[Foundation-l] Why do you contribute to Wikipedia?

[Bod Notbod]

On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Lennart Guldbrandsson
<wikihannibal at gmail.com> wrote:

> Right now we in the Bookshelf Project are preparing a number of booklets and
> brochures and you are welcome to participate in the work. We look forward to
> any comments you may have to any of our deliverables:

> http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf_Project#Deliverables

[Also cross-posting from Foundation to English Wikipedia list]

I'll just add my voice to this.

At the moment participation on this project is low. The materials that
are developed in Bookshelf will likely be the first time students and
professionals see something from us in print form.

Now, there is a wonderful person taking a lead role in this project. I
am certainly not going to question their wonderfulness. Their
wonderfulness is not in doubt, as evidenced by their patient treatment
of some of my more snotty moments.

However, bless them, I draw the conclusion that their first language
is not English. I hope I need hardly press the point that this
presents something of a problem when generating readable, professional
literature for an English audience (albeit that the intention is to
translate the materials later).

I will try to mitigate issues arising from this. But there's more
material than I can handle. And, in any case, some of the literature
is aimed at audiences I know little about (such as marketing
professionals).

So please do come and investigate the Bookshelf project.