Building an online encyclopedia at least as good as the Encyclopaedia Britannia is a very respectable aim I can fully identify with. Promoting and preserving minority (or less widespread) languages is another one that I endorse just as much. In many cases they might complement each other very well. If that is the case we'll have Wikipedias with "added value".
However, my conviction is that the these two separate goals do not necessarily always go hand in hand. Cases in which a language has too few speakers or is used as a language of first choice too infrequently to bring about an encyclopedia "Britannica or better" certainly do exist. This is an evaluation I think we all can agree on. And it's a fact that we'll simply have to realize now that no longer every new Wikipedia becomes an immediate success (like it was broadly the case in the early years) and sadly quite a few plainly fail to become what they are supposed to be (a comprehensive and reliable source of information).
What we need to do now is to clearly distinguish between the creation of premium encyclopedias and the advancement of languages. And we need to keep in focus what comes first, just like Jimbo pointed out. Being pessimistic about the prospects of a proposed Wikipedia for a language of, say, 5,000 speakers (who might all be at least as fluent in a more widespread language) should no longer be mistaken for being against that language or the promotion thereof.
Contrary to what has been written by others I fear that generously granting new editions for smaller languages can very well harm the project as a whole. The first time I heard about Wikipedia was on a German TV program. All I thought was: "Everyone can change it and write whatever they wants? It's another one of those anarchistic web projects and it I'm sure it will never amount to anything good. (Especially as there were some acceptable encyclopedias staffed with professional editors on the internet already)" But of course I was curious, too and checked it out one of the next days. And, surprisingly enough, I actually found the piece of information I was looking for. In the following time I came back now and then because the first impression had been a good one. Some day I actually tried and wrote a couple of sentences myself. Later I registered and even later I suscribed to this list and so forth. Not out idealism or the like. Just because I had gotten the impression that!
Wikipedia is a project which is running well and which I can benefit from. Now please imagine this first encounter would have been with the Nauru or Muscogee edition. I just would not have found anything useful for me and I would never have come back to Wikipedia at all. Of course, every edition of Wikipedia must go through it's early stages. But our problem now is that many of them have been stuck there for ages and I fear quite a number will perhaps never leave that stage. And it is my conviction that a 100+ practically inactive Wikipedias certainly do not raise the project's reputation.
The only useful encyclopedia (I'm repeating myself here) is an encyclopedia were you find the article you need. To assure that you it takes literally tens of thousands of articles. An encyclopedia were most inqueries fail or produce unsuffincient, unreliable information is outright useless even if it is a nice community project. Again, it taken tens of thousands of articles. Let us face the fact that currently for probably most of the world's languages we can't generate them in an online project totally depending on unpaid volunteers.
I would therefore recommend that:
1. Whenever we evaluate new language proposals we should assess if they have the potential to yield a 5-digit number of articles.
2. We should require every new language proposal to be supported by at least two or three native speakers in order to assure there is some demand within that language community (instead of first setting up a new Wikipedia and then trying to convince native speakers).
3. We should require people interested in setting up a new Wikipedia to provide 20 basic encyclopedia articles before we establish that edition in order to have some start-up basis and to avoid "zero" article Wikipedias.
4. New constructed and extinct languages should not be allowed except proponents provide sufficient arguments that their language has a special potential for an extensive high quality online encyclopedia.
5. We should discuss new avenues for the advancement of small languages (minority, extinct, constructed) within Wikimedia, apart from Wikipedia.
Boris
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--- Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
> I might agree, but disagree that a Wikipedia-produced encyclopedia in
> the language effectively captures it. Does the Latin Wikipedia properly
> capture the cultural heritage of Latin, for example, or merely the
> perspective of English, German, French and other speakers writing Latin
> as a second language? More importantly, does having a new article on
> quantum mechanics written in Latin contribute anything that the extant
> corpus of Latin writing doesn't?
No - but writing about Virgil in Latin will be. As would writing about any
number of other works in Latin. Some things (esp humor and meter) simply do not
translate well.
