I agree with Wouter, of course WP is meant to distribute information but it helps to "emancipate" a language like for example Limburgish and Low Saxon (and if Dutch-Low Saxon is created than the community will also benefit greatly)
If you just write in the national language of a country lets say Dutch or German, then people won't be bothered to write it in that language but if you give them the opportunity to have their own Wiki and let them write in their own (regional) language I think Wikipedia would certainly gain some respect from the user... may be this is difficult for a English person to understand (I'm not sure) since everything in the world is in English from alarm clocks to faxes and the label "Made in China".
So I also think that Klingon and Quenya should be allowed even if they're not natural languages, neither is Esperanto and the same goes for the extint languages but if people prefer that to English, Dutch, German or French or what ever I think it's a good thing, not a negative point.
Servien
P.S.: Off-topic: I added the test-wp for Dutch-Low Saxon on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/nds-nl/
2005/7/9, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com:
From: Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
I have trouble relating to this. What do you think Wikipedia's goals
are
(or should be)? Why do you contribute to Wikipedia?
Do you mean I should withdraw from Wikipedia because I am wasting time?
No, I mean that I have trouble relating to it, and I'm wondering why you contribute to Wikipedia. I'm waiting with curiosity and an open mind. Don't be ashamed of your beliefs.
I agree with you that Wikipedia's /main/ goal is still to spread as much information as possible to the world's population, in their native language wherever possible. When Wikipedias are too small to provide full information to the reader, he can enhance this information with bigger Wikipedias.
Besides, I think the Wikipedia phaenomenon is a tool to make languages emancipate and being used aside. A language is one of the most important culture bearers there are, and fictional languages are culture bearers as well, even more so than IALs, and as real and existant as the latter group. Though you might think an encyclopaedia in a language noone speaks is no use, in my opinion it is, when someone reads it. Klingon and possibly Quenya and Sindarin Wikipedia(s) will never make out more than only a small part of the whole collection of Wikipedias, so I think we should view it/them as (a) side project(s), secondary or even tertiary, but in no way useless, that is, if it/they ever grow(s) to a considerable magnitude.
Wouter
Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school http://webmessenger.msn.com/
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