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

[Gerard Meijssen]

Henry Tan-Tenn wrote:

> Just now I listened Jimbo's interview by the NPR journalist Brian 
> Lehrer, who did mention that Wikipedia had some 160+ languages.  But 
> not surprisingly this was hardly a central aspect of the story.  I 
> think one reason is that the English edition has garnered the most 
> attention due to its age, size and activity, and the criticism 
> specifically directed at it by the Encyclopedia Britannica and 
> others.  Another is the assumption that should en: fail (or be judged 
> to have failed), one can safely assume smaller and less active 
> editions will also fail.  So the discourse ends up circling around en: 
> as a test case, almost to the exclusion of other innovative aspects of 
> Wikipedia.  This is unfortunate but probably unavoidable given the 
> limited understanding and experience the public has about how wiki 
> works.  But I do agree that "multilingualism" should be cited more 
> often as a central characteristics of Wikipedia, in the sense that 
> Wikipedia is not merely one edition replicated hundreds of times 
> (though I imagine it may feel that way to our developers), but rather 
> the whole is more than the individual languages put together.  That 
> might sound a bit of a cliche, but I think there's something there 
> worth developing.

Hoi,
When Wikipedia is to be in the news, people want Jimbo. He is seen as 
the main man, the icon of our effort and, Jimbo does do a great job. The 
thing with Jimbo is however, that he does not scale. He travels more and 
more and even at home, he gives loads of interviews and is increasingly 
unavailable on irc. This is great in that his work really increases the 
awareness of our wikimedia projects but it would be much better when the 
projects establish their own press contacts and present themselves as 
valid spokespersons for the projects.

This can be done by individuals but it would be easier when chapters 
take a more assertive role in seeking the limelight. One way of 
promoting the non English languages is by promoting them, by going to 
computer shows, writing press releases, giving interviews, engaging 
other organisations. By making use of the talents that exist in our 
community Jimbo does not have to scale and, we have plenty of talent to 
scale up our presence. We just have to appreciate why this is necessary 
for our projects and why it is worth the effort.

Thanks,
    GerardM