Scríobh Mark Williamson:
Also I feel that as long as it isn't a conlang, it doesn't matter how many speakers there are as long as there are people interested in writing an encyclopedia.
You do realise that Esperanto is a conlang, and it has one of the most active Wikis out there? There are some other conlang-Wikis out there too, like tlhIngan Hol, Interlingua, and Sindarin (Tolkeinese, I seem to remember this existing, although I can't remember the code).
I think that so long as a language has modern speakers, some of whom are interested in writing an encyclopædia, there should be no restrictions.
That said, while a Gothic wikipedia would be interesting (I'm sure this is the Robert Smith fan inside me speaking ;-) ), I'd wonder whether there really is that much interest in it. Even being optimistic and taking a high estimate for the number of speakers (say, 5,000), I don't know if anyone would actually be willing to add to it. Not that having a Gothic Wiki with no entries would really tax the foundation, but I don't think we need *another* deserted Wiki with five articles in it.
As always though, it's not up to me to decide ;-)
- Craig Franklin
------------------- Craig Franklin PO Box 764 Ashgrove, Q, 4060 Australia http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art, and Culture.
Craig Franklin wrote:
That said, while a Gothic wikipedia would be interesting (I'm sure this is the Robert Smith fan inside me speaking ;-) ), I'd wonder whether there really is that much interest in it. Even being optimistic and taking a high estimate for the number of speakers (say, 5,000), I don't know if anyone would actually be willing to add to it. Not that having a Gothic Wiki with no entries would really tax the foundation, but I don't think we need *another* deserted Wiki with five articles in it.
Come to think of it, I suppose I wouldn't mind it being created really, for the reason you mentioned---there's really not much to lose. We might gain some publicity in certain circles, and we're unlikely to be negatively affected.
I'm still somewhat dubious, of course---a reasonable Wikipedia needs at least a few hundred articles to be written, and it appears there has not been a single piece of text written in Gothic in the past few decades. If it did work, Wikipedia would suddenly become the source of 99% of extant Gothic texts, which would be somewhat interesting.
-Mark
On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 01:59:07 -0400, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
If it did work, Wikipedia would suddenly become the source of 99% of extant Gothic texts, which would be somewhat interesting.
This would be a nice example to be able to point to. --Sj (The fact that this is already true for tokipona, is not nearly as interesting)
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of the tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis. Adding the wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the language file, mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki links. From establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of developer work involved. Then there is a similar cost to the rest of the community -- stewards have to deal with creating bureaucrats and administrators, and for small conlangs, the community has to deliberate over visibility on the larger wikis.
This is all no big deal for important projects, I spend many hours per week on Wikipedia. But there's a reason I spend that time on Wikipedia rather than some other project, and that is because I think providing general information to as large an audience as possible is a noble goal.
I was annoyed at having to support the Toki Pona wiki, and I wasn't keen on Klingon either. I researched the Lojban language to see if there was any way I could motivate myself to work on it by relating it to Wikipedia's mission, but I didn't find one. I added it to the language list with no intention of supporting it. It was painful turning down the inevitable support requests, directing them to a more general forum. I decided that if no developer was willing to support a wiki, then creating it would only lead to frustration on the part of the contributors.
So, if any developer is willing to support the Gothic Wikipedia (or by the same token, the Old English Wikipedia), I invite you to follow the instructions at:
http://wp.wikidev.net/Wiki_farm#How_to_add_a_language
Don't forget to give the contributors your contact details, in case they have any problems.
-- Tim Starling
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours? Either more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new wiki can be set up.
As a consultant, I have found that a good way to avoid boring work tasks is to put a price tag on them. Oh yes, I would love to fix your spelling errors -- at $10 per page or $150 per hour. :-)
The current discussions of whether or not to start new projects are tiresome and frustrating for all parties. It would be better to allow anybody to start new projects, so that the hard part will not be convincing the Wikimedia Foundation, but convincing the community to fill the new wiki with contents. Perhaps such communities should be required first to collect 250 articles (off-wiki, by e-mail) and when this is achieved, the new wiki will be started.
Lars Aronsson, lars@aronsson.se
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours? Either more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new wiki can be set up.
I suggest you read my post again. I'll quote it here in part.
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of the tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis. Adding the wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the language file, mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki links. From establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
developer work involved.
That's just a very rough guess. Some wikis take a lot more than that. I just finished writing a new feature specifically for the Finnish Wikipedia which probably took 6 hours alone, although you wouldn't see me giving that level of service to Gothic or Klingon.
The task of creating a wiki is already automated. As I explained above, the problem is in ongoing tech support and system administration, not creation. There are ways to reduce that too, but there's always going to be someone who doesn't bother reading the manual.
That's why I suggested that if anyone is interested in providing ongoing support for this wiki, they should offer themselves as a point of contact. They should do their best to fix any problems, but *never* pass the problem on to the rest of the community.
-- Tim Starling
The difference here Tim is that while Klingon is 1. a conlang with a fairly small number of speakers intended as the language of an imaginary alien race from a scifiseries 2. afaik completely without native speakers altogether, save maybe a handful, while Gothic is a natural language with perhaps 4000~5000 speakers, the only well-known East Germanic language and as such very important to linguistic reasearch (the others ie Vandalic and Burgundian are known only from proper names), a language with its own unique and beautiful (well at least I think it is) alphabet, and has a (though not clustered in the same neighbourhood, city, or even country as most such movements are) revival movement going to teach the language to children as a native language with (supposedly) upwards of 400 children so far. In the near future it is forseeable that these 400 children (and probably teens too by now; I think this started in the 80s or something) will be ready to use an encyclopedic resource which they would benifit a great deal more from if it were in Gothic; then what about *their* kids if they are raised in Gothic as well? This could eventually lead to upwards of 10000 native gothic speakers (perhaps up to 2 million if the movement eventually finds a geographical location they can use as a gothic-only environment) in the foreseeable future.
