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

[Samuel Klein]

I agree with Brianna here 100%.

On Fri, 17 Nov 2006, Brianna Laugher wrote:

>> == Vision Statement ==
>>
>> '''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
>> in the sum of all knowledge.'''
>>
>> Comment:
>>
>> One version from the Retreat contained the phrase "in their own
>> language" at the end, but we removed that later--I made the argument
>> that there are different ways to address language barriers, e.g. by
>> teaching another language like English and then giving access to
>> learning resources in that language. IMHO we should not explicitly
>> endorse or reject any particular _strategy_ of knowledge dissemination
>> in our vision statement.
>
> The more I ponder this statement the more I dislike it. Forget
> dissemination -- what about knowledge collection? As if knowledge only
> exists in English, or major European languages. The "language barrier"
> goes both ways. To access some of the world's oldest and most classic
> texts, we should also advocate teaching everyone classical Chinese.
> How likely is that? The gift of accessing information in your native
> language should not be underestimated by those who are lucky enough to
> take it for granted.

It is not simply a gift.  As you suggest, treating this issue lightly 
limits the efficacy of collection.  More knowledge is lost when there are 
no native speakers trained as archivists, because archiving or gathering 
is something done [in all languages] by people who only speak a limited 
set of languages.

> The principle of multilinguality is what really gives Wikimedia
> *global* participation and therefore WMF a global voice and global
> influence. That is something amazing that I am not really aware of
> anyone else... anywhere... doing on the same scale.

Absolutely.  It is not only special to Wikimedia, it is one of the
more beautiful goals of the organization, despite having been a difficult 
one to pursue to date.  It has led to Wikimedia being one of the prime 
places where one can observe debates about small-language classification,
naming, and categorization -- because we have a practical use for the
decisions we are making.


--SJ


> It deserves proper recognition -- I think the "in their own language" 
> should be re-appended.
>
> regards,
> Brianna
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