[Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing

[Christiano Moreschi]

No it doesn't. The greatest tool for the education of those poor sods in the 3rd world is the English Wikipedia, plus Spanish, French, etc. But mostly en. Here's why. 

1. It's the biggest. It's the best. You learn the most. 
2. You get to practice reading English at the same time.  English is THE global language and will become even more so, mostly because of the economic dominance of the US and the fact that it's so easy to learn. You can learn to speak understandable English in a month: even if/when China takes over economically, we'll still do business in English. I know hundreds of people who can speak English as a second language: I know not one non-Chinese who speaks fluent Mandarin. Mr Botswana will do far better economically from en than he will from botswanian wiki. 
3. It is not run by monomaniacal ethnic zealots, who find smaller wikis laughably easy to take over. Even ru wiki has a problem with this, I've heard. On en, people like me spend hours making sure that history is not distorted by fanatics and that our narratives offer an accurate, rational fair picture. There's little food for fundamentalists. God knows what crap you find on smaller wikis with less editorial oversight. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Bombay, this seems particularly relevant.

Conclusion: let them all fail, bar the big ones.

CM

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.



> Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:04:43 +0100
> From: effeietsanders at gmail.com
> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
> 
> Please, speak for yourself :) I *do* care, and if there is an easy and
> definite solution, I'd love to embrace it. I think we should care about our
> little siblings, about the smaller languages as we call them, and support
> them if possible. I can only hope you were being extremely ironic :)
> 
> Because bear in mind, especially in those languages, a complemented work of
> human knowledge really adds something. In the large languages, we already
> had encyclopediae and dictionaries of good quality. Wikipedia is better
> sure, and has improved our lives. But now just imagine that you are living
> in Botswana, and on school (if you're lucky) there is very little material
> available... and now there is an encyclopedia... In YOUR language! Even if
> it only contains 1000 articles, you can already learn a lot from it. You can
> improve your knowledge, and increase the odds in competition with the
> western world. It won't do miracles of course, but every tiny little bit
> helps.
> 
> And now imagine that this goes for all languages. And not only
> encyclopediae, but also learning books, dictionaries and perhaps one day
> even other collections. Wikipedia *does* make a difference. (and I'd almost
> add: donate now ;-) )
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Lodewijk
> 
> 2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk>
> 
> >
> >  Do we care that 80%
> > > of our projects are failing?
> > > Thanks,
> > >       GerardM
> >
> > No. Why should we? Nobody actually reads shit like the albanian wikibooks
> > (doesn't matter if that doesn't exist, you get my point). Such projects
> > exist purely the monomaniacal benefit of the editor(s), not any readers. Let
> > them all fail, with the exception of Wikipedias en,fr,de,ru,etc + wikt and
> > commons.
> >
> > CM
> >
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