Re: [Foundation-l] On Arabic and sub-language proposals.

Hello, It is a well known phenomenon, and interesting to read from you about it in the Arab world. In principal, I tend to be as liberal as Gerard: Let people do what they like to do. On the other hand, practically, I strongly advice people to think twice about starting a project that has little chance to grow out to a respectable encyclopedia. If there is no standard grammar, orthography, dictionary, it is very difficult to contribute to an encyclopedia in that idiom. In Bavarian WP (bar.WP; Bavarian is a dialect of German) there is a cleavage between those who want to conserve the old local dialects, and those who would like bar.WP to be the forum to create a unified Bavarian language. In fact, the latter view can be seen as "original research", and I know of a West Flemish Wikipedian who critisized similar tendencies in vls.WP with that argument. So, if there is no linguistic community already that uses the idiom as a written language in formal situations (like writing an encyclopedia or scientific works)... then it seems to me not impossible, but very unlikely that the Wikipedia in that idiom will grow. Kind regards Ziko van Dijk http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Manual_for_small_and_new_Wikipedias#Should_I… 2008/10/5 Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)gmail.com>om>: -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde