[Foundation-l] Vandalism and small wikis

[Ray Saintonge]

Darko Bulatovic wrote:

>>It's the global perspective that counts, not the one from the narrow 
>>view of one language.  Most languages do not have a one-to-one relation 
>>with any country.  If you recognize 3,000 languages and only 200 
>>countries many would be left out.  For the endangered languages a 
>>country devoted solely to that language would not be viable.
>>
>>Ec
>>    
>>
>I don't understand you very well here. Many language (mostly 
>European)are having nation marks (English, French, German, Russian, 
>Albanina, Greek, Italian, ....) so their process of building language is 
>trough nation history. Same thing is with south Slavic language. It is 
>not reference to country - more region in which people talk similar. 
>History of south Slavic people ( Europe) is quite dense in political and 
>demographic change, So many parts of South Slavs are developed 
>differently try many centuries and that was also reflected on language. 
>So here we have situation that all Balkan nations have their own 
>languages and their wikipedias. I don't see how this same rule should be 
>different for Montenegro. I will not mention that wikipedia is also 
>possible for some artificial languages and don't have very harsh and 
>strict rules regarding this. But in Montenegrin case it seems that 
>people wish to close eyes. Why?
>
Many languages in Europe do not have countries to match the language: 
Galician, Catalan, Frisian, Sardinian ...  And what should happen with 
the Roma?  Other languages are spoken in several countries.  Wikipedia 
is based on languages, not on nations or the evil of nationalism or 
patriotism. 

I don't like the artificial languages any more than you do.  Except for 
Esperanto, there is nobody that really speaks these languages on a 
regular basis, and nobody to be the audience for the language games that 
their supporters like to play.  It would be very difficult to get rid of 
them, as the experience with a totally ridiculous language like Klingon 
has shown.

I have no problem with Montenegrin independence, though I have sometimes 
wondered why it was so much slower to break away from Serbia  than the 
other repblics of Yugoslavia.  Many of us from outside the Balkans find 
the persistent chauvinism of the entire area (not just Yugoslavia) 
thoroughly mystifying, and I don't think that Wikipedia should be 
encouraging these separate language in the face of contrary linguistic 
evidence.

Ec