User:ArnoLagrange/Kandidatiĝo por la Fidataro

Arno Lagrange ✉ kandidatas por Balotado pri Estraranoj de Fondaĵo Wikimedia.

Vidu :

• Balotaj kandidatoj: Arno Lagrange.
• Kandidatiĝo cxe Wikimedia/2005

eo : Bonvolu lasi komentojn sub la linio
fr : Veuillez laisser vos commentaires sous la ligne
en : Please put comments under the line

---

Point à mi-chemin

Le vote est ouvert depuis quelques jours et il va bientôt s'achever. Plusieurs personnes m'ont interpellé en m'interrogeant sur mes positions à propos de points précis et importants concernant la Fondation, son fonctionnement. Je ne veux pas y répondre à la légère et que plutôt que d'étudier chacun de ces points et de leurs implications, c'est-à-dire d'explorer par exemple quelles dicussions se sont déjà tenues dessus - avant de me prononcer, j'ai consacré mon temps et mon énergie à améliorer le multilinguisme dans l'interface de cette élection (voir mes contributions ici depuis le 2 août).

Par une sorte de réflexe wikipédien, plutôt que de tenir des positions théoriques, j'ai préféré travailler à mettre en pratique ce que je préconise : il s'agit de fournir au visiteur lambda une interface aussi propre que possible dans la langue de son choix, c'est-à-dire avec le minimum de liens en rouge et le maximum d'explications et de liens dans sa langue. Il s'agit aussi de faciliter le travail des traducteurs et la maintenance de l'ensemble des pages dans toutes les langues autant à jour que possible en appliquant le principe de modèles centralisés qui contiennent les infos (la liste de candidats, la liste des traductions de leurs proclamations, la liste des pages traduites, ...) et d'en assurer l'affichage dans les différentes langues par le biais de messages multilingues.

L'obstacle au multilinguisme est qu'il nécessite beaucoup de travail, c'est pourquoi il nous faut développer des outils qui allègent ce travail, et par conséquent accélèrent la circulation d'informations à jour. C'est un des reproches que l'on peut faire au multilinguisme : il est lent, pour une communication rapide l'utilisation d'une langue unique est plus appropriée et c'est pourquoi on y revient constamment : dès qu'il s'agit de communiquer dans l'urgence, pour une instance dirigeante où une consultation et une prise de décison doivent intervenir rapidement, la langue unique s'impose de fait. A l'heure actuelle c'est l'anglais qui joue ce rôle, et personnellement je joue le jeu aussi : je me suis laissé entraîner à essayer de discuter en anglais, j'ai correspondu en anglais avec divers wikipédiens (superviseurs, candidats, traducteurs, "wikipédiens de base") de divers pays (Japon, Allemagne, Suède, Pays-Bas, Angleterre, etc ). Mais j'ai pu avoir aussi des contacts en français, en allemand en espagnol et en espéranto : le choix se portant sur la langue où la communication passe le mieux.

Je pense l'avoir largement développé : ma critique de l'anglais ne tient pas tant à ce qu'il joue avec une certaine efficacité le rôle de langue internationale privilégiée (on m'a souvent reproché que critiquer cet usage de l'anglais mettait en péril la possibilité de communiquer à l'échelle internationale), mais comme je l'ai - sans doute déjà trop souvent - répété : que l'usage privilégié de l'anglais exclut tous ceux qui ne le maîtrisent pas ou insuffisamment. Le multilinguisme tente d'y remédier offrant les informations dans un choix de langues qui permet à un public plus large d'y accéder. Mais j'aimerais que l'on ne perde pas de vue qu'un véritable multilingusime n'est pas cette forme passive à laquelle certains le réduisent : que les seules sources d'informations valables sont celles qui sont rédigées en anglais et que les autres langues ne peuvent que servir à traduire la source. Le véritable multilinguisme consiste à permettre à chacun de s'exprimer dans la langue de son choix et qu'à partir d'une source dans n'importe quelle langue, le message soit transmis dans les autres langues : c'est sortir d'un modèle centralisé où les ressortissants de certaines nations privilégiées (et les élites des autres nations qui ont pu accéder à la langue dominante à un niveau suffisant) sont les seuls qui peuvent s'exprimer et les autres réduits au rôle d'auditeur passif quand ce n'est pas de sourd.

Sincèrement je considère que le multilinguisme est un pis-aller - cependant préférable à l'usage unique de l'anglais -. Il me semble d'évidence que l'usage d'une langue neutre auxiliaire est de loin préférable. Mon choix personnel va clairement vers l'espéranto pour des raisons objectives que l'on peut argumenter solidement en plus de raisons personelles : je connais l'espéranto et comme tous ceux qui le connaisssent j'ai expérimenté l'avantage qu'il présente. Cette connaissance pratique et cette expérience réelle pèse un autre poids que toutes les batailles d'arguments dans lesquelles certains polémistes tentent de m'entraîner. Cependant, de la même façon que l'initiateur de l'espéranto (Zamenhof) a dit lui-même : nous sommes partisans d'une langue neutre auxiliaire, peu importe son nom et sa forme, ça peut être l'epéranto, ça peut être lojban, ça peut être volapük, l'essentiel est de s'entendre et d'arrêter son choix et de l'appliquer. ( AL ✉ 05:22, 7 September 2006 (UTC))

D'ailleurs je ne pense pas qu'une décision sur un tel point soit à prendre de haut et à imposer à la base. Tout au contraire il s'agit de lancer une vaste réflexion et de lancer un processus de résolution des problèmes qui passe autant par le développement d'outils appropriés - divers projets sont en maturation - que l'adoption de protocoles de communication à tous les niveaux. Le problème ne se pose pas seulement au niveau du Conseil d'Administration, où manifestement le monolinguisme tout-anglais a l'air de s'imposer comme une règle intangible et incontestée y compris par les candidats qui a l'exception de deux d'entre eux ont tous rédigé leur proclamtion en anglais, y compris ceux dont ce n'est pas la langue maternelle.

