, or at least not encyclopedic enough, in other languages' wikipedias.
Verdlanco
Ulf Lunde wrote:
I also wanted to say that I agree that gerard Meijssen's point is very important: The wikipedias are indeed culture-bearers for their respective populations, and not just for humanity as a whole!
I disagree that this should be the case, and to the extent that it is, feel it should be corrected. Languages are not culture, although they have connections with it.
If we wanted languages to be identified with culture, then we should split some up, and have a "United States" wikipedia as a culture-bearer for the U.S., a "French Canadian" Wikipedia as a culture-bearer for French-Canadians, and so on. But we don't, and to the extent possible keep these together. In essence, the only reason we have separate Wikipedias at all is because of language barriers---when languages are similar enough to keep together (as with the French spoken in Canada vs. France vs. Algeria), we do so.
Or do people actually seriously think we *should* have separate Wikipedias catering to different cultures?
-Mark
Sure, that's a way to go. But not to the detriment of the big English or French Wikipedias. Especially there could be an Indian (South Asia) Wikipedia in English. But only when the time comes that a lot of people want it.
Fred
From: Delirium delirium@hackish.org Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:48:28 -0500 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] The role of a wikipedia for a language like Hopi
Or do people actually seriously think we *should* have separate Wikipedias catering to different cultures?
Delirium wrote:
Ulf Lunde wrote:
I also wanted to say that I agree that gerard Meijssen's point is very important: The wikipedias are indeed culture-bearers for their respective populations, and not just for humanity as a whole!
I disagree that this should be the case, and to the extent that it is, feel it should be corrected. Languages are not culture, although they have connections with it.
Languages are not culture ?? Encyclopedias most certainly are !! Please consider what words are used in a culture. The English used reflects the culture the person speaking or writing comes from. The idea that you can divorse culture from language is odd. When comparing articles on the same topic the diffferences are sometimes huge.
If we wanted languages to be identified with culture, then we should split some up, and have a "United States" wikipedia as a culture-bearer for the U.S., a "French Canadian" Wikipedia as a culture-bearer for French-Canadians, and so on. But we don't, and to the extent possible keep these together. In essence, the only reason we have separate Wikipedias at all is because of language barriers---when languages are similar enough to keep together (as with the French spoken in Canada vs. France vs. Algeria), we do so.
Or do people actually seriously think we *should* have separate Wikipedias catering to different cultures?
When we have an encyclopedia with articles that are acceptable to all people who speak a language, we aim to achieve a neutral point of view and provide more extended information. We want to maintain one wikipedia bridging the divide between the cultures that use a language. Given the virtually limitless amount of harddrive capacity we have articles on cricket and honkbal. We are happy to host any topic that is of intrest. What this discussion is about, is not about en: or fr: It is about Hopi. By having a Hopi or a Dutch or a Frisian wikipedia, you allow many topics to be narrated with a Hopi, Dutch or Frisian point of view. Not a non-neutral but with a Hopi, Dutch or Frisian point of view. This is good because certain things that are true from an English perspective are plain different and non-neutral from another culture point of view. To put it bluntly, the words mean different things, they have different conotations denying people a resource like that is like denying that languages differ and that languages reflect a culture.
The UN has a mother language day. This day is to celebrate the diversity of the cultures of the world. All languages have a need for good information, that is what wikimedia aims to provide. The argument that the Dutch can read and write English and do not their own wikipedia is great. It only reminds me of a recent tiff I was in, where I was accused of not being able to express myself in English... So please allow me to read and write in Nederlands and, I will not be asking for a wikipedia in Westfries. :) And I do apologize for my poor English (or was it apologise ...)
I would almost accept your point if you agree to only read French or Chinese in future. You will find how much it will divorce you from the culture that you live in.
Thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
I would almost accept your point if you agree to only read French or Chinese in future. You will find how much it will divorce you from the culture that you live in.
I don't find this at all. I speak both English and Greek fluently, and find that the people speaking it makes much more difference than the language. When my Greek relatives speak to me in English, they still speak from a Greek cultural perspective.
You seem to be arguing a cultural relativist position, which I think frankly is nonsense, even if it sometimes is popular in "critical theory" academic circles.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
You seem to be arguing a cultural relativist position, which I think frankly is nonsense, even if it sometimes is popular in "critical theory" academic circles.
To expand on this, I think that every language's viewpoint should bridge *all* cultures, to the extent possible, not just all cultures that speak that language.
That is, the Greek Wikipedia should not only be a consensus of Greek-speaking people (i.e. Greeks and Cypriots). It should attempt, as much as possible, to present things neutrally, so that even a Turk who reads Greek (and there are quite a few) could read an article on the Greek-Turkish conflict on the Greek Wikipedia and agree that it's a neutral article, not an article from the Greek perspective.
This is of course easier to do in languages which have more diverse cultures speaking them---the en: Wikipedia is constantly moving away from being a U.S. perspective through the efforts of English speakers from other countries. With languages like Greek, this is harder, but I don't think impossible.
