[Foundation-l] An agenda for the meeting of the language committee

[Yann Forget]

Hello,

2011/2/24 M. Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> There are currently 13 members of the committee, all of them live in
> Europe, the US or Canada with the sole exception of Amir Aharoni, who
> currently lives in Jerusalem but lived in Russia until 1991 and whose
> native language is Russian. I find it hard to believe that the
> language committee has been actively recruiting Wikimedians or others
> in Asia, Latin America or Africa but faced constant rejection and lack
> of interest from all people in those places, which is the impression I
> got from what you said. I think the appropriate reaction to such a
> strong imbalance (and it is a very strong one) is not to say "Well, we
> will be happy to have them if they ever want to join" but to say "We
> recognize that this is an issue and we will actively recruit people to
> try to rectify it."

I agree with Mark here.
This is also a common issue in many international organisations, and
we need to take active steps to correct it for Wikimedia.

Best regards,

Yann

> 2011/2/24, Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org>:
>> As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language
>> committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the
>> world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented regions
>> to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know a
>> good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them in
>> touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least
>> incorporate the knowledge.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Lodewijk