Well, the problem of lack of attention in the future is certainly something worth considering. Obviously, this goes not only for constructed languages, but basically for all smaller projects. It will always depend on whether there are people willing to keep an eye on it. Take Wikipedia in Old Church Slavonic: it's very small (582 articles in more than 10 years), but there is one admin who is always there, weeding out the bad stuff, correcting errors and the like. On the other hand, Wikipedia in Interlingua has nearly 20,000 articles and new pages are being added regularly (most of which are pretty decent), but what it lacks (at least, until recently) is leadership: questions remain unanswered, discussions are non-existent because nobody responds. In other words, the writers are there, but there is no real community.

In my previous post I mentioned Novial, so let me use it as an example. This Wikipedia has two admins, one of whom has made only one edit after 2009, the second only six edits after 2011. The founder of the project made his last edit in 2010. In other words, the people who are supposed to carry the project, clearly have lost interest. There are no regular contributors and there is definitely nothing like a community. 

I am neither a user nor a proponent of Novial, but I know how to use it and I still check up regularly on the project. Because it was a deplorable mess, I applied for temporary adminship on Meta in 2014. Once I obtained it, I reorganised the main page (which looked pretty much like it was made in the 1990s) and deleted about 1,000 articles (pages with nothing but a template, year pages without content, pages with nothing but "X is a city in Y", pages in another languages, etc.). I also undeleted several articles that had been deleted by global sysops for whatever reason, even though there was nothing wrong with them. And I wrote a few new articles myself.  But then? My adminship lapsed after 6 months, I had it prolonged, and then it lapsed again. Now, I don't want to go begging for a few extra buttons every a few months, so I let it pass. As a result, the Novial Wikipedia has no admin once again.

What I am trying to say is this: it doesn't take a lot of people to keep a project clean. What strikes me as unfair, though, is that initially adminship granted practically for life (one edit in two years is enough to keep it!), but once the community turns out too small, the only way for potential new admins is to keep filing new requests on Meta for temporary adminship. I am well aware of the fact that this is nothing the Langcom can do about, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

I am not quite sure what you mean by "an environment that is out of control". Could you please explain that, Gerard? If you mean that a project could be taken over by people with some fuzzy political agenda, then I don't think this is serious risk in the case of LFN.

Cheers,
Jan



2017-02-02 10:37 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>:
Hoi,
I like the argument put forward by Jan and Michael. Personally I do not mind when people are busy with knowledge in any language and we do know that some say that the WMF is in the business of education.. Surely people get educated in this way.

The problem is in two parts. How do we prevent an environment that is out of control ... (This is not specific to a conlang) and two, what does it take to prevent death by lack of attention in the future.

The first is not really a problem we have a precedent whereby a project can be closed. The second does not need to be a problem when there is attention for its quality (also automated).

So I am rather positive to allow for a change of heart.
Thanks,
     GerardM

On 1 February 2017 at 12:57, Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren.jan@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not a member of the Langcom, but I've been subscribed to this mailing list for quite a while now. Since my primary field of interest is constructed languages, let me tell you why I am inclined to support this request. Mind, I am in no way involved with LFN itself.

My point of view is that there is only one criterion that should really matter for allowing a project to exist, namely the question: is it sustainable? 

At present, we have Wikipedias in seven constructed languages: Esperanto, Volapük, Ido, Interlingua, Interlingue (Occidental), Novial and Lojban. Of these, only Esperanto has native speakers, albeit an extremely low number compared to virtually all ethnic languages with a Wikipedia. Yet, the project is thriving. With >236,000 articles it is #32 on the list, which is more than Wikipedias in for example Greek, Danish, Bulgarian and Hindi. Ido and Interlingua (#98 and #109) are doing fine as well, in spite of the fact that both languages have no native speakers and less than a thousand users. The number of Volapük users is not more than a few dozens, but the "Vükiped" is doing reasonably well anyway. Even Interlingue seems to manage somehow, although its number of users (I always avoid the word "speakers" in the case of constructed languages) is probably less than ten.

