Hi guys, can I ask why you don't consider Russian language to be world language, in contrast to Portuguese. I mean his status in wiki language menu. Thanks
Topic on Talk:Wikimedia Language engineering
Back when we were creating the list in 2012, we gave "Worldwide" to languages that are artificial and don't belong to any particular country (like Esperanto and a few others), and to languages that are spoken on many continents. Portuguese is spoken in Europe, America (Brazil), Africa (Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau), and Asia (East Timor, Macau, Goa), and Russian is only Europe and Asia.
Frankly, I don't think that the choice of aforementioned criteria was a wise decision. Territory when Russian is used is much vaster than Portuguese-speaking territory. Russian is the second most widespread language on the Internet with more L1+L2 speakers than Portuguese or French. I wouldn't call Chinese and Hindi worldwide language, because they are restricted to one specific region, virtually to one country. But I think that we cannot say that Russian is somehow "restricted", given the immensity of the area. For me it is definitely world language, alongside with Arabic. And let's faced it, globally much influential and significant than Portuguese (official language of UN etc.). Anyway, if you like it, leave it as it is. Thanks for your answer. Bye.