[WikiEN-l] What is the fundamental goal of the project?

[Francis Tyers]

Some machine translation is good, unfortunately nothing that works
between English and any other language at the moment. Please don't tar
it all with the same brush though :)

Fran

On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 17:27 +0100, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> You could try a machine translation, but if the intended audience don't
> understand the article because it's badly translated you've achieved
> nothing. That's why we don't do it. It is worse than nothing, because it can
> confuse the reader.
> 
> Mgm
> 
> 
> On 1/25/07, Omegatron <omegatron+wikienl at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > In Jimbo's 2005 "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" post, he described the
> > purpose of the project:
> >
> >    Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a
> >    free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single
> >    person on the planet in their own language.
> >
> > Does this still hold true?  There have been a lot of major changes in
> > policy in the months since, which, we all hope, are supportive of our
> > fundamental goals.  I think almost everyone who contributes to the
> > project agrees completely with this mission and wants to maintain it.
> > But if you think about it, the statement actually contains several
> > goals:
> >
> > * free
> > * (create an) encyclopedia
> > * of the highest possible quality
> > * (distribute) to every single person on the planet
> > * in their own language
> >
> > In fact, these goals occasionally conflict.  For instance, machine
> > translations are considered "worse than nothing" because of their poor
> > quality, so it would seem that "of the highest possible quality" is
> > more important than "in their own language".
> >
> > If Jimbo's statement is still valid, which objectives override the
> > others?  Can they be arranged (preferably by Jimbo) in order of
> > priority?
> >
> > Can this statement or the principles it represents ever be repealed or
> > changed?  Who has the power to change it?  Is this simply a top-down
> > authoritarian mandate that can't be challenged, or do regular
> > Wikipedians have a say when changes are made to the ultimate goals and
> > priorities of the project?
> >
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