On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 06:21:16 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Ewen Caroline wrote:
If we (luxembourgish wiki, around 10 regulars so far, working on it :) had to go that way to get our own wiki, I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten it, since noone would have found us etc. Now at least we have a chance to create something original in our language (for those who aren't that familiar with lux, we're only about 250.000 native speakers :)).
There would be no question about setting up a wikipedia when there are 250,000 native speakers. There would be no question, in fact, for much smaller language communities than that.
Node tends to engage in invalid FUD. It's a very different thing to contemplate a population of 250,000 native speakers who actually use a language, versus an academic exercise.
It's one thing to say that sort of thing in a private e-mail or even to everybody *but* me, but when you say it so I can read it, that's asking for a fight, I think, though I'm not really wanting to fight.
Anyhow there are several things here - 1. Caroline's e-mail was in response to an e-mail talking about paying money and such to get a Wikipedia hosted. 2. An academic excersise? http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_3_110/ai_73064217/pg_1 <- Gothic was last heard in the Crimea by outsiders between the 1780s and 1790s, according to the page (and if travellers passing through still heard it in the 1780s, it probably survived in remote areas until the 1800s or 1810s). As is normal with language death, descendants of the last native speakers undoubtedly knew some of the language, less with each generation, until perhaps the 1850s or 1870s (though it could hardly be declared fluency most likely), and I would not be surprised if there are still a couple of hundred Gothic words in use by their descendants today in Tatar/Ukrainian/Russian/whatever language it is they speak now.
Also it is not difficult to find pages on the internet (most of them with some reference to Matthew Carver) speaking of a Gothic revival of sorts (the 400 native speakers was my mistake, it turned out to be from a conworld page which looks confusingly real, declaring there are 2 million Gothic speakers in the Crimea).
Also there is the fact that there are plenty of interested people - most of Gothic-L would probably be willing to contribute or at least help in some way.
Of course if you still don't think it's a good idea, you're entitled to your opinion.
The question is more about dead languages and conlangs which are spoken only by very small numbers of people, and especially when those speakers primarily from the perspective of language preservation, academic interest, or just as a fun subculture. For those types of communities, it is certainly in line with our educational mission to assist them, but it is fairly clear to me that setting up an encyclopedia project is not likely to be the best way to help.
It is my opinion that we should revisit some of our existing wikipedia projects for which no community has developed or seems likely to develop, and see if we might not better serve those communities (and the goals of Wikimedia more broadly) by encouraging wikibooks and wiktionaries first.
I hope you are speaking only of conlangs here (I don't think we have any deadlangs with dead wikis), it would be a shame to delete some of our small-but-seemingly-dead wikis in small natural languages.
But if you are speaking only of conlangs, then I entirely agree. the Klingon wikipedia might be moved to KLI webspace, and the Toki Pona wikipedia might be moved to the Toki Pona website, especially since Toki Pona itself is copyrighted (Klingon may be too, I'm not sure). The Lojban wikipedia is a bit questionable in my mind but it seems that in the minds of others it is on a level with tokipona: and tlh:, so perhaps it could be moved to the Lojban website?
best, node