[Bug-gnupedia] Positioning of <GNUpedia> - Multilinguism

[Philippe Aigrain]

1) I suggest the following positioning for <GNUPedia> (or whatever will
be its final name):

<A technical infrastructure for and a library of free contents in
encyclopedia article form>

I think describing it as a free library is too wide: a library contains
many different types of documents (journals, books, prints, etc). And
each of these types many different sub-types: for instance scientific
journals and daily newspapers. The Web is a kind of universal library.
Many open contents projects are more specialised libraries. GNUPedia has
to be more focused than this. The critical definition of its identity is
the medium form as which it is aiming: encyclopedia articles each aiming
at giving self-standing reference information on a given well delineated
subject. Defining GNUPedia as I suggest would enable good
differentiation from and good complementarity with Nupedia or other
edited encyclopedia projects. GNUPedia would not aim at becoming an
encyclopedia per se, but a library of encyclopedic contents with its
associated tools. GNUpedia contents and tools would be usable by any
edited encyclopedia compatible with its license, and also by "portals"
providing added-value views on GNUPedia contents.

2) One parameter on which the existence of a project defined as
suggested above can bring a critical added-value is true multi-linguism.
Projects focusing on directly editing an encyclopedia will claim to aim
at multilinguism, but they will have a natural bias to create a huge
disbalance between the English lingua franca and other languages. This
bias will take 30 years to correct. We can not afford it. I would thus
motion that the guidelines on submitting articles to GNUPedia should
recommend strongly submissions in the mother tongue of the writer and
never make it compulsory (even as a lax recommendation) to provide
English translations (but of course, non-native English speaker
contributors who want to provide such a translation should be left free
to do so). The contents of Gnupedia should reflect lingustically the
diversity of its contributors.

On the contrary, the email lists can require English for practical
purposes.

Cheers,

Philippe Aigrain
depuis GNU/Linux sur sa machine personnelle en Belgique