[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the Wikimedia Foundation

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 11/16/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
[snip]
> relating to their own cultures.  It may be interesting to translate into
> a minority language information about the latest discoveries in nuclear
> physics, or the politics of nations on the other side of the globe, but
> that has nothing to do with the soul of that language.
[snip]

A language can not live without useful material being both available
in it, and being actively written in it.

That said, although it is a laudable goal, I do not believe that
preserving dying languages should be part of Wikimedia's mission.

If the output of our efforts can be used by others to help preserve
languages... If they can translate the content in the major Wikipedias
or if we can find a little space on our servers for them to run
Wikipedias in their languages, all the better. If our efforts to
archive the past knowledge of the world in wikisource, and our efforts
lower the real cost of sharing knowledge through Wiki technology
causes the preservation of languages as a side effect then thats
fantastic!

But preserving languages should not be our mission.