[Foundation-l] Priorities

Wed Oct 24 19:02:12 UTC 2007

On 10/24/07, SJ Klein <sj at laptop.org> wrote:
> You don't address the case of large languages with small wikis; and many
> speakers who have no other fluent language, but don't use wikipedia.

I think you are making an assumption about them not using Wikipedia.  :)

Honestly, by the numbers its fairly clear that computer/internet
access and simple literacy are bigger barriers to Wikipedia access
than WP not being useful in a particular language.

For example, What percentage of Swahili speakers do not speak one of
English, French, Portuguese, Spanish or Arabic?

> We could use a hotlist of language communities that obviously need support
> (active online, few secondary languages, active in non-WP communities,
> slow-growing wiki; with extra weight given to languages whose
> speakers have to overcome many obstacles to edit wikipedia, and are
> often only able to read static, offline, perhaps smuggled mirrors).

But use it for what?

There is a simple and natural mechanism to ensure that resources are
appropriately distributed: Do nothing beyond setting up the site.   If
a language needs and can use a Wikipedia it will develop.   This
pretty little theory falls down in some cases: places where there
isn't internet access, places with oppressive governments.  Soliving
those problems is outside of our scope, and better accomplished by
other orgs, such as OLPC. Ever heard of them? ;)