[Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"

[Ting Chen]

Noein wrote:
> I don't know if wikipedia should have a chapter specific to children
> because it would be culturally biased by our views about education.
>   

It will be biased on the common sense of the culture, in which language 
that version is written, on how education should be. As well as every 
Wikipedia version has some sort of cultural bias in those cultures, in 
which that language is used and spoken. And that is just fine.

> I think it would be better to aim for a specific psychological profile
> and skills, ie:
> - - for the non-semantic persons (who don't rely much on words), more
> direct images (or photos) and animations (or videos). For example
> explaining the size of the sun and of planets showing their relative
> size works better than sheer numbers for most of people, or at least is
> a necessary intermediate step for understanding the numbers.
> - - for people not fluent with vocabulary, use only the 500 (200? 1000?)
> most common english words (a bot could signal rare words)
> - - for people with few abstracting skills, use concrete objects and
> familiar analogies to explain (like explaining the curve of 3d space
> with a sheet of paper)
> - - replace complex equations with qualitative explanations
> - - Etc.
>   

These are all interesting possible projects. And I am totally fine with 
them, as far as there are enough volunteers who would build up a lasting 
community which would dedicate on those projects. And that's the basic 
thrashold that a new project should master.

> Also, for illiterate persons, it would be great to include a "play"
> button that would automatically read the article out loud. It should be
> included so that illiterate persons don't have to install their own
> text-to-speech software.
>   

Since Wikipedia is a web application and not a rich client application 
at least the browser must provide support for such features.

Greetings
Ting