Hi
"I must say that creating synthetic languages wikis is somewhat controversial."
Yes, I understand this point of view. It is legitim. But ...
We are now x milliards of human in the world. How many, I don't know (can the encyclopedie answer this question?). And we did never live in peace live without hunger live without racialism. Perhaps it is not a matter for wiki.
But we did did never transmit the knowledge. And that is a self-given objective of wikipedia. An example: I did leave in West-Africa about 30 years ago. My colleague had a cousin studying medicine. Her professor was a Chinese medicine professor. He spok only and always Chinese! No one African student did have learn Chinese. I know that it was terribly difficult for the poor African students to follow her professor. I am certain that a lot of the students did become doctor and have different deficits because of this very unadapted situation.
I did participate a long time to the messages board www.africa.com . A frequent opinion was that this continent will never more get any chance because of the division. I am not an African. I can not think like an African. But I am certain that different African people will never forget that her neighbours did fetch them to sell them as slaves. You are surprising of my opinion? And however different European people maintain an antipathy because of facts very older (French against Englishman, French and other European people against Turkish or different Arab people, etc.). It is a matter of culture, it is a matter of religion and it is mainly an matter intercomprehension too because the respective languages have a realy little diffusion in the other country. You can see that people with analog approach of comprehension like German, Japanese and Turkish (in all the 3 languages has the verb the same place at the end of sentence! and there are more languages in the world with this kind of construction as the construction in English, French, Russian or Chinese). The matter of the language is a main peace factor! But the matter of the faculty of comprehension also!
Artificial language can work as bridge between the people. You will be surprising: We need such bridges even under an uniform country with only one official language too...!
Consider for example the situation of deafs without hearing since the birth. They can't have make a begining to think though they think in spoken words because they never did realy listen to spoken words (deaf persones live all the live thinking in a different language or change into the (for them) foreign language of her nation in a second stage of the life after many years language education). Her thoughts are formed in different manner. For this reason they prefer sign languages created especially for her. But the use of sign languages needs a terrible long experience and the healthy people are totaly "deaf for sign language" generally. For this reason deaf people learn to read on the lips, a very difficult exercise and highly dependent of the "quality of the speaker", and try to speak herself words that they will speak but never listen. In the same country, the communication of 2 handicaped person can become a wonder.
In different countries is this intercomprehension not possible between handicaped persones and sometimes very difficult between normal people!
In all this cases can an artificial language sometimes help and be a good bridge between the people.
But all the articificial languages are not equivalent. Only one offers an build-in interface for deaf and different handicaped people. Only one can be readen with more or less difficulties by milliards of humans (all speakers of English, Spanish, French, German etc.; and relatively light by Grec and Russian people: E. de Wahl was himself Russian speaker at home - he was a Baltic born in Ukrain. But only after learning of the Latin alphabet). Only one is certainly 1000 time more spreads as the other each (Esperanto). Etc.
Next problem:
Different sources of knowledge have a extremly difficult nearly impossible access for normal people:
As I did begin to publish solresol in different languages I did constate that the (complete material of gajewsky!) material that I did have was not the best. I did search the original material from inventor. But the book of solresol was a timid effort of a widowed woman to try to make a little money with the invention of her man after he was dead. I suppose, she did print only a minimal quantity. Today this book is one of the rarest books on the world and a lot of languages specialists try to get it, because only a minimal number of big libraries (Bibliothèque national in France, Bibliothèque royale in Belgium, "Germanisches Museum", München, and, perhaps, Bibliothèque historique des sourds, Paris) have the old extremely rare book. I did search months and months for this book only to copy him. Months along, more that on year, without result. And "I" did be the happy man who did can buy it after one year of daily search in ebay, amazon etc...
I can now give all other people how are searching for this information the content of this work and start practice experience in the use of the language in a place that a lot of people will find easy.
Or I can close my new acquisition on my books board.
As I did constate which importance such secondary language can become for important groups of the world population (the European Union of 15 members did have 37 Million of handicaped people in 1995 and about 10 Million of completely analphabet. See please OCDE-statistic), I did find indications about Frater. The same problem in other form: The Vietnamese Publisher seems not to be any more existent. I did ask a friend for a copy of the book of the library of the US-Congres (I live in Germany!!!). Why? This book also is extremely rare now, because it was published in Vietnam and all people know that Vietnam was an especialy tourmented country. It is not possible to become the book in Europe (stand: Internet middle of 2004). It exist only an examplar at the University of Würzburg but it is only possible to see it in Würzburg.