Il se pose globalement à tous les niveaux de nos vastes communautés wikipédiennes multilingues qui sont un reflet d'un monde tout aussi multilingue. Certaines communautés se définissent autour de projets dans une langue donnée, mais elles sont ouvertes aux autres langues : des contributeurs dont ce n'est pas la langue y participent, et les contributeurs dont c'est la langue sont ouverts à ce qui se produit en dehors de leur projet. Certaines communautés se définissent autour de projets qui sont par vocation multilingue (meta, commons, WiktionaryZ, ...). Et clairement il n'y a d'autre frontière entre toutes ces communautés, que celles des barrières lingusitiques. Et c'est à ce niveau que se pose tout le problème du choix entre l'utilisation de l'anglais comme lingua franca, un multilinguisme plus ou moins fonctionnel ou l'extension de l'utilisation d'une langue auxiliaire neutre. Et encore une fois le problème ne se pose pas seulement dans le contexte présent mais dans une mise en perspective à long terme. Les défenseurs du tout-anglais ont beau jeu de me faire la preuve par neuf que l'anglais ça marche, que la science, le commerce, la diplomatie, l'informatique, internet et les projets Wikimedia fonctionnent parfaitement avec l'anglais qui est utilisé de façon incontestée par des gens originaires de tous les pays du monde et ayant pour langue maternelle les langues les plus diverses : c'est une tautologie. Du fait de la position dominante de l'anglais il se produit une sélection où seuls les utilisateurs avertis de l'anglais (natifs ou appartenant aux élites) apparaissent dans tous ces domaines : ce cercle privilégié se resserre sur lui-même et répond à toute personne qui tenterait de s'approcher du cercle :

• Apprends à parler anglais aussi bien que nous ou tais-toi et écoute !
• Comment !? tu te sens exclus ? bon ! nous sommes généreux, nous te ferons parvenir une traduction de notre divine parole qui te parviendra quand elle pourra. - cependant en cas de divergence entre la traduction que tu recevras et notre parole seul notre texte prévaudra -
• Ha ? en plus , tu as quelque chose à dire !!!? alors dis-le en anglais, sinon, comment veux-tu qu'on puisse t'entendre ?
• Comment ? tu ne sais pas t'exprimer en anglais et tu voudrais quand même qu'on prenne en compte ton point de vue ?
• Bon ! soit ! mais, alors débrouille-toi pour te trouver un traducteur et tes réflexions pourront peut-être nous parvenir un jour.

Si ce mode de fonctionnement que je dépeins là est actuellement accepté dans les projets wikimedia, il ne me semble pas tenable à la longue. Les membres du monde du biznes, du monde de la science, et des cercles dirigeants politiques adhèrent sans réserve à la position dominante de l'anglais qui consolide leur propre position dominante dans la société. Même ceux dont ce n'est pas la langue maternelle jouent ce jeu de dupe car ils espérent avoir par ce biais une miette du gateau, alors qu'ils seront toujours en position d'infériorité par rapport à un confrère anglophone de naissance.

J'ose espérer que ce mode fonctionnement ne sera pas durablement celui des projets wikimedia qui ont pour vocation de diffuser des savoirs par toutes les voies, de les rendre accessibles dans autant de langues que possible et par conséquent de rendre aussi accessible la conduite du développement du projet à chacun quel que soit la langue dans la langue où il peut s'exprimer.

Le sens de ma candidature n'est donc pas de vouloir siéger demain au Conseil d'Administration - sauf si c'était un moyen efficace pour faire évoluer significativement la situation linguistique dans les projets wikimedia, mais pour cela j'ai préféré travailler à faire progresser le multilinguisme de l'interface de l'élection à titre d'exemple -. Le sens de ma candidature est de poser la question, de susciter une réflexion, et de mettrre en perspective une évolution du mode de fonctionnement de nos projets sur le plan de la communication linguistique.

J'imagine qu'on pourra considérer que les voix qui se seront portées sur ma candidature seront celles de contributeurs qui partagent les préoccupations que j'expose et qui souhaitent qu'on y trouve des solutions appropriées. On peut aussi espérer que plus ces voix seront nombreuses plus elles seront entendues. Mais je ne me fais aucune illusion sur ce point, au vu de la surreprésentation de la communauté anglophone aussi bien parmi les votants, que parmi les candidats qui reflète cette même surreprésentation parmi les contributeurs, parmi les internautes, parmi les possesseurs d'ordinateurs, parmi les populations économiquement favorisées, j'entends surreprésentation par rapport à la population mondiale réelle.

Arno Lagrange ✉ 05:31, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Subtenas

Mi bonvenigas ĉi tie vian subtenon per kelkaj vortoj kaj via subskribo. Dankon.
Je serais heureux de trouver ici l'expression de votre soutien suivi de votre signature. Merci
I welcome your support with a few words and your signature. Thanks.
Mit ein paar Worten bitte ich hier um Ihre Unterstützung und Ihre Unterschrift. Danke. AL ✉

1. I wholheartedly support your initiative! Il me semble indispensable que chacun soit respecté... Good luck with your candidacy. Azernb
2. ...