The only project that IMO has become a failure is Novial. Currently it has 1,644 articles. About 50 of them have some real critical mass, perhaps another 200 are more than just one or two lines of text, tables and infoboxes. After its foundation it had a few enthusiastic, active users, but they all seem to have vanished a long time ago. Since 2011 practically nothing has been happening over there. New articles still appear every once in a while, but most of these are the work of people who don't even know the language and just copy info from other articles, giving articles whose sole content is: "George Clooney is an American actor". 

Wikipedia projects in three other constructed languages have been closed in the past, for different reasons: Siberian because it turned out a hoax, Toki Poni because it is a minimalistic language with just ±120 words, Klingon because it is a work of fiction with a vocabulary too small for creating a viable project in it. For the same reason, Quenya and Sindarin are not suitable either.

Anyway, compare all this to Wikipedias in African languages, for example Oromo: a major language with 60 million speakers, but only 726 articles, most of which are oneliners like "Germany is a country in Europe" or even empty. Where's the educational value in that?

Speaking about educational value, I think this boils down to two things: communicating valuable content, and working with the language itself. 

When it comes to perusing Wikipedia because one is looking for info, a vast majority of the projects we have are quite unnecessary. Speakers of Bavarian, Luxemburgish, Rhaeto-Romance, Belarusian, Bashkir or Pennsylvania German won't be looking for information in their native language, they will look for info where they can find it, and in a language they speak fluently, i.e. in German, Russian, English etc. Wikipedias in languages like that serve an entirely different purpose: they offer a platform for generating content in a particular language, for practicing it, developing it, showcasing it. In other words, these projects are there for the sake of the language itself rather than the information presented in it.

And in this respect, numbers of native speakers are completely irrelevant. Latin has no native speakers, but its Wikipedia is still a success. What really matters, in other words, is whether there are people willing to write in it and read in it.

LFN is of more recent date than the other auxlang projects, but remarkably vivid nonetheless. I don't know if it really has 100 active users; numbers like that are notoriously difficult to verify, and the only persons who really have an idea about these figures are the same ones who have a vested interest in exaggerating them. But it is clear that there is a large number of people involved in it anyway, enough to generate quite some content. Of course, nobody knows what will happen when the author of the languages stops being involved with the language for whatever reason: it might go down the same road as Novial, but that would be a worst case scenario. In any case, the LFN wiki at Wikia (http://lfn.wikia.com/wiki/Paje_xef) has 3,774 pages at present, and keeps growing. Quite a lot of these pages are substantial articles, some of them having even more content than their equivalents in the major European languages. Obviously, not all pages could be moved to a Wikipedia in LFN, as they also contain translations of poetry and prose, but still, even at the very start this Wikipedia would be at a higher level than those in Interlingue, Novial, Volapük and Lojban. Not only in terms of numbers, but also in terms of substance and quality. So why not give it a chance?

Best regards,
Jan van Steenbergen (User:IJzeren Jan)

2017-02-01 10:15 GMT+01:00 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 7:44 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
> We had in the past really well functioning languages that were also shifted
> to Wikia. It is all part and parcel of the original idea of the policy to
> prevent the easy creation of new projects. This was needed because at the
> time there was a groundswell of sentiment to prevent new projects all
> together.
>
> When one member of the committee says "NO", it will not happen. Wen doubts
> are raised it is not no. So please be clear what your intentions are.

True. Here is my more precise position.

My basic position is on the Amir's line: So weak against ("Wikia
should be good enough") that I don't want to be the one who blocks it.
However, for me it *is* mandatory to have a good reasoning in favor.
That's why I asked Michael to make one. I see that as mandatory
because of the future request.

There is a tiny line, invisible from both sides, which differs
relevant institutions from irrelevant ones. LangCom exists to keep
Wikimedia relevant institution in relation to the languages. I would
define relevancy as.

We are still on the relevant side and LFN is one of the possible lines
and we need to make a good decision here. And I have to say that what
Amir's said about LFN doesn't sound promising at the moment.

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