[Wikipedia-l] Re: multilingualism (was Q1 drive)

[Stan Shebs]

Stirling Newberry wrote:

> [...] there are signs of "poly-linguism", where the different 
> languages are acting to support each other, where articles written in 
> one language are being used as material or a basis for others. This 
> will, again, serve to underline the advantages of wikipedia as a 
> project. I know I have used German wikipedia articles at various 
> times, and it might even be worth collecting some anecdotes about how 
> wikipedia is forming a "research community" that is larger than any 
> single language.

Amen - despite there being fewer articles, I've found plenty of
German WP pages that are superior to their English counterparts, and
someday I'd like to suck it:'s detailed data on the 8,000 Italian
comunes into en:, whose Italian town info is currently spotty;
still lots of red place-name links in English articles on Italian
subjects.

Commons is also getting to be a considerable resource - locals can
take more and better pictures of their own area than tourists
usually, so en: articles are now getting a variety of illustration
beyond what en: editors alone can muster.

Stan