I wasn't precise while describing my intention, so I'll try to do it now with responses to the previous emails. * About moribund languages: It is not a precise term, but it is possible to make some description and to realize where are the borders of the term. For example, a language with ~15.000 speakers would be a very alive language if it is spoken at some Pacific island. However, if it is spoken inside of much stronger culture with a different dominant language (the case of Lower Sorbian) or the population is too disperse inside of some area (let's say, dialects of Ladino at Balkans), such language is at the edge. The good side of that position is a possibility for the revival of that language (like in the case of Welsh). But, any kind of our positioning is related to the contemporary linguistic situation, not to a future one. * Policy: Just to say that I am not talking about new policies, but about preferences of LangCom members. As it was mentioned, in the most of the cases such language wouldn't get a new project. In the mean time we did nothing. Even there is really one person who is a native speaker, such person would loose the initial enthusiasm after a couple of months of waiting for the project. * Intention: So, i think that in such cases we should think about what is more important to a particular endangered or moribund language. For example, having an article about the Earth in Lower Sorbian is fully redundant. All of the speakers of Lower Sorbian are able to read much better article in German. Similar situations are with the most of endangered and moribund languages. Those languages are usually not endangered or moribund because of physical extinction of the population (except in Paupa New Guinea and some other similar places in the world, but it is not so hard to predict that we won't get any native speaker of those [endangered or moribund] languages soon), but because of dominance of surrounding culture(s) and language(s). If we want to help to such linguistic group, we shouldn't force them to pass our standard procedure. One-person project may work just if it is a life dedication of that person. In almost 100% of the cases, we won't get MediaWiki localized, we won't get more than ~50-100 articles at Incubator and so on. So, our response should be: Don't waste time with making your own Wikipedia (by passing our measures made because of completely different reasons), but try do something important for your language. Writing oral literature, writing dictionaries and similar are much more useful task than trying to write the article about the Earth. We have enough resources (particularly, Wikisource and Incubator) to help to the speakers of endangered and moribund languages. My intention was not to forbid such projects, not to make some new policy, but to make some more efficient procedure for such cases. The other option is to wait for years in the process of "discussion" about some proposal. And such languages are in the position to loose 1% of speakers every month.

On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 1:57 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: Lower Sorbian is a good example for my point because I don't think that there is a native speaker of Lower Sorbian who is not a native speaker of German. So, I chose that for the example. There are, of course, other examples where the article about the Earth is necessary. For example, [almost] every Macedonian knows Serbian as their second language (a lot of them know Bulgarian, too). There is a significant difference between the native and the second language. [Almost] all Ukrainians know Russian as their native language. But, there are ~50M of Ukrainians, a lot of Ukrainian cultural institutions and so on; and they are in the position to work on articles in their language about quantum mechanics and similar. But, Lower Sorbian is in the completely different position. Every article in Lower Sorbian has cultural, not educational purpose. Article in Lower Sorbian about the Earth means that there is an article about the Earth in that language, it doesn't mean that someone will use it as a source of information. The point is that in such cases it is much more clever to work systematically on the cultural issues than build random articles on one encyclopedia. In such cases, having a Wiktionary (or using OmegaWiki for that purpose, whatever) is more important than having a Wikipedia, too. If we want to help to such languages, we need to share our experiences with native speakers. Having an encyclopedia is an expensive luxury. and a rich society in comparison with the most of the world, I may say that a good ordinary encyclopedia is beyond our cultural strength. A culture of the similar size has to have very rich and very well educated society to build ordinary encyclopedias (for example, Netherlands and Sweden). Wikipedia makes building encyclopedia much easier. So, it is possible to have a good online encyclopedia in Serbian. But, everything has limits. Writing articles which no one would read to search informations is a task without a lot of sense. It is better to try to find good examples of language revival, like Welsh is, and try to incorporate that into Wikimedia procedures, advices to for speakers of endangered and moribund languages. Making connections with cultural institutions which care about those languages may be one more good path. Actually, listing languages which don't have Wikimedia projects and making a set of advices for each of them may be a very useful task. Languages are far from being the same in the cultural sense. Because of that we need different approaches for different languages. Demanding MediaWiki localization for endangered or moribund languages is not reasonable. Waiting undefined amount of time for discussion is everything but not helping to them. So, we should think and articulate some kind of solution. Note, also, that Wikimedia is in a very specific position toward languages of the world: this is the institution with the best knowledge of world languages. Even there are just less than 300 languages, there is no other institution in the world which is covering in depth this number of languages. Incubator may be used for, let's say, building a Wiktionary. Also, there is a sense to give to Incubator the new purpose: already mentioned idea of Compendium: until one project is not self-sustainable, it should exist at Incubator/Compendium. In a lot of cases, this would be a long term option.

