Hoi, Like you I want to see a thousand flowers bloom. However, I am not a stamp collector. I want living projects representing living languages (here I mean languages that are actually used by people). I want to make sure that a project is understandable to its readers and this is why localisation is essential. I want to make sure that a new project has a good start and this is why new projects have a kernel of a community and a kernel of content. I insist that there must be something to read; it cannot only be a picture with a caption.
In the Incubator new languages have all the time to develop. On Meta, a project proposal is accepted as eligible when the language is recognised. In Betawiki, we accept almost all linguistic entities within reason. There seems to be a policy to commit a new language to MediaWiki when a first substantial stab has been made to the localisation of such a linguistic entity.
Most of the Wikipedias with less then 1000 articles are only a dream. When this dream is started by a person who knows this languages well, it has a chance. When there is nobody who cares for a project, such a project is much better off in the Incubator and closed.
I do not believe in eventualism I believe in sending a new project off with a minimal start in life. Thanks, GerardM
On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 10:02 AM, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I do not require all project to have 1000 articles. I would consider a project for closure when they do not have a 90% localisation AND not
1000
articles. Also a new project does not start with zero articles. It
starts on
average with a sizable number of articles *AND *a full localisation of
the
most used messages.
That is how they start... now. You are proposing, from what I can tell, criteria to be imposed on existing projects. If these two are to be used together, then I wonder which projects will be closed? I'm most curious about Wikipedia; although I know it has annoyed you in the past, that is the project I care most about and I will admit it freely, I have a tie to it and a bias towards it. I don't feel bad when Wiktionaries and Wikibookses are proposed for closure on Meta, but I lose sleep when Wikipedias are. I am human, I have feelings, and that is how I feel.
From the very start, I have been a strong believer in eventualism and gentle prodding. I discussed this with Francis Tyers, and from what I recall, he didn't buy it when we were doing preliminary work on adding a couple of skeletal articles to the Tajik Wikipedia... and then all of a sudden, new users came along. This, after 3 or 4 years of existance and total lack of meaningful articles.
Most existing Wikis have their growth start either like the Big Bang, or in fits and spurts. I am disappointed that we are now closing empty Wikis, although I always knew it was only a matter of time before this would happen. That the Chamorro Wikipedia is now saved, I consider a great thing, and I hope it will remain open enough longer to attract real users.
Many people have said "If nobody has come by now, they never will come", but the rash of Wikis that were all created around the same time have become active at different times across the years, right up until the present. If we wait long enough, almost all of them can be expected to become active. Wikis like Cheyenne, with 1700 mostly elderly speakers, could possibly fail, but the vast majority of currently empty Wikis are likely to flourish at some point.
We have had this discussion in the past, and that is why I started SWMT. To my disappointment, the people who joined SWMT and made it their own after I became less active in monitoring small Wikis have all become strong proponents of the deletion of inactive Wikis. That goes directly against my original reason for starting it - if these Wikis are vandalized, having someone to monitor them removes that as a possible problem. It appears that the people who have taken it upon themselves to monitor these Wikis have decided that it is too much work and that they'd rather just close 'em all up instead... I guess for them, it is not a labor of love as it was for me, but rather a dull maintenance task. I was always excited to see that someone had added real content to a previously empty Wiki... I wonder about them? Since I stopped watching, the Tigrigna Wikipedia has sprung alive... did they smile? Did they add any helpful messages to guide the new Tigrigna Wikipedians along? I wonder.
Deletionism is not the answer here. It has never been, and it never will be. Now that we have tightened restrictions on new Wikis, I don't see why we need to excommunicate any of the existing members of our family, except the problem children (like ru-sib).
Mark
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