User:Anthere/Future of international Wikipedias as part of the main community
Given the not so trivial issue of question-mark versus red links, solved in 19 hours after some asked time to ask their own community, I have been pondering...
Does it sound as if international wikipedias were only meant to be bare translations of the en.wiki, or can they be involved in the global decision-making process if so is their wish and their interest ?
1. Do we or do we not consider international wikipedias part of the existing wikipedia community ?
2. If they do, what part can they be allowed to play in the setting-up of common rules and common software ?
3. If they do, how does the community plan to take into account regional cultural differences ? (e.g., colors having different meaning in different cultures)
4. If they do, how does the community plan to take into account their advices given that they are likely to express themselves through spokemen for langage reasons ? (i.e.,one voice for several heads)
5. If they do, how does the community plan to take into account time issues related to reporting delays or night & day out of phasing ?
6. If they don't, why should the international wikipedias have to justify minor deviations from the main community and be granted permissions before doing so ? (e.g., logos)
Somehow, unless we consider international wikipedians to be also active members of the main wikipedia (i.e., necessarily fluent in english), failing to adress these issues will either promote mere passive followers or forking rebels.
Both cases not being the best way to build a truly comprehensive, neutral and enlightening encyclopedia.
Anthere, 23 sept 2002
I believe the multi-language project issues are coming to the forefront of Wikipedia planning, with some heavy nudging by people such as Anthere. The meta now has different homepages for differnt languages; Wikipedia embassies have been set up, and many people have been working to set up inter-language links between articles. See Wikipedia software upgrade status and What to do with www.wikipedia.org for more work being done. It seems that many Wikipedians want Wikipedia to be truly multi-lingual, rather than having the English Wikipedia as the important wiki, with the others being afterthoughts. --Stephen Gilbert 11:23 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)
Point 5: How is language connected to time zones? The englishs-speaking wikipedians are scattered all over the globe, I imagine the other languages will be the same.
I think a multi-faceted project like this should have some common strands that run through it. The concept of creating an encyclopedia, with corrolaries such as NPOV; the name "wikipedia" and a common logo would be such strands.