[Wikimedia-l] The case for supporting open source machine translation

[MZMcBride]

Erik Moeller wrote:
>Could open source MT be such a strategic investment? I don't know, but
>I'd like to at least raise the question. I think the alternative will
>be, for the foreseeable future, to accept that this piece of
>technology will be proprietary, and to rely on goodwill for any
>integration that concerns Wikimedia. Not the worst outcome, but also
>not the best one.
>
>Are there open source MT efforts that are close enough to merit
>scrutiny? In order to be able to provide high quality result, you
>would need not only a motivated, well-intentioned group of people, but
>some of the smartest people in the field working on it.  I doubt we
>could more than kickstart an effort, but perhaps financial backing at
>significant scale could at least help a non-profit, open source effort
>to develop enough critical mass to go somewhere.

[...]

>Wikipedia and our other projects reach more than 500 million people every
>month. The world population is estimated to be >7 billion. Still a long
>way to go. Support us. Join us. Share: https://wikimediafoundation.org/

Putting aside the worrying focus on questionable metrics, the first part
of your new e-mail footer "Wikipedia and our other projects" seems to
hint at the underlying issue here: Wikimedia already operates a number of
projects (about a dozen), but truly supports only one (Wikipedia). Though
the Wikimedia community seems eager to add new projects (Wikidata,
Wikivoyage), I wonder how it can be sensible or reasonable to focus on yet
another project when the current projects are largely neglected (Wikinews,
Wikisource, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, etc.).

There's a general trend currently within the Wikimedia Foundation to
"narrow focus," which includes shelling out third-party MediaWiki release
support to an outside contractor or group, because there are apparently
not enough resources within the Wikimedia Foundation's 160-plus staff to
support the Wikimedia software platform for anyone other than Wikimedia.

In light of this, it seems even more unreasonable and against good sense
to pursue a new machine translation endeavor, virtuous as it may be. If
an outside organization wants Wikimedia's help and support and their
values align with ours, it's certainly something to explore. Otherwise,
surely we have enough projects in need of support already.

MZMcBride