[WikiEN-l] Audience : was Re: pictures of genetalia

Wed Jan 14 03:01:43 UTC 2004

Optim wrote:
>There is no discrimination between Native and
>Non-Native speakers. Let's get rid of discriminations.

There is no discrimination. It is a matter of information organization and 
focus, which means that an encyclopedia in one language is not really the 
same thing as an encyclopedia in another language. So people who are not 
native speakers should respect the traditions of the second language they may 
be writing in. If they don't then the resulting articles will only be 
maximally useful to people who happen to have the same primary language as 
themselves. Cross pollination is nice and a good thing, but can only be taken 
so far. 

For example, if I spoke French as a second language, I would not insist that a 
textbook written in French follow standards of focus and organization that 
are common in English textbooks. To do so would make the French textbook less 
useful to most French speakers (except those whose primary language is 
English). Also, if every combination of primary/secondary language audience 
were written to, then the textbook would be huge and not be very useful to 
any audience. See what I mean? 

But since we are a wiki whose content is created by volunteers (most of whom 
who are native speakers), these rough edges will get ironed out very 
naturally in time - if left alone. So the point is really moot (and is more 
of a background effect to larger differences in personal likes and dislikes 
of information organization - those get ironed out in time as well). But it 
is still an important point because we *could* form policies that work 
against this natural inclination. That, IMO, would be a very bad thing. 

But having Wikipedias in different languages helps to ensure that each is 
maximally useful to their readers. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)