[Wikipedia-l] Re: Q1 2005 Fund Drive over

[V. Ivanov]

On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 01:35:10 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Are any of your students Ossetic speakers, or for that matter speakers
> of other Russian Federation languages?

No. They are mostly ethnic Russians living at St. Petersburg.
 
> Even if you don't know if any of them speak it, it would be a very
> nice thing to mention.

Well, I did mention that it's in tens of languages, including minority
ones as (several examples here). In fact they are future linguists:
and the fact of multilingualism at Wikipedia might be interesting for
them.

> If a presentation is being made in Spain, I think it is important to
> say "Not only is it available in Castillian, but there are also
> Wikipedias in Asturian, Aragonese, Galician, Catalan, and Basque".

Well, I've put the news to
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%89%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%8B%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%8F
. The text is smth like "28 February: the Ossetic Wikipedia is now on,
being the fourth Wikipedia in the languages of Russia, afte the
Russian, Tatar and Chuvash wikipedias".
 
> also meet with Hawai'ian language activists to discuss Wikipedia with
> them, but obviously and understandably such issues are not as

For lesser used languages Wikipedia might be extremely necessary, for
the speakers often don't have enough resources to print a classic
encyclopedia. Flexibility of Wikipedia mechanism is the best here.
While in Russian or English they can argue, if Wikipedia is good
(reliable, etc.) enough, in a lesser used language they just don't
have much choice!

> important when your focus is not linguistic diversity), in Phoenix
> mention that we have a Navajo Wikipedia, 

If it's code is nv, then its interwiki links don't work at
os.wikipedia.org and I have to cut them.

Sl.
-- 
Esperu cxiam!