[Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[Sarah Stierch]

>
> I partially disagree. Certainly it is very important from the perspective
> of
> providing material about the native countries of those languages.
>
>
I don't partially, I completely disagree. While these communities might not
be English based, and many of the members don't even speak English, we wall
want to see every single Wikipedia, regardless of language, grow and
flourish with information from cultures universal.

I have often found better articles in German (where "German Indianer" books
are some of the best selling books of all time and entire festivals are
based around Native American Plains culture) about Indigenous North American
communities than in English. Cross-language is a necessity in this global
age. And sharing content with other language based Wikis can also help to
update resources, break stereotypes about cultures and encourage respect in
regards those communities. It also allows people to understand that there
are "others" out there. It takes away from the centric-aspects of some
language Wikipedias, something that people often accuse English Wikipedia of
doing.

Information is the language of Wikipedia as a whole, and we must learn how
to make the utmost use of that language in order to continue our mission to
disseminate knowledge on a worldwide scale.

-Sarah