This is true.
However, there is also a practical way to measure things. One can assume that things he has written in English which appear that he didn't know how to translate them, rather than that he wanted to leave them for people whose English is better, are indicative of his level.
Most of the pages he writes in Maori are very short. See, for example, http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiringa-%C4%81-nuku
Also, while one would expect the page on New Zealand and on Maori people and Maori language to be of a considerable length in a Maori-language Wikipedia, they're all very short.
See: http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aotearoa (new zealand) http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori (this is longer than most pages he has written; in one of the edit summaries he said he added some text to it from a book, so this is probably why) http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_reo_M%C4%81ori (maori language)
Compare with: http://ch.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%C3%A5h%C3%A5n (Chamorro page about Guam; Chamorro Wikipedia's only real Chamorro-language content) http://nv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Din%C3%A9tah (Navajo page about Navajo ancestral homeland; one of the longest of the 50 or so pages in the Navajo Wikipedia) http://xh.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMzantsi_Afrika (Xhosa page about South Africa, one of only 18 pages on the Xhosa Wikipedia) http://sc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinna (Sardinian page on Sardinia, one of the largest of 36 articles in the language) http://zu.wikipedia.org/wiki/IsiZulu (Zulu article on the Zulu language, one of only 5 or so articles on the Zulu Wikipedia, second-largest after the article about pottery)
It is extremely unnatural for a language to have such a large number of pages (over 300 now) but such short pages about the nation (in this case New Zealand) and language (in this case Maori). The only other Wikipedia I can think of in a similar situation is the Nauruan Wiki, which is in a similar situation -- written entirely by language enthusiasts who aren't fluent in the language, with over 100 articles in poorly-written Nauruan.
Besides that, I used a Maori grammar book to construct a more appropriate stub notice on the Maori Wikipedia. That's right, the one that's there now is of my creation. Robin Patterson's had about 4 Maori words, basically "This piece is stump - you expand it?", followed by a 10 or so word long English sentence inviting people to expand a stub.
Mark
On 11/07/05, Ole Andersen palnatoke@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote: ...
Robin Patterson is, as you know, the most prolific contributor. He is not of Maori heritage, and his level of Maori is (self-admitted) mi-1.
...
How precise is this level mearurement? One person's mi-1 may be better than another person's mi-2, if the two persons have different views of language abilities. Not that I know anything about Robin's (or anyone else's) Maori, but you cannot really use the language skill measurement like that.
-- http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc ICQ: 86989486 phone: +45 22 34 72 92