2006-a balotado

I see a positive contribution to Wikipedia neutrality and openness if at least the most important topics are also presented and can be discussed in at least 4 additional languages (I mean: German, French, Spanish, Chinese, possibly Japanese and Arabic too, as in the United Nations Organization website). But anyway, the official records of the Board will be kept in English, even if they come from translations from one of these important languages which together, cover more than 90% of web users in the world, at least as a secondary language.

I don't think that a native French-speaking user in the board will be a problem, given that the board decisions will be important enough to benefit of the help of contributing translators, and given that Arno can already understand very well the English language to make sure that the translation of his own words will be accurate. So if he thinks that his own opinion is easier to formulate in French first, and then he asks for assistance in improving his own approximate translation to English, it will not be a problem. Anyway, Arno, you will have to make some efforts, and make some of your comments available in English, at least partially, and then invite your readers to help improving the translation. When you are satisfied with a translation, just note it after and request that the English version becomes authoritative and represents correctly your opinion. Decisions in the board are long enough to not require the approved English terms in emergency.

But with your representation in the board, other French speaking wikipedians that have lots of difficulties to write in english or even to read it, will have the opportunity to get their opinion heard, or will be able to understand the most important decisions of the board with faster translations available in other languages.

But I don't think you should promote Esperanto too high. It is certainly intersting for the small Esperanto community, but it is not a native language from anyone, so differences of interpretations across Esperanto speakers around the world will be a major difficulty, due to different cultural backgrounds. I hope you will support this language only as a second language but that you'll choose another primary language (one of those 9 languages with more than 100,000 articles in Wikipedia, plus English for which you will always provide at least a reasonnable summary) for ALL your discussions regarding board procedures, discusions and discussions.

If language diversity is an excellent challenge for the board, which will improve its NPOV, I do think that you will need to make more contacts with the translator working groups, and invite the admins of all major wikipedias to create the necessary sections in their Wikipedias to promote the translation of the board discussions and decisions, and to make contacts with Wikipedia embassies whose work are to negociate common goals across all wiki projects.

Personnally, I support your candidature, and I will support candidatures from outside US. The board really needs members whose primary work is not only on English Wikis; For now you are the only one from outside US and the only one promoting another primary language. I hope we'll also have German and Spanish native speakers soon at the Board, living in countries where English is not the primary language. Wikimedia needs such openness, as it will improve the collaboration across projects, and will not base all decisions only on the very advanced current state of the English wiki and its hundreds of admins and subcommities and working groups. The solutions that could be developed in EnWiki are not immediately translatable to other projects.

The other important thing is legal: some issues involve knowledge of international laws, and these are completely ignored by American English members of the board, who have lots of difficulties to locate the appropriate sources and contacts or understand the issues. With other language native readers, it will be much easier to evaluate those legal constraints, when the most accurate and authoritative documents are definitely NOT in English but in other languages. The most difficult issues that concerns Wikimedia projects is licencing and copyright issues, and the effects of delimitation of applicable legislations to juridictions.

That's something that the GNU Foundation is also considering now, in the current draft for the GPLv3 (and related licences like the LGPL and later the GFDL too...), whose wording will allow the inclusion of enough additional terms that even the LGPL and the GFDL may be seen as particular applications of the GPLv3. If you read the ongoing GPLv3 discussions at the FSF, you know what this means: a better international protection, and better protection against patent claims which are now threatening even the most respectable open-sourced or free projects (this has already been the cause of some Wikimedia projects being closed and completely cleared, causing a real damage for those that contributed a lot to what was thought as a well-behaved and well protected respectable project for the benefit of everyone). If the Board had better understood the international issues, such thing like the termination of the French WikiQuote would have not happened, because there would have been serious discussions to help controling better the contents on WikiQuote, and to protect preventively the work from legal issues abd claims by third parties. The board would have decided soon the relevant policies that help protecting the projects. It's notable that the Board did not understand the consequences of the French and European legislations, and the effects of the changing international environment with the growing influence of the WPO, or evolving legislation that are now promoting DRM in every content, including free ones, but using proprietary patented DRM solutions and protocols.

So I think that important contribution from international members at the board will come when they challenge the projects with the evolution of international legislation, and with the ongoing projects that are fighting against proprietary DRM solutions (I mean here: the new GPL, the Creative Common licence, and related tools and working groups, including groups in US and elsewhere defending the freedom of speech for everyone, not only for specific sets of citizens or commercial and non-profit organizations of one country).

So I will vote for you, and I hope there will be a German candidate too immediately. The board really needs such international representation. fr:verdy_p 22:26, 7. Auxg 2006 (UTC)

Sekvo de la diskuto je Wikimedia, l'anglais et les autres langues (franclingve).

Collaborative consensus-based nature.

