Hi Gerard, thanks for the reply, just a couple of points:
There is no need for a fixed or formal orthography, there are many projects
where there is no fixed orthography. Muhammed writes about a duplication of effort, we support many languages and there are those who say that people should learn English because all the rest is a duplication of effort. These people are right however it is not *their *effort that does the duplication. When people feel a need to write in Egyptian, they can and you do not need to. When people ask for a Wikipedia, they have their reasons. The language committee does not know these reasons and does not really care to know them. People do their thing for their reasons and as long as it is within the bounds of the rules that the Wikimedia Foundation has set, they can.
Two things here
1. Your example here is not the same, People are not 'learning' Arabic to participate in Arabic wikipedia, I actually can claim that they are 'learning' how to write and read in the perspective dialect/language (in this case Egyptian). 2. I certainly am not against people giving their volunteer time anywhere they choose, however my point about duplicating is not about duplicating work in different languages, it is about duplicating work in say 10 slightly different versions of Arabic when everyone knows how to read the original version perfectly. I too, dont know the reasons of the people who request this, but by a simple logic deduction, if the main purpose of a wikipedia would be to transfer knowledge to people of a certain tongue, it doesnt seem this reason applies to any of those because simply, all the people who speak those dialects/languages almost dont *read* anything except in formal Arabic if they know how to read.
In the end it is about freedom. Are you free to determine for others what they can and cannot do?
Actually, I dont get how it is about freedom, it is about process, the current process of selection allows for some languages/dialects that I personally feel will be superfluous, and I am stating my opinion, how is that affecting anyone's freedom?
Thanks, GerardM