[Foundation-l] WMF 2015 strategic plan and multilingualism

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The Wikimedia Foundation is a five hundred pound gorilla in the field of
building language resources in the languages that have a smaller footprint
on the Internet. I am convinced that for a million Euros we can make sure
that all languages have technically a level playing field.

I have proposed to spend 100,000,- Euro and this will make major
improvements for the scripts, the fonts and the standards for the languages
we have a Wikipedia for. This is given the current budget chicken feed.
Thanks,
      GerardM

On 5 March 2011 22:58, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5 March 2011 21:48, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The notion that everyone working on Wikipedia and MediaWiki is a
> volunteer
> > is a fallacy.
> > The one thing I have been advocating is that the different languages and
> > scripts are performing technically on a level playing field. This is not
> the
> > case and there is a lot that can be achieved with modest investments. At
> > this stage we do not want to invest in specific languages to create
> content.
> > If a language is viable and can operate on a level playing field the
> > communities will do their thing in the way that fits for them.
>
>
> Yes. The advocates of a minimal Foundation are missing the point that
> "in their own language" is an extremely good reason to spend money on
> the necessary translations and so forth.
>
> The Chapter structure is a brilliant way to get this sort of thing
> locally self-organising and not be run from San Francisco. But as Amir
> points out, this results in very patchy coverage.
>
> Really. Take the sentence:
>
> "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."
>
> - and think of how to fund everything that implies, or to fund its
> encouragement, or to fund encouraging the funding of its
> encouragement. The WMF as it stands is *tiny* for such a goal.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>