[Foundation-l] Notice of the results of the WMF Board ofTrustees election

[habj]

2007/7/14, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be>:
>
>
> I think the main problem is not the making of the translations but to
> bring that translated information to the attention of the target
> audience. The work is done of making the translations but there a lack
> of followup to do anything with those texts.
>
> But bothem line is that is the responsibly of very Wikimedia project
> wiki community to organize there own community and inform there local
> community. That it is not the task of the WMF to hire people to make
> translations. Like was written before here this is not a kindergarden.
>
> The wiki community's have very large automity but that gives also very
> large local responsibility. At the top of pyramid there was more then
> enough attention and information about the election. It can just happen
> that there is no interest by a local community. That is the
> responsibility of that particular community and not of the WMF.


*nod*

I am sure this saying exists in many languages: "You can lead the cow to the
water, but you can not make it drink". No matter how much information is
sent from the WMF to the various communities, if people are not interested
they will not listen. Indeed translation is necessary for many participants
to take part in the election process, but it also works the other way
around. If the community is not interested in the election, it will not
produce translators. This probably reflects the degree of interest in the
WMF in itself, rather than the degree of interest in the very election.

As for hiring translators for an election, it sounds to me like a hopeless
project. There is no way you can hire translators for all languages, and how
do you decide which ones should be translated to? Also, my experience of the
translation process of election pages in similar rounds of elections is that
this was a way for a couple of people to discover the WMF for themselves.
They have since gone further, reading pages on Meta and informing
themselves, occasionally bringing information back to the comunity. This
informal way of spreading information is the best, and it might be something
that you lose if you let professional translators do the job. All kinds of
roads that lead active users on projects to read and learn about the WMF
should be protected, IMHO.

The basic question to ask would then be, how do you make the communities
interested in WMF. Probably all types of cross-wiki collaborations could be
a help, on a more "workshop floor" scale. I don't think we need more
committees, but people who actually reach out to other wikis with the intent
and persistence to talk and listen. A message posted on a village pump is
after all not more personal that a bot-pasted message. Some kind of
network... is there anywhere a "beginner's guide the the WMF"?

/habj