[Foundation-l] It Is not Us

Fri Jul 1 14:01:06 UTC 2011

I think people should be more flexible in their postings. It is OK to
write a message in Japanese and also in not quite perfect, or even rather
poor English. Send both. And if there is no English just use Japanese,
even on this list. We can all go to Google translate and see more or less
what it says. The world is moving simultaneously in two directions:
English as lingua franca and towards mulilingualism.

I have no real hope of learning Japanese, but if someone is young and
spending a lot of time on a multilingual site they are going to learn
other languages naturally. People can be very fluent in their native
language. There is no reason they should not use it and say exactly what
they mean.

Fred

> Well, respectfully I disagree, Gerard, on your view, or analysis of
> the stats. Edit is used vague on our community: from writing a FA
> almost alone to doing a WiiGnome task. We need both, but those two
> activities require not a same amount of communication skills as well
> involvement to wiki editing commuity lives.
>
> We have a certain number of people who edit several languages. I edit
> English Wikiquote and Japanese (even most of those edits are on talks
> or project name spaces). I know some translators who edit several
> languages - but I'm not sure we assure every those "multilingual"
> editors edit main namespace of each projects mainly. I was honored to
> be called Aphaia on all wikis once by a certain editor who visited
> #wikipedia.ja, but it didn't mean I was then active as writer of
> articles - rather it may have meant I created interlang links
> aggressively.
>
> So I'd like to ask in which way we keep and assure our community as
> multilingual? Honestly I have been thinking this for years seriously.
> Even on meta, it was not once I was accused just because I left a note
> in Japanese - when I had a hardship to express my opinion enough in
> English. I remember still how I was accused then - I was accused
> because I didn't write in English "the language everyone can read".
>
> How then can such a community multilingual? Or in other words, what
> have we been doing for making our community multilingual? We have
> devout translators - and always I thank them and feel honored to
> collaborate with them,  but, or because I have been working with them,
> I feel we need more other ways to assure and empower multilingual
> aspects of our Wikimedia community.
>
> Cheers,
>
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 3:37 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> Recently research showed that the majority of our editors is multi
>> lingual
>> and edits on multiple projects. This is without considering Commons ...
>> I
>> have a user on 491 projects and I am certainly not the only one who has
>> many
>> many profiles.
>>
>> As we did not know the extend to which we generally edit in many
>> languages,
>> we have not considered the needs of this majority. Our view has always
>> been
>> on single projects. We can do better and we should do better for our
>> majority.
>> Thanks,
>>      GerardM
>>
>> http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2011/06/in-defence-of-social-networks-ii.html
>>
>> On 28 June 2011 13:27, Peter Coombe <thewub.wiki at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 28 June 2011 08:35, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > Hoi,
>>> > I have read the replies that are against social networking
>>> functionality.
>>> In
>>> > my opinion you are all missing the point. Our projects are crowd
>>> sourced
>>> > projects and we do not support collaboration, we do not support
>>> special
>>> > projects. We need to.
>>>
>>> Yeah! Special projects with a narrower focus would be great, how about
>>> giving them a catchy name like "WikiProjects". Maybe we could give
>>> every article a "talk page" for users to collaborate on. Heck, let's
>>> go mad and give users their own talk pages too! Now if only there was
>>> some protocol for real time chats we could use...
>>>
>>> > Social networking in our context will not be a Facebook, a Twitter
>>> or an
>>> > IRC. It will have the parts that we need and it will support our
>>> activities.
>>> > Thanks,
>>>
>>> I'm all for improving the interface around these things, but exactly
>>> what functionality are you asking for that we don't already have?
>>>
>>> Pete / the wub
>>>
>>>
>>> > On 27 June 2011 18:24, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 11:43 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>>> >> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> > Hoi.
>>> >> > Wikipedia should be more like a social network. It provides us
>>> with
>>> the
>>> >> > opportunity to reach out to people when we want to crowd source
>>> some
>>> >> > activity. We have a problem in retaining people particular
>>> newbies.
>>> When
>>> >> we
>>> >> > show a social side to our work on open content (not only
>>> encyclopaedic
>>> >> > content) we stand a better chance we are likely to do better.
>>> >> > Thanks,
>>> >> >     GerardM
>>> >>
>>> >> That's an interesting theory. Wikipedia is sort of the epitome of a
>>> >> social enterprise, and all of the good and the bad in the project
>>> can
>>> >> be traced to its social nature. Trying to make it more like a
>>> "social
>>> >> network" can only be interpreted as making it more like some other
>>> >> social network, perhaps by integrating purely social mechanisms a
>>> la
>>> >> Facebook. Of course, that could either help or hinder, with no way
>>> to
>>> >> know for sure in advance; perhaps encouraging more social
>>> interaction
>>> >> would exacerbate and personalize the disputes and conflicts that
>>> drive
>>> >> people away.
>>> >>
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>
>
>
> --
> KIZU Naoko / $BLZDE>0;R(B
> member of Wikimedians in Kansai  / $B4X@>%&%#%-%a%G%#%"%f!<%62q(B
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