People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of the
tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis. Adding the
wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the language file,
mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki links. From
establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of developer work
involved. Then there is a similar cost to the rest of the community --
stewards have to deal with creating bureaucrats and administrators, and
for small conlangs, the community has to deliberate over visibility on
the larger wikis.
This is all no big deal for important projects, I spend many hours per
week on Wikipedia. But there's a reason I spend that time on Wikipedia
rather than some other project, and that is because I think providing
general information to as large an audience as possible is a noble goal.
I was annoyed at having to support the Toki Pona wiki, and I wasn't keen
on Klingon either. I researched the Lojban language to see if there was
any way I could motivate myself to work on it by relating it to
Wikipedia's mission, but I didn't find one. I added it to the language
list with no intention of supporting it. It was painful turning down the
inevitable support requests, directing them to a more general forum. I
decided that if no developer was willing to support a wiki, then
creating it would only lead to frustration on the part of the contributors.
So, if any developer is willing to support the Gothic Wikipedia (or by
the same token, the Old English Wikipedia), I invite you to follow the
instructions at:
http://wp.wikidev.net/Wiki_farm#How_to_add_a_language
Don't forget to give the contributors your contact details, in case they
have any problems.
-- Tim Starling