[Foundation-l] Priorities

[GerardM]

Hoi,
When you speak about people's own language, you should consider their mother
tongue first. Information has the most impact when it is provided in
people's mother tongue. In education, a teacher who understands and speaks
the language of his students has a bigger impact then someone who speaks the
officious language. You may have observed this in the schools you have been
to.

I assume that you are under the impression that I want the WMF to pay people
for creating content. First of all I did not say this, second of all there
is more mileage in ensuring that languages are enabled to be used in
MediaWiki. This may mean that we invest in the creation of some Unicode
glyphs, some fonts. This does enable people to use their language in the way
they know it. There are many more strategies that take investments that will
promote the creation of content in such languages without paying people to
create such content. Having said all that.. why should it necessarily be a
problem to pay people for creating content ?? It does not even have to be
WMF money..

When the English language Wikipedia started, it was small. People saw its
potential and invested their time, their effort and now we have this
wonderful resource. There are people who see a similar value in a Wikipedia
in Twi, Wolof, Xhosa. The argument that it is not yet as good as the English
Wikipedia is irrelevant. People see that the potential is there. A Wikipedia
in these languages can be made to work. With dedication such a project will
become useful, valuable, educational.

You assume that people prefer to learn in another language. You forget that
many do not have a choice. With your assumption that people prefer to be
educated in other languages then their mother tongue, you even deny them
that choice. It is an established fact that people will hear and understand
better when a message is brought to them in their own language. By insisting
on educating people in a "world language" we will not provide the best
education that we could provide.

Thanks,
    GerardM


On 10/24/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/24/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> [snip]
> >  It is a part of the core to make knowledge available
> > to everyone in his or her own language.
> [snip]
>
> Actually,
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vision
>
> And what exactly would "own language" mean for a person who must use a
> word-wide language like French in order to speak to people in his own
> country?
>
> > Diverting funds to that end for
> > an endangered language is not contrary to our mission.
>
> If we must speak of doing something to save a dying language it is...
>
> We should speak about educating people.  As soon as you've forgotten
> about the people and focused on the languages you've gone off track
> with respect to the mission.
>
> Mathias Damour <mathias.damour at laposte.net> wrote:
> > You should consider that the main cost being writing articles, it is not
> > only made for but _by_ one language speakers.
> > I would go further and say that it's not only the fact to have the
> > content (articles) available to read that helps to "save" a language but
> > the very work to write them as well.
> [snip]
> > Did anyone but you told about people being paid rather than being
> > volunteer to edit small language Wikipedia ?
>
> Thats exactly what has been advocated.  It's being advocated by some
> that the focus of the Foundation's spending should be to pay people to
> create content in languages which are dying, because the WP's in those
> languages are too small to be useful.
>
> If this isn't your position, then we have no reason to argue. :)
>
> Unlike some of the folks around here I haven't argued that English
> Wikipedia should be the only one. :) Nor have I argued that we should
> educate the rest of the world only by teaching them english and giving
> them ENWP.   ... But where people already know, or are rapidly
> learning an established world wide language, our efforts are best
> spent making sure those resources are excellent rather than trying to
> redo our work in the dozen local languages which we may find in
> parallel to a world-wide language in a particular country.
>
> Having open Wikipedia sites in many small languages, even indisputably
> dead ones, is a fairly low cost exercise. I support it.  If people
> want to write in a Wikipedia for a dying language.. thats great, or at
> least harmless.
>
> But to go on and say "X wikipedia is too small, we need to sponsor its
> development" when X wikipedia is small because people would rather
> write and read French, Portuguese, or English than X is an error it
> terms of fulfilling the mission and vision (see above).
>
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