The problem seems to be not the lack of a linguist's knowledge. We
Wikimedians are not sure or unanimous about what to expect from a Wikipedia
language edition, and what languages (language communities) we trust to
conform to our expectations.
My thoughts about the questions discussed here:
- The language comittee could be organised differently, with more rules
about communication and decision making and also majority rule instead of a
veto for every member.
- I don't think that Gerard deserves the aggression I have noticed here.
- Wikipedia can not be a solution for all problems of the world. Language
planning is difficult and includes also the implementation of a language
(acquisition planning, status planning). I do not believe that creating an
encyclopaedia should be at the beginning of this long way.
- Our present day rules for new proposals would outlaw language editions
already existing and doing well, like Esperanto ("constructed"), Latin
("ancient") or Luxembourgish (dialect). It would be a pity if a Wikipedia
language edition does not exist for the only reason that a rule prohibits
it.
- Labeling languages and forbidding them is not a good point to start. It
should not be said "this is a dialect, we don't want ist", but looked
whether there is an actual linguistic community that already uses the
language for purposes similar to Wikipedia (scientific, popularizing texts).
- And, as already said, the decisive point is what we expect from a
Wikipedia. For some the Wikia of "Lingua Franca Nova" would have been a
great Wikipedia, for others it shows that a Wikipedia in it would have been
disappointing.
Ziko
P.S. Maybe I should go on with translating my handbook about multilingual
Wikipedia to English.
2009/1/11 Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com>
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 9:34 PM, Milos Rancic
<millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Tomasz Ganicz
<polimerek(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Well, I
think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
historical and cultural background related to language problems which
is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.
Actually, it is a misunderstanding of Michael's knowledge. His
expertise is, for example, making an orthography for a random language
[without orthography]. In fact, we need exactly his kind of linguists.
As I mentioned, we are working on raising expertise quality inside of
LangCom.
And just to be more precise. After a couple of years of interacting
with people in relation to Wikimedia projects, I realized that it is
not so possible to get a random academician and put them into some
Wikimedian working body. Usually, those persons are not so interested.
I see that we have two more options for finding persons with relevant
level of expertise:
* to find Wikimedians with this kind of expertise; or
* that some interested academician contacts us.
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Ziko van Dijk
NL-Silvolde