Proposal talk:Make Wikipedia better known ("smaller" languages)

From Strategic Planning

This is very much a chicken and egg situation. In order to become more relevant we have to have a bigger Wikipedia. In order to get a bigger Wikipedia we need to better prepared and better known. The Norwegian languages are doing fine as far as localisation is concerned, it is imho a matter of perseverance in maintaining this and in writing and improving articles. Blogging and other outings may help as well. Thanks,

   GerardM
Since I specified Norwegian teachers, I'll say a bit more about them. Nearly all can read English (and German, Danish and Swedish) to some degree. All can use text programs and almost all use the internet. Everyone knows and has used Google. I'd wager that the majority of people who answer, no, they've not heard of Wikipedia, have, in fact, found (through Google) and read Wikipedia articles in English.
So it's not just a matter of growing the Norwegian Wikipedias so big that they're unavoidable. It's name-recognition which is missing, regardless of language. Probably not many know what a wiki is, and pedia sounds like pediatrician, not lexicon. I'd guess that other "small" languages may be in the same situation and promotion name-recognition internationally would help. We need people to not only say "Oh, yes, that's the big online lexicon in English," but also to know the fact that some portion of it is available in all languages. --Hordaland 17:12, 21 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Impact?

Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 00:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]