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

[Erik Moeller]

On 5/4/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> It is the lack of communication that creates resentment it is not the fact that
> things are done.

Yes. Why do people from Commons not communicate enough?
- They do not speak the same language as the content users.
- They do not have accounts on the other projects.
- It is too much effort -- the software doesn't assist them.

On the other hand, it is largely not because:
- They are arrogant and like to tell others what to do.
- They don't care about the projects that use the content.
- They are secretly plotting to take over all of Wikimedia.

We all do share your frustration. We all do want to improve
communications and integration. And that makes anger and resentment
unhelpful and reasoned debate necessary.

The technical changes you mention are just one part of it. Simply put,
the problem of maintaining a multilingual media repository that is
transparently used by many projects in many languages is a _hard_
problem. We will need years to fully solve it.

Finally, it's not a one-way problem. Users who access Commons _must_
understand the free content philosophy. Many do not, and that causes
much of the friction. I believe that the recent discussions about
Wikisource show that this philosophy needs to be much more strongly
communicated to all projects and all languages. Ideally, a few months
from now, I'd like every Wikimedia project to have a "free content"
logo with a link to the definition in its footer.

Last mail for the day,
Erik