[Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

[Arbeo M]

2007/3/27, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> What is required is that some localisation has to have happened. It does
> not
> say full localisation. At this moment it is not possible to localise in
> the
> first place. The notion that a policy should be changed because there is a
> current stumbling block is silly.


The subcommittee's efforts to develop a framework that leads to less "mess"
than we've had in the past are praiseworthy. That's why I'm not speaking out
against the subcommittee in general. But bearing in mind the fact that we
don't live in a perfect world, I believe large parts of the Community would
expect the subcommittee's members to opt for the lesser of two "evils" if
necessary, i. e.

either
1) having a number of flourishing new wikis providing real benefit to people
who don't happen to speak Dutch, German or the like - without a localized
interface right from the start

or
2) not having _any_ progress in terms of multilingualism at all

I never denied that having the interface translated beforehand is the
preferable option but we must not lose sight of the primary objective
- which is content not software. Besides that, IMHO a reasonable degree of
accessibility has always been a vital factor to Wikipedia's success. Let's
keep on improving the technical side but let's watch out not to choke off
all positive new input, too.

--Arbeo