[Wikipedia-l] Money, money... (let's bribe

Mon Oct 13 21:10:59 UTC 2003

 From: <epzachte at chello.nl>

> Pay experts for their knowledge? What a bad idea!
> 
> > Paying experts in this way would inevitably result
> in a two-class society.
> 
> Yes, and in another way than stated already: We
> would have a class of fools, still doing things for
> free, out of love for an ideal, and a class of savy
> experts, who know what makes the world go around,
> have no inner motivation to share their knowledge
> with lay people and need to be bribed into this
> silly affair.
> 
> A fool like me might come to his senses and think
> twice before contributing for free what can be
> bought on the market.
> 
> > I think it is beyond silly that the Hindi and
> Arabic Wikipedias are still so small. 
> 
> How many of our top ten Wikipedias were faring
> really well a year before now? Marvel at what has
> been achieved in such a short time, and have the
> patience to see other Wikipedias, and underdeveloped
> areas in the existing ones, grow up the wiki way.
> Wikipedia is not a household name yet, but it will
> be in a year time, thanks to Google. Surely some
> arabists, art historians and chromosome watchers
> will catch the opportunity to show off. Surely more
> photographers will relish the prospect of a world
> stage to make their marks upon. 
> 
> Maverick is worried that Arabic and Hindi Wikipedias
> are nowhere near where they should be. The same
> could be said for the Chinese Wikipedia only a few
> monthes ago, yet they got going for real recently,
> and will almost certainly be within our top ten in
> less than half a year from now.
> 
> As for nearly dead languages: very nice to preserve
> them for posterity, a wiki might help. Only I would
> like to see the surviving speakers do their part
> because they care, not because the XBox II is not
> theirs' yet.
> 
> We receive a couple of thousands very much needed
> dollars and suddenly everybody goes crazy. Once all
> dying languages are resuscitated we might save the
> wales (no pun intended) and help the Ethiopians to
> put a man on the Moon. I say: lets keep our feet on
> the ground and talk about goals that are of benefit
> for a lot of people and that can not be reached in
> any other way. Hardware is a clear case and more of
> that will be needed soon. Administrative labour is a
> borderline case to me, but what will happen if Brion
> is struck by fatherhood or any other disability (God
> forbids), is too sad to even envision. Certainly a
> print or CD edition will require some cash. Once we
> educated the billion or so people that regard
> education a luxury item (not to speak of food), and
> would not be harmed by some readily available
> knowledge, they will all jump happily to the task of
> preserving dying languages, I'm sure.
> 
> Erik Zachte

I entirely agree with you Erik
Btw, we have an India specialist on the fr wiki. I
hope all his articles will someday help the indian
wiki to take off. We also make a lot of effort to
attract arab/french speaking people. I am optimistic.

And I am sure Brion will be a great father (attention
à ne pas poser la bécane trop lontemps sur les genoux Brion).

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