[Foundation-l] Language proposal policy

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
What we do is done to make information available. Our main objective is not
the creation of content, but the publication of content to readers. It is a
well established fact that localisation is one of the best methods of making
our content more accessible to our readers.

Andre, you and I are fortunate that both the English, the German, the Dutch
and the French Wikipedias have a continued great localisation. These are the
languages that a typical Dutch person will read. Consequently ou do not know
the problem of limited localisation because you do not experience it.

When you say that it is a bother for editors that they have to localise, I
will agree. However, all this work is necessary to make the content they
create more accessible to the readers. It is the readers and getting more
readers that everything centres around.
Thanks,
        GerardM

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 8:39 AM, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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