Gregory Maxwell wrote:
The argument being made is that we must somehow prop
up the
construction of Wikipedia in dying languages even at an extreme cost
in order to preserve them.
How "extreme"?
I don't think that people understand the immense
cost involved. The
Wikipedias in dying langauges are tiny because the labor needed to
make them comprehensive does not exist in volunteer form. ... which
should not be shocking, since if *a language is dying people will not
be excited about writing in it*.
The labour needed to make them comprehensive is indeed absent, but
comprehensiveness is an unrealistic ideal. Detailed articles in a small
language about the obscure local flora and fauna on the other side of
the world are not needed. Nobody should object when they are added, but
a more realistic expectation is to have a range of articles about the
things that make a difference to the culture associated with that language.
In a month's time a million people will edit
English Wikipedia at
least once. There are 20,000 'frequent contributors' by reasonable
metrics. None of them are on the foundation payroll.
There are more people who effectively work full time on our largest
projects than *speak* some of the dying languages we have projects in.
Is this an argument in favour of the Tyranny of the Majority?
There is an enormous manpower cost in creating a
usable and
comprehensive Wikipedia. Due to the volunteer nature of the project we
do not see this cost but it still exists.
When we talk about using Wikimedia funding to preserve dying
languages, which don't have the volunteer pools needed to build
Wikipedia naturally, we are talking about bringing that huge cost on
to the foundation. It just can't work... and it is not desirable.
If we can
agree that comprehensiveness is not a realistic goal for all
these languages, what techniques do you have for evaluating the costs
that you postulate. In your hypothesis of huge costs are you
disregarding the possibility of targetted funding?
Ec