On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 02:33:35 -0600, Phil Sandifer sandifer@sbcglobal.net wrote:
Except that, you know, everyone who has ever supported cutting down on small language Wikipedias has noted that they would never object to a Wikipedia like German, Japanese, or another major world language that's used for business, that the great works of civilization have been written in, and that has several million people who use it as their primary language.
That's not really true, not many people said that.
In addition, languages that have been proposed for cutting, such as Pashto, Yi, Lingala, etc., all have several million speakers and are used for "business".
As far as "the great works of civilisation", "civilisation" is POV, and I really don't think it matters much anyways. If somebody speaks a language, it's as good as any other language.
The idea that these policies would restrict any of those Wikipedias is a straw man, plain and simple.
No, not really.
To my knowledge, there is no major language Wikipedia we currently lack. There are no major language Wikipedias in danger of being locked. The question only applies to Wikipedias that are unlikely to have more than a handful of users in the next five years.
And what is your definition of "major language"? And as I noted before, the Limburgish Wikipedia was proposed for deletion, yet the number of Limburgish people with the internet would suggest that in the next 5 years, there will very likely be a relatively large community there.
The Japanese Wikipedia always had an obvious and large population to draw from. But Limburgish? Not so much.
Apparently your sociolinguistic knowledge is a bit lacking.
Personally, I increasingly advocate a moratorium on new language Wikipedias. Instead, we should start one "small language" Wikipedia to be run like Wikibooks, with various subsections. So articles would be in the form of [[Limburgish//Article title]]. And, should one of the small languages suddenly take off to have a real and sustainable community on it, it could be moved to being its own independent Wikipedia.
I'm sorry, but that's a really, really crappy idea. And what is so wrong with having all these Wikipedias anyways?
But I can see no plausible reason to waste limited developer resources on creation and support of projects that will have no lasting userbase except for occasional surges when someone threatens to take them down. And since no one is actually suggesting any of the strawmen you're bringing up, I have to ask, with all due respect, that you stop trolling this listserv.
It has been noted by more than one developer that, as long as a language is a natural language with native speakers, they do not mind using some time on it. And really, honestly, how long does it take to create a new Wikipedia, for a developer? And I have to ask, with all due respect, why on earth you hate minority languages?
Mark