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

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
If that is all you want to discuss, the status quo is that Ancient Greek has
been denied. I do not want to discuss Ancient Greek only. If that is all we
are discussing, I am done talking.
Thanks,
      GerardM

On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 12:03 PM, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>