Zitat von [email protected]: > A supply of content is a prerequisite to stimulate demand in content. > > After > all one of the biggest problems of a fledgling Wikipedia is that few > people have the dedication to work on a project that will probably not > "take off" for years to come. It's easier to win contributors if the > project already has taken off and people know that they are not > wasting their time.
To further emphasize this: Wikipedia was created in 2001. Why 2001? The Internet existed since 1991 and it wouldn't have been hard to create a wiki-like site to build a free encyclopedia. After all Tim Berners-Lee's idea of the Internet was that of a wiki-like editable net. So why did it take 10 years to build the first successful free encyclopedia? The idea existed but nobody realized it. Nobody had enough faith in the idea to dedicate time on building it and those who tried did not reach the critical mass to take off, probably due to lack of dedication to the project when nobody was sure whether it could work. The same happens nowadays. There sure are many people who would like to have decent content in their native language. But they have no faith that anybody would ever read it and they fear that they waste their life writing stuff nobody will read. People _will_ read it, but only after the project has reached a state where it's worth it looking up things on it. If 70% of your searches deliver no useful result, you enthusiasm as a reader will not be great. If 90% of your searches deliver useful results you will probably accept it as your main body of reference. This gap between the start and becoming useful to readers was easily taken by the big languages that have many educated speakers with much free time. But the less "strong" a language is the more this gap becomes an obstacle that cannot be taken. Marcus Buck User:Slomox _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
