[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Day 4 Fund Drive Report (updated)

[Henry Tan-Tenn]

Delirium ti 2005/2/23 ChS 01:16 sia-kong:

> I'd question that: I think Africa is "best served" by whatever content 
> the most people can read, which is likely to be English.  

I'd like to hear the opinions of Africans on these issues, and not just 
the elites.  My current opinion is that a Wikipedia limited only to a 
few European languages would be a disaster.  They would likely serve, at 
best, only the top echelons of African societies, in the sense that 
"whatever content the most people can read" would automatically exclude 
those who cannot (currently) read.  To this some Wikipedians might point 
out that the projects are meant only for the Internet-using population, 
and it is not our goal to disseminate knowledge beyond that limited 
population (globally speaking).  My response would be that we should not 
assume Wikipedia would always remain textual.  In order to disseminate 
knowledge to the rest of the population, recordings will eventually need 
to be made, initially on a selective basis.  For that we need as many 
languages as practically possible and for which there are willing 
volunteers.  At this very early stage in Wikimedia's development, urging 
editors to close ranks under the banners of a few mega-languages is in 
any case premature.

And by the way, a language with 8 million speakers is _not_ a small 
language at all.

To put matters into perspective, the following is an article describing 
how a US evangelical Christian group (related to the Ethnologue) is 
handling languages.  They are currently proceeding at a rate of starting 
translations into 90 new language per year: 
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/002/28.74.html .  Wikimedia is 
not out to save souls (or languages) but there is something about having 
a vision that is worth looking into.




>Even expanding 
> to say, four languages, the best choices are likely to be English, 
> French, Arabic, and Swahili (although I can't find very good statistics 
> on this).  Unless you have a plan to simultaneously publish editions in 
> 500 different languages, publishing in the major languages---i.e. those 
> that the most people are able to make use of---seems like the best plan.
> 
> -Mark