Latin, however, (ttbomk) has no such movement (which is surprising, in the very least), and the chances that somebody will be able to read Latin sufficiently better than any other language with an extant Wikipedia are fairly low (Latin has other justifications though I believe).
Of course its still up to you to decide whether or not you'll ultimately be OK with supporting such a language or not, but I do hope you'll reconsider.
best, node
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 12:23:03 +1000, Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours? Either more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new wiki can be set up.
I suggest you read my post again. I'll quote it here in part.
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of the tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis. Adding the wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the language file, mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki links. From establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^developer work involved.
That's just a very rough guess. Some wikis take a lot more than that. I just finished writing a new feature specifically for the Finnish Wikipedia which probably took 6 hours alone, although you wouldn't see me giving that level of service to Gothic or Klingon.
The task of creating a wiki is already automated. As I explained above, the problem is in ongoing tech support and system administration, not creation. There are ways to reduce that too, but there's always going to be someone who doesn't bother reading the manual.
That's why I suggested that if anyone is interested in providing ongoing support for this wiki, they should offer themselves as a point of contact. They should do their best to fix any problems, but *never* pass the problem on to the rest of the community.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Oh also I would like to add that I'd be very happy to help anybody wanting help setting up a new Wikipedia, beyond the most technical aspect I can handle it very well, and I think I have a fair grasp of that too. Of course dev tasks I couldn't do, but beyond that...
best, node
On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 19:40:04 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
The difference here Tim is that while Klingon is 1. a conlang with a fairly small number of speakers intended as the language of an imaginary alien race from a scifiseries 2. afaik completely without native speakers altogether, save maybe a handful, while Gothic is a natural language with perhaps 4000~5000 speakers, the only well-known East Germanic language and as such very important to linguistic reasearch (the others ie Vandalic and Burgundian are known only from proper names), a language with its own unique and beautiful (well at least I think it is) alphabet, and has a (though not clustered in the same neighbourhood, city, or even country as most such movements are) revival movement going to teach the language to children as a native language with (supposedly) upwards of 400 children so far. In the near future it is forseeable that these 400 children (and probably teens too by now; I think this started in the 80s or something) will be ready to use an encyclopedic resource which they would benifit a great deal more from if it were in Gothic; then what about *their* kids if they are raised in Gothic as well? This could eventually lead to upwards of 10000 native gothic speakers (perhaps up to 2 million if the movement eventually finds a geographical location they can use as a gothic-only environment) in the foreseeable future.
Latin, however, (ttbomk) has no such movement (which is surprising, in the very least), and the chances that somebody will be able to read Latin sufficiently better than any other language with an extant Wikipedia are fairly low (Latin has other justifications though I believe).
Of course its still up to you to decide whether or not you'll ultimately be OK with supporting such a language or not, but I do hope you'll reconsider.
best, node
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 12:23:03 +1000, Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours? Either more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new wiki can be set up.
I suggest you read my post again. I'll quote it here in part.
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of the tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis. Adding the wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the language file, mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki links. From establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^developer work involved.
That's just a very rough guess. Some wikis take a lot more than that. I just finished writing a new feature specifically for the Finnish Wikipedia which probably took 6 hours alone, although you wouldn't see me giving that level of service to Gothic or Klingon.
The task of creating a wiki is already automated. As I explained above, the problem is in ongoing tech support and system administration, not creation. There are ways to reduce that too, but there's always going to be someone who doesn't bother reading the manual.
That's why I suggested that if anyone is interested in providing ongoing support for this wiki, they should offer themselves as a point of contact. They should do their best to fix any problems, but *never* pass the problem on to the rest of the community.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Mark Williamson wrote:
The difference here Tim is that while Klingon is 1. a conlang with a fairly small number of speakers intended as the language of an imaginary alien race from a scifiseries 2. afaik completely without native speakers altogether, save maybe a handful, while Gothic is a natural language with perhaps 4000~5000 speakers [...]
I'm aware of their differences, but neither can be justified in terms of the reasons I work on this project. I'm just not interested in supporting linguistic research. I'm happy to leave it to other people as long as they don't waste my time.
Oh also I would like to add that I'd be very happy to help anybody wanting help setting up a new Wikipedia, beyond the most technical aspect I can handle it very well, and I think I have a fair grasp of that too. Of course dev tasks I couldn't do, but beyond that...
We can talk about that offlist. Suffice to say that there are certain dev tasks you *would* have to do.
-- Tim Starling
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 13:37:09 +1000, Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
The difference here Tim is that while Klingon is 1. a conlang with a fairly small number of speakers intended as the language of an imaginary alien race from a scifiseries 2. afaik completely without native speakers altogether, save maybe a handful, while Gothic is a natural language with perhaps 4000~5000 speakers [...]
I'm aware of their differences, but neither can be justified in terms of the reasons I work on this project. I'm just not interested in supporting linguistic research. I'm happy to leave it to other people as long as they don't waste my time.