I did decide that I invest the time to transmit my knowledge to other.
Naturally you can prevent it and say: Wiki is for knowledge pure!
My best friend on the internet is an intermediate person: Her man works at the university. Her mother is illetterate...
That is our world and I will change that...
Trully yours
oui (yes/ja/da/shì etc...)
So, to sum it up, Johanna (I understood it was Johanna at least) would like to create two new languages wikipedias.
I know neither of these two, which is in no way more than just a statement.
Generally, I think two things should govern a new language settings which are
* Audience : who will read this new language, how many people does that represent, if few people, are they likely to be better served by another language ?
* Editors : who will work on that new project, how many people ?
Otherwise, waiting community feedback :-)
anthere
Johanna & François Comparot a écrit:
Hi
"I must say that creating synthetic languages wikis is somewhat controversial."
Yes, I understand this point of view. It is legitim. But ...
We are now x milliards of human in the world. How many, I don't know (can the encyclopedie answer this question?). And we did never live in peace live without hunger live without racialism. Perhaps it is not a matter for wiki.
But we did did never transmit the knowledge. And that is a self-given objective of wikipedia. An example: I did leave in West-Africa about 30 years ago. My colleague had a cousin studying medicine. Her professor was a Chinese medicine professor. He spok only and always Chinese! No one African student did have learn Chinese. I know that it was terribly difficult for the poor African students to follow her professor. I am certain that a lot of the students did become doctor and have different deficits because of this very unadapted situation.
I did participate a long time to the messages board www.africa.com . A frequent opinion was that this continent will never more get any chance because of the division. I am not an African. I can not think like an African. But I am certain that different African people will never forget that her neighbours did fetch them to sell them as slaves. You are surprising of my opinion? And however different European people maintain an antipathy because of facts very older (French against Englishman, French and other European people against Turkish or different Arab people, etc.). It is a matter of culture, it is a matter of religion and it is mainly an matter intercomprehension too because the respective languages have a realy little diffusion in the other country. You can see that people with analog approach of comprehension like German, Japanese and Turkish (in all the 3 languages has the verb the same place at the end of sentence! and there are more languages in the world with th
is kind of construction as the construction in English, French, Russian or Chinese). The matter of the language is a main peace factor! But the matter of the faculty of comprehension also!
Artificial language can work as bridge between the people. You will be surprising: We need such bridges even under an uniform country with only one official language too...!
Consider for example the situation of deafs without hearing since the birth. They can't have make a begining to think though they think in spoken words because they never did realy listen to spoken words (deaf persones live all the live thinking in a different language or change into the (for them) foreign language of her nation in a second stage of the life after many years language education). Her thoughts are formed in different manner. For this reason they prefer sign languages created especially for her. But the use of sign languages needs a terrible long experience and the healthy people are totaly "deaf for sign language" generally. For this reason deaf people learn to read on the lips, a very difficult exercise and highly dependent of the "quality of the speaker", and try to speak herself words that they will speak but never listen. In the same country, the communication of 2 handicaped person can become a wonder.
In different countries is this intercomprehension not possible between handicaped persones and sometimes very difficult between normal people!
In all this cases can an artificial language sometimes help and be a good bridge between the people.
But all the articificial languages are not equivalent. Only one offers an build-in interface for deaf and different handicaped people. Only one can be readen with more or less difficulties by milliards of humans (all speakers of English, Spanish, French, German etc.; and relatively light by Grec and Russian people: E. de Wahl was himself Russian speaker at home - he was a Baltic born in Ukrain. But only after learning of the Latin alphabet). Only one is certainly 1000 time more spreads as the other each (Esperanto). Etc.
Next problem:
Different sources of knowledge have a extremly difficult nearly impossible access for normal people:
As I did begin to publish solresol in different languages I did constate that the (complete material of gajewsky!) material that I did have was not the best. I did search the original material from inventor. But the book of solresol was a timid effort of a widowed woman to try to make a little money with the invention of her man after he was dead. I suppose, she did print only a minimal quantity. Today this book is one of the rarest books on the world and a lot of languages specialists try to get it, because only a minimal number of big libraries (Bibliothèque national in France, Bibliothèque royale in Belgium, "Germanisches Museum", München, and, perhaps, Bibliothèque historique des sourds, Paris) have the old extremely rare book. I did search months and months for this book only to copy him. Months along, more that on year, without result. And "I" did be the happy man who did can buy it after one year of daily search in ebay, amazon etc...
