[Foundation-l] Meta-arbcom (was: the foundations of...)

[Milos Rancic]

On 1/5/08, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> That if a working team should be multilingual or not depends on its
> purpose highly: what they would like to solve, whom they would like to
> involve or interact etc. And also there is always a possibility to ask
> for help of the people not directly involved. Like we are doing on
> OTRS, some committees etc.

I agree. If we have problems with people who don't speak English, options are:

1. If it is some of the languages with relevant number of speakers who
are talking English, then ArbCom would be able to find someone who
would help.

2. A lot of languages have their primary second language (in the most
of cases English, but may be French, Russian, Dutch, German,
Arabic...). In this case ArbCom may switch to the first solution (with
some variants).

3. If we are talking about really small language without a lot of
possibilities for talk in other language, then ArbCom should try to
make some solution. At least, it should show a good will with
investigating the case.

4. If we are talking about a person who are not willing to accept some
help in translation, then it is not a problem of ArbCom, but a problem
of that person.

However, I am sure that the most of the cases would be solved by using
1st and 2nd solutions.

In all cases it should be mentioned that ArbCom *really* prefers
English as a lingua franca, but if a person is not able to write (or
to understand) English, ArbCom will try find some way how to help.
(And this message should be written in as many as possible languages
:) )