Question -- Jeandré, 2006-08-06t07:47z

Chapter/board

What do you think of the relationship ? Do you see the relation as a federation type or a branch type ? (without or with legal ties). Do you think that chapters should have an authorization to use brand name and logo for deals (such as a DVD publishing) or should the Foundation handle this from a legal perspective ? What is your position in term of membership (should the Foundation have members or not ?). Anthere User talk:Anthere

Je suis surpris que tu m'adresses une question en anglais. Ou bien tu poses la même question à tous les candidats à la manière dont on envoie une circulaire. Ou bien tu me l'adresses personnellement et je ne vois en rien ce qui justifie que tu t'adreses à un francophone en anglais. Résultat : je ne comprends pas parfaitement ni immédiatement ta question. Je dois la relire, chercher dans le dictionnaire certains mots - le dictionnaire ne m'éclaire pas toujours - et même si je suis revenu trois fois dessus, je suis toujours embarassé pour répondre. Si tu souhaites sincèrement que je réponde à ta question, je te prie de me la reformuler en français. Je t'invite à lire ma proclamation développée Merci. Arno Lagrange ✉ 10:14, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment perçois tu la relation entre les associations locales et la fondation ? Plutôt une structure basée sur l'affiliation (avec partage des risques légaux) ou plutôt une structure en fédération ? Estimes tu que les associations locales devraient avoir l'autorisation d'utiliser les noms de marques et les logos (par exemple pour publier un DVD) ou la Fondation devrait elle tout gérer de manière centralisée ?

Quelle est ta position concernant la position de membres de la Fondation (la Fondation devrait elle ou non avoir des membres ?). Voir aussi bylaws update. Peux tu commenter sur le sujet ?

Merci

Ant

Merci de m'avoir reformulé la question en français. J'avais à peu près compris. Je n'ai pas encore étudié la question et n'en mesure pas actuellement les conséquences. Je m'y pencherai, y réfléchirai et ferai connaître mon opinion dès que possible. cordialement Arno Lagrange ✉ 21:23, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I would like to know the same answer, but then in English :) Arno, can you write down in english what you wrote here in French? Although I know you find multiliguism very important, but on the other hand it is very important for a boardmember to be able to communicate in English. And I am very interested in the answer of anthere's (english) question, and my french is not that good unfortunately. Effeietsanders 22:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I wondered Anthere adress to me in english rather in French (while I know she's french and she knows I'm french ! ). I didn't quite understand the question when asked in english. I better understood it when in french ... but I cann't answer quickly. I've to think about seriously. And I only said : "wait till I've thought about and then I'll give an answer".

You think it's important a boardmember can communicate in english : yes I can but it's easier for me to communicate in french or in esperanto. I think it's important a boardmember can communicate also with non-english speaker (yes! there could be some). How can they do ? AL ✉ 10:25, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Quand même, j'ai trouvé très impoli votre attitude vers Anthere. Quelqu'un qui désire se faire élire devrait pouvoir au moins comprendre l'anglais parfaitement, même s'il ne peut pas le parler très bien. Alors ma question: Vous nous avez demandé de respecter votre langue ici, et je suis capable de vous parler en français. Mais la plupart des gens sur Wikipedia sont des anglophones qui ne parlent aucun mot de français. Est-ce que vous allez respecter les droits linguistiques des anglophones sur Wikipedia, ceux qui ne parlent pas de français? (Je vous prie de bien vouloir m'excuser pour la qualité de mon français.)

Starcreator

Being a non-english speaker myself I know very well that there are people who don't speak English. But when such a question is asked, in English, please make sure that others can enjoy the answer as well, and not only the French-speaking people, because there are also people who don't speak French that well. I have no problem with answering questions in French, I just had no energy to grab my dictionary and try to translate it, that's why I ask for an English version too. Effeietsanders 10:07, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I also sometimes have no enough energy to grab my dictionnary and try to tansalte english textes ....

Answer/ Réponse

sorry not to answer in english. i write in french, please translate to english who feels himself able to do it . Thanks AL ✉

Oui j'ai mis un petit moment avant de répondre à la question d'Anthere : c'est qu'elle n'est pas triviale. A première vue ça me choque que l'on interpelle un candidat et qu'on suppose qu'il a réponse à tout. Un délégué à mon sens est avant tout un porte-parole - il peut bien avoir une opinion personnelle sur cerains sujets, mais une fois élu il est censé être le porte-parole de ceux qui l'ont élu. Et si une question importante se pose ce n'est pas au délégué de la trancher en fonction de son opinion personnelle, mais d'organiser une consultation afin de prendre connaissance de la position de la base dont il tire sa légitimité. Et justement ma réponse à la question d'Anthere qui se recoupe avec d'autres éléments de débat tourne autour de la légitimité. La légitimité de la Wikimedia Foundation se batit-elle dans un contexte étroit Etatsunien voire Floridien, ou est-elle fondée par les apports de tous les contributeurs bénévoles et tous les généreux donateurs qui permettent aux projets de se développer et de vivre et ils ne sont pas nécessairement ni Etatsuniens ni floridiens, ni même anglophones (de langue maternelle ou pas)? C'est la question que l'on doit se poser à la base. Partant de là il s'agit de trouver la forme d'organisation la plus appropriée. Ma position personnelle (par philosophie politique ) tend vers le fédéralisme : que la fondation soit l'émanation d'associations "locales" (local chapters = associations nationales) qui chacune dispose d'un maximum d'autonomie pour gérer au mieux le développement des projets dans le contexte national ou linguistique dans lequel il se trouve. C'est aussi une précaution à prendre par rapport à des évolutions imprévisibles : si les Etats-Unis d'Amérique du Nord évoluaient vers un fondamentalisme hyperconservateur et que les projets Wikimedia étaient trop dépendants du contexte Etatsunien cela mettrait en danger les projets qui ne correspondraient pas aux vues des tenants du pouvoir dans cette entité politique qui pourrait un jour définir l'axe du mal à sa guise et jetter à la poubelle le travail de milliers d'heures de milliers de contributeurs. C'est à tout cela qu'il faut réfléchir et trancher en connaissance de cause. Je considère que la situation actuelle des projets wikimedia centrés sur une base Etatsuniennne et l'utilisation privilégiée de la langue anglo-américaine comme langue de communication est provisoire et est appelée à laisser la place à un fonctionnement plus ouvert à l'ensemble des cultures d'un monde où l'anglais n'est la langue maternelle que d'un infime minorité (<6%) et la lingua franca d'une élite, et que l'immense majorité de l'humanité est par conséquent de facto tenu à l'écart, phénomène qui n'est visible que quand on sort d'un espace clos où l'utilistion de l'anglais entre tous est un fait acquis. Je sais que j'agace à chaque fois que je mentionne cette dimension des choses, mais je m'intéresse à un monde réel qui n'est pas forcément conforme à une vision formattée qui nous est porposée par des gens qui méconnaisent superbement tout ce qui leur est étranger. Arno Lagrange ✉ 14:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Language

