Monday, June 13, 2011

#WMFboard; the election is done

The #Wikimedia board election is done and, we have something of a scandal. In essence it is about politics. When our politics was about constituencies, it would have been fine. When our politics is about particular points of view it would be fine.

It is something of a surprise as our projects are embodied by our "Neutral Point of View" that the notions of a need for a "Catalan Point of View" even makes the rounds.

From "My Point of View", the Catalan Wikipedia is doing fine. Its localisation is under control, it gets a fair amount of traffic with an annual growth of 53%. It operates on a level playing field with English. There is not much special that needs to be done for the Catalan language to prosper in our projects.

When you compare this with languages without a level playing field, then it should be obvious where our attention should go. Where our attention will have a serious impact. Our attention is much better served in India, where attention for fonts and input methods will unlock our projects to languages like Hindi, Oriya. When we do the same for the Myanmar language we will make a difference that goes way beyond our projects.

I was amazed and saddened by the Catalan hoopla, it is not necessary and it is not the kind of politics that are appropriate; when elected you become a trustee. As a trustee you are responsible for all projects, all languages. The trustees are entrusted with the well being and the future of all our communities.
Thanks,
       GerardM

2 comments:

Sarah Stierch said...

I don't understand what happened. can you provide some context please?

-Sarah

Fajro said...

See the discussion page of the election.