[Foundation-l] A heads up

[Magnus Manske]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 10:13 PM, Gerard
Meijssen<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> OK, there are *many* pictures of a marc'h on Commons... Now pretend that you
> cannot find what this is in English. Try to find it on Commons.

Noone disputes that this is a problem. And if we had an unlimited
number of volunteers fluent in all languages adding descriptions to
images, it would easily be fixed. But if that were the case, we
wouldn't have this discussion in the first place.

Image descriptions are, first and foremost, limited by the languages a
user (who is willing to write these descriptions) speaks. Of all these
languages, the user will (if he has time and ability to write one or
two descriptions) chose maybe his native one, and the one that will be
useful for most people - English. (And yes, more people speak Chinese,
but few Commons editors do).

Once again, ugly reality triumphs over wishful thinking. At least
until we can get some 10K Indonesian-speaking editors.

Magnus