[Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects

[Deryck Chan]

On 29 July 2012 22:39, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 29 July 2012 22:33, Steven Walling <steven.walling at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I can see how you would think this if you're not involved with these
> > communities, but a clear majority of the active editors on Portuguese
> > Wikipedia are in fact Brazilian. The description given is not inaccurate.
>
> While I may not be involved in the Portuguese Wikipedia, I do have a
> masters degree in mathematics, so I can reliably inform you that
> "majority" is not the same as "all".
>
> The WMF tends to employ smart people, so I assume that whoever wrote
> that bit of the plan knew that that wasn't the most accurate way of
> describing the activity. So, my question to you is: why did they
> describe it that way? Why say "Portuguese Wikipedia’s top
> contributors" when "a selection of Wikipedians in Brazil" would have
> been far more accurate?
>
> Because everyone describes themselves in a way that makes them sound the
most powerful.