I can now give all other people how are searching for this information the content of this work and start practice experience in the use of the language in a place that a lot of people will find easy.
Or I can close my new acquisition on my books board.
As I did constate which importance such secondary language can become for important groups of the world population (the European Union of 15 members did have 37 Million of handicaped people in 1995 and about 10 Million of completely analphabet. See please OCDE-statistic), I did find indications about Frater. The same problem in other form: The Vietnamese Publisher seems not to be any more existent. I did ask a friend for a copy of the book of the library of the US-Congres (I live in Germany!!!). Why? This book also is extremely rare now, because it was published in Vietnam and all people know that Vietnam was an especialy tourmented country. It is not possible to become the book in Europe (stand: Internet middle of 2004). It exist only an examplar at the University of Würzburg but it is only possible to see it in Würzburg.
I did decide that I invest the time to transmit my knowledge to other.
Naturally you can prevent it and say: Wiki is for knowledge pure!
My best friend on the internet is an intermediate person: Her man works at the university. Her mother is illetterate...
That is our world and I will change that...
Trully yours
oui (yes/ja/da/shì etc...)
Hi
Thank you Mark for your open approach of the request.
Anthere I will take bake my candidature for the two new languages.
As I did discover yesterday this background mailing list (I did all the time suppose that all the talk where open talks in the open-talk pages; I know, it was naive) I was chocked.
I did think about this matter during the evening and the night and I think that different important points of view in the Wiki world are extremely problematical.
I will now take my distance from the Wiki movement.
I was a long time thinking about the yes or the no to become a co-worker at Wiki. Why?
The "no": --------- The open character of information ressources may be a potency but it is a danger at the same time because there is no indicator of quality. If you by something at ebay, you know that the partner is registered, you can look for his evaluations and you can even look what other user did criticize. You can open the other young article and look the texts concerning the problematical transaction. All that has no equivalent in Wiki. You consulte an information, perhaps an important information with consequences on your comportement because that and for the next development of your life, and there is no evaluation or possibility of any control. It would be possible to enter problematical information with the objective to influence. What to influence is a question of the specific detail. Two example: The World Fact Book http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/fr.html writes for France: "Languages: French 100%, rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal, Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish) Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 99% male: 99% female: 99% (1980 est.)" The site http://www.educationnationale.com writes "Pourcentage des 16 à 65 ans éprouvant des difficultés à lire et à comprendre des textes de la vie quotidienne enquête OCDE, 1995) : Suède 7,5 ; Pays-Bas 10,5 ; Allemagne 14,4 ; Canada 16,6 ; États-Unis 20,7 ; France 40,1 ; Pologne 42,6". Between the 1 % of illeterate people of the WFB of the official institution CIA (one information source of the President of the USA to start wars and anihilate populations and cultures - Irak was a really problematic country but Irak was not fundamentalistic and was theoretical lay/secular like Turkey!) and the information of the other source (you can click on the link "Quid" - French people considere Quid as an "eprouved" Wikipedia not as an experiment!), there is a world of difference.... An you can see yourself in the differente wikis that the affirmation "rapidly declining regional dialects and languages" is not certain! And if this information would be correct why did you give in wiki the ok to start new wikis in those declining dialects and languages? Only to disturb the unity of countries like France or Spain etc? Or did you do that with the conviction to help people to develope somewhat, that is precious to protect, somewhat with a great valor? Today your restrictive conviction concerning solresol is for me an indicator more of the first as of the second: Soleresol was a great invention. But different people don't want to allow that other languages as national language can exist parallel to the national language. For this reason especially in France did a law forbid the use of special languages as the national language. Please enter following words into the search motor www.yahoo.fr "loi fabius congrès de milan" and you will see a fantastic number of link on the problem that AS YOU today in wikipedia the most important part of the population of France through his leader as on the list wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org did refuse to handicaped people MORE THAN 100 YEARS ALONG the legitimity to develope own educative solution especially signs languages to help the poor persones to live in the dignity. See please http://www.a2mains.com/historique3.html . It is only a little more as TEN YEARS legal to do that in France: propage an universal language including a sign language: You will restrict the liberty with terms like "audience" - "editors"- Well!