The reasons you work on the project can't justify helping to build an encyclopedic resource for a fledgling community of native speakers who will start growing into such a resource in the next couple of years? Just curious, but what exactly are the reasons you work on this project, and what requirements must a language meet to be justifiable in terms of them?
Oh also I would like to add that I'd be very happy to help anybody wanting help setting up a new Wikipedia, beyond the most technical aspect I can handle it very well, and I think I have a fair grasp of that too. Of course dev tasks I couldn't do, but beyond that...
We can talk about that offlist. Suffice to say that there are certain dev tasks you *would* have to do.
My point is that I do not have dev access, and I would be surprised if it was given to me at least before the end of next year. I'm sure I could do a lot of the dev tasks if I had the access, but I don't have the nessecary knowledge to be able to mess with code until it works the way I want, with only a few exceptions; thus for example the Finnish thing you referred to I could probably not've done.
--node
Mark Williamson wrote:
The reasons you work on the project can't justify helping to build an encyclopedic resource for a fledgling community of native speakers who will start growing into such a resource in the next couple of years? Just curious, but what exactly are the reasons you work on this project, and what requirements must a language meet to be justifiable in terms of them?
I already said what my reasons for working on this project are, and I'm not required to justify them to you. You're welcome to learn how to write language files, obtain shell access and CVS access, and add all the languages the community will tolerate. But don't tell me how I should be spending my time.
I agree with Delirium, who wrote:
: ...I can't seriously see people using the Gothic Wikipedia as a : source of general encyclopedia-type information. If you want to know : some random fact (say, the biography of Charlemagne), why would anyone : look for it in a Gothic-language encyclopedia?
I think that's an important point.
I think your assertion that parents will teach their children Gothic as a first language is ridiculous. In fact I sincerely hope they don't. There's a difference between language preservation and language revival, and I'm not ashamed about supporting one but not the other. No doubt linguistics is an interesting field, but there are lots of interesting fields and I can't get involved in all of them.
There are 16 people with shell access, and any one of them can do what I'm suggesting. I suggest you go and bug one of them instead of wasting your time interrogating me about my motives.
-- Tim Starling
Ooh... somebody's grumpy.
I wasn't interrogating you or anything. At least I didn't mean to.
Sorry.
--node
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 17:50:59 +1000, Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
The reasons you work on the project can't justify helping to build an encyclopedic resource for a fledgling community of native speakers who will start growing into such a resource in the next couple of years? Just curious, but what exactly are the reasons you work on this project, and what requirements must a language meet to be justifiable in terms of them?
I already said what my reasons for working on this project are, and I'm not required to justify them to you. You're welcome to learn how to write language files, obtain shell access and CVS access, and add all the languages the community will tolerate. But don't tell me how I should be spending my time.
I agree with Delirium, who wrote:
: ...I can't seriously see people using the Gothic Wikipedia as a : source of general encyclopedia-type information. If you want to know : some random fact (say, the biography of Charlemagne), why would anyone : look for it in a Gothic-language encyclopedia?
I think that's an important point.
I think your assertion that parents will teach their children Gothic as a first language is ridiculous. In fact I sincerely hope they don't. There's a difference between language preservation and language revival, and I'm not ashamed about supporting one but not the other. No doubt linguistics is an interesting field, but there are lots of interesting fields and I can't get involved in all of them.
There are 16 people with shell access, and any one of them can do what I'm suggesting. I suggest you go and bug one of them instead of wasting your time interrogating me about my motives.
-- Tim Starling
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I agree with Delirium, who wrote:
: ...I can't seriously see people using the Gothic Wikipedia as a : source of general encyclopedia-type information. If you want to know : some random fact (say, the biography of Charlemagne), why would anyone : look for it in a Gothic-language encyclopedia?
I think that's an important point.
I think your assertion that parents will teach their children Gothic as a first language is ridiculous. In fact I sincerely hope they don't. There's a difference between language preservation and language revival, and I'm not ashamed about supporting one but not the other. No doubt linguistics is an interesting field, but there are lots of interesting fields and I can't get involved in all of them.
When did I say parents *will* teach their children Gothic as a first language? Plenty already have.
What's important to remember is that while in Western Europe, Gothic died quite some time ago, in the Crimea, Gothic died perhaps around the same time as Cornish did, or maybe even later, in Cornwall. And we have a Cornish Wikipedia...
--node
Mark Williamson wrote:
When did I say parents *will* teach their children Gothic as a first language? Plenty already have.
What's important to remember is that while in Western Europe, Gothic died quite some time ago, in the Crimea, Gothic died perhaps around the same time as Cornish did, or maybe even later, in Cornwall. And we have a Cornish Wikipedia...
According to our article on the Gothic language, Crimean Gothic is a different language to the older Gothic language known from the Codex Argenteus. I assumed we were talking about creating an encyclopedia based on the ancient language. Again according to our article on the subject, all that is known about the language comes from a single 16th century letter, giving a vocabulary of about 80 words. I fail to see how parents can teach their children a language of which only 80 words are known.
All that is known about Ancient Gothic comes from a bible translation plus a few fragments, which at least gives you enough to work with that you might plausibly consider writing an encyclopedia in it.
Can you please provide a reference for your statement that 400 children are currently being raised in Gothic? I couldn't find anything with a quick web search. Which variety of Gothic are they taught?
-- Tim Starling
On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 12:22:04 +1000, Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
When did I say parents *will* teach their children Gothic as a first language? Plenty already have.