Going the other way, I also disagree that languages should have more content on their local cultures. This will happen initially just because of what people are interested in, but there's no reason it has to stay that way. I personally am planning to go through and translate hundreds of articles on local German universities to en:, so that eventually en:'s coverage of small Germany universities will be on par with de:'s, and on par with en:'s coverage of U.S. and U.K. universities.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Delirium wrote:
You seem to be arguing a cultural relativist position, which I think frankly is nonsense, even if it sometimes is popular in "critical theory" academic circles.
To expand on this, I think that every language's viewpoint should bridge *all* cultures, to the extent possible, not just all cultures that speak that language.
I agree, but that doesn't mean cultural influence doesn't infiltrate the articles in interesting ways. I've been reading Wolfram's History of the Goths lately, and he uses Ulfila's Gothic version of the Bible to acquire cultural insights, for instance by comparing words that can be translated directly, suggesting concepts integral to the culture, vs loan-words for "foreign" things, like palm trees.
The production of an encyclopedia is more of an un-self-conscious effort of using the language in a normal way. I've heard that the Hopi language doesn't have the usual concept of past and present; if so, Hopi-language articles on physics could be much more revealing than the traditional interviewing by academic linguists.
We can only get this kind of benefit from the participation of multiple native speakers, so I think it's reasonable to set that as a criterion for creation.
Stan
"the usual"?
Most languages don't use grammatical devices to separate time, but rather use separate words if it's relevant and exclude it if it's not.
Hopi does have a distinction between past and present, as do all languages, it's just not nessecarily inherently grammatical.
Mark
On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 12:33:47 -0800, Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
Delirium wrote:
You seem to be arguing a cultural relativist position, which I think frankly is nonsense, even if it sometimes is popular in "critical theory" academic circles.
To expand on this, I think that every language's viewpoint should bridge *all* cultures, to the extent possible, not just all cultures that speak that language.
I agree, but that doesn't mean cultural influence doesn't infiltrate the articles in interesting ways. I've been reading Wolfram's History of the Goths lately, and he uses Ulfila's Gothic version of the Bible to acquire cultural insights, for instance by comparing words that can be translated directly, suggesting concepts integral to the culture, vs loan-words for "foreign" things, like palm trees.
The production of an encyclopedia is more of an un-self-conscious effort of using the language in a normal way. I've heard that the Hopi language doesn't have the usual concept of past and present; if so, Hopi-language articles on physics could be much more revealing than the traditional interviewing by academic linguists.
We can only get this kind of benefit from the participation of multiple native speakers, so I think it's reasonable to set that as a criterion for creation.
Stan
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Delirium wrote:
Or do people actually seriously think we *should* have separate Wikipedias catering to different cultures?
Nope. Now, for your next task, you must (a) call 'bullshit' on the separation of the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedias (b) get this to stick. Good luck ;-D
- d.
Shh... don't say that too loudly, or we'll get a Serbian or a Croatian or a Bosnian in here telling you how they're vastly different languages and how you have no idea what you're talking about and all sorts of other nationalist bull. That isn't to say there aren't differences between the three, just that they're smaller than nationalists would like to have you believe.
Serbian nationalist Mr Nikola Smolenski of en.wikipedia and sr.wikipedia would like us to revise Wikipedia to have Bosnian considered a dialect of Serbian, along with Montenegrin, both of which are very widely considered to be separate languages and if anything are dialects of "Serbo-Croatian" rather than "Serbian". AaMoF, he has been somewhat successful with his POV-pushing regarding Montenegrin - it is obvious, at least to me, when reading [[:en:Montenegrin language]] that he had a hand in multiple revisions, but I don't dare {{sofixit}} because I have seen him tear other users to shreds over it, although admittedly [[User:Montenegrin]]'s contributions bordered on POV-pushing themselves.
Mark
On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:39:44 +0000, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
Or do people actually seriously think we *should* have separate Wikipedias catering to different cultures?
Nope. Now, for your next task, you must (a) call 'bullshit' on the separation of the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedias (b) get this to stick. Good luck ;-D
- d.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
Shh... don't say that too loudly, or we'll get a Serbian or a Croatian or a Bosnian in here telling you how they're vastly different languages and how you have no idea what you're talking about and all sorts of other nationalist bull. That isn't to say there aren't differences between the three, just that they're smaller than nationalists would like to have you believe.
I have a Srpski-speaker who calls "bullshit" on the idea, noting the differences are on the level of 'Merkin vs British, and who I think would happily call it "Serbo-Croato-Montenegro-Bosian" if it could all be made to work together. Just need to get him on Wikipedia.
And I think my views on nationalist POV-pushers are well known ;-)
Really, it's nationalist splitting for no reason that's to Wikipedia's good. But a merge would have to go down well with the contributors, of course.
(I look forward to guerilla bands of interwikiers "translating" articles from one to another by copy'n'paste. And machine transliteration to sr:.)
- d.
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