[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] Announcing Wikimedia Foundation

[Ray Saintonge]

Christopher Mahan wrote:

>I personally would like to see a global page at www.wikipedia.com,
>one  that shows the global reach of the product (for example a world
>map of languages rather than countries) stats about the project,
>number of contributors, articles in each language, as well as links
>to each of the language wikis.
>
>This, I think, would really separate the project from all other book
>or web based encyclopedias: none are multilingual to the extent of
>the W.
>
>Effectively, this would put the pressure on other encyclopedia to
>match our multilingual "feature", but of course they couldn't.
>
I actually believe that the multilingual environment is the second most 
important feature for distinguishing us from the other encyclopedias. 
 The open contribution system is more significant.  That approach 
carries the risk that some first draft articles will sometimes be highly 
POV or even outright goofy.  At the same time this is the feature that 
allows us to react more quickly to world events in all areas of 
knowledge as well as to our own more highly opinionated contributors. 
 An encyclopedia that is bound by traditional editorial structures 
cannot do this.

Ec