Hi Ronline!
The other thing that makes me worried is the growing pressure on new language contributors. We must remember that Wikipedians are *volunteers* and most, except vandals, are always adding knowledge to the community. Pressuring them into reaching a certain guideline for their language is abuse, in my opinion.
It would be a pity if those guidelines were primarily perceived as "pressure". They should of course never be abused as an instrument to exclude people or groups but only serve everybody participating at Wikimedia projects (old and new members) by helping to assure the success of those projects.
Sadly, it's a fact that roughly half of all Wikipedias are clinically dead at present. Being enthusiastically pro-multilingualism here, I believe that we must do the best we can in order to add more productive, useful editions in the coming years but at the same time try hard to prevent any further stillbirths. My personal opinion is that establishing a few standards will be more beneficial here than a total laissez-faire. But I do understand your concern, too.
New contributors must be encouraged, not discouraged.
Right. The attitude of the established community towards potential new members must always be a cooperative, constructive, helpful and friendly one. But maybe part of the encouragement can also be something like: "Look, we've been around here for a while and we've seen what works and what doesn't. We recommend that you first find a couple more like-minded people _before_ you start because it's probably more work than you can imagine now."
Best,
Arbeo
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