Oh also I would like to add that I'd be very happy to help anybody wanting help setting up a new Wikipedia, beyond the most technical aspect I can handle it very well, and I think I have a fair grasp of that too. Of course dev tasks I couldn't do, but beyond that...
best, node
On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 19:40:04 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
The difference here Tim is that while Klingon is 1. a conlang with a fairly small number of speakers intended as the language of an imaginary alien race from a scifiseries 2. afaik completely without native speakers altogether, save maybe a handful, while Gothic is a natural language with perhaps 4000~5000 speakers, the only well-known East Germanic language and as such very important to linguistic reasearch (the others ie Vandalic and Burgundian are known only from proper names), a language with its own unique and beautiful (well at least I think it is) alphabet, and has a (though not clustered in the same neighbourhood, city, or even country as most such movements are) revival movement going to teach the language to children as a native language with (supposedly) upwards of 400 children so far. In the near future it is forseeable that these 400 children (and probably teens too by now; I think this started in the 80s or something) will be ready to use an encyclopedic resource which they would benifit a great deal more from if it were in Gothic; then what about *their* kids if they are raised in Gothic as well? This could eventually lead to upwards of 10000 native gothic speakers (perhaps up to 2 million if the movement eventually finds a geographical location they can use as a gothic-only environment) in the foreseeable future.
Latin, however, (ttbomk) has no such movement (which is surprising, in the very least), and the chances that somebody will be able to read Latin sufficiently better than any other language with an extant Wikipedia are fairly low (Latin has other justifications though I believe).
Of course its still up to you to decide whether or not you'll ultimately be OK with supporting such a language or not, but I do hope you'll reconsider.
best, node
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 12:23:03 +1000, Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours? Either more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new wiki can be set up.
I suggest you read my post again. I'll quote it here in part.
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of the tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis. Adding the wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the language file, mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki links. From establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^developer work involved.
That's just a very rough guess. Some wikis take a lot more than that. I just finished writing a new feature specifically for the Finnish Wikipedia which probably took 6 hours alone, although you wouldn't see me giving that level of service to Gothic or Klingon.
The task of creating a wiki is already automated. As I explained above, the problem is in ongoing tech support and system administration, not creation. There are ways to reduce that too, but there's always going to be someone who doesn't bother reading the manual.
That's why I suggested that if anyone is interested in providing ongoing support for this wiki, they should offer themselves as a point of contact. They should do their best to fix any problems, but *never* pass the problem on to the rest of the community.
-- Tim Starling
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