Jesse Martin (Pathoschild <pathoschild@...> writes:
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?
Hi, sorry to but in late on. I am LeighvsOptimvsMaximvs and was one of the main advocates for the Ancient Greek wikipedia and contributed to the test project and interface translation. I have a few comments to add to this thread.
Firstly, I agree with some of the posters here that the mission of the Foundation to "provide the sum of human knowledge to every human being" does fit with the creation of wikipedias in ancient languages. "Providing knowledge" is quite a broad concept; I think that creating a wikipedia in a language that is widely studied, that does not have a modern encyclopaedia, but that can be used to make one, does aid the provision of knowledge to some human beings. In any case, even if it only help to provide knowledge of the language itself, it surely does more to help with the aims of the project than to hinder them.
Secondly, it does not follow that if we take the mission statement to mean that a new project should only be allowed if it makes the project accessible to more human beings we should ask whether there are any first-language speakers; instead we should ask whether there is anyone who can only understand that language: there are many living languages whose speakers are all able to read in another language. It may be true that everyone who can speak an ancient language can understand another language, but if we take that to mean that an Ancient Greek wikipedia does not fit with the project's aims then one could also argue that most of the wikipedias are unnecessary. If we had always forbade languages whose speakers can all speak another language we might not have any Celtic language wikipedias, we certainly would not have any of the wikipedias in dialects of Dutch or German whose speakers can all understand the standard written dialect and we might even have only one wikipedia in a Scandinavian language. If you would reject the argument that we should not have a Gaelic language wikipedia because all the speakers of that language understand written English and that such a project would only serve to promote the language, then you should think carefully about whether we should reject Greek wikipedia on those grounds. Obviously here is a difference insofar as the languages I have mentioned do have native speakers, but the mission statement does not have anything to do with native speakers: whether a language is someone's first, second or third is irrelevant when we are talking only about imparting knowledge (one could say that standard written English is just a learned dialect for most English speakers).
Thirdly, wikipedias can still be created in artificial languages. All of the above arguments apply here, and I really can not see why a wikipedia in an artificial language which is not used by anyone as a native language and whose speakers all speak another language is deemed to fit with the goals of the Foundation, but a wikipedia in an ancient language which is still used often by thousands of people but which is not used by anyone as a native language and whose speakers all speak another language is deemed to not fit with them.
If the mission statement had been to "do what is absolutely necessary to provide the sum of human knowledge to every human being and nothing else" then we would have to forbid languagres with no native speakers (I refuse to call Ancient Greek dead: it is just in a persistent vegetative state. Latin" just smells funny" ;)). But it doesn't so we don't.
On another point, a few people have stated that some ancient languages can not be used to write about the modern world. This might only have been an argument against the wikipedias in certain ancient languages such as Akkadian and Egyptian, but I would still like to show that one can not say this about Ancient Greek. Because there is a great deal of literature written in ancient Greek about science, mathematics and philosophy, because Ancient Greek can, did and still does create new compound words and because Ancient Greek authors were able to use understandable circumlocutions when writing about things alien to their society, Greek would probably better than any other ancient language for writing an encyclopaedia. I do no foresee any major problems writing about telephones and triskaidekaphobia. If Vicipaedia can cope with the modern world, Οὐκιπαιδεια will be able to as well. In fact there is evidence of Ancient Greek being used to write about the modern world: look at the Greek Harry Potter and the "Akropolis world news" website which discusses nuclear weapons and football; at my university it is not unusual for examiners to set prose composition exams to second year undergraduates which require us to write about the modern world, so it is not something which only professions can do.
Now, I appreciate that some members of the language subcommittee are reluctant to allow the creation of language which do not have a valid ISO-639 code lest people take advantage of the precedent that would be set, but I think that there should be some flexibility, especially as the request was made before this rule was introduced. The fact that rules are applied retrospectively seems very unfair. We could prevent people from citing precedent by pointing out that, if a Greek wikipedia (which was conditionally approved) were finally approved, it would have been approved according to the rules as they were when the request was made. The new rules would only apply to projects proposed after they were made.
Thank you,
LeighvsOptimvsMaximvs