Arno, How do you feel about English being the main language (officially or unofficially) of Wikimedia? Fruggo 08:18, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I think you can find answers in my developped statement AL ✉ 22:18, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I can. In your developped statement you say that you want to make Wikimedia more multilingual. Apperently you find that current efforts of making Wikimedia multilingual are not enough. As possible solutions you pose to summarize English texts and obligatory translation of these, or using an auxiliary - artificial - language. I cannot find what solution is in your opinion the best choice. Let's make my question more concrete: In what language do you feel general mailing lists and board meetings should be? Fruggo 11:25, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I began to answer last night and because a very short interruption, my work was loosed. I now try to edit my answer again.

Your question is difficult to answer. Actually it seems everybody agree to use english to communicate togeher (I also do so). But that means that everybody which cannot comunicate in english cannot participate. And you even do not notice that because you don't hear these people, and finnally you could believe they don't exist. But it is not true : in the world a great majority can't communicate in english and even in wikipedia projects a lot people can't too : but these people don't read our discussions and let not hear their point of vue. The members of the board can discuss together in english if all of them can easily use this language. But that means that if somebody cannot communicate in english he/she cannot participate in the board = for being elected in the WMF board english required!

Some people have already said to me : "How could you be member of the Board, if you cannot well communicate in english  ? ". I think there are very small chances that a guy as I be elected because of that. The Board will continue to use english and only english. One could dream on a multilingual board opened to non-english speakers and which would have to solve the language problem inside itself, using multingualism or choosing an auxiliary language : but that are only dreams. I think I rather talk about linguistic problems in the whole community than in the Board where is abslotuly no problem.

to be more concrete : the good language is the one which is the most understood. It's certainly english for some people. If I said "tomorrow everybody must communicate in esperanto", that couldn't work, because very few people can communicate in esperanto today. Esperanto could work after few years, if the wikimedia community would choose to use it and individuals would seriously learn it. That's my proposal : each of you can participate to make that reality or not. Arno Lagrange ✉ 21:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

So what you are saying is that it is better for Wikimedia to use Esperanto, than to use English. So everyone has to learn Esperanto. Why do you believe it more realistic that everyone learns Esperanto, than that everyone learns English? You say that Esperanto could work, if "the community would choose to use it and individuals would seriously learn it". Why would individuals not "seriously learn" English? Or, if all individuals would seriously learn English, why would that not solve the problem? Fruggo 16:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

"Why do you believe it more realistic that everyone learns Esperanto, than that everyone learns English?" Because Eo is approximatly 10x more easy/fast to learn ? (Many studies have proven that). --Bouil 09:34, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

"Why do you believe it more realistic that everyone learns Esperanto, than that everyone learns English?" — this has really amused me much; thanx for the phrase. :) Evidently for me learning English for non-Germanic persone is many times greater trouble than learning Esperanto. Bilingual state (En/Eo) could be a good compromice (that scheme being proposed for scientific uses by some scholars like Lev Semashko in Russia and others). Slavik IVANOV 22:36, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

"Why do you believe it more realistic that everyone learns Esperanto, than that everyone learns English?" — Personally I don't think this to be realistic for the next five years given the fact that those opposing Esperanto still are unsufficiently informed about our language and our community. They usually don't know anything about the positive development the Esperanto community took in the past thirty years; they usually never considered the negative consequences the international use of English has for other cultures; they don't consider that for most Esperanto speaking people the opposition against Esperanto is regrettable but not relevant and does not hinder that Esperanto is being used everyday with great pleasure. For most of the Esperanto speaking people a general introduction of Esperanto is desirable but by no means essential.

Nowadays the usual alternative is not "to learn English or Esperanto". Most people already learned some English (in school and while practising), let's say during 500 or even 4000 hours, but this is still not enough to be on the same level with native speakers who practised their language during more than 10,000 days (at the age of 30) which probably means more than 100,000 hours. Usually it is estimated that you need something like 10,000 hours to be near the level of native speakers - which means even an average "good" non-native speaker of English has still several thousand hours left to practise. Now, the competence of 10,000 hours learning and practice in English would be comparable to about 1000 hours of Esperanto (at least when it's your second foreign language). So the alternative for a "good" non-native speaker of English is: "Where do I best invest 1000 more hours of language learning and practice?" Using English and gaining a bit more competence which will not make a big difference in practice? Or learning Esperanto (for about 20 to 50 hours) and practising it in international meetings and in the internet? Now the choice is up to you. Lu Wunsch-Rolshoven 10:26, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Board

Hmmm, maybe a nasty question, but if I may ask: what do you find more important if you would be boardmember right now: Good communication or focussing on trying to become multilingual and mosly "fair" because everybody will have trouble to learn esperanto? Effeietsanders 21:23, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Questions de Anthere

qui ne sont pas des questions dentaires

Composition of the board

What is your opinion on how the board should be constituted ? Do you think it should exclusively be composed of editors of our projects ? If so, rather elected or appointed ? Do you think we should have some people external to our community ? In those listed in the past two months on Foundation -l, can you list those you think would be great board members and those who might reveal dangerous for our dream ? Do you have names to suggest for board expansion ?

