[Wikipedia-l] The role of a wikipedia for a language like Hopi

[Boris Lohnzweiger]

Frankly spoken, I am totally against that idea because I think it would lead to a fragmentation of the knowledge that we are trying to collect. I couldn't think of any Indian topics that wouldn't have a place in the general English encyclopedia. The main advantage of a large encyclopedia is that is gathers knowledge from various fields (in our case, in many different languages). We shouldn't fragmentize knowledge but rather unify it in one single place. Once we'd start splitting Wikipedias into separate editions for ethnic or cultural groups, it would eventually lead to "Wikipedias for Christians", "Wikipedias for Muslims", "Wikipedias for Women", "Wikipedias for Students", "Wikipedias for Seniors" and the like, and all of them would have to be translated into 200 languages. Would that still constitute a "Free Encyclopedia" then or wouldn't it rather mean of plethora of "closed shops".

IMHO, our main advantage is that we bring together people with all different sorts of backgrounds and enable them to *cooperate*. Thus we are able to attract as much knowledge as we presently do. The exchange between people of very different origins is a unique feature of Wikipedia. Any sort of separation or segregation among Wikipedia's contributors would invariably effect the level of quality we have been able to achieve, simply because it would mean a brain-drain for the general Wikipedia.

Nevertheless certains steps in order to better serve specific communities of users can very well make sense. More than that, they would raise Wikipedia's value even more. AFAIK WikiReaders provide a very useful tool for that and so do categories and lists. Please let us not make knowledge exclusive while we are striving to unify it in one single place were it is easily accessible to everyone. We're here to remove obstacles to knowledge and not to errect new ones.


wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 11.03.05 20:25:23:

Sure, that's a way to go. But not to the detriment of the big English or
French Wikipedias. Especially there could be an Indian (South Asia)
Wikipedia in English. But only when the time comes that a lot of people want
it.

Fred

> From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:48:28 -0500
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] The role of a wikipedia for a language like Hopi
> 
> Or do people actually seriously think we *should* have separate
> Wikipedias catering to different cultures?

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