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

folengo at netcourrier.com folengo at netcourrier.com
Sat May 6 16:13:12 UTC 2006


When he says "The result is what is important" (09:32, 6 May 2006
 (UTC)) (see link 1 below), Arnomane seems to be following a 
philosophy likely to be disrespectful of individuals, risking to
 condone humiliation as a routine practice.  "The principle that the
 end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the
 denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily
 the supreme rule." (Friedrich A. Hayek, link 2 )

On that same Template_talk:Lang-mp page, at 14:43, (UTC),
 Mormegil uses the worded "forced" (albeit with quotation marks) to 
express what happened. One shouldn't be forced (with or without
 quotation marks). I am convinced that a smile is more powerful than
 Arnomane's stick, because whenever I asked (in Spanish, with a 
smile) for a translation on the Spanish village pump of Commons, 
or on the Japanese village pump of the Japanese Wikipedia, or on
 the Chinese village pump of the Chinese Wikipedia,  I found
 everytime people who provided the needed translations. 

I think "notafish"'s idea(3) of "launching a massive
 translation rally"is a good idea. I am ready to go to every village
 pump of every concerned Wikipedia, use babelfish or Google
 language tool when I can, or leave a message in French or English
 when I can't, and recruit a voluntary translator for the Main Page
 in each language. It is also possible to use all our connections to
 people who know someone, who know someone... who knows a
 given language, as Brianna (4) who says she knows someone who
 speaks arabic. It is also possible to use the History of the pages in
 the various languages to find the names of the people who wrote
 them. I think this is a workable alternative to Arnomane's threats,
 but I am fearful of implementing it in conditions that would enable
 Arnomane to think that his threats are showing positive results, 
and of going to these village pumps as a message bearer of a
 threat.


Links
1) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Lang-mp
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_to_Serfdom
3) http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-May/006988.html
4) http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-May/006995.html

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Teofilo




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