[Foundation-l] Priorities

[Samuel Klein]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> On 10/24/07, SJ Klein <sj at laptop.org> wrote:
>> You don't address the case of large languages with small wikis; and many
>> speakers who have no other fluent language, but don't use wikipedia.
>
> I think you are making an assumption about them not using Wikipedia.  :)
>
> Honestly, by the numbers its fairly clear that computer/internet
> access and simple literacy are bigger barriers to Wikipedia access
> than WP not being useful in a particular language.

Agreed.

> For example, What percentage of Swahili speakers do not speak one of
> English, French, Portuguese, Spanish or Arabic?

(or German)
certainly almost none of those with internet access.


>> We could use a hotlist of language communities that obviously need support
>> (active online, few secondary languages, active in non-WP communities,
>> slow-growing wiki; with extra weight given to languages whose
>> speakers have to overcome many obstacles to edit wikipedia, and are
>> often only able to read static, offline, perhaps smuggled mirrors).
>
> But use it for what?

To identify places where there are bottlenecks to effective use that we 
don't understand, and that the larger community can try to overcome.  The 
early stages of community building aren't easy.  Communities in which 
'contributing to Wikipedia' isn't understood are still undrerepresented in 
every language, including their native ones... and also undrerepresented 
in meta discussion about how to make the projects more effective at 
realizing our shared goals.

> There is a simple and natural mechanism to ensure that resources are
> appropriately distributed: Do nothing beyond setting up the site.   If
> a language needs and can use a Wikipedia it will develop.   This
> pretty little theory falls down in some cases: places where there
> isn't internet access, places with oppressive governments.  Soliving
> those problems is outside of our scope, and better accomplished by
> other orgs, such as OLPC. Ever heard of them? ;)

Heh.  The theory also falls down in places where a community doesn't quite 
'get' Wikipedia yet; this seems within scope.  "setting up the site" isn't 
always enough to let a million-strong community of net-savvy users grok
the nuances of wikipedia.  perhaps "setting up the site, helping with
translation of the core strings, principles, and pages/mechanisms, finding 
a few eloquent people who can write about the project and its goals in 
that language..."

There is a good deal we can do to speed the development of a language 
project to the point of sustainable (growth+communication with others). 
Teaching them about bot creation, helping them overcome early growing 
pains, and pointing them to the most important channels for bootstrapping 
and tapping polyglot enthusiasts who roam the wikiways and may not have
heard the call to, er, words.

SJ