[Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

[Mark Williamson]

Well, most of the more successful recently-created Wikis did not have
translated interfaces until they left the incubator, by which point
some of them were already relatively large.

Mark

On 27/03/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/03/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2007/3/27, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> >
> > > As far as Gerard and I have talked about this issue and I understand
> > > it, it seems like a sensible policy to me. If you want a new language,
> > > it should not be that difficult to at least prepare the groundwork for
> > > MediaWiki localization before you start. If you cannot even get that
> > > organized, how are you ever going to write a useful encyclopedia?
> > >
> >
> > What if your interest is in writing an encyclopedia, and not in translating
> > software? If you have 10 people happily writing articles, but none of them
> > having interest in going through all 200+ MediaWiki-pages, does that mean
> > that it can never be an encyclopedia?
>
> Exactly. There is a lot of crud in the MediaWiki messages. Even when
> you start a new wiki in English, how many people go through the
> messages to localise them and create all the referenced pages such as
> Project:About? (I sure don't.) As opposed to, how many dive into the
> exciting project of content creation?
>
> Why is localisation so important? The messages will be translated as
> the wiki progresses. I am not convinced that localisation before
> launch is more likely to ensure a successful project. Is there some
> research or some cases that show this?
>
> regards,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
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