Now, the "yes", my devise in the web, -------------------------------------- A lot of idealists works in these pages, do her best to make a lot of possibilities accessible for a great number of other persones. Different editors, not all, have a great experience and qualification and invest a lot of time for other. Different editors of course reinvente only the wheel (and it seems you prefer those editors: A encyclopedie book oder CDROM costs only 10 Euro in Germany today) but not fully round rather with a lot of corners. But other give access at the knowledge to persones how would be have difficulties because of the language of because of the deficit of the production or import of book ware in her part of the world; I did already explain that medicine students in West Africa did learn medicine from a Chinese professor, who was only Chinese speaker... And books where extremely rare at the same time in this African country. Other give access to non conventional knowledge with reduced accessibility (like Solresol and Frater - Try to get the complete sources that I have now...)
For this reason I did in the supposition that Wiki did be a really open and wide seeing institution say to me: YES, I cooperate also.
But I did ignore those back ground tribunals like this access limited email-list wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org and the opinion, that a persone can only get a chance if he already did have this chance on a different place, if he already has a successfull community (* Audience : who will read this new language, how many people does that represent, if few people, are they likely to be better served by another language * Editors : who will work on that new project, how many people ).
To Anwhere,
if I would have a kind of Catalan-Yahoo ( http://ct.yahoo.com/ ) for solresol or frater, I would not move to Wikipedia (Catalan also is not a national language; but they have a own yahoo...) after all the work would be done and so annihilate my old work and make twice the same!
Good luck with your problematical project... I go away!
Truly ours
François
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Williamson" node.ue@gmail.com To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 1:21 AM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedia proposal
I thought Interlingue already had a Wikipedia?
Anyhow I think we should at least consider a Wikipedia for Solresol.
However Frater I have never heard of, but of course it would still be open to discussion.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthere" anthere9@yahoo.com To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 1:53 AM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia langage solresol
So, to sum it up, Johanna (I understood it was Johanna at least) would like to create two new languages wikipedias.
I know neither of these two, which is in no way more than just a
statement.
Generally, I think two things should govern a new language settings which are
- Audience : who will read this new language, how many people does that
represent, if few people, are they likely to be better served by another language ?
- Editors : who will work on that new project, how many people ?
Otherwise, waiting community feedback :-)
anthere
Francois, please don't give up so easily. If you truly believe that this is something worth doing and encouraging, it should take more than a few people saying "maybe" rather than "yes" to make you give up. Nobody here has said "no" to your proposals; if you think you can make this work, then have courage and try to make it work, even when it seems difficult. I will try to address and discuss some of your current concerns below.
On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 16:22:46 +0200, oboenfan oboenfan@hotmail.com wrote:
As I did discover yesterday this background mailing list (I did all the time suppose that all the talk where open talks in the open-talk pages; I know, it was naive) I was chocked.
Yes, there has long been debate about whether we should use mailing-lists such as this. The main reason they still exist is that people find them more convenient for certain kinds of discussion than the wiki pages. They are not intended to be any less open.
The "no":
The open character of information ressources may be a potency but it is a danger at the same time because there is no indicator of quality. If you by something at ebay, you know that the partner is registered, you can look for his evaluations and you can even look what other user did criticize. You can open the other young article and look the texts concerning the problematical transaction. All that has no equivalent in Wiki.
Working out how we can ensure quality is one of the biggest issues facing Wikipedia today, but we know it, and we are constantly working to introduce mechanisms to help. You mentioning e-bay here is interesting, because they have had to try hard to solve a similar problem - how to measure trustworthiness of anonymous sellers over the Internet. Clearly, you feel that their current measures work well enough to trust - others might point out that it is still possible to fool people by making multiple small, genuine, sales to gain a reputation and then making a larger, fraudulent, sale.
There will probably *always* be a struggle to improve such systems, but that should not stop us trying to create projects which have the chance for real beneifts.
You consulte an information, perhaps an important information with consequences on your comportement because that and for the next development of your life, and there is no evaluation or possibility of any control. It would be possible to enter problematical information with the objective to influence. What to influence is a question of the specific detail.
