This is essentially my position.
However, there is a line to be crossed - when we are writing a language based on existing materials, and when we are writing in a language that we have made up. A Gothic or Anglo-Saxon Wikipedia could possibly stay on the proper side of this line, but a Sumerian Wikipedia probably could not and a Carian Wikipedia definitely could not.
Mark
On 02/04/2008, White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 12:10 AM, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) < pathoschild@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
The language subcommittee only allows languages that have a living native community (except Wikisource, due to its archivist nature). This is based on an interpretation of the Wikimedia Foundation mission to "provide the sum of human knowledge to every human being". Thus, the overriding purpose of allowing a wiki in a new language is to make it accessible to more human beings. If a language has no native users, allowing a wiki in that language does not fit our mission because it does not make that project accessible to more human beings. Instead, a wiki in their native languages should be requested if it doesn't already exist.
Typically, the users requesting a wiki in an extinct language don't want to provide educational material to more people at all, but only want to promote or revive the language. While these are noble goals, they are not those of the Wikimedia Foundation, so that a wiki should not be created simply to fulfill them.
But that is my opinion. What do you think; should wikis be allowed in every extinct language?
-- Yours cordially, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
If there are people willing to develop and administer the language edition of the encyclopedia, sure. At worst it is their time to waste. Such users should be willing to operate the wiki as in take care of vandalism and etc.
If the wiki somehow successfully resurrects a dead language, no harm done. It would be great publicity too. I see this as a no risk endeavored we should take.
The role of the language subcommittee in my view should be to determine weather or not there is enough of a community to launch a new language edition of a project.
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l