[Foundation-l] The status of smaller languages on the Wikimedia Commons

[Brianna Laugher]

GerardM said:

>It is abundantly true that we need better support for the localisation
>of our project and of our software. There is a subcommittee that deals
>with communication and translation. I am sure that they were consulted
>before these punitive measures were enacted.

Sorry, what subcommittee? The meta subcommittee that is completely
divorced from commons? (I'm not saying that's their fault or the
Commons' fault, but it's a fact)

folengo said:
>The issue has
>been discussed on the English speaking village pump of Commons.
> But should we consider the English speaking village pump of
>Commons as an authoritative voice in a multilingual project, which
>includes tiny minority languages, and also somewhat less tiny
>minority languages yet less active and dynamic than the English
>speaking community (and represented there mostly by bilingual
>people, non bilingual people being almost absent and
>underrepresented if not unrepresented) ?

What is the alternative???? How do you honestly propose that we
communicate with all these monolingual people?

As you know Teofilio I have supported some of your measures (like the
&uselang links one) and disagreed with others (parallel category
structures), and as it happens I disagree with the "hiding" links
approach of Arnomane. Although the Arabic front page is quite
appalling: literally one paragraph. It is the *only* page in
[[Category:Commons-ar]]. I did suggest to an admin candidate who spoke
Arabic that they might like to update it substantially. But if native
speakers are not interested in maintaining their translations what
exactly are us non-speakers supposed to do about it? We cannot force
them. They have to take the initiative. But they are more interested
in their Wikipedia or other projects - of course! The vast majority of
English and German speakers are too, actually. These projects are just
lucky enough to have a "surplus of interest" to allow something
resembling a Commons community to exist.

Realistic, workable, technically-feasible ideas to promote
multilinguality, I will always support. But it is unrealistic to
expect the people who are interested in the Commons to consult over
100 different language groups on ANYTHING let alone EVERYTHING.

Look at the Village Pumps - look at how active they are.
(als) Commons:Brünnele No topics.
(ar?) Commons:قهوه‌خانه One line, not even set up. Should probably be deleted.
(bg) Commons:Разговори One topic in October 2005.
(ca?) Commons:La taverna 6 topics, last active November 2005.
(de) Commons:Forum Active.
(en) Commons:Village pump Active.
(es) Commons:Café Active.
(fi) Commons:Kahvihuone No topics.
(fr) Commons:Bistro Maintained, but not very active (6 topics).
(gl) Commons:A Taberna Maintained, not very active (9 topics).
(he) Commons:המזנון 1 topic, unanswered.
(hu) Commons:Kocsmafal One line, no topics.
(it) Commons:Bar italiano Moderately active, seems to be maintained by
our one native Italian speaking admin.
(ja) Commons:井戸端 Moderately active. I see the most recent discussion
concerns Captchas - another technical limitation we never asked for
but had to work around (and I recall being accused of "English
villainy" on this occasion too)
(lb) Commons:Stamminet No topics.
(nl) Commons:De Kroeg 4 topics, remarkably unused considering the
NL.wp controversy. (We can never solve problems on Commons if they are
not discussed there...)
(no) Commons:Tinget Maintained, not very active (7 topics).
(pl) Commons:Bar Surprisingly inactive, 4 topics.
(pt) Commons:Esplanada Maintained, moderately active (24 topics).
(ru) Commons:Форум 2 topics, seems to be unmaintained and inactive.
(sl) Commons:Pod lipo No topics.
(sv) Commons:Bybrunnen Moderately active/active, maintained.
(zh-hans) Commons:互助客栈 4 topics, but basically unused.
(zh-hant) Commons:互助客棧 No topics.

So of the 20-odd groups, there are not even ten that have any decent
amount of activity. Realistically, what do you propose we do? How
should we conduct discussions?

To me the bottom line is that the whole thing is volunteer, just like
everything else. That means people only translate if they are
interested. We can't force them.

As you criticise us, please consider coming and helping us improve. It
is hard for us to be everything to everyone when very few people want
to devote much time to maintaining or improving the place.

Help us harass the developers for automatic translation of templates,
automatic language selection based on browser settings and/or
drop-down menu for language choice on the main page, for adoption of
Duesentrieb's proposed category translation scheme via interwikis.
These are just a few of the proposals that we dream of being
implemented but have no idea if it will ever happen.

Join the Commons mailing list and start throwing out proposals:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l

Brianna
[[user:pfctdayelise]]