Hi Ronline!
The other thing that makes me worried is the growing
pressure on new language contributors. We must
remember that Wikipedians are *volunteers* and most,
except vandals, are always adding knowledge to the
community. Pressuring them into reaching a certain
guideline for their language is abuse, in my opinion.
It would be a pity if those guidelines were primarily
perceived as "pressure". They should of course never
be abused as an instrument to exclude people or groups
but only serve everybody participating at Wikimedia
projects (old and new members) by helping to assure
the success of those projects.
Sadly, it's a fact that roughly half of all Wikipedias
are clinically dead at present. Being enthusiastically
pro-multilingualism here, I believe that we must do
the best we can in order to add more productive,
useful editions in the coming years but at the same
time try hard to prevent any further stillbirths. My
personal opinion is that establishing a few standards
will be more beneficial here than a total
laissez-faire. But I do understand your concern, too.
New contributors must be encouraged, not discouraged.
Right. The attitude of the established community
towards potential new members must always be a
cooperative, constructive, helpful and friendly one.
But maybe part of the encouragement can also be
something like: "Look, we've been around here for a
while and we've seen what works and what doesn't. We
recommend that you first find a couple more
like-minded people _before_ you start because it's
probably more work than you can imagine now."
Best,
Arbeo
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