On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 8:48 PM, Ting Chen <wing.philopp(a)gmx.de> wrote: There are a number of levels how one amateur may help in this case. Unlike in archeology, amateur is not able to damage an artifact. Actually, methods for gathering materials for language preservation are quite simple -- [more or less:] just record it. There are some more complex methods, but they are more related to preserving a dialect variation than to preserving a language. (If language varieties of preserver and speaker are close enough, speaker will try to adapt their speech to preserver's speech. However, if it is about distant or same language systems, it is much easier.) If it is about non-written languages, amateurs may record speech, put it at Commons with description and, probably, link it to Wikisource. If it is about moribund languages with established written tradition (Lower Sorbian case), amateurs may even write oral literature (at Wikisource). I agree that Wikipedia is not the right place for that task in the most of the cases. However, Wikisource and Wiktionary are (along with auxiliary projects like Commons and Incubator are in this sense). But, again, languages with written tradition may make Wikipedia, too (again, Lower Sorbian case) with the primary goal of encyclopedic description of their culture. I tried to explain that we need to make a set of [generic] suggestions for languages which are at different levels in the extinction process. Out of technical suggestions and similar, suggestions may look like: 1. A non-written language with around 100 old speakers or less is almost dead. The main goal here is preservation of that language. So, anyone who is willing to help should record speech. In this case it would be preferable to connect that person with some language preservation institution, but, we shouldn't stop such person in doing the job. It is better to have something than to have nothing. Those records should be uploaded to Commons and linked from Wikisource. If such language has written tradition, it is possible to transcribe records, too. 2. A moribund language with cultural background (Lower Sorbian case). The goals are here language preservation and help in a language revival if speakers are interested in that. So, besides preservation goals, in this case we are able to put a variety of linguistic materials at Wikisource, Commons and Wiktionary. Also, it is possible to make a Wikipedia. We may suggest them to try to write more [encyclopedic] articles about their culture than about natural sciences. 3. A language with ~1-10M speakers from Sub-Saharan Africa. Such language probably has a written form made by some missionaries during the past centuries (or a very similar language has a written form which may be used). However, the most of the population probably don't know to read and write. This is a kind of task where WMF should be connected with other global, regional or local educational initiatives. Such language should get all projects, but at the time when they are able to handle that. Preservation tasks may be useful, too. 4. A non-moribund Amazon or Papua New Guinea language. Such language probably doesn't have a written form. So, besides tasks from the previous case, such language needs a description and written form. (It should be noted that a very large specter of languages are in that kind of situation: from languages of Nepal to Swiss German.) If speakers are interested in making Wikimedia projects in their languages, we should find a way how to help them. In some cases it is much more about their will (Swiss German), but in the most of the cases it is much more about resources. And WMF should work on that in cooperation with relevant global, regional or local initiatives and institutions. Note about language preservation and revival: While it is not a strictly educational goal, it is an educational goal in the wider sense because it deals with knowledge preservation. Those suggestions/tasks assume a variety of actions. Some of them are medium or long term goals, but some of them may be done immediately. For example: * If we realize that one of the goals is a language preservation, we may give a manual to the persons interested in the Wikimedia project creation: how to deal with that. * If a language is in the second category, we may suggest them to concentrate on issues related to their culture and help them in achieving that task. * If it is about some other issue, connected not just to our online projects, we may tell them what are we able to do for them, as well as we may express our will to help them in other issues.