I am quite amused; it doesn't happen to me much that people take so much care to protect my privacy. I do appreciate it, though.
In case nobody guessed it, I am (probably) "Mr. Western Wikipedian". The language gap in Wikipedias has always concerned me since the very first day I tried editing Wikipedia in 2004—as a volunteer, and later as a WMF staff member. I exchanged a few words about this with Mr. Rancic at Wikimania because I know he cares about it. (In case you're wondering, I don't know who are the other people that Mr. Rancic is mentioning.) The problem is fairly easy to It is a problem that some of the most spoken languages of the world have very little information online. In Wikipedia and on other websites. I'm talking about Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Indonesian, Tagalog, and a few others. India is just the biggest of the countries in question, but certainly not the only one. There's even less information online in smaller languages, which is just as bad, even though they are smaller. It's a deep social problem that bothers me more and more as the years go by, and as I learn about these languages, about the countries in which they are spoken and about the people who speak them—especially those of them who don't speak any other language. The WMF could solve _some of it_. I am not entirely sure how. It's a vicious circle of sociolinguistics making dominant languages even more dominant, and less demanded languages even less demanded. It has a lot to do with culture and politics, a bit of which I understand, and a lot of which I don't. As a developer of the Content Translation tool and other related things, I very naïvely hope that I (not alone, of course!) am helping to resolving a tiny bit of it. But I cannot resolve all of it, and WMF alone cannot resolve all of it. Even though Wikimedia's famous "every single human being" motto definitely puts this problem in Wikimedia's declared scope, it's way too big and complex to be resolved with the resources the WMF currently has. It's better to acknowledge that we cannot solve all of it quickly, even though we'd love to, then to pretend that we'll save the world the next week. (Bringing other people to Wikimania will also not save it, certainly not by itself. That said, variety is a good thing.) On an optimistic note, I have to reiterate that the recently started research project that Anne Gomez mentioned is probably the best step that the WMF ever made in this direction. I've been waiting for something like this to happen since 2012 or so. It's an important acknowledgement that there are a lot of things that we don't know, and that we want to try to learn them. It's only a small first step, but a truly good one, and I'm eager to see how it develops. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore 2016-06-28 21:43 GMT+03:00 Milos Rancic <mill...@gmail.com>: > My last mail for today, so Anne, just to say that I really appreciate > what you've done, but I'll comment in a bit more detail tomorrow. > > On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 8:01 PM, Pete Forsyth <petefors...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > I'll leave the "defensive" bit aside, and just reiterate that I *still* > do > > not understand exactly what problem you're trying to focus discussion on. > > In the piece of text Asaf quoted, you used the words "it" and "reports." > I > > don't know what you intend by those words. Maybe for some reason you feel > > it's Asaf's job to clarify that for the rest of the list's readers; maybe > > so. I don't have more to contribute on this point. > > The background goes this way... > > I've been approached privately two years ago about the issues that > bother significant part of Indian Wikimedian community. As I think > that's in the range of quite solvable issues, my instinct was to talk > with the relevant people inside of the Wikimedia movement (not just > WMF). I thought it's been solved and I forgot for that. However, two > years later I am listening about the same problems. So, I am pissed > off enough to start talking about that on this list. > > However, if I say everything I know, I would for sure harm a number of > people. And I am not willing to do that no matter how pissed off or > drunk I am. The situation is not good, but far from being any kind of > catastrophe. > > But I want to see the problem solved. So, I am giving quite enough of > information about the problems (cf. my first email, then my response > to Risker) and expect the beginning of communication. The responses > are telling me what's safe to talk about and what's not. I also expect > to be convinced that the most of Indian Wikimedians will be content at > the end of this process. > > So, the research is very good thing and I am again positively > surprised by the attitude of WMF. However, that's not enough. > > I also want to say that what I said in my first email and in my > response to Risker is the core of the problem. Many particular issues > are not useful (and could be harmful). I understand that many people > on this list don't realize how those issues are important, but they > *are* vitally important to the Indian part of our movement. > > In other words, although I am not disclosing all of information I > have, mostly to protect privacy of some people, I am not cryptic at > all. It is just a matter of what's perceived as important to a Western > and what to an Indian Wikimedian. > > -- > Milos > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
