[Foundation-l] [Langcom-l] Ancient Greek reconstructed an analysis of a proposal for a new Wikipedia

[Mark Williamson]

Stop saying Latin, we already have a Wikipedia in Latin. We are
discussing the denial of a Wikipedia for Ancient Greek.

Mark

On 17/04/2008, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 5:51 PM, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
>  <pathoschild at gmail.com> wrote:
>  >  Further, I've painstakingly followed every thread in this discussion,
>  >  and I have not seen any strong argument for allowing languages nobody
>  >  uses natively. Wikimedia wikis exist to make the sum of human
>  >  knowledge available to everyone, not to practice or preserve
>  >  languages.
>  >
>  >  I think the argument that they act as a common language for scholars
>  >  of the ancient language is not valid; we are not a forum for academic
>  >  exchange.
>
>
> You have to remember that "everyone" includes people who consider
>  written-only languages a part of their intellectual sphere.  If
>  Wikimedia was around 500 years ago, would we deny Latin for purely
>  ideological reasons, even though it was very widely used in
>  literature?  And though that use has declined greatly for Latin and
>  similar classical languages, I do not think we can say that such a use
>  is dead, nor can we at all predict the future course for such
>  languages.
>
>  And is it not true that certain topics are best researched in certain
>  languages?  If one were to collect writers from around the world to
>  write an encyclopedia article on medieval ecclesiastical history,
>  based on the most relevant and important sources, would not the
>  optimal language for collaboration be Latin?  And if one were to write
>  an encyclopedia article on early 20th century artificial languages,
>  would not the optimal language for collaboration be Esperanto?
>
>  Surely such articles, written in one context but translated into many
>  other languages, would be very valuable to all of our Wikipedia
>  editions.
>
>  Not that I agree with Gerard's specific proposal, but the case for
>  Wikipedias in written-only languages is quite clear to me.
>
>  Thanks,
>
> Pharos
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  foundation-l mailing list
>  foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>  Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>