What's important to remember is that while in Western Europe, Gothic died quite some time ago, in the Crimea, Gothic died perhaps around the same time as Cornish did, or maybe even later, in Cornwall. And we have a Cornish Wikipedia...
According to our article on the Gothic language, Crimean Gothic is a different language to the older Gothic language known from the Codex Argenteus. I assumed we were talking about creating an encyclopedia based on the ancient language. Again according to our article on the subject, all that is known about the language comes from a single 16th century letter, giving a vocabulary of about 80 words. I fail to see how parents can teach their children a language of which only 80 words are known.
Theoretically, it is treated as a separate language although essentially it is more of a dialectal variety (they're very very close). Apparently there are sources available in the Ukraine (or so I have been told) with more information about Crimean Gothic which supposedly survived into the late 1800s in some rural agrarian communities; the letter you speak of is the only one readily accessible from Western European libraries I believe.
Then there is also Gotlandic. Sweden and Denmark both say it is a dialect of their respective national languages, but many Gotlanders claim that Gotlandic is an East Germanic language descended directly from (ie the modern offspring of) the Gothic language. How valid this is, I am not sure.
All that is known about Ancient Gothic comes from a bible translation plus a few fragments, which at least gives you enough to work with that you might plausibly consider writing an encyclopedia in it.
No, no, not really. All that is known about Gothic ("western gothic" rather than "ancient gothic" might be more appropriate) comes from 1. Wulfilas' translation of the bible (which you mentioned), 2. A great deal of religious commentaries and the like, and 3. A few legal contracts written in the language. However that is only counting the known documents in Gothic that are written *in the Gothic script* presumed to have been invented by Wulfilas (some people believe it already existed), there is also apparently a large body of texts in a slightly modified fuþark alphabet (Nordic runic alphabet).
Can you please provide a reference for your statement that 400 children are currently being raised in Gothic? I couldn't find anything with a quick web search. Which variety of Gothic are they taught?
No, I cannot provide a reference. But I do remember the movement was associated with an "M. Carver", and there were neologisms too ie for computer, email, electric bill, and the like.
--node
Oh, and as regards the variety, apparently it wasn't really any existing variety (since apparently even Western Gothic was highly dialectal) but sort of the type of thing that nations have done when trying to codify a highly dialectal national language.
But if I recall correctly it *was* based primarily on Western Gothic - not sure about that, though.
--node
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 19:40:37 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 12:22:04 +1000, Tim Starling ts4294967296@hotmail.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
When did I say parents *will* teach their children Gothic as a first language? Plenty already have.
What's important to remember is that while in Western Europe, Gothic died quite some time ago, in the Crimea, Gothic died perhaps around the same time as Cornish did, or maybe even later, in Cornwall. And we have a Cornish Wikipedia...
According to our article on the Gothic language, Crimean Gothic is a different language to the older Gothic language known from the Codex Argenteus. I assumed we were talking about creating an encyclopedia based on the ancient language. Again according to our article on the subject, all that is known about the language comes from a single 16th century letter, giving a vocabulary of about 80 words. I fail to see how parents can teach their children a language of which only 80 words are known.
Theoretically, it is treated as a separate language although essentially it is more of a dialectal variety (they're very very close). Apparently there are sources available in the Ukraine (or so I have been told) with more information about Crimean Gothic which supposedly survived into the late 1800s in some rural agrarian communities; the letter you speak of is the only one readily accessible from Western European libraries I believe.
Then there is also Gotlandic. Sweden and Denmark both say it is a dialect of their respective national languages, but many Gotlanders claim that Gotlandic is an East Germanic language descended directly from (ie the modern offspring of) the Gothic language. How valid this is, I am not sure.
All that is known about Ancient Gothic comes from a bible translation plus a few fragments, which at least gives you enough to work with that you might plausibly consider writing an encyclopedia in it.
No, no, not really. All that is known about Gothic ("western gothic" rather than "ancient gothic" might be more appropriate) comes from 1. Wulfilas' translation of the bible (which you mentioned), 2. A great deal of religious commentaries and the like, and 3. A few legal contracts written in the language. However that is only counting the known documents in Gothic that are written *in the Gothic script* presumed to have been invented by Wulfilas (some people believe it already existed), there is also apparently a large body of texts in a slightly modified fuþark alphabet (Nordic runic alphabet).
Can you please provide a reference for your statement that 400 children are currently being raised in Gothic? I couldn't find anything with a quick web search. Which variety of Gothic are they taught?
No, I cannot provide a reference. But I do remember the movement was associated with an "M. Carver", and there were neologisms too ie for computer, email, electric bill, and the like.
--node
Mark Williamson wrote:
The reasons you work on the project can't justify helping to build an encyclopedic resource for a fledgling community of native speakers who will start growing into such a resource in the next couple of years? Just curious, but what exactly are the reasons you work on this project, and what requirements must a language meet to be justifiable in terms of them?
It's important for all of us to all remember that we are all volunteers, and "I don't feel like it" is always a valid reason for not doing anything at all.
I share Tim's concerns about small wikis, and some more besides. For example, we don't have a big problem with wiki spam on large busy wikis, but it is a problem that is only going to grow worse, and small wikis without active communities will be ripe targets.
There was a time when we tended to say yes (accidentally or otherwise) to just about every proposed language. But the simple fact of the matter is that we've already done all the easy cases of general interest, and the languages that we don't have are all going to need some scrutiny.
