[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek Wikipedia, possible reconsideration

[Dovi Jacobs]

>The lack of an ISO 639 code for modern usage of Ancient
>Greek is only one argument, and not necessarily one I put
>much weight on.

It's quite nice to finally have a statement like this!
Until now the *only* voice we heard from the language
committee on this was that of GerardM, and that appeared
to be the "consensus". It is indeed an utterly tendentious
argument. Ancient Greek has an ISO code, period.

>The policy requires that a language have living native
>communities to read the wiki, and that is my personal
>position as well. There has been a lot of discussion
>on this list about this requirement recently, but no
>consensus on any change to it and no similarly objective
>workable alternatives.

Now that is a real argument, but I think you misrepresent
the "consensus". As somebody above pointed out, the issue
is when the "consensus" of the language committee is at
serious odds with a major position in the community.
Especially when there there seems to be little justification
for that consensus.

Ever since "native" was (wrongly) added to the policy
there has been serious opposition, and I dare to say
that there was never anything close to acceptance. What
a project needs is some *competent* contributors, not
specifically *native* ones (myself at he.wikisource
as a live example). If you need native then Latin should
be gone as well, despite the (correct) argument that it
is still alive, and that would be a terrible loss (please
don't remind me again that it had already been set up!).

>no similarly objective workable alternatives

Of course there is an objective, workable alternative! It
is quite simple too. A project needs an ISO code (GerardM's
unconvincing logic notwithstanding) and competent writers.
Period.

grc.wikipedia has a firm base of worldwide classicists,
students, and enthusiasts, some of whom (and extremely
qualified) had been working on it directly, and is "live"
in a way similar to Latin (though admittedly not to the
same degree. It qualifies under an objective, workable
policy definition.

Dovi


       
---------------------------------
Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it now.