Hoi, When we consider if a language is appropriate for having a wikipedia, you may find old respectable languages that have gone in official disuse like Neapolitan and consequently diverged in spelling because there was no longer an education in a language. Neopolitan is a language that some see as a dialect of Italian. I understand that the Andalusian statute does not say that Andalusian is a language while it is as different, as distinct as many of the other languages spoken in Spain. I know that Andalusian is known for its many songs which is one form of literature. On the I&I conference I spoke with someone from Guatamala and discussed Mayan languages. I learned that for many people it is their first and only language. It does not have a literature or standardised orthography because it is primarily a spoken language.
My point is that by creating artificial barriers, you prevent us from making our aim come true; all information for all people. When a small dialect/language is good for codifying that culture, it serves our purpose. I doubt that we would get these same people to write about their culture as much in a language that they are forced to use. When we insist on literature and one orthography we may exclude the people that use predominantly a spoken language and prevent us from getting our information to these people.
As I mentioned on the wikitech list, the whole idea of voting is broken anyway because when you vote for a language, you are supposed to actively support this project to be while a nay-sayer is excused from any effort. I do not vote for Dutch nds or for Andalusian because I will not work on these projects.
Artificial languages are different from dialects and languages as they do not represent a culture, a people. Consequently comparing natural and artificial languages is problematic. It also helps to be a little more relaxed about artificial languages; even with Klingon it works as a project for as long as there is a community willing to put a lot of effort in it. As it is a rather silly thing, I am sure that these people will reach this conclusion at some point. In the mean time it does not detract from the value of our other projects. It only becomes a problem when we adopt or care about the value system of the officious.
Thanks, GerardM
On 11/25/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Brion Vibber wrote:
ilooy wrote:
I'd like to suggest that taking into consideration ISO codes or SIL
codes may
be one solution. This would mean that an outside group which is well established and has looked into the matter has deemed a certain language important enough to be assigned a separate code.
This is exactly the policy we adopted several years ago, which has
proved
insufficient.
Relying on existence of ISO codes brings us:
- split Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian replacing Serbocroatian [controverial]
- Klingon
etc
and denies various languages/dialects/whatever which don't have their
own codes
but which are oft asked for.
Yes. It's really important that everyone gets this. The idea of referencing these external codes is and was a great one in many ways... it gets the argument out of our hands, it could presumably be a professionally-decided list, etc.
The only problem is that the list of ISO codes is highly politicized and broken in many many ways. It was fine for getting a list of things like "English" and "German" and "French" and so on, but it breaks down when you start looking at it more closely.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l