I'm not sure what you were trying to say with the example you gave here. If you meant that it is possible for Wikipedia to contain incorrect information, then again I say: this is something we are trying to address; the official policy is that Wikipedia should have a "Neutral Point of View" - any article which deliberately sets out to influence is one that needs fixing, and we are trying to find ways of spotting and labelling such articles.
But your example almost suggests to me that the CIA's World Fact Book may be the one in error - or, at least, that there may be credible challenges to its figures. A *good* Wikipedia article would actually *help* here: with no agenda of its own, and no editorial control to suppress alternative viewpoints, any supportable statistics could be entered alongside each other, with a discussion of why each may be better or worse. This is an advantage of the wiki approach, not a disadvantage.
[...] And if this information would be correct why did you give in wiki the ok to start new wikis in those declining dialects and languages? Only to disturb the unity of countries like France or Spain etc? Or did you do that with the conviction to help people to develope somewhat, that is precious to protect, somewhat with a great valor? Today your restrictive conviction concerning solresol is for me an indicator more of the first as of the second: Soleresol was a great invention. But different people don't want to allow that other languages as national language can exist parallel to the national language.
I disagree with your conclusions here: the various language wikipedias were started by individuals or small groups of people who thought it would be a useful, achievable project resulting in a useful resource. I have seen nobody say that you should not be allowed to propose this project; only people who are not sure whether it is achievable, or whether it would be useful. So prove them wrong: convince them that it could be achievable, and would be useful, and set about making it happen.
A lot of idealists works in these pages, do her best to make a lot of Different editors of course reinvente only the wheel (and it seems you prefer those editors: A encyclopedie book oder CDROM costs only 10 Euro in Germany today)
I'm not sure why you consider us as "reinventing the wheel"; no, we are not the first to write an encyclopedia, but we are the first to write a collabourative, multi-lingual, freely available (not only for no money, but also with no restrictions on copying and distributing), un-biased encyclopedia. How is that encouraging people to reinvent the wheel?
For this reason I did in the supposition that Wiki did be a really open and wide seeing institution say to me: YES, I cooperate also.
Some decisions have to be considered carefully: if we allow too many versions of Wikipedia that turn out to be unsuccessful, we risk taking effort away from others that have better chances of success. On the other hand, if we create too few, we are failing in our aim of making information available to those who need it. So it is only natural that we want to pause and consider before saying "YES" to your proposal.
But I did ignore those back ground tribunals like this access limited email-list wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org
I still don't understand why you think of this list as "access-limited": you were able to post here, as is anybody else who wishes to. If you mean it is not well-enough publicised, that is a different matter: the discussions on this list are no more closed to the public than on our wikis.
and the opinion, that a persone can only get a chance if he already did have this chance on a different place, if he already has a successfull community (* Audience : who will read this new language, how many people does that represent, if few people, are they likely to be better served by another language * Editors : who will work on that new project, how many people ).
You have to be aware that creating an encyclopedia in a new language is a big challenge, and not something that will just happen as soon as you decide to start. This is what Anthere meant about needing an audience and editors - it doesn't matter if they don't exist yet, but it matters if they never will. If you start a project where you are the only contributor, it will be extremely hard work, and you will not have the power of collaboration which makes Wikipedia work. If you start on a project where only you want to read it, all your effort will be wasted, and better spent elsewhere.
So to make a project successful, you need to have reason to believe that your project will "gather steam": that there will soon be enough editors to make a real start, and that there are people out there who will find your work, use it, and with luck become contributors themselves. You don't need to already have a community, but you need to have the means to build a community. For a solresol encyclopedia, you need enough people who know solresol, or who are willing to learn it, that will be interested in reading it, and hopefully also in helping create it.
In short: if you think there are people who will want to use this, and want to help you with it, those are your editors and readers, even if they don't know it yet. If you believe that they are out there, then you have my blessing to start, and probably that of most others here.
Have courage.
Also, one major difference between Solresol/Frater and languages such as Catalan, Occitan, Alsatian (now transformed into the Alemannic wikipedia), Breton, etc which already have Wikipedias is this: Solresol and Frater are "constructed languages" with no native speakers. They are not "minority languages" like these other languages, they are in a different category completely. There are 0 people who can read or write Solresol or Frater better than any natural language.
This doesn't mean I wouldn't support a Solresol or Frater wikipedia; all I'm saying is that these languages are not comparable.
