On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 02:33:35 -0600, Phil Sandifer
<sandifer(a)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