I express no opinion on Gothic; I simply don't know enough to know. But I do make these observations... (1) while there appear to be somewhere between several hundred and several thousand speakers, to my knowledge *none* of those speakers use Gothic as their primary language or would have difficulty finding encyclopedia information in a language that they do understand (2) therefore, this is more of a linguistic research matter, so I wonder if perhaps what is really wanted is a wikibook type of place where speakers can share texts in the language, write texts in the language, write textbooks to help others learn the language, etc.
The same argument could be given for other dead languages, but it's important to remember that we don't have to be consistent, when there are historical factors (historical to our project) involved. Reading about the moon landings in Latin is a fun curiosity, not a necessity for our project, and presumably the Latin wikipedia might have such a thing.
--Jimbo
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 06:01:09 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
The reasons you work on the project can't justify helping to build an encyclopedic resource for a fledgling community of native speakers who will start growing into such a resource in the next couple of years? Just curious, but what exactly are the reasons you work on this project, and what requirements must a language meet to be justifiable in terms of them?
It's important for all of us to all remember that we are all volunteers, and "I don't feel like it" is always a valid reason for not doing anything at all.
Sure, but Tim didn't simply say he didn't feel like it but simply that helping such languages in Wikipedia cannot be supported by his reasons for working on the project, I asked him about his reasons, I didn't say anything like "Well, you suck and should do it anyhow!" because that is not how I feel.
I share Tim's concerns about small wikis, and some more besides. For example, we don't have a big problem with wiki spam on large busy wikis, but it is a problem that is only going to grow worse, and small wikis without active communities will be ripe targets.
What I still wonder about is why we have so many Wikis that have not been created per se but have working subdomains, ie bo:, oj:, etc. If there are people willing to create a Gothic or an Anglo-Saxon wiki, yet we know of nobody willing to create a Tibetan or Ojibwe wiki, then why is it the former exist and the latter don't?
There was a time when we tended to say yes (accidentally or otherwise) to just about every proposed language. But the simple fact of the matter is that we've already done all the easy cases of general interest, and the languages that we don't have are all going to need some scrutiny.
Would that include all the languages we don't have, or just those with under 1 million speakers (at present, not in the past)?
I express no opinion on Gothic; I simply don't know enough to know. But I do make these observations... (1) while there appear to be somewhere between several hundred and several thousand speakers, to my knowledge *none* of those speakers use Gothic as their primary language or would have difficulty finding encyclopedia information in a language that they do understand (2) therefore, this is more of a linguistic research matter, so I wonder if perhaps what is really wanted is a wikibook type of place where speakers can share texts in the language, write texts in the language, write textbooks to help others learn the language, etc.
As I said before, there is a movement to "revive" Gothic by teaching it to kids as a native language. If I recall correctly, this started in the 80s so these kids should be about the right age for encyclopedia usage now, and if not they presumably will be in a couple of years. I think so far this movement has produced about 400 native speakers (spread out across the world), and presumably more to come.
The same argument could be given for other dead languages, but it's important to remember that we don't have to be consistent, when there are historical factors (historical to our project) involved. Reading about the moon landings in Latin is a fun curiosity, not a necessity for our project, and presumably the Latin wikipedia might have such a thing.
The difference here is that Latin, whilst being a "language of high prestige" among much of the scientific community, does not (to the best of my knowledge) have any native speakers whatsoever, whereas Gothic does. The same goes for Sanskrit which now has a Wikipedia (ahem - but look at the articles........), the language has been a liturgical language and a language of scholarship with no native speakers for centuries, however quite recently a movement started to teach it to children as a native language and now there are upwards of 4000 native speakers.
--node
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
It's important for all of us to all remember that we are all
volunteers, and "I don't feel like it" is always a valid reason for not doing anything at all.
I know that that has a lot to do with what I do or don't do. Our richness in things to do goes beyond imagination. For as much as I may do I still leave many of my own projects incomplete. I can't say that I'm proud of that personal shortcoming, but it is heartening when someone takes up an idea of mine and develops it far beyond what I ever could have done. Being aware of that makes me a little more tolerant of the failings of others, but not less frustrated.
I share Tim's concerns about small wikis, and some more besides. For example, we don't have a big problem with wiki spam on large busy wikis, but it is a problem that is only going to grow worse, and small wikis without active communities will be ripe targets.
The one big advantage they still have on the smaller wikis is that the "Recent changes" remains at a manageable size. That makes it easier for the regulars to spot something out of the ordinary like spam or vandalism.
There was a time when we tended to say yes (accidentally or otherwise) to just about every proposed language. But the simple fact of the matter is that we've already done all the easy cases of general interest, and the languages that we don't have are all going to need some scrutiny.
The audience should be one factor in any decision. Without an audience what's the point? There are still some significant languages without a wiki, and with a population that could be helped. (Singhalese, Hausa, Navajo, Quechua are examples from four different continents.) These might even be encouraged if there were an inkling of desire to participate.
I express no opinion on Gothic; I simply don't know enough to know. But I do make these observations... (1) while there appear to be somewhere between several hundred and several thousand speakers, to my knowledge *none* of those speakers use Gothic as their primary language or would have difficulty finding encyclopedia information in a language that they do understand (2) therefore, this is more of a linguistic research matter, so I wonder if perhaps what is really wanted is a wikibook type of place where speakers can share texts in the language, write texts in the language, write textbooks to help others learn the language, etc.
