[Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)

[Jon Harald Søby]

On 1/22/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> Least Wikipedia
> contributorship is present in languages of India, with Punjabi (100 million
> speakers, no Wikipedians) at the bottom.

Actually, there are several Wikipedians who speak Punjabi as a first
language, but they all work in the English Wikipedia [1]. This is,
IMHO, really sad, because I believe that they would be much more
useful for our mission (you know, to "create and distribute a
free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single
person on the planet in their own language" [2]) if they worked on the
Punjabi Wikipedia; the English Wikipedia is crowded enough already.
Perhaps an appeal could be made for them? (Oh, and this goes for all
languages where the natives work on the English Wikipedia instead of
"their own"; like several Indian languages, and Dhivehi, and probably
several more.) I feel it would be better if it came from someone
familiar to them, though, and not an "outsider" like me.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:User_pa-N
[2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-March/020469.html

-- 
Best regards,
Jon Harald Søby

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
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