Comment le board doit il être formé ? Plutôt d'éditeurs ? Si oui, plutôt élu ou nommé ? Peut on accueillir des membres externes ? Parmi ceux listés ces derniers mois sur Foundation-l, peux tu lister ceux dont tu estimes qu'ils seraient d'excellent membres du board et ceux qui te semblent constituer une menace ? Peut tu suggérer des noms de personnes à accueillir au board ?

Copyright

Do you think the Foundation should be a publisher ? If not, do you think it should control what is publish, through the authorization (or not) of use of our brands ? Do you know of one project currently trying to be edited and in conflict with the Foundation on that matter ?

Estimes tu que la FOundation doive se comporter en éditeur ? Si non, penses tu qu'elle doive contrôler ce qui est publié, à travers la délivrance d'autorisation d'usage de nos noms de marque. Peut tu citer un projet qui cherche à être publié et qui est en conflit avec la foundation du fait de ce souhait de publication ?

Money

What should be the business plan of the Foundation ? How would you suggest it earns money ?

Comment la Foundation doit être assurer sa viabilité ?

Threat and forces

Can you cite 3 forces of the Foundation ? Can you cite the main 3 threats for our projects as of today ?

Peux tu citer les 3 points forts de la Fondation ? Quelles sont les 3 principales menaces pour nos projets à ce jour ?

Vision

If you had to decide which are the 5 most important moves for the board in the next few months, which ones would they be ? (be practical)

Quels sont les 5 choses essentielles sur l'agenda du board ? (sois concret)

Language

I agree with you that the predominance of English in the Wikipedia is problematic, though I never thought of that before. I also agree on the fact that guidelines about multi-language discussions make sense and should be introduced. However, the introduction of a helper language wouldn't solve the problem at all. The problem does not, as you say, sum down to "It's not a problem (I speak English well enough) and I don't care for the others", since the choice of English over an other language is based on the widespread acceptance of English as a world language not only in the Internet, but also in the scientific world. The vast majority of English speakers learned English as a world language, not as the language of Great Britain and the USA. The percentage of native English speakers is relatively small.

I hope I am allowed to make two comments here. (If not: Just take it away.) I do think people learn English mainly because of the USA and the cultural products of the US. I remember that 20 years ago about 50 % of all mathematicians (at universities?) of the world had English as mother tongue - this was a strong argument for every other mathematician to learn at least to read English. And, please, think of something rather hypothetic: The US decide to change the language from English to e.g. Spanish within the next 20 years - do you think there would be many people to continue with English? (Just think of the board of Wikimedia.)

The percentage of native English speakers is indeed relatively small, if you take all those who can say "hello". But it's much higher, if you only consider those who can write legible texts. And it's, I suppose, over 80 %, if you take only those who already published a book in English. There we come back to Wikimedia: The percentage of native speakers is not so high among the Wikimedia users, but relatively high among those who can rapidly participate in discussions. Lu

The only people who really benefit more than others from the fact that English is the commonly used communication language are exactly these, relatively few, native speakers. All other English speakers started from the same point and had (roughly) the same labor learning the language. What would a helper language like e.g. Esperanto, which you favor, change?

• The advantage of Esperanto over English is the fact that it was developed as an easy-to-learn language and not purely romanistic/germanistic, which would favor speakers of these languages. (Note that as far as my knowledge goes, chinese and japanese influences in Esperanto are marginal at best, which relativizes the advantage of Esperanto over English for speakers of these languages.)
  • esperanto's structure (not vocabulary) makes it ten times easier to learn for chinese than English. I say it again learning one root in Esperanto one knows immediatly tens of new words : because of that one can learn esperanto five to ten times faster than english. AL ✉
• The second advantage of Esperanto, which you seem to emphasize, is its freedom from cultural bias. Here I have to agree, as regards content. Personally, I don't care a lot for this problem, though, and I suppose most other potential or actual English speakers would agree that although this might be an interesting topic for linguists, ethnologists or historians, it is without major signifiance to most of us.

The cultural problem is to be found in the fact that between 50 and 70 % of the books translated into Spanish, French, German, Danish etc. (the languages beside English) are translated from English books written mostly by English native speakers. The advantages of Esperanto are obvious when you consider that English takes only about 20 % as language of origin for the translations into Esperanto. Which means that in Esperanto the different cultures are much more equally represented and the diversity of the world is a lot more visible than in English or in any other language. Lu

