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

[Mark Williamson]

That's something worth pointing out.

Whenever I try to get people involved in Wikipedia, I always say
"project to build a free [language] encyclopaedia", and describe the
basic concept of Wikipedia later. The exception is the Linux
community; for example e-mailing the Maldivian Linux User Group about
the Divehi Wikipedia, I explain the concept up-front.

Mark

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 21:02:37 +0300, V. Ivanov <amikeco at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 13:00:14 -0500, Henry Tan-Tenn wrote:
> >  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.
> 
> It's not exactly the fact.
> 
> While the larger language Wikipedias compete with commercial
> encyclopedias (and the larger language speakers have the choice), the
> smaller language Wikipedias are _unique_, the speakers of such
> language don't have much choice -- and Wikipedia appears to be the
> only _try_ to create an encyclopedia. It also can become the main
> source for a future "official" encyclopedia, which might be too
> expensive for a not so large people, if all the authors are paid.
> 
> So, Wikipedia might exist as a set of _relatively good_ sources for
> the languages, which do not have large choice. E. g. I am not sure if
> there had ever appeared any Ossetic text on the Laplandian War before
> the "translation of the week" has been done (though there are
> certainly lots of texts, including large novels, on the WWII in Soviet
> territory).
> 
> Wikipedia for a nation of 500 thousand to, say, 5 million seems to be
> the best way of writing an encyclopedia in their language. And even if
> the English WP fails, that will not mean the idea is all wrong for
> every language on the Earth.
> 
> Sl.
> --
> Esperu cxiam!
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