On Apr 4, 2004, at 21:50, Erik Moeller wrote:
Brion-
Certainly there are people who have derided the existence of the Esperanto-language Wikipedia,
Esperanto has an estimated number of 2 million speakers. That is larger than many tribal cultures or ethnic groups which have their own language, and far greater than the proposed 10,000 speaker requirement. It is the most widely accepted artificial language. It is therefore hardly a valid comparison to Toki Pona or Klingon.
There are also many endangered languages with *fewer* speakers than there are active speakers of Toki Pona or Klingon. Getting _them_ to put together some encyclopedia material in their native languages would probably earn somebody a nice PhD in linguistics or anthropology, and would be very very worthy of our support.
The idea of a 10,000-speaker limit is absolutely abhorrent, and I can only assume you haven't thought it through. Arbitrary limits are inappropriate.
I'm all for people enjoying themselves and working on Wikipedia because of that, however, as with everything, you have to do a cost-benefit analysis. And there is certainly a cost associated with letting every pet language have its own Wikipedia.
The cost is minor, and we've got plenty of "real languages" with fewer interested contributors (total speakers or not), with dozens of barely-scratched wikis already set up and unused. If you want to improve the signal/noise ratio, I humbly suggest you concentrate on boosting the signal. Putting down somebody else's effort isn't productive even if it is satisfying.
Per enjoyment alone, we should probably set up a big-ass Wikimedia gameserver, that would certainly attract thousands of possible Wikipedia recruits. (No, I am *not* suggesting that we do so.)
Capture-the-Troll? :)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)