--node
On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 17:20:01 +0100, Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com wrote:
Francois, please don't give up so easily. If you truly believe that this is something worth doing and encouraging, it should take more than a few people saying "maybe" rather than "yes" to make you give up. Nobody here has said "no" to your proposals; if you think you can make this work, then have courage and try to make it work, even when it seems difficult. I will try to address and discuss some of your current concerns below.
On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 16:22:46 +0200, oboenfan oboenfan@hotmail.com wrote:
As I did discover yesterday this background mailing list (I did all the time suppose that all the talk where open talks in the open-talk pages; I know, it was naive) I was chocked.
Yes, there has long been debate about whether we should use mailing-lists such as this. The main reason they still exist is that people find them more convenient for certain kinds of discussion than the wiki pages. They are not intended to be any less open.
The "no":
The open character of information ressources may be a potency but it is a danger at the same time because there is no indicator of quality. If you by something at ebay, you know that the partner is registered, you can look for his evaluations and you can even look what other user did criticize. You can open the other young article and look the texts concerning the problematical transaction. All that has no equivalent in Wiki.
Working out how we can ensure quality is one of the biggest issues facing Wikipedia today, but we know it, and we are constantly working to introduce mechanisms to help. You mentioning e-bay here is interesting, because they have had to try hard to solve a similar problem - how to measure trustworthiness of anonymous sellers over the Internet. Clearly, you feel that their current measures work well enough to trust - others might point out that it is still possible to fool people by making multiple small, genuine, sales to gain a reputation and then making a larger, fraudulent, sale.
There will probably *always* be a struggle to improve such systems, but that should not stop us trying to create projects which have the chance for real beneifts.
You consulte an information, perhaps an important information with consequences on your comportement because that and for the next development of your life, and there is no evaluation or possibility of any control. It would be possible to enter problematical information with the objective to influence. What to influence is a question of the specific detail.
I'm not sure what you were trying to say with the example you gave here. If you meant that it is possible for Wikipedia to contain incorrect information, then again I say: this is something we are trying to address; the official policy is that Wikipedia should have a "Neutral Point of View" - any article which deliberately sets out to influence is one that needs fixing, and we are trying to find ways of spotting and labelling such articles.
But your example almost suggests to me that the CIA's World Fact Book may be the one in error - or, at least, that there may be credible challenges to its figures. A *good* Wikipedia article would actually *help* here: with no agenda of its own, and no editorial control to suppress alternative viewpoints, any supportable statistics could be entered alongside each other, with a discussion of why each may be better or worse. This is an advantage of the wiki approach, not a disadvantage.
[...] And if this information would be correct why did you give in wiki the ok to start new wikis in those declining dialects and languages? Only to disturb the unity of countries like France or Spain etc? Or did you do that with the conviction to help people to develope somewhat, that is precious to protect, somewhat with a great valor? Today your restrictive conviction concerning solresol is for me an indicator more of the first as of the second: Soleresol was a great invention. But different people don't want to allow that other languages as national language can exist parallel to the national language.
I disagree with your conclusions here: the various language wikipedias were started by individuals or small groups of people who thought it would be a useful, achievable project resulting in a useful resource. I have seen nobody say that you should not be allowed to propose this project; only people who are not sure whether it is achievable, or whether it would be useful. So prove them wrong: convince them that it could be achievable, and would be useful, and set about making it happen.
A lot of idealists works in these pages, do her best to make a lot of Different editors of course reinvente only the wheel (and it seems you prefer those editors: A encyclopedie book oder CDROM costs only 10 Euro in Germany today)
I'm not sure why you consider us as "reinventing the wheel"; no, we are not the first to write an encyclopedia, but we are the first to write a collabourative, multi-lingual, freely available (not only for no money, but also with no restrictions on copying and distributing), un-biased encyclopedia. How is that encouraging people to reinvent the wheel?
For this reason I did in the supposition that Wiki did be a really open and wide seeing institution say to me: YES, I cooperate also.
Some decisions have to be considered carefully: if we allow too many versions of Wikipedia that turn out to be unsuccessful, we risk taking effort away from others that have better chances of success. On the other hand, if we create too few, we are failing in our aim of making information available to those who need it. So it is only natural that we want to pause and consider before saying "YES" to your proposal.
