[Foundation-l] The status of smaller languages on the Wikimedia Commons

[folengo at netcourrier.com]

----Message d'origine----
>Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 16:11:01 +0200
>De: GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
>
>Hoi,
>This seems to be yet another fine mess that the Commons crowd is
>getting itself into. The question is when will they learn that they
>are serving the other projects and that their good intentions have
>resulted in projects NOT adopting Commons because of the fiendly
>cooperation as it is perceived.
>
>What do they think they achieve by doing this? Is this in the interest
>of the projects? Is this the considered opinion of the Commons
>community or is it a solitary excercise? It is indeed a great way of
>creating more hostility.
>
>Thanks,
>    GerardM

I think one should be prudent on whether Wikimedia Commons is 
or is not a "community". Personally I would consider Commons as
a confederacy of communities, rather than a single community. If 
you consider Commons as a single community, you will hear only 
the voice of the stronger ones, that is the English native speakers 
and the Other-native-language+English-bilingual people. You will 
quite never hear the voice of the strictly non bilingual non-English 
speakers. 

The person that made the changes  has done a lot of good jobs on
 Commons and has therefore an authoritative voice. The issue has 
been discussed on the English speaking village pump of Commons.
 But should we consider the English speaking village pump of 
Commons as an authoritative voice in a multilingual project, which 
includes tiny minority languages, and also somewhat less tiny 
minority languages yet less active and dynamic than the English
 speaking community (and represented there mostly by bilingual 
people, non bilingual people being almost absent and 
underrepresented if not unrepresented) ?

Or should we say that these languages communities are not
 included, but merely tolerated under restricting conditions in a 
basically English-speaking Wikimedia Commons project ?