OpenWetWare talk:Community development/Non-English versions

The main motivation of incorporating Spanish information has been three-fold:

1) to reach out to the approximately 400 million people whose main language is Spanish around the world to educate them on the subject and to help dissipate misconceptions and fears of a new technology that may arise;

2) to engage scientists who are interested or may already be working in this or related fields of research and promote interaction/collaboration with groups in the US; and

3) to harvest the potential wealth of research data that normally would not be accessible to us and that could fuel advancement in the field.

That having been said, I agree with Jason's points of view. The original intent has not been to simply provide a direct translation of the Synthetic Bioloy pages already in existence, but rather to have a wiki site that serves as a platform to engage a curious and trained audience on a discussion of the issues, scientific, social, ethical, political and economical derived from this line of research and its potential applications.

Along the process it was suggested that the idea of a "Spanish version of OWW" would be welcome and it was thought that, initially, translating the already existing material, would facilitate take-off of a distinctly separate wiki for Spanish speakers.

It is evident to me that running and maintaining a wiki community is a significant undertaking. My knowledge and experience about wiki development is very limited (the past 7 days!). My original request when approaching this community was related to whether you would be able to help me with this, first by allowing me to host the Spanish wiki pages on the same system as OWW and in this way facilitate their administration. Perhaps, once the community grows (and I understand it will take a great effort to achieve this) it will, as most mature children, become independent instead of becoming a strain for the OWW community. In any case, I am already very appreciative of the support I have already received for this idea and hope that we will be able to promote it together. --Maurod 21:57, 9 March 2006 (EST)

Jasonk 00:27, 10 March 2006 (EST): I think that sounds very reasonable, if it gets to the point where the Spanish community has gotten large enough to warrant a separate wiki then it will be a good problem to have anyway ;) Looking forward to seeing more spanish pages get online, let us know if you run into any issues.