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

[David Gerard]

On 20/11/06, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Nov 2006, Brianna Laugher wrote:

> > 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.


Indeed. Look at recent discussions on wikitech-l of how MediaWiki
implements usability in multiple languages - rather than
"internationalisation", which has tended to mean "write it in English
and bolt other languages on the side," everything they do has hundreds
of languages allowed for very early in the design.


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


Utterly and totally. I really don't see a case for having removed it at all.


- d.