We've been over this a million times in the past year or so on this list. While preserving small languages is a positive externality of the Wikimedia projects, it is NOT the stated goal of the project. It is simply a useful side effect. It is not, and cannot be, our main focus.
-Dan On Dec 26, 2007, at 10:26 PM, Nathan wrote:
I think that preserving a language is a good goal, but it is one that Wikipedia is not well suited for and is not intended to fulfill. Creating an automatically translated article on every city and town in the US is not a way to 'preserve' a constructed or dead language. If the point is to aggregate knowledge in a way that is accessible to as many people as possible, how does a Wikipedia in a constructed language (a code, really) serve that point? Additionally, someone mentioned that there are present native speakers of Latin. I'd be interested to find out who these folks are.
On Dec 26, 2007 10:17 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
On small languages, it should be remembered that the Wikimedia projects have the potential to save some small languages. There are hundreds of languages under threat right around the globe (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endangered_languages) many of which will soon be lost as the last remaining native speakers die out. I think the seriousness of this situation drives a good slice of the prejudice against wikis for conlangs with a dozen or two speakers that are stuffed full of bot translations.
This, i think, is one of the most important points to be made: Wikipedia could really serve not just as an encyclopedia, but as a record of a language. for small and endangered languages, the Wikipedia for that language may be one of the only written records of that language.
Preservation of small conlangs is not nearly so important as the preservation of small natural languages. Of course, this all ignores the question of whether the WMF should be in the business of language preservation. Although, I think that if it were a goal that we set out to perform, we could probably get some funding for that purpose specifically.
--Andrew Whitworth
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