[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek Wikipedia

[Dovi Jacobs]

GerardM strongly feels the following,
an argument he has made countless times
as the reason the Ancient Greek Wikipedia
was cancelled (even after being approved
with the sole remaining condition of finishing
the interface translation):

>When you write in a dead language you will invariably start to
>use neologisms or start to give a different meaning to a words that they
>originally did not have. As a consequence you do not learn the language as
>it was at the time of its demise. It is no longer that language...

>In contrast to historic languages neologisms are fine
>in constructed languages.

This, however, is a conceptual point that may not be
a good reason to deny a Wikipedia, and indeed many of us
do not feel it is, nor that it is even correct.

What is so terrible about neologisms?
What makes them so distasteful to you that you were willing
to go so far as to close down an approved project with some
highly educated and qualified people contributing to it?
Why, Gerard, must a Wikipedia represent a language exactly
as it was "at the time of its demise"? (Can you define,
exactly, the exact state of the "demise" of a classical
language like Greek?)

As previous posters have mentioned, Greek is still to this 
very day a basic part of a classical education, and "creative
writing" in such a rich language is par for the course when 
studying it. So are "neologisms" really so foreign to it?
And is it really completely "dead" for the purposes of an
encyclopedia?

On the contrary, I posit that the issue of neologisms has
nothing to do with the validity, or lack thereof, of a 
Wikimedia project. There is no reason not to have a project
with neologisms, and there are languages without neologisms 
that may not be appropriate. That neologisms must be foreign
to Wikipedia language projects is Gerard's firm conviction,
but it is a value judgement like any other, and not shared
by many others. There is nothing objective about it.

On the contrary, *all* languages have adapted to the technical
needs of Wikipedia and even changed as a result. This includes
English itself and other major European languages. The English
of Wikipedia today is different than the English language of 
2001 precisely because it has been used in a Wikipedia environment.

On a larger scale, I would like to know more about the language
committee and how it is appointed. It seems to have very dedicated
and highly qualified members. But from recent discussion it also
appears to be somewhat monolithic and might benefit from a greater
diversity of voices.

Dovi


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