• Now to the crucial disadvantage of artificial languages in the Wikipedia: Your main argument is that English has a predominance on the Internet which is not in proportion to the presence of English in the "real world". Is this an argument for or against English? In fact, this speaks for English rather than against. The fact that English has reached popularity as language of international communication and is learned as such a language constitutes the status as world language for English, regardless whether Esperanto is the better language or not. A common language should lower the obstacles for helping with the Wiki project. An introduction of Esperanto would raise them, in fact. Yes, English is a majority-based decision, but to exclude a minority is still better (or "less bad") than to exclude almost everybody.
  • My aim is not to exclude everybody. Esperanto could be used in Wikimedia projects only if people would choose it, and had learned it.
  • You are talking about people (native speakers or not but easyly communicating with english) for whom english is a good tool. I am talking about the others : all these which cannot communicate with english or only with difficulties. The phenomenon is the same in scientific areas, in internet and in wikimedia projects : even if english looks to work well as "world language" (language of which world ? ) it doesn't work efficiently for everybody. Multilingualism is now necessary to enable more people access the informations and the knowledges. The use of an auxiliary language would lower the obstacles -not only because it is easy-to-learn but also clear ambiguousless which structure and grammmar help to understand well and enable to express clearly ideas -. Examples :
    • In english it is very difficult (or impossible) to know if a word is a noun a verb an adjective or an adverb : so there are lot of sentences which you can understand in different ways, and the reader cann't know what the writer wanted to express. In esperanto you can know by each word what is its role in the sentence. So people from different cultures can understand one another much better and much easier.
    • In esperanto you can build tens of words whith very few material create new words which reflect fairly your thoughts and been immediatly understood by everybody which has the same basic knowledge of esperanto as you, even if they didn't this word before.
    • AL ✉
• In fact, hardly anybody would profit from the adoptance of Esperanto as Interwiki language. Instead of having to learn English, people had to learn Esperanto. Where should I learn Esperanto? With a bit of luck, I might find a language school in my neighborhood - English is taught in almost every school throughout the world. I can use English everywhere in the world, people understand me. Nobody understands Esperanto. Let's face it - Esperanto was a very good idea, and it was not far away from succeeding. Reality was faster, though, and we have a new Esperanto, perhaps linguistically and culturally less perfect, but generally recognized, and not only in our Western cultures.
  • You can easyly learn esperanto with internet tools there are several to learn it (see Learning (en) lernen (de) at esperanto.net informations about esperanto in 62 languages, in WP : de:Esperanto#Esperanto-Kurse or Esperanto courses (en) ); (lernu.net, vortaro, ...). Then you can train participating in the esperanto wikimedia projects  :-)
  • Please don't say that "nobody understands esperanto". It's a nonsense : there are billions of people in the world which understand it ( 2 to 10 following the calculations)
  • Please don't say that "esperanto was a good idea" and "esperanto has failed". Esperanto remains a good idea (particulary for the future). Please rather say "esperanto has not yet succeeded in the scale we could have expected". AL ✉

Esperanto has failed. We shouldn't try to reintroduce again what didn't work. The Wikipedia is important, and so is multilingualism in the Wikipedia, and I continue to support your aims of guidelines and a policy for multi-language discussion in the Wikipedia. But to most collaborators, it is not important to the extent that they would learn an additional language to participate. In my eyes, your advocacy of Esperanto is purely ideologically motivated. Do you really attribute such weight to the question of Esperanto that you would endanger the Wikimedia project for it? The Wikimedia collaborators are not ready for such an important change, and would not understand it. The battle for Esperanto was not lost on the Internet, it was lost long before. If you want to introduce Esperanto (or any other helper language, for that matter) at all costs (which I derive from your statement on the German candidacy pages) you weigh a failed utopy more than the Wikimedia project, an utopy which became reality at least in significant parts.

Certainly Esperanto failed to make the much hoped quick victory as widely used international language - but the game is still open. (Please remember that English needed about 1500 years to establish its current position.) Within the past thirty years there were a lot of major developments in the Esperanto speaking community:

The number of international meetings and the number of participants increased steadily.

The number of children with Esperanto as mother tongue increased. Nowadays there are several international meetings open to Esperanto speaking children who have contact with friends in other countries.

There is now music in Esperanto in a lot of different styles.

The scientific literature about Esperanto grows steadily.

The number of Esperanto speakers overseas still increases, especially in southern America, in Africa, India and the far East. Type "Esperanto+China" into a searching machine to see.

The number of Internet pages increases as may be seen with wikipedia. Lu

What do you reply to this statement of mine? If you are ideologically biased, you are not viable as a candidate for the Board of Trustees for me. It seems to me that Esperanto is more important to you than the Wikipedia is. Can you calm my fears? --Dvrvm 19:40, 29 August 2006 (UTC) , a non-native English speaker.

(Si tu veux, je peux traduire ma question / ma déclaration en Français, mais mon Français est beaucoup plus, disons, modeste que mon Anglais. Autre possibilité: Allemand, ma langue maternelle.) --Dvrvm 22:10, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Ich danke Dir für Deine Frage. Deine Gedänke sind sehr nett. Ich verstehe Dich ganz gut. Ich hätte gern dassselbe auf Deutsch gelesen, es ist aber nicht nötig, dass Du deine Frage für mich übersetztest. Vielleicht bist Du recht, wir benützen Englisch wie eine internationale Sprache zwischen uns, und wir frohen uns, dass wir dadurch ein ander verstehen können. Ich denke aber auch an allen Leuten im Welt, die Englisch nicht gelernet haben, und für die Englisch lernen schwer wäre. Ich denke an der Zukunft, am Ziel der Wikimedia Projekten : Wissenschafte zu alle in allen Sprachen zu verfügen. Ich denke an der Zukunft der Menschheit.

