[Foundation-l] Language proposal policy

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 8:19 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> What we need more then new projects is supporting our existing languages.
> Even for languages like Turkish, one of our bigger projects, we have only
> 74% of the MediaWiki messages and 25% of the WMF used extensions localised.

I would say: so what? As you say, it is one of our bigger projects,
and it seems to be doing well. If then still MediaWiki is not
localized as you would like it, maybe that means that localization of
MediaWiki is not thought by everybody to be as important as you think
is? Wikimedia is there in the first place for making encyclopedias,
textbooks and dictionaries. Projects should be supported with what
they need to do that better. And I don't think that translating
MediaWiki, at least beyond what the average editor comes across on a
regular basis, would be high on that list. Apparently the Turkish
agree with me. Translating the interface in many languages is a nice
thing to have, and I am happy you are working on that. But I do feel
you are putting way too much emphasis on it, to an extent that is
bothering languages more than supporting them. Creating a betawiki,
and inviting people to come over there is supporting languages.
Forcing them to go a certain distance with it before they can get
their project is bothering them. Then you are using the Wikipedias
(and Wiktionaries and other projects) to build the software, rather
than the other way around.

-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com