[Wikipedia-l] Spanish Wikipedia

[Brion VIBBER]

tarquin wrote:
> Khendon wrote:
>> Well, *one* of the two groups is going to have to speak the other's
>> language. Why not use English as the common language?
>>
> Then by the same argument, why not use Spanish?

I believe the main reason Spanish-speakers are being suggested is that 
English-language negotiation on English-language mailing lists was 
spectacularly unsuccessful at preventing the fork. Language in 
particular may not be at fault, but general cultural mistrust and 
misunderstandings seem to have been.

A bunch of Yankees demanding the Spanish surrender their encyclopedia 
isn't going to go anywhere -- we need people who are _part of their wiki 
community_ to explain why moving back is a preferable option. (May be 
difficult -- they have control over their server, they can upgrade to 
the phase III software as easily as we can if they care to download it, 
and it's not clear whether they would consider the interlanguage links 
and Wikipedia name a significant draw.)

> I think it was Brion who suggested we use Esperanto. That would be the 
> fairest option.

Wasn't me, but I've no objection. ;) Certainly by definition all our 
people at the Esperanto wiki are polyglots, and a fair chunk of us are 
active on other-language wikipedias, so I'd like to hope we can serve as 
ambassadors from time to time.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)