[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek Wikipedia

[Ilario Valdelli]

IMHO it's not a problem of neologisms but the problem is that using died 
languages you miss the purpose of diffusion and divulgation of Wikipedia.

Why you write in Wikipedia? You write in Wikipedia because other people 
can read your texts and your articles, because your aim is the 
widespread of knowledge.

Perfect... an open project of Wikipedia *must* have got writers and 
readers. Your aim is the communication and your mean is a wiki and for 
this reason your communication is a *written* communication.

Using a died language probably you miss this aim because you don't have 
readers: you write in Wikipedia in a died language only for you, for 
your satisfaction.

You can have a small number of readers but, probably, if they must 
choose an article in old Greek, for example, or in their own language, 
they will choose the second one.

What Gerard is saying is that a language is a *living* language and this 
language changes, it has an evolution. Using a died language you are 
using an *artificial* language and not a live language because you 
choose a version of this language (the Old Greek for example has 
different koiné) and you probably translate articles. Not only you 
translate but probably you can have a lot of discussions about the 
translation because no one can decide the correct version because there 
are not speakers... the *grammar becomes philology*.

IMHO the died languages cannot follow the aim of Wikipedia, but they can 
be the source for other projects where the aim is strongly based on 
translation. The aim is not the widespread of knowledge. In this project 
the aim can be the *knowledge of translation*, here people can share 
informations and discussions about the died languages used.

Ilario

Dovi Jacobs wrote:
> 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):
>
>   
>