[Foundation-l] An observation on languages

[Delphine Ménard]

On Jan 25, 2008 6:10 AM,  <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> Looking over this list for the past couple of months, several key issues
> have been discussed. I notice, however, that most of the discussion is by
> members of the English projects, with the notable exception of Gerard. In
> comparison, two years ago on Foundation-l and three and four years ago on  Wikipedia-l
> (pre-Foundation-l), there was much more vigorous participation from
> representatives of other projects. In fact, that is what made Wikipedia a truly
> international organization.
>
> I wonder where so many of the participants of those discussions have
> drifted. Is the discussion taking place on chapter lists, at the expense of  the
> Foundation umbrella, or is it taking place on internal-l, at the expense of
> transparency.

As far as I can make out, neither.

I'd have one explanation though. There comes a point where reading in
a language that is not yours, on a list that sprouts an average of 20
emails of more than 2 pages a day, very often on a level of English
that is hard to follow, just prevents one, as a non-English speaker,
from participating. I consider myself as having a rather good level of
English, but sorry, when you get a thread dominated by lengthy English
speakers, I just give up.

Apart from that, I find that people who have little to say on a
subject, or who actually answer "on the side", are somehow also too
present, and answer faster than their shadow [1], often depleting a
thread of its substance in the very first emails to veer towards
uninteresting side conversations, or even considerations that have
nothing to do with the subject at hand. Which, for those who might
have something to say about a subject but need a little time to
formulate their answer, means that they'd be going back to a dead
thread when they're ready to participate.

To summarize: Level of English and fast pace of the list. I would
personally not look further for an explanation.

Delphine
[1] see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Luke
-- 
~notafish
http://blog.notanendive.org

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