The community that speaks a dead or artificial language needs to exist beyond the walls of academia or Hollywood. There is plenty in the various existing projects to accomodate these languages: Grammar guides in Wikibooks, ancient texts in Wikisource, vocabulary entries in Wiktionary. It's difficult to justify a whole encyclopedia for a dead or constructed language that has done none of these. In the early days such a language proposal could be viewed more favorably because none of these other projects existed.
Scaling the overall project involves balancing two extremes. If a project is too big it bureaucratizes itself. Rules and rule-making become ends in themselves for some parts of the community. The average contributor can't keep up with it in any kind of informed way. There are frequent votes to decide questions that only affect part of the community, and an old-timer who has gone off to deal with topics on another part of the pedia comes back to his old topic to find that it has been flooded with rules that make no sense to him. It becomes very difficult to re-open the debate in the face of a rule-bound opposition. New projects can offer new ways of looking at a situation; this is why I was moderately supportive of the new Wikispecies project. The way things are done on a new project where contributors can take the risks necessary for original development, with a reasonable chance of defending those risks is what will keep the wiki complex alive and in a state of dynamic growth. Proposals that impose a certain regimentation on an entire family of projects need to be resisted; such would be the case with any insistance that all Wiktionaries follow the same format for articles.
The other extreme that scaling must face is the premature development of small projects, or ones with extremely limited growth potential. The idea of a separate project to deal with the chemical elements had limited growth potential because on a practical level the number of elements is finite. In theory that list could be expanded infinitely, but such a prospect within our lifetimes is not at all realistic. There also appear to be some efforts to create some communities based on an absence of effort by a small number of individuals to work together with others. The recent debate over separate traditional and simplified chinese wikipedias is a good example of this. Although the zh-tw Wikipedia was set up in error, the debate that followed did show us how incredibly difficult it can be to get the genie back in the bottle. Similar proposals have been made for separate German and Hebrew language Wikisources. I can understand where in the absence of technical expertise the request for a separate project for an RTL language would be sensible. The arguments for German, however, seem to focus on the concept of being able to work better in an environment in their own language. True as that may be it reflects an unwillingness to seek solutions to how to work together in a multilingual environment. The underlying texts in whatever language are stable, and the difficulties relate to meta-matters about how we discuss the treatment of those texts. How do we make the texts of one language more available to the readers of another? To me that is one of the fundamental questions that Wikisource should seek to address. Wikisource currently has a little less than 4,000 articles of which maybe 100 are German language texts. Considering that number is affected by having Bible and Book of Mormon entries on a one chapter = one article basis reduces the 4,000 significantly for independant articles.
Synchrinized side-by-side edit boxes still remain just a dream.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
There is plenty in the various existing projects to accomodate these languages: Grammar guides in Wikibooks, ancient texts in Wikisource, vocabulary entries in Wiktionary. It's difficult to justify a whole encyclopedia for a dead or constructed language that has done none of these. In the early days such a language proposal could be viewed more favorably because none of these other projects existed.
I think this is very well said.
--Jimbo
Mark Williamson wrote:
The difference here Tim is that while Klingon is 1. a conlang with a fairly small number of speakers intended as the language of an imaginary alien race from a scifiseries 2. afaik completely without native speakers altogether, save maybe a handful, while Gothic is a
See, these are the tiresome arguments that we have to hear over and over again for every little language or project idea. So much time and effort is wasted in this boring argumentation that could be better spent if you just started to write some 250 encyclopedic articles in Gothic and then said:
"Here is what I have assembled on my own without any wiki. Could I please have a wiki so that my friends could help me in this project? My friends have collected these $500 to help it happen."
Can you imagine how much more convincing that kind of argument is? This way, instead of fighting against the arguments of other wikipedians, you would have to fight against your own abilities.
Current articles in Latin: 2648, Nynorsk: 528, Kashubian: 266, Toki pona: 190, Latvian: 137, Faroese: 51, Klingon: 47, Breton: 28.
What if you cannot write 250 articles on your own? What if your friends cannot collect $500? Then what are your chances of ever writing an encyclopedia?
What if the Wikimedia Foundation still would not accept your 250 Gothic articles and $500? To heck with them, run your own wiki! You've got the contents and the resources. You're strong. Be happy!
Lars Aronsson, lars@aronsson.se
I find it quite sad that anybody but the creator and sole speaker of a conlang would have to set up their own Mediawiki-based encyclopedia because of lack of support from the Foundation. (the same goes for conlangs in my mind unless they have at least 500 speakers and maybe even past then)
Of course the nature of this project means that the community will decide on things like this, so however much I may disagree with the ultimate decision of the community and/or Jimbo, I accept that it is final.
Now Lars, some of the Wikipedias you give statistics for are deserving of explanatory notes.
If you were looking for "dead languages" and conlangs, that would exclude Breton, Faroese, Latvian, Kashubian, and Nynorsk (Nynorsk is basically an official codification of rural SW Norwegian speech forms, it can hardly be considered a conlang).
