[Foundation-l] Following the conventions: seperating Wikisource

[GerardM]

Hoi,
My position is:

   - Any language has to be the language it claims to be
   - I am actively involved in getting MultiLingual MediaWiki developed
   - I never stated that Wikisource or Commons should not have
   multilingual content for all the right reasons

NB All languages deserve support. I am fully in favour of Wikisource
supporting extinct languages and languages that have little presence on the
web. The presence within Wikisource however has to support these languages,
something that will be improved on when the content is accurately tagged.

The consequence is that we DO have an interest making sure that languages
are indeed languages they proclaim to be and we ARE happy and willing to
make sure that there are codes to indicate those linguistic entities that do
not have a code yet.

The consequence is that once MLMW has been realised, we expect it to be used
particularly by http://Wikisource.org.

The consequence is that there are good reasons why the language committee
has an interest in the languages supported in any Wikimedia Foundation
projects. This is what this committee is there for.

Thanks,
   GerardM

On 6/7/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> GerardM wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > I am well aware of where Google stands on supporting languages. I have
> > discussed this for two years now with one of their language engeneers.
> You
> > underestimate the importance that the proper language codes should have.
> You
> > are not aware on the importance that is given to project of the
> Wikimedia
> > Foundation. It  is exactly because we aim to do justice and promote
> language
> > diversity that we invest in Multilingual MediaWiki. And it is with a lot
> of
> > frustration that for all kinds of reasons, good and bad, it is still not
> > finished.
> >
> > If Google and Internet is only about being able to find things on the
> > Internet, than only languages with a more or less fixed orthography will
> be
> > found. Most content of other languages can only be found like a needle
> in
> > the proverbial haystack. This problem is made worse because of people
> that
> > mean well but have no clue about the complexity of the problem.
> >
> > Indicating what language a text is in, is vitaly important. It is
> > particularly important for those language that do not have much of a
> foot
> > print on the Internet.
> >
>
> It seems to me that the approach you seem to take does not do a good job
> of supporting your stated intentions.
>
> If you are in favor of using the correct language codes for the content
> in Wikisource, then support a mechanism that will allow for that to be
> accomplished, but don't use the lack of such a mechanism as a means of
> preventing said content from being added.
>
> There are several good reasons for some languages to be gathered into a
> single wiki (extinct languages, languages with a very limited corpus,
> etc.). To insist that source texts must reside in their own wiki so that
> the correct language codes are used is "letting the tail wag the dog,"
> so to speak: it's putting things in the wrong order of priority, it's
> letting an implementation limitation in MediaWiki determine which source
> texts we collect. To me, that just seems silly.
>
> -Rich Holton
>
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