[Foundation-l] "Historical" languages and constructed languages

[David Gerard]

On 25/01/2008, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> For a constructed language writing an encyclopaedia is in many ways the holy
> grail. Being able to do so succesfully proves that the constructed language
> can be used to express about any subject. Both a Wikisource and a Wiktionary
> are static resources while the value of constructed languages is in active
> resources.
> As you indicate that there are arguments why you come to exactly the
> opposite viewpoint, I am interested in learning them.


I'm speaking in terms of reader usefulness. It's not a question of the
writing so much as the reading. I do agree it's an important milestone
for a conlang to be useful enough to write an encyclopedia,
particulary a living wiki-based one.

(Getting back to the question of machine-generated articles, these
seem to me to be more like building infrastructure for further
development rather than creating useful work - I didn't think the
Rambot US placename articles on en:wp were very useful when created,
but lots have had good stuff added to them by humans since then.)


- d.