GerardM wrote:
Hoi, I am well aware of where Google stands on supporting languages. I have discussed this for two years now with one of their language engeneers. You underestimate the importance that the proper language codes should have. You are not aware on the importance that is given to project of the Wikimedia Foundation. It is exactly because we aim to do justice and promote language diversity that we invest in Multilingual MediaWiki. And it is with a lot of frustration that for all kinds of reasons, good and bad, it is still not finished.
If Google and Internet is only about being able to find things on the Internet, than only languages with a more or less fixed orthography will be found. Most content of other languages can only be found like a needle in the proverbial haystack. This problem is made worse because of people that mean well but have no clue about the complexity of the problem.
Indicating what language a text is in, is vitaly important. It is particularly important for those language that do not have much of a foot print on the Internet.
It seems to me that the approach you seem to take does not do a good job of supporting your stated intentions.
If you are in favor of using the correct language codes for the content in Wikisource, then support a mechanism that will allow for that to be accomplished, but don't use the lack of such a mechanism as a means of preventing said content from being added.
There are several good reasons for some languages to be gathered into a single wiki (extinct languages, languages with a very limited corpus, etc.). To insist that source texts must reside in their own wiki so that the correct language codes are used is "letting the tail wag the dog," so to speak: it's putting things in the wrong order of priority, it's letting an implementation limitation in MediaWiki determine which source texts we collect. To me, that just seems silly.
-Rich Holton