Kaixo!
On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 08:26:20AM +0100, Boris Lohnzweiger wrote:
But, a the end of the day, what is (or should be) an encyclopedia all about? My definition is: a _comprehensive_ source of information. Now I'm afraid neither Klingon nor Quenyan nor any other fictional language wikipedia will ever achieve that status. Matter of fact, I think even most International auxiliary language wikipedias which have been set up so far won't get there.
I fully agree. (note that for "most international auxiliary languages", their wikipedias are not very healthy because the language itself isn't; Esperanto is the most successful auxiliary language, used by a lot of people and I have actually seen Esperanto in use in various places; and eo: Wikipedia does quite well).
So after all, those fantasy language wikipedias would all end up being creative playgrounds for small circles of people. Which surely woundn't be a bad thing. But would that really fit into the concept of this great project?
That is the problem; what the proposers of those languages want is not a Wikipedia! They want a playgroung, feature the wonderfull mediawiki software (which has evolved to be the best wiki software out there). Imho such demands should be redirected to wikibooks or a similar thing (maybe not hosted by wikipedia foundation); it will be even better for them, as there won't be the need to write NPOV encyclopedic articles.
As for people doing research, I can perfectly imagine people doing research in Klingon about Klingon language topics (or about supposed Klingon fictional universe); but indeed I don't imagine them doing research in Klingon about chemistry, medieval European history or Russian litterature... So, a mediawiki site for those fictional language makes sense and is legitimate, but it should definitively not be a wikipedia; it doesn't has the same goels, and it should have the same constraints either.
(I feel the same about some dead non-fictional languages, like classical Latin or Anglo-saxon)