-- mav
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Many thanks Angela for the quick reply :)
That's why i so love Wikipédia: so many people that you always find someone having the information you search *g*
Nicolas
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--- Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
> I obviously speak only for myself here, not Jimbo, but IMO promoting
> minority languages is separate from the main goal. The goal of creating
> an *encyclopedia* is to get information to people, in a language-neutral
> way. The only importance of any language in that context is that the
> encyclopedia needs to be available in enough languages so that everyone,
> or at least as many people as possible, can access information in a
> language they feel comfortable using---only creating an English
> encyclopedia, for example, would leave out in the cold people who don't
> understand English well enough to make good use of it.
Let�s not forget that language is not only a means by which information is
presented, it is also part of the human experience we are documenting. One of
the main reasons why many schools require students to learn a second language
is to expose students to a different culture and way of codifying thought (this
contrast is often very instructive in showing the student how their own
language works).
Thus helping to preserve an endangered language by hosting an encyclopedia in
it also directly furthers our goal. This would not include non-famous conlangs
since those are largely original research.
-- mav
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Hello.
I think there was a research paper (from the MIT?), some months/years ago, that analysed how a specific article on Wikipedia was modified, showing the slow modifications over time and a few big changes.
Anyone would have an URL pointing to that article?
Nicolas "Ryo" Weeger
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I an Japanese. I'm not good at English so I hope someone transport it.
私は日本人の学生だ。
今までWikipediaを利用する中で不便を感じたことは無かったが、この度、いくつか
の記事で誤りや、誤解を招く書きかたを見つけた。
あなた方は「多くの人が集まれば、自然に間違いは修正され、不完全な部分は埋めら
れ、嘘を書きこむ者は排除されていく」と考えているようだ。
確かに「多くの良識者と、少しの無知者、あるいは嘘つき」が集まればそうだろう。
しかし「多くの無知者、あるいは嘘つきと、少しの良識者」が集まった場合、その原
則は成り立たない。
多くの人が興味を持ち、積極的に参加する話題ならばこうした事も起こらないだろ
う。
だが、中には多くの人が参加せず、まれに「最近更新したページ」に上っても、その話
題について詳しい知識を持たないために、記事に誤りが残されることがある。
また、歴史的な事件で、複数の資料で記述が食い違っている物もある。
そのような時は削除や修正の応酬が続き、時に話題に上っている事件について詳しく
ない人が混乱するかもしれない。
私はこのプロジェクトが無駄で害悪で奨励されるべきでない物だとは思わない。
だが、Wikipediaはまだ発展途上の百科辞典であり、必ずしも正しい（あるいは、一
般に正しいとされている）情報を表示しない。
このままではWikipediaが権威があり、常に正しいと思いこんでいる利用者に、正し
くない（あるいは、一般に正しいとされていない）情報を伝える危険がある。
だから、一つ一つの見出しに「この記事は多くの人が修正、追加、削除を行っている
ため、正しくない場合がある」と注意書きをつけるべきだと考える。
このメッセージに対する、運営側の意見を教えて欲しい。
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Hash: SHA1
Looks like the New York Public Library has but more than a quarter
million images online in the public domain!
Happy salvaging,
Magnus
http://slashdot.org/articles/05/03/04/1258219.shtml?tid=146&tid=126
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFCKKZGCZKBJbEFcz0RApEaAJ9fRaBu6YUikIHwllgHSvWdAQDACgCeNBMb
zyyFLOnae9aU26JmxPHfTAU=
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Hello Wouter !
How neat you have that proverb in the Netherlands, too! Maybe I should emphasize that my evaluation of the Frisian nature was in no way meant negatively. They are industrious, reliable folks with a sense of humour of their own and a sense of pride that has served them well throughout many centuries. Issues for which people in areas further down in the south might need half an hour of discussion are solved with two or three words. I certainly like them and only wanted to point out that there is a certain let's say cautious character trait. Of course even I ; ) have realised that the world is changing and certainly Internet connectivity and usage in western Europe is basically the same in rural areas as it is in big cities.
>From what you are writing I can tell that you are very well informed about the situation of Seeltersk and therefore your proposal is on more solid ground than many others. Furthermore, what you have achieved so far in the Limburgish edition makes it appear even more well-founded.
While many of the concerns I mentioned earlier today about starting Wikipedias for very small languages persist, I nevertheless wish you all the best for your efforts!