If you were looking for Wikipedias with small numbers of articles, perhaps it should be noted that Nynorsk got started very recently and the fact that they already have 528 articles is something we should admire them for. The Faroese wikipedia does seem to be... well... a bit dead that the moment, as does the Breton wikipedia. The Klingon wikipedia was very controversial. It too appears to be dead - I wonder why we have a Wikipedia whose very existance is controversial, which is not even being worked on anymore, that has not been trashed or at least moved elsewhere? If it had over 100 articles maybe I would feel differently, but it has *47*. Similarly, Toki Pona which although at the time of its creation was not controversial many Wikipedians appear to resent today has only 190 articles and has not been growing really at all for quite some time. If this does not change in the near future, I would suggest that we ask for it to be moved to the Toki Pona official website.
best, node
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 05:55:32 +0200 (CEST), Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Mark Williamson wrote:
The difference here Tim is that while Klingon is 1. a conlang with a fairly small number of speakers intended as the language of an imaginary alien race from a scifiseries 2. afaik completely without native speakers altogether, save maybe a handful, while Gothic is a
See, these are the tiresome arguments that we have to hear over and over again for every little language or project idea. So much time and effort is wasted in this boring argumentation that could be better spent if you just started to write some 250 encyclopedic articles in Gothic and then said:
"Here is what I have assembled on my own without any wiki. Could I please have a wiki so that my friends could help me in this project? My friends have collected these $500 to help it happen."
Can you imagine how much more convincing that kind of argument is? This way, instead of fighting against the arguments of other wikipedians, you would have to fight against your own abilities.
Current articles in Latin: 2648, Nynorsk: 528, Kashubian: 266, Toki pona: 190, Latvian: 137, Faroese: 51, Klingon: 47, Breton: 28.
What if you cannot write 250 articles on your own? What if your friends cannot collect $500? Then what are your chances of ever writing an encyclopedia?
What if the Wikimedia Foundation still would not accept your 250 Gothic articles and $500? To heck with them, run your own wiki! You've got the contents and the resources. You're strong. Be happy!
Lars Aronsson, lars@aronsson.se
Aronsson Datateknik
MW> If you were looking for "dead languages" and conlangs, that would MW> exclude Breton, Faroese, Latvian, Kashubian, and Nynorsk (Nynorsk is MW> basically an official codification of rural SW Norwegian speech forms, MW> it can hardly be considered a conlang).
Kashubian is not a dead language. There are still many native speakers in Kashubia.
Hi,
Le Sunday 19 September 2004 07:19, Mark Williamson a écrit :
If you were looking for "dead languages" and conlangs, that would exclude Breton, Faroese, Latvian, Kashubian, and Nynorsk (Nynorsk is basically an official codification of rural SW Norwegian speech forms, it can hardly be considered a conlang).
Breton is not a dead language. There are schools where children are teached mathematics and history in Breton. cf. look Diwan at Google i.e. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/diwan.bro.roazhon/
best, node
Regards, Yann
Yes, that's what I was saying. "that would exclude".
--node
On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 14:11:19 +0200, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Hi,
Le Sunday 19 September 2004 07:19, Mark Williamson a écrit :
If you were looking for "dead languages" and conlangs, that would exclude Breton, Faroese, Latvian, Kashubian, and Nynorsk (Nynorsk is basically an official codification of rural SW Norwegian speech forms, it can hardly be considered a conlang).
Breton is not a dead language. There are schools where children are teached mathematics and history in Breton. cf. look Diwan at Google i.e. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/diwan.bro.roazhon/
best, node
Regards, Yann -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclopédie libre http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
Pawel wrote:
MW> If you were looking for "dead languages" and conlangs, that would MW> exclude Breton, Faroese, Latvian, Kashubian, and Nynorsk (Nynorsk is MW> basically an official codification of rural SW Norwegian speech forms, MW> it can hardly be considered a conlang).
Kashubian is not a dead language. There are still many native speakers in Kashubia.
Mark Williamson wrote:
The Klingon wikipedia was very controversial. It too appears to be dead - I wonder why we have a Wikipedia whose very existance is controversial, which is not even being worked on anymore, that has not been trashed or at least moved elsewhere? If it had over 100 articles maybe I would feel differently, but it has *47*. Similarly, Toki Pona which although at the time of its creation was not controversial many Wikipedians appear to resent today has only 190 articles and has not been growing really at all for quite some time. If this does not change in the near future, I would suggest that we ask for it to be moved to the Toki Pona official website.
These were kept because it was felt that there was or would soon be an active community of interested parties, and that these projects were obviously not potentially forks or otherwise problematic for existing communities.
Given that neither seems to be active communities, I agree with you that we should consider helping them to find new homes.
--Jimbo
On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 22:19:38 -0700 Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Similarly, Toki Pona which although at the time of its creation was not controversial many Wikipedians appear to resent today has only 190 articles and has not been growing really at all for quite some time.
I disagree with your statement that Toki Pona "at the time of its creation was not controversial". I have spoken out my doubts BEFORE it was created, and major objections came in within _days_ of it being created - see timeline below. If there was no major objections before its creation, that was only because those against it: 1. Did not know there were any plans to create Tokipona, or 2. Assumed that objecting was not necessary to stop those plans.
At the time several languages were proposed, and none had been created for quite a while. I was definitely with the second group.
Andre Engels
Timeline regarding Toki Pona: 31 March: Request by Sonia to start Toki Pona 1 April: Yours humbly says tokipona should get a 3- not a 2-letter code, and in this message writes: "[...] for me personally it's getting to the level where I doubt whether having it would be good at all." 4 April: Brion tells that Toki Pona, Ido and Tok Pisin have been created 4 April: Evan Podromou write: "On this subject: isn't the toki pona Wikipedia just going to have, like, 12 articles?" 5 April: Erik Moeller writes a rather long mail rejecting Toki Pona. Discussion starts between Erik attacking and Brion defending. 5 April: Erik proposes to remove Toki Pona and move it to the Unilang wiki 5 April: Erik adds another argument: Toki Pona is copyrighted
Lars Aronsson wrote:
"Here is what I have assembled on my own without any wiki. Could I please have a wiki so that my friends could help me in this project? My friends have collected these $500 to help it happen."