But I did ignore those back ground tribunals like this access limited email-list wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org
I still don't understand why you think of this list as "access-limited": you were able to post here, as is anybody else who wishes to. If you mean it is not well-enough publicised, that is a different matter: the discussions on this list are no more closed to the public than on our wikis.
and the opinion, that a persone can only get a chance if he already did have this chance on a different place, if he already has a successfull community (* Audience : who will read this new language, how many people does that represent, if few people, are they likely to be better served by another language * Editors : who will work on that new project, how many people ).
You have to be aware that creating an encyclopedia in a new language is a big challenge, and not something that will just happen as soon as you decide to start. This is what Anthere meant about needing an audience and editors - it doesn't matter if they don't exist yet, but it matters if they never will. If you start a project where you are the only contributor, it will be extremely hard work, and you will not have the power of collaboration which makes Wikipedia work. If you start on a project where only you want to read it, all your effort will be wasted, and better spent elsewhere.
So to make a project successful, you need to have reason to believe that your project will "gather steam": that there will soon be enough editors to make a real start, and that there are people out there who will find your work, use it, and with luck become contributors themselves. You don't need to already have a community, but you need to have the means to build a community. For a solresol encyclopedia, you need enough people who know solresol, or who are willing to learn it, that will be interested in reading it, and hopefully also in helping create it.
In short: if you think there are people who will want to use this, and want to help you with it, those are your editors and readers, even if they don't know it yet. If you believe that they are out there, then you have my blessing to start, and probably that of most others here.
Have courage.
Rowan Collins [IMSoP]
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 11:51:18 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Also, one major difference between Solresol/Frater and languages such as Catalan, Occitan, Alsatian (now transformed into the Alemannic wikipedia), Breton, etc which already have Wikipedias is this: Solresol and Frater are "constructed languages" with no native speakers. They are not "minority languages" like these other languages, they are in a different category completely. There are 0 people who can read or write Solresol or Frater better than any natural language.
While I generally see your point, I would advise against being too hasty on this point: I'm told, much to my surprise, that a few people are actually brought up speaking Esperanto as a first language; and on the other side, many "minority languages" will be *so* minority that most - if not, in some cases, all - users of the language will actually more often use, and thus be more proficient in, another, more mainstream language. This is true, for instance, of languages that are being "saved from extinction" by enthusiasts, and which may therefore be insufficient for any speaker, however proficient, to use as their *primary* tongue.
So the distinction may not be so clear cut as you make out: there are "constructed languages" for which there are "native" speakers, and there are probably "minority languages" which are nobody's "mother tongue".
Which all rather strengthens calls to take each proposed language on its own terms.
Notice I said "constructed languages" with no native speakers rather than "constructed languages" which by default means they have no native speakers.
--node
On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 00:19:46 +0100, Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, 3 Oct 2004 11:51:18 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Also, one major difference between Solresol/Frater and languages such as Catalan, Occitan, Alsatian (now transformed into the Alemannic wikipedia), Breton, etc which already have Wikipedias is this: Solresol and Frater are "constructed languages" with no native speakers. They are not "minority languages" like these other languages, they are in a different category completely. There are 0 people who can read or write Solresol or Frater better than any natural language.
While I generally see your point, I would advise against being too hasty on this point: I'm told, much to my surprise, that a few people are actually brought up speaking Esperanto as a first language; and on the other side, many "minority languages" will be *so* minority that most - if not, in some cases, all - users of the language will actually more often use, and thus be more proficient in, another, more mainstream language. This is true, for instance, of languages that are being "saved from extinction" by enthusiasts, and which may therefore be insufficient for any speaker, however proficient, to use as their *primary* tongue.
So the distinction may not be so clear cut as you make out: there are "constructed languages" for which there are "native" speakers, and there are probably "minority languages" which are nobody's "mother tongue".
Which all rather strengthens calls to take each proposed language on its own terms.
-- Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP] _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
In the first instance, "with no native speakers" directly modifies "constructed languages". It is meant to create a subset of constructed languages, ie those that don't have native speakers (as opposed to those constructed languages which *do* have native speakers), whereas the latter one implicitly makes it clear that there is no other possible interpretation than that no constructed languages have native speakers (which is not true). ;)
--node
On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 07:51:25 +0200, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Mark Williamson a écrit:
Notice I said "constructed languages" with no native speakers rather than "constructed languages" which by default means they have no native speakers.
--node
I fail to see the difference :-)
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org