Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote in part:
Just wondering - how much would it cost to hire translators that would translate all contents of English Wikipedia to some 20 or so languages ? Common sense suggests that translating is much easier than developing anew, yet we keep doing it the hard way.
Actually, I think that the hard way is /good/.
If you're writing an article in, say, Polish, and you read, say, English, then by all means, use an English article (if any exists) as a source. But otherwise, I think that your time is best spent (and this is true whether you pay for your time or not) writing a new article based on the available sources. This is because it gives fresh ideas and fresh input. Then when somebody comes along that /does/ know both languages, the different present takes on the subject can be moved in /both/ directions.
Note that the idea of time management is quite important to my idea. Rewriting an article from scratch when a good article is available is not a wise use of time; translate when you can do that. But when the translation can't be done now, for whatever reason, then we should welcome the new article from scratch.
(I'm not sure that anything that I've said actually disagrees with you.)
-- Toby