Where did the $500 come from? By that standard, we shouldn't have the vast majority of the current languages. AFAIK, only the US, UK, France, and Germany have donated a total of over $500. Perhaps we oughtn't to have Polish, Greek, Portuguese, Chinese, etc. Wikipedias because obviously they're not serious enough to donate $500?
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
"Here is what I have assembled on my own without any wiki. Could I please have a wiki so that my friends could help me in this project? My friends have collected these $500 to help it happen."
Where did the $500 come from? By that standard, we shouldn't have the vast majority of the current languages. AFAIK, only the US, UK, France, and Germany have donated a total of over $500. Perhaps we oughtn't to have Polish, Greek, Portuguese, Chinese, etc. Wikipedias because obviously they're not serious enough to donate $500?
I didn't say that languages or groups with less money should be refused. All I said was that groups that can collect $500 (as I am sure that the Gothic language supporters can) are sure to get their wiki off the ground, with or without the Wikimedia Foundation.
In a western country, an experienced IT contractor would charge something like $80 per hour for this kind of job and the estimate we were given was that six hours of work might be required. Thus, $500 is sure to cover the cost of paying someone to do the job. Alternatively, this amount is also enough to pay for hosting a website outside of Wikimedia for a year or two, depending on traffic volume. If you can collect $500 from your community, you are sure you can start a wiki of your own. You might be able to get away with less. But the amount $500 is sure to remove the counter-argument that time or money is insufficient. It boils down to: Do you want to argue for ever, or do you want your new wiki off the ground?
I'm sure that Klingon, Latin and Gothic can collect $500, since they have many supporters in wealthy western economies.
The community that started to build the Polish Wikipedia did start their own server (Rosetta, remember). That proved they were able to do it. With their smartness, I'm sure they managed with less than $500. When they decided to un-fork and rejoin Wikipedia, it wasn't because they had to, but because they wanted to. If there was any disagreement, they were negotiating from a position of strength.
Lars Aronsson, lars@aronsson.se
Lars Aronsson a écrit:
Tim Starling wrote:
People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours? Either more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new wiki can be set up.
As a consultant, I have found that a good way to avoid boring work tasks is to put a price tag on them. Oh yes, I would love to fix your spelling errors -- at $10 per page or $150 per hour. :-)
The current discussions of whether or not to start new projects are tiresome and frustrating for all parties. It would be better to allow anybody to start new projects, so that the hard part will not be convincing the Wikimedia Foundation,
I really did not have the feeling convincing us was the hard part...
but convincing the community to
fill the new wiki with contents. Perhaps such communities should be required first to collect 250 articles (off-wiki, by e-mail) and when this is achieved, the new wiki will be started.
Lars Aronsson, lars@aronsson.se
I agree Start with articles and with a minimum of interested editors.
Delirium wrote:
If it did work, Wikipedia would suddenly become the source of 99% of extant Gothic texts, which would be somewhat interesting.
Perhaps the Gothic writers could start off with Wikisource. Various technical issues could be worked out there (encoding, font, spelling). Just annotating the texts in Gothic could be a small, yet unprecedented (?) step toward more original writing.
Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:
Delirium wrote:
If it did work, Wikipedia would suddenly become the source of 99% of extant Gothic texts, which would be somewhat interesting.
Perhaps the Gothic writers could start off with Wikisource. Various technical issues could be worked out there (encoding, font, spelling). Just annotating the texts in Gothic could be a small, yet unprecedented (?) step toward more original writing.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Another good place to start is wiktionary; to me artificial or dead languages make themselves more credible if a wikipedia customer can find what the words actually mean. I would propose that a minimum of say 1500 of the most used words have entries in one wiktionary. After this is done, the people who propose a new wikipedia have proven themselves to be serious by giving our users a change to understand what is says.
Thanks, GerardM
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Henry H. Tan-Tenn wrote:
Delirium wrote:
If it did work, Wikipedia would suddenly become the source of 99% of extant Gothic texts, which would be somewhat interesting.
Perhaps the Gothic writers could start off with Wikisource. Various technical issues could be worked out there (encoding, font, spelling). Just annotating the texts in Gothic could be a small, yet unprecedented (?) step toward more original writing.
Another good place to start is wiktionary; to me artificial or dead languages make themselves more credible if a wikipedia customer can find what the words actually mean. I would propose that a minimum of say 1500 of the most used words have entries in one wiktionary. After this is done, the people who propose a new wikipedia have proven themselves to be serious by giving our users a change to understand what is says.
These are all excellent suggestions. The other thing that should be considered is a Gothic grammar in Wikibooks. These are all broad considerations that could go into establishing criteria for determining whether a dead language should have its own Wikipedia.
The 1500 word minimum may be somewhat arbitrary, but the principle is good. I would even say that it does not have to be in "one" wiktionary, but it could be the total of all Gothic words in all Wiktionaries. I'm not at all supporting the premature establishment of a uniquely Gothic Wiktionary.
Ec
REALITY CHECK: How many people actually WANT this?
Are we discussing at length whether we should be ready to cater for this *in the event* that there be people wanting a Gothic WP or IS there actual, genuine demand beyond a handful of (say more than 5) users?
-- ropers
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