Well, this is an old argument....
I know some manufactured language Wikipedias have been moved to Wikia, such as Toki Pona and Klingon, But I don't see a real case for moving away real genuine languages. You are talking about moving them, aren't you? Not just deleting entire wikipedias?
I tend to think that removing a dialect Wikipedia to try and force editors onto the "main language" Wikipedia is for a great many reasons a bad idea. If these editors wanted to contribute more tot he other project, so be it. If you start removing languages, where do you stop?
If there is a case, however for moving or deleting a particular wiki, that is a meta discussion anyway. It has been done before, it probably will be done again. This is the wrong forum though.
-aliasd
On Jan 18, 2008 3:24 PM, Ian A Holton poeloq@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure this is the right list for this, but I've been thinking about this for awhile now. Surely, some languages that Wikipedia is offered in are unnecessary and obsolete. For example Gothic and Allemanisch and many other German dialects. Anybody who can uses Wikipedia in a German dialacet spoken in Germany can also at least read standard German.
Why am I against such languages? A) They are an additional cost and Wikipedia isn't exactly swimming in money and B) the contributors of these Wikipedias would be making contributions to the larger more popular and also more necessary standard version of the language. I know this from several cases that good editors switched from Standard German to their local dialect, for "a laugh".
Of course, this doesn't apply to all dialects and all dead languages. Latin for example is still used in academic circles and is therefor not dead in my opinion. However, I don't see many people writing in Goth anymore.
What is the general opinion on this, am I alone in thinking that this is maybe an issue that needs to be addressed?
Ian [[User:Poeloq]], who is running the risk of making some enemies ;-)
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