I don't agree with your vision that esperanto has definitively failed. I would say esperanto has not yet succeeded because it needs decades perhaps centuries for such a change as choosing an auxiliary language. Metrical system has needed such a time since it has been conceived theoritically (few centuries ago), proposed in a first country, and adopted in facts in fast all countries (except in some anglosaxon countries bizarily).

I don't think the perspective adopting esperanto could endanger wikimedia projects anyway. If the option to use an auxiliary language was choosen, it could only be done gradually and with the acceptance of each user. You never will see such a decison as "tomorrow all discussions on mailing lists and meta talk pages must be only in esperanto", but if an international board equitably representing all the communities would decide it : "now all our documents must be havailable in english and esperanto and if possible also in french, german, chinese, japanese, ...". So it would enable the access to informations, discussions and decisons more equitably for everybody because (I say it again) everybody cann't communicate well with english, and to better communication between people from different cultures in the future esperanto is a better way than english.

You wrote : "But to most collaborators, it is not important to the extent that they would learn an additional language to participate."

You are right. But I don't speak only about the actual collaborators for whom english is not a problem but about all the others.

You wrote : "The Wikimedia collaborators are not ready for such an important change, and would not understand it."

Perhaps you are right. Perhaps you are talking about yourself. Perhaps a lot of actual wikimedians aren't ready and wouldn't understand. Perhaps there are some which could understand the advantages of adopting an auxiliary languages : probabily they are not numerous today, and changes are not coming next week, but I'm sure we can expect significant evolutions in the next years. Arno Lagrange ✉ 02:05, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Questions from Dijxtra

Hello, these are generic questions I decided to submit to every candidate. If you already answered the question in your application, skip it. If you consider any question to be to private for you to answer, feel free to state that and accept my apology for being to intrusive. I also ask you to pardon my English since spellcheckers don't check grammar :-) Here are the questions:

1. Privacy policy of Wikimedia Foundation projects states that: "It is the policy of Wikimedia that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, may be released by the system administrators or users with CheckUser access, in the following situations: 1. In response to a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement" If such subpoena occurs, would you agree that Wikimedia Foundation complies ASAP or would you request Foundation to dispute that subpoena in court, like Google did in January this year? Let me remind you that the second option requires money to be spent.

2. What is your opinion of WP:OFFICE? Do you think that:

• It is very good solution to bureaucratisation of Wikipedia, allowing a swift action in cases which need such action. We should widen the circle of people who have the power to use WP:OFFICE.
• It is very good solution to bureaucratisation of Wikipedia, allowing a swift action in cases which need such action. (And only Danny should use WP:OFFICE privilege)
• I don't like the thing, but we need it so we don't get sued.
• Community is above any user and we should think of WP:OFFICE as temporary measure until we find a way for the whole community to act swiftly in cases of libel accusations.
• We should move our servers to jurisdiction which makes it hard for people to sue us for libel.

3. Have you ever been on a paylist of anybody/any organization/any firm connected to any current member of the board? Please understand this question in the broadest sense possible.

Thank you for your time, Dijxtra 20:25, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

English vs other languages

You are answering to questions on this page in French or Esperanto. I am wondering if this is because of lazyness, or because of your lack of English language skills. In latter case: How will you be able to contribute to discussions? Note that the rest of the world might not be willing to learn French. --82.212.10.96 13:17, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Je n'ai pas (encore) le droit de vote, mais je trouve ce débat vraiment intéressant... parce qu'effectivement, la prédominance de l'anglais sur wiki est un vrai problème (pour le côté "administratif"). Et je trouve très révélateur que des contributeurs anglophones se demandent pourquoi tu ne réponds pas en anglais : c'est justement le problème ! Pourquoi devrait-on répondre en anglais ??

Which means, according with our anonymous friend : Note that the rest of the world might not be willing to learn English...

Mais cela, c'est la théorie, parce qu'en pratique, l'anglais est prédominant. Et recommander l'usage de l'esperanto dans les débats n'est donc pas, à court terme, une solution (aussi élégante soit-elle, j'en conviens).

Reste alors le multilinguisme, que tu trouves trop lourd à mettre en oeuvre. C'est probablement vrai pour les débats, mais ne sommes-nous pas dans une communauté virtuelle ? Pourquoi ne pas utiliser ses ressources ? Disons un moteur de traduction automatique qui génère des "ébauches linguistiques". Ainsi donc : pourquoi ne pas miser sur une solution software ?

And as a conclusion (for english users) : the only official text "Rules for candidates" is the english one ; I think it's a big problem if you don't understand english. What the feeling of the three organizers about this ?

Druss 1ier septembre 2006.

Il faut se demander: Pourquoi l'anglais est-il prédominant? English is the neutral language of the world. It is the most widely spoken language internationally, the language of business and the de facto official language of Wikipedia. A language like English is far more widely spoken than, for instance, Esperanto (as you proposed), and is the closest thing we have to an international language. Nous devrions donc nous concentrer non sur une façon de changer la langue que nous parlons, mais d'assurer que nos débats et nos discussions sont bien traduites pour les gens qui parlent d'autres langues.

Starcreator

9/11 Wikipedia

Hi, Arno. In light of the four discussions listed below, what course of action would you take with regard to the 9/11 Wikipedia if you were elected to the board?

• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sep11wiki/Babel_thread
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sep11wiki/Request_for_deletion
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/9/11_wiki_move_proposal
• http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#Closure_of_September_11_Wiki

You're more than welcome to reply in Esperanto or French. Looking forward to your response. Thanks. Andreyi 17:36, 13 September 2006 (UTC)