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

[Marco Chiesa]

Jon Harald Søby wrote:

>
>
>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
>
>  
>
Well, I'd say it is a rather complicated issue. I think contributors 
from every culture should be welcome on all wikipedias, particularly the 
English-language one which, willing or not, is the biggest one and the 
one most people translate from. So, the best thing would be to invite 
Punjabi (or whatever other language) to contribute both to en.wiki (to 
spread their culture to the rest of the world) and to the their own 
mother tongue wikipedia (to give quality content to the local people).

I know very little of the situation in India, especially how many people 
which have access to the internet are not fluent in English since, for 
the time being, these would be the people who would benefit most from a 
wikipedia in their own language. I know it's not the most appropriate 
example, but it looks to me a situation comparable to many regional 
languages wikis (Italian regional languages for example): in most cases 
people won't get more information that what they would get from the 
national language wiki (and they're probably more fluent in the national 
language as well). If the contributors from India/Pakistan/... almost 
consider English as their own first or second mother tongue, it doesn't 
surprise me that they  read and write on the en wikipedia.

Marco (Cruccone)