2007/12/27, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com:
It is interesting, although more on the larger issues of:
- What constitutes a viable wikipedia language project? Do some
languages not deserve to have a Wikipedia? Or, conversely, do we create a new wikipedia for every single conlang in existence?
I would say that the criterium here would be the issue of readership: For whom are we making this wiki? Wikipedia is, first and foremost, a medium to find information. Is there a reasonable likelihood that people will go to this wiki rather than another for the purpose of getting information? For a natural language with a reasonable number of speakers, this will be answered with yes - if there is a decent sized Wikipedia in that language, people having it as their first language will probably prefer it to other languages. But for dead languages, extremely small languages and conlangs, this is not automatic. Only when there is a considerable amount of people who would prefer that language to any language that would have Wikipedias of similar or larger size, I think that such a project would be useful.
- When, if ever, can the foundation step in to "fix" a language
project that may have gone astray? Is there a way to evaluate the progress and status of a language project to determine if it is generally "good" or "bad"?
I think there are cases where the foundation can, and perhaps should step in. A language project has its own community, but it is also part of a larger Wikipedia and Wikimedia community. These communities do have the right to admonish a language project that has gone astray, and the foundation could, and perhaps should, act as a proxy for this wider community in these cases.
For the when I think that there are some principles that are project wide, and they are what on en: Wikipedia are called the five pillars. Blatant disregard of these would be a ground for intervention. So I would say that the following are definitely reasons to censure a project: * Material with strong POV not being changed/removed or even being encouraged * Material that is clearly not encyclopedic (like poems and stories) taking a significant part of the main namespace * Requiring approval by the existing community before someone is allowed to edit the wiki * Allowing of large amounts of copyrighted material that is neither under the GFDL nor under any other free license