[Foundation-l] A simple question on languages.

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Jan 23, 2008 9:42 PM, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24/01/2008, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There are more kinds of resources that need to be allocated than
> > simply turning on Wikis, which is why understanding the payoff is
> > important.
> >
> > For example, on a multi-lingual project like Commons it might be a
> > reasonable requirement that all policies, featured image descriptions,
> > etc be translated into the top N languages at a minimum.  Requiring
> > translations into hundreds of languages would be a impressive waste of
> > resources. By knowing the tradeoffs we can make better decisions.
>
> What resources are you speaking of?

Any kind of resources.  The fundraising video would have us expecting
WMF to be somehow spending money on the native languages of the
developing world in the future.  How should that money best be spent?
Part of the answer depends on knowing the impact of languages.

> Volunteer resources?
> If so, I find the question fairly moot, as we can't really "require" anything.

Common misconception. You know better, think about it for a bit. We
can exert pressure in all sorts of ways even in our existing volunteer
systems. Consider commons, "To be featured an image's description must
be translated into at least three languages, including at least two
from this list".  That would have a clear impact on common's
accessibility to people of many languages.

Even without stuffing it in as a requirement having clear information
about the impact of supporting other languages will allow us to make a
better argument to the volunteers, and providing that will hopefully
shift their priorities a little.

Going beyond that, other heavily volunteer organizations are quite
able to set clear goals and achieve them.  That we are somewhat broken
in that regard doesn't mean we will never get better, or shouldn't get
better.