--- Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008 11:49 PM, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
If people want to write a wiki in a constructed
language like Esperanto or a
long defunct language like ancient Egyption
language or Latin (Vatican
doesn't count :P), let them. For example a
"Wikisource" edition for ancient
texts in their original language feels like an
excellent idea.
I would consider a wikisource to be an exception to this rule. People on wikisource aren't creating new content, they are simply uploading and preserving it. I would venture to suggest that the "language" of a wikisource project should only represent the language that the members speak and use for organization, and not necessarily the language in which the texts need to be. For instance, I think it's perfectly reasonable to include old latin texts on en.wikisource. A multilingual wikisource, similar to commons but for source texts, still might be the far better option then the current implementation.
It is not acceptable to put latin texts on en.WS. Seriously such a policy have a famous laitn text repeated over all subdomains with various editions proofread while others have errors. Having interwiki link to the ONE version on la.WS, as is currently done, works much better. However some one what you say is true as Middle English and Anglo-Saxon texts are perfectly acceptable on en.WS with a regular english interface. And el.WS has texts in ancient greek while the interface is modern.
You might be interested to know a multilingual WS does already exist and hosts a number of texts which do not and active community warranting their own wiki. I imagine some of these texts will never have a wiki of there own, and the multilingual WS will always have a niche for them. However it was not the best idea to keep everything there, like Commons, with an English interface. After splitting off the subdomains into wikis with native interfaces, many of the languages like French and German had a great amount of success.
Birgitte SB
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