On Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:14:14 +0200
Gerard Meijssen <[email protected]> wrote:

> One of the reasons why Danish has been sluggish may be that the
> localisation of Danish was not optimal; in Februari 83.66% of the
> MediaWiki messages and 14.11% of the WMF used extensions were
> localised. This has improved to 100.00%  and 59.30% respectively ...
> compare this with Norwegian 100.00% 96.92% Nynorsk 100.00% 84.81% 
> and Swedish 100.00% 99.33%..

Gerard, that reasoning is rather far-fetched.  As you know, MediaWiki contains 
many messages which regular users will never be exposed to.  Even with admin 
(and more) access, I rarely come across anything needing translation.  We would 
surely have complaints galore if missing interface translations turned people 
away from the Danish language Wikipedia, and I've never seen a complaint about 
that.

I have a hunch why there is/was a comparatively low number of Danish MediaWiki 
message translations, but am not going to open old wounds.  Old wounds aside, 
another reason could be that people focus on other aspects; since most message 
translators to Danish are from the Danish language Wikipedia, they may not care 
much about messages/extensions not relevant in Wikipedia, as they feel 
Wikipedia is their project, not MediaWiki or Translatewiki.

What I think is the primary reason for the Danish Wikipedia being much smaller 
than the "neighbouring" languages is that Danes generally are internationally 
minded and pride themselves on being good at English - people may simply prefer 
to use/edit Wikipedia in that language (even I did that when first attracted to 
Wikipedia).

-- 
Regards, Kaare

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
[email protected]
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Reply via email to