(Wouter asked me privately to please personally comment on this thread, so I will.)
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
Could requests for wikipedias in Zeelandic and Town Frisian be granted.
Not knowing anything about these two particular variants, I am unable to make a proper guess or judgment.
This thread has done a very good job I think of discussing some or most of the factors that should properly go into a decision such as this.
We are currently inconsistent in our treatment of different linguistic situations. I do not think this inconsistency is good, but I also do not think it is a grave crisis. I am not even certain that consistency is desirable -- there may not be a "one size fits all" solution to this question.
One thing I think we can all agree upon: there is a difference between us *needing* a certain language in order to fulfill our global vision of a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet (in a language they can easily enough understand) and us *wanting* a certain language in order to fulfill a secondary goal of language preservation and support for minority communities.
"Every single person on the planet" is a bit of rhetoric, but a serious bit of rhetoric. I will feel that this mission is complete if we have an encyclopedia written in enough languages so that 99.99% of all people _who are able to read in some language_ can read a Wikipedia.
Let me take as an example Welsh. I am happy that we have a Welsh wikipedia. But it is all true that virtually every Welsh reader can also read English. Therefore, to meet our *central* mission, English does the trick for Welsh speakers. And for this *secondary* goal, Welsh is a nice thing to have too.
Are all people who could read Zeelandic and Town Frisian also people who can read standard Dutch? Then we don't *need* them for our primary mission, but they would be a nice thing to have as well, if it makes social sense for the community. (Meaning, if there are enough people who want to do it, etc.)
--Jimbo