Note: The Radio Interview is in Two Parts.
Part 1 ||| Part 2

From a BBC Summary of the Interview:

Speaking on the BBC World Service’s Digital Planet programme, Mr Wales outlined the next step for the online encyclopaedia.

[Snip]

He says his challenge is to encourage thousands more to contribute in their own languages.

“In the languages of India, we’re seeing 10% monthly growth, which is really exciting but they’re still quite small.

“In Africa, we have very few languages that have any substantial size at all – Swahili is around 10,000 entries now. But that’s quite tiny compared to what we think of as a really successful project with 200,000 entries.”

[Snip]

“We’re not hearing from everybody. We hear very unevenly from places around the world. I think that’s going to start to even out, and we’re going to start getting cultural influences from places we know almost nothing about today.

[Snip]

Meanwhile, in the developed world, Wikipedia has other hurdles to jump. The site has been heavily censored in China – at times being completely unavailable. Recently, however, the Chinese authorities have loosened controls.

“We were completely banned in China for three years,” recalled Mr Wales.

“Now we are available in China, with the exception of a few pages – certain sensitive topics in China. Certain questions about the status of Taiwan are quite delicate – those things tend to be filtered.

Source: BBC World Service

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