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

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
You added some pearl of wisdom at the end. It is obviously wasted for the
people like me who do not understand Latin. In a similar way, if these other
people do not read and understand English Spanish French etc, they are not
informed with our pearls of wisdom..
Thanks,
       GerardM

2008/11/30 Christiano Moreschi <moreschiwikiman at hotmail.co.uk>

>
> 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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