Ziko van Dijk wrote:
In principal, I tend to be as liberal as Gerard: Let people do what they like to do. On the other hand, practically, I strongly advice people to think twice about starting a project that has little chance to grow out to a respectable encyclopedia.
While I do agree with everything that you write, is there really any mechanism why people should "think twice"? Is there any downside at all for an individual who asks for a new language of Wikipedia to be started, after that version fails? We don't really have a list of people who started failed projects. If I don't propose a Lebanese Wikipedia, my neighbor might do so. If it fails, the Wikimedia Foundation will be more ridiculed over its inflated number of 250 languages, but my neighbor doesn't suffer.
Maybe it's the Foundation that should think twice before granting more languages? It is the one to suffer, not the individual.
I wish that new languages could be handled in a more wiki way, where the threshold to start is lower, and where the upside and downside are more connected: you start it, so the failure is yours or the success is yours.
I think the name "Wikipedia" should be saved for those that have more than 10,000 or 50,000 articles. Before that stage, everybody should be free to start a "candidate reference wiki" in any language or dialect, hosted by WMF or elsewhere. We now have 35 languages with more than 50,000 articles and 80 languages with more than 10,000 articles. Any of these numbers (35 or 80) is more useful than the 264 languages that are currently listed as Wikipedias.
As it works now, anybody with an ISO language code and some wishful thinking can get the trademark "Wikipedia" on their hobby project, and the failure will belong to the Wikimedia Foundation.
With my scheme, anybody can start a hobby project of their own but the name Wikipedia would be something you deserve after spending some real effort.