[Wikipedia-l] Re: Rethinking Meta (was- Wikiquote now has subdomains)

Thu Jul 22 19:01:16 UTC 2004

Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> I agree with mav. In the german chapter we thought about setting up an 
> own wiki for the chapter but in the end we decided to use meta to avoid 
> balkanization and to facilitate cooperation.

I think I already said it, but I will repeat then :-)
I was really glad you move the chapter things to meta.

> I'd like to have a setting to switch the interface to german to make 
> german meta-contributors feel more at home, but there's no need for 
> separate wikis and zillion of translation pages.
> My thoughts:
> * our representation for visitors (the WMF website) should be multilingual
> * the most important pages on meta should be translated (we don't have 
> the capacities to translate everything)
> * we should accept that we need a working language (english) for wikimedia
> * pages in other languages should contain english abstracts
> * pages in english can have abstracts in other languages
> 
> In my opinion, it's an illusion that participation in wikimedia affairs 
> is possible without a basic knowledge of English. People should have the 
> possibility to inform themselves about the goings-on, but it makes no 
> sense f.e. to translate the german preparations for the Linuxtag Lörrach 
> into spanish. On the other hand, the spanish people should be able to 
> see that there are preparations done and ask the germans for experiences 
> and tipps for a congress in Spain. If everything was done in separate 
> wikis, they would probably not realize it.
> 
> greetings,
> elia
> n

You are totally correct on this.