(forwarded to Reinhart (Ron) Hahn to get his opinion)
[Some basic background on the issue for Ron: As you know there is already a Low Saxon Wikipedia. Somebody just requested a "Dutch Low Saxon" Wikipedia, complaining that nds.wiki is in "German Low Saxon". I expressed a few concerns, not least among them that in a case of a dialect continuum, it will be difficult for us to decide where to draw lines between varieties, and which varieties should get their own Wikipedias.]
Concerns that nobody has responded to yet:
* As I noted before, it is a dialect continuum. Stellingwarfs and Middel-pommersch are surely not easily mutually intelligible, but Grunnegers and Oostfreesk very well should be.
* Dividing Platt along national boundaries is illogical. If we had an Oostfreesk Wikipedia, Grunnegers-speakers would surely understand it and vice-versa, even though Grunnegers is in the Netherlands and Oostfreesk is mostly in Germany. There are no definite borders between one and the next, and the national border is just as arbitrary as any.
This would also mean that a man from the tiny village of Laar (in Germany) would use a different Wikipedia than a man from the tiny village of Gramsbergen (in the Netherlands), even though they're about 4km (~2.5mi) apart and their speech is identical. Does this make much sense?
* A case of a dialect continuum is a very new thing for us. We have no experience with it so far, or we have crammed them all into a single Wikipedia.
Mark