Hi Tomasz,
By stating the fact that they aren't working now I didn't mean to imply that they
will never work. Me too, I believe the Kashubian Wikipedia has a future. But I think one
also has to acknowledge that presently roughly half of all Wikipedias look different than
the German, Polish or even Kashubian editions in their early days (=historical
perspective). It's not like they grow slowly - they don't grow at all even though
many of them have existed for two or more years now. The reasons are manifold, of course,
and have been discussed here before.
I fully agree with you that any useful encyclopedia needs 10k+ (quality) articles to be a
useful source of information. Think of a printed encyclopedia with less articles.
You'd never be able to find the information you're looking for and it would
probably only tell you things you already know. I'd most likely just throw it away.
Bottom line: it takes a huge number of articles and that takes a large number of editors
(with good language skills, preferably native speakers). And I think it's this very
fact that people ignore when suggesting e. g. a Wikipedia in Chinook Trade Jargon. Who is
supposed to write that encyclopdia?
Just like you, Tomasz, I expect and hope many of the minor WPs to grow in the future. But
I doubt that e. g. Interlingue, Nauruan, Yiddish, Lojban, Klingon, Volapük, Hawaiian,
Aromanian, Manx, Gothic, Pali, Aramaic, Choctaw, Hiri Motu or Muscogee will ever reach
that critical mass where they can rightly be considered as encyclopedias. In my opion,
that's a fact we must not overlook when discussing about new language editions of
Wikipedia.
Boris
wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org schrieb am 09.07.05 14:25:56:
On Sat, Jul 09, 2005 at 01:37:50PM +0200, Boris Lohnzweiger wrote:
However, I think it's finally time to realize that
not every language is suitable
for a wikipedia. Matter of fact, from a realistic perspective we have more
Wikipedias that aren't working than ones that are.
You lost historical perspective. I remember times when German Wikipedia had
so friggin awesome 1200 articles (mostly stubs, by today's standards),
and we tried to get over 500 on the Polish Wikipedia.
It wasn't such a long time ago. Now the German Wikipedia seems like the best
German-language encyclopedia ever made, and the Polish Wikipedia is likely to
reach similar status in a year or two.
On the other hand Kashubian Wikipedia has now 661 articles and
so many people consider it a hopeless effort that can't possibly work.
Not all of the currently small Wikipedias will grow, but it's very likely
that most of them will get to into "useful" (10k+ articles) range in just
a few years, and by then we will have a lot of new small Wikipedias
that people will keep whining about, how hopeless their efforts supposedly are.
I, for one, believe the Kashubian Wikipedia and others like it have future.
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