It is my opinion that as long as you are not allowed to write in a variety on any existing Wikipedia, you should be allowed to write on it in a new Wikipedia.
In private discussions before, Jimbo has used AAVE as a sort of measuring stick to judge whether or not some language should or should not get a Wikipedia, ie that AAVE itself should not.
I'm perfectly aware of many of the reasons he has for this, but I disagree primarily on the following grounds:
If we allow people to write in the vernacular on en.wikipedia and do not chase after them 'correcting' their grammar, then it is a more complicated question whose answer lies more in whether or not there is a community desire among proponents of AAVE to use entirely separate literature.
However, since this is not the case - if I wrote a new, detailed, thoughtful, complex, well-researched non-stub article in AAVE, Scots, Singlish, or any other language which is considered by some to be a "non-standard form of English" (whether correctly or incorrectly), I think there is a 25% chance it would be listed of VfD for being 'utter nonsense', a 25% chance it would be "corrected" right away - ie, translated to standard English - a 25% chance it would be listed for cleanup, and a 25% chance that nobody would know what on earth to do with it. But I know there would be a 0% chance that people would agree to let it stay in its current form: the current trend on Wikipedia is towards prescriptivist enforcement, "correcting" others' "incorrect" spellings, their "bad grammar", "poor punctuation", etc. While some "misspellings" or "grammatical errors" on Wikipedia are in fact typos or unintentional, the simple fact is that the majority of them were intentional, either because the user did not know the so-called "correct" spelling, or in the case of grammar because they based it on WHAT REAL PEOPLE ACTUALLY SAY where they come from rather than the stuffy middle-aged millionaire bureaucratic language that the DoE tried so diligently but ultimately failed to make them use.
If an article is entirely beyond understanding, that's one thing - if I write "Zuwolojii z' dh'sayints v'kritrs 'n sotx. Yi 'z tri maan brons o'zuwologii, alvim 'ndivizali 'portnt n' ts' oon raat" I would expect it to be deleted as vandalism, and while I would certainly rather somebody changed it to make it more understandable, I have no particular problem with its deletion. However, if I write "A creol langage is a langage who is fairmed whin a pijin-langage is gains native speakres", I do not believe that should be changed - pijin-langage should be wikified as [[pidgin language|pijin-langage]] and native speakres should be [[native speaker|native speakres]], but the rest should be left alone.
Of course there will probably be dozens of responses about how people should use proper language, understand, comprehension, blah blah blah, what is really _correct_, blah, blah, blah, but this is my opinion.
Mark
On 03/05/05, Wouter Steenbeek musiqolog@hotmail.com wrote:
Dear fellow list subscribers,
Following on the discussion on the two or even four written and standardised variants of Norwegian, I would like to see how much two language varieties must differ from one another to be apt for a new wikipedia. Don't get me wrong: my intention is NOT to dispute the validity of two coexisting Norwegian wikipedias. Those variants have a long history and tradition of mutual incompatibility. I just think all of us agree that somewhere it has to stop - or should we wish a Texan wikipedia? "e freea cundent engcyclep~e thad annywun can eddit"? - but we might disagree where. Probably you held this discussion many times before, but I am a relative newbe on this list.
Now I would like to pose my question in a casuist way: Could requests for wikipedias in Zeelandic and Town Frisian be granted. Neither is generally considered a seperate language (those some linguists do call them languages), but Zeelandic is a clearly bordered regional language which differs about as much from Dutch proper as Nynorsk from Swedish (as far as I can judge) and is, when spoken, very problematic to be understood for Dutch speakers, while Town Frisian is a mixed language with a 16th century Hollandic vocabulary and Frisian grammar and phonetical principles. Moreover, it goes without saying that these variants (to avoid both the term "language" and "dialect") are not allowed on nl:, being a standardised language.
I don't necessarily support requests for wikipedias in those (thogh I would be willing to contribute), but I would like to know where the community draws the borders.
Thanks for reading this, Wouter
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