United Wikipedias Forum

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The idea

To create a multilingual web space for unification of language Wikipedias, promoting cooperation between them as well as exchange of information.
To serve the whole project, with all being heard and all having their voice.

Rationale

We aim to make one multilingual web encyclopedia
The communication inside single one language Wikipedia is usually sufficient, achievement of the same level of communication between all Wikipedias is now impossible
There is lack of proper flow of information between groups of people working on different language Wikipedias to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts, various kinds of forks, POV
There are language barriers and most Wikipedians are not fully aware of them
The mailing list format is unsuitable for translation and some form of content management system (wiki?) is better for discussion and working out solutions
The mailing list does not stick to Simple English which would be much fairer for non native English speakers, although still not fair to non English speakers
Meta Wikipedia has not, so far, been a focusing point of all Wikipedias (99.9% in English)
Planning and decisions concerning, to various extent all Wikipedians, is in hands of relatively small group. Others potentially valuable people just because they don't speak English seem to be shut off - troll-formative injustice runs rampant, rather than the transformative justice some seek.

Implementation

Technical solutions

Proposal 1

a sub-division of meta.wikipedia.org
- would be interesting, but "division" means more walls. Just dividing would not promote relationships. Requires technical dev.
- also, would be under the control of the same people, and using the same technology - maybe something based on tikiwiki or MoinMoinWiki run by someone else would be better.

Proposal 2

slashcode like web site using blog technology

Proposal 3

heavy use of http://crit.org facilities to mark up mailing list URLs, meta-wikipedia URLs, and policy pages, in languages the cabal does not understand - thus enabling conspiracy against them.

Proposal 4

rework the Mediawiki-engine (and others) in order to enable multilingual textwork on single pages like partly implemented on CommunityWiki:MultilingualExperiment. Multilingual communication presents and explains the solution.

Name proposals

News of the Wikipedias
Wikipedia News
Wikipedia Focus
Wikipedians Unite
Wikipedias Common Ground

Editorial solutions

Essential : editorial board comprising (at least?) one Wikipedian from all major language Wikipedias with good command of English and their own language
items of information submitted by editors or submitted by Wikipedians and approved or just translated for Wikipedians
items of information are translated and transmitted to all Wikipedias or alternatively incorporated into language editions
all items can be discussed but only resumes are translated to other editions
published : daily, weekly ?

Subjects, areas for inclusion

announcements
call for comments
surveys
achievements (best articles, progress of article count)
internal problems (vandalisms, POV issues, copy-right violation etc)
data requests and offers
image requests and offers
putting articles across Wikipedias in sync
resumes of important topics from wikipedia-l, intlwiki-l wikitech-l wikinl-l and wikifr-l
level of language used in dispute resolution
older issues are archived

Addition of an area where smaller wikipedias can receive specific help and ideas from old hands, who have already participated to the "birth" of one wikipedia.

Cons

What about Embassies ?
- May be included in that proposition
What about Intlwiki-L? If no one is using that mailing list for the purposes outlined above, why think they'll use a special area of meta.wikipedia.com? Maybe they would, and it would be a good thing if they did, but I'm skeptical that in fact they would.
linguistic factionalism - deliberately not wanting articles translated or things defined in one language to be challenged in another