On 07/11/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
Elian has written something very powerful and
important, and I want to
quote some from it to echo the sentiments.
I respect your opinion, but to me it seemed more like whinging (for
lack of a better word) than something very powerful and important.
Bravo!
On that point I will agree with both of you.
> I went back to the real thing, the encyclopedia
in my language - which
> is nor Bavarian, neither Münchnerisch although I am from this region and
> city but german, a language almost everybody in Germany speaks and is
> able to understand (except he's maybe turkish or serbian or arabic).
> There's still a lot of work to do even if some newspapers rate us
> already as better than brockhaus.
>
> Tell me when you've stopped discussing and voting on genial new projects
> and obscure dialects, when you've kicked the language fanatics from the
> mailing lists, when you've closed the unwatched spam traps, when you've
> settled on a checkuser and logo policy, when someone has had the guts to
> introduce single login instead of just talking about it and when you are
> serious about this human knowledge thing.
I'm very sympathetic to all these points. I
don't have an easy answer
to what to do, and kicking language fanatics off the mailing lists isn't
exactly our normal style. I do think we need some serious reform of our
language policy to end what I see as an ongoing drive to reclassify
every dialect in the world into a standalone language. I do think we
need to be much more severe about closing down unwatched spam traps.
It may seem this way from where you are. But let's look over a few things:
1) Dialects. So far, nearly all proposals have been classified by the
Ethnologue as separate languages. Among those that haven't are:
Zlatiborian, Samogitian, Banyumasan, Voro. However, all of these
(except Zlatiborian) are listed by numerous other sources as separate
languages. So, while you may label them "dialects", experts do not.
Based solely on the standard of mutual intelligibility, it almost
makes more sense to merge the Spanish and Portuguese WPs than to say
that Riparian is nothing more than a dialect of German and should be
shoved into the same Wikipedia. Besides this, there is already a huge
test wiki in Riparian. Other so-called "dialects" like Bavarian or
Zeelandic are considered by many of their own speakers, as well as a
significant number of experts, as independent languages, and they are
certainly not easily mutually intelligible (in written form) with the
parent language.
2) Language policy. This is already being worked on [[m:Proposed
policy for wikis in new languages]]
3) "unwatched spam traps". Would you be kind enough to point me to
even one unwatched spam trap? I'm quite offended that the work of
myself, Angela, Chamdarae, Mxn, Mustafaa, and others has gone largely
unnoticed by you. Thanks to us, the majority of spam and vandalism on
so-called "unwatched spam traps" _is_ watched, and is reverted
quickly.
Each person's list of things like this will be
slightly different, but
the overall point is that I am beginning to sense a need with the
community for us to turn inward, to change some of our very open
policies which lead people to endless new-project proposals and
new-language speculation.
I think things are working just fine the way they are. Well, not
entirely, I agree that some things are dysfunctional, but I think
they're only very minor problems and people are already working on
them. So, while you see a big fissure across the face of Wikimedia, I
see a tiny crack which is already being patched.
Mark
--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin