Except that, you know, everyone who has ever supported cutting down on small language Wikipedias has noted that they would never object to a Wikipedia like German, Japanese, or another major world language that's used for business, that the great works of civilization have been written in, and that has several million people who use it as their primary language.
The idea that these policies would restrict any of those Wikipedias is a straw man, plain and simple.
To my knowledge, there is no major language Wikipedia we currently lack. There are no major language Wikipedias in danger of being locked. The question only applies to Wikipedias that are unlikely to have more than a handful of users in the next five years.
The Japanese Wikipedia always had an obvious and large population to draw from. But Limburgish? Not so much.
Personally, I increasingly advocate a moratorium on new language Wikipedias. Instead, we should start one "small language" Wikipedia to be run like Wikibooks, with various subsections. So articles would be in the form of [[Limburgish//Article title]]. And, should one of the small languages suddenly take off to have a real and sustainable community on it, it could be moved to being its own independent Wikipedia.
But I can see no plausible reason to waste limited developer resources on creation and support of projects that will have no lasting userbase except for occasional surges when someone threatens to take them down. And since no one is actually suggesting any of the strawmen you're bringing up, I have to ask, with all due respect, that you stop trolling this listserv.
-Snowspinner
On Nov 25, 2004, at 12:29 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:
See, this is the reason why Wikipedia has such a long list of Wikipedias with user bases and content, but Wikitravel has 5. If we adopt your Draconian policies for Wikipedia, such growth as that on ka.wikipedia, scn.wikipedia, and li.wikipedia will be much wider apart. Had we adopted them at the beginning, such major Wikipedias as the Japanese, German, Welsh, and other Wikipedias would be a significant bit behind where they are today.
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