Andrew Whitworth,
Sorry for this late reply; I have just noticed the existence of this thread.
"...is not nearly so important as ..." It is not you to tell others in which language a wikimedian should contribute. Everybody decides for herself. Wiki is made by volunteers.
H.
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
On Dec 28, 2007 8:19 AM, hillgentleman hillgentleman.wikiversity@gmail.com wrote:
Andrew Whitworth,
Sorry for this late reply; I have just noticed the existence of this thread.
"...is not nearly so important as ..." It is not you to tell others in which language a wikimedian should contribute. Everybody decides for herself. Wiki is made by volunteers.
H.
Thanks for the reply. My point was not to tell which languages a person should contribute in, i don't care which communications medium people use. I was talking instead about "language preservation", the act of using a large written record such as Wikipedia to preserve a dieing language. Think of it in terms of the rosetta stone, where a preserved written text is able to help us translate a dead language many years later. Given enough server space for one, I would prefer to preserve a natural language rather then a conlang. Of course, this preference ignores the fact that it's (apparently) not the WMF's goal to preserve languages whatsoever. The goal of Wikipedia, instead, is to preserve and distribute knowledge, and that goal is not helped by writing a small language wikipedia (conlang or natural language) for which there are no natural-born speakers and a trivially small secondary speaking population. I personally would rather people not contribute, then to have people contribute in a way that doesnt help our goals. Again, this is just a personal preference.
--Andrew Whitworth
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org