Boris
wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org schrieb am 07.03.05 18:01:33:
Hi Boris,
Thanks for your reply, both to my and to Mark's messages. There is however
one thing I might disagree with you.
You compared the rural community of Seeltersk speakers with the Hopi people
and pointed out that "Wat de boer niet kent, dat (vr)eet hij niet" (this
proverb is also known in Dutch). Of course they are generally conservative;
indeed, the conservative nature of the Saterfrisians might have saved the
language from extinction for centuries!
But you might forget that the world is changing, and that even rural areas,
at least in Western Europe, become completely emancipated: a farmer is no
longer someone whose world ends with the borders of his farmyard. At least
some of them must be willing to join the project (elder people get
increasingly connected to the internet ;-)), and quite all of them are
nowadays aware of the unique status of their language and the necessity to
preserve it and to promote it outside their own community.
Moreover, there are nowadays many youngsters who know the language. Not from
their parents, who mostly raised them in Low Saxon with only very few
exceptions, but at school (in the 90s schools started projects to learn
their pupils Seelters), or from (one of) their grandparents, and they use it
as a second language, maybe sometimes even as a first language (cf. similar
movemens on the Isle of Man, or in French Flanders). These people can very
well be persuated to join the project.
Wouter
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Hi Wouter !
First of all, let me point out that I fully agree that there is no sense in including Saterlandic Frisian articles in the existing West Frisian Wikipedia. The language (along with North Frisian and its dialects) is just too distinct for that. I think Mark got it right - even though living in Arizona! - when he was writing about three Frisian languages. One might add that - as far as I know - Saterlandic is the only surving dialect of the East Frisian language which formerly covered basically the whole region of East Frisia (including the East Frisian islands). By the way, in Germany only the terms "Saterländisch" or "Saterfriesisch" are used for the language while "Ostfriesisch" nowadays refers to the regional variant of Lox Saxon (Plattdeutsch) spoken in East Frisia. When talking about the Frisian language spoken in the north of the Netherlands Germans generally use the term "Westfriesisch" in order not to confuse it with Frisian spoken in Germany. However the Dutch simply call it "Fries" or "Frysk" and many might not be aware of the variants spoken in Germany because they have relatively few speakers compared to West Frisian.
Having said all that, here's my main point. I value your enthusiasm and I am in favour any appropriate means for preserving and promoting endangered minority languages (which are a precious cultural heritage) such as Saterlandic Frisian. However, I think it's just impossible to create a useful online encyclopedia depending on volunteer editors out of a community of barely 2000 native speakers. Please think about it. From looking at your name, I guess you are not a native speaker, are you? Please don't get me wrong. Of course, you can set up a Saterlandic wikipedia technically. But once it is installed would it ever have the slightest chance of becoming a useful, reliable source of information? Could it ever really flourish? If so, great! But given the small number of Saterlandic speakers I really doubt that. And please remember that even for those, say, 1.800 people the language they read and write in is German.
How many editors does a wikipedia need to work (even if only at a very modest level)? E. g. the Dutch wikipedia (with c. 55,000 articles) currently has 9,333 registered editors, out of a language community of maybe 23 million. That equals a ratio of 0.04 % editors - and even if that number might still grow in the future, most wikipedia languages probably won't even reach that percentage. Now try to break that down for Saterlandic! In my opinion the only way for a wikipedia to become a success is to bring together a large number of people to cooperate. As far as Saterlandic is concerned, that is just not possible. That is a pity, of course. But it's the truth.
If you think I am too pessimistic please have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_ranking_February_2005, ranks 86 through 161. It's not that those wikipedias have just been established recently. Matter of fact, most of them have existed for quite some time now. Some of them have been around for a couple of years or more. And all of them have been them have been set up with the best of intentions by committed people just like you. And many of those languages have millions of speakers. But nevertheless, those wikipedias just aren't running. I always get kind of sad when I look at them. I surely wouldn't like to see a Saterlandic edition ending up like that.
Just some thoughts that crossed my mind
Boris
wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org schrieb am 04.03.05 20:43:28:
I would like to apply for a Wikipedia in Saterlandic (East) Frisian. Further
details can be read at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saterlandic_Frisian_language and soon at the
requests page.
Thanks in advance,
Caesarion
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