[WikiEN-l] Cultural distinctions are accidental? Consensus among cultures is bad?

Thu Jun 8 11:10:18 UTC 2006

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 6/7/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>  
>
>>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>For the record, and as I have said many times in the past, I do NOT
>>>think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias
>>>are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were
>>>possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot
>>>imagine that we would want to do so.
>>>      
>>>
>>This seems like a strange position to me.
>>    
>>
>It doesn't make any sense to me either, and it seems to directly
>contradict this exchange:
>
The similarities are just as accidental as the differences.

>If Jimbo does "NOT think that cultural distinctions between
>difference language Wikipedias are accidental", then he must think
>they're intentional.  That raises the question as to who intended
>these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended.  I always
>thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with
>regard to culture.  Maybe English is the exception?
>
I reject the syllogism that absence of accidentality implies intention.  
The English Wikipedia is as neutral as the converged thoughts of its 
participants, but so are all the others.

>Jimbo also writes "Anyway, if we were going to use a constructed
>meta-language, obviously it would be Klingon or Toki Pona. ;-)"  This
>presumably was a response to "Yes, the original plan was to write all
>articles in Esperanto and then have them autotranslated to all the
>other languages of the world."  This might point to some of the
>confusion, as my statement had NOTHING to do with constructed
>languages.  I was thinking more along the lines of Wikipedia after the
>invention of the [[babel fish]].
>
I think that the native Esperanto speakers would have a hard time 
keeping up. :-)  
I have no background on this "original plan", though I suspect that the 
idea would flatter the esperantists.

>If everyone in the world could write to everyone else in the world and
>be understood, would there still be a need for multiple language
>Wikipedias?  Is Jimbo saying that yes, there would?  If so, I'd LOVE
>to see some of the "many times in the past" he's talked about this,
>because it makes absolutely no sense.
>
Your hypothetical premise here is unrealistic

Ec