[Foundation-l] On Arabic and sub-language proposals.

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The question is what makes a resource respectable. When a Wikipedia
represents a substantial body of work for that language, it is relevant and
when the text is well written it is even respectable. When the yardstick is
the comprehensiveness of the English Wikipedia, there is no way that most of
our projects will get to such a level.

When you ask for a list of people that propose projects, I am glad to say
that there is none. When you have been involved with ensuring that the
conditions are right for new projects like I have been, you know that
certain individuals are eager to see many projects started. They are
motivated people and typically they are happy to contribute a lot. I have
less problems with these people then with the anonymous cowards who propose
new languages. They are a total waste of time. Some proposals like the
"Lebanese" proposal are stirring up emotions while they have no chance at
all given that the request does not reflect the language as described and,
there are no people effectively supporting this proposal.

The projects that started after the implementation of the language policy
are all doing moderately well. When their communities grow, when the amount
of content grows, the number of articles will grow as well. I personally do
not care for the number of articles as a yardstick in any way. Certainly
numbers like 10.000 or 50.000 before it can be called a Wikipedia is a
certified way of preventing any new languages. If anything it is a great way
of proving the existing bias that can be found in our Wikipedias.
Thanks,
        GerardM

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 8:01 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:

> Ziko van Dijk wrote:
>
> > In principal, I tend to be as liberal as Gerard: Let people do what
> > they like to do. On the other hand, practically, I strongly advice
> > people to think twice about starting a project that has little chance
> > to grow out to a respectable encyclopedia.
>
> While I do agree with everything that you write, is there really
> any mechanism why people should "think twice"?  Is there any
> downside at all for an individual who asks for a new language of
> Wikipedia to be started, after that version fails?  We don't
> really have a list of people who started failed projects.  If I
> don't propose a Lebanese Wikipedia, my neighbor might do so.  If
> it fails, the Wikimedia Foundation will be more ridiculed over its
> inflated number of 250 languages, but my neighbor doesn't suffer.
>
> Maybe it's the Foundation that should think twice before granting
> more languages?  It is the one to suffer, not the individual.
>
> I wish that new languages could be handled in a more wiki way,
> where the threshold to start is lower, and where the upside and
> downside are more connected: you start it, so the failure is yours
> or the success is yours.
>
> I think the name "Wikipedia" should be saved for those that have
> more than 10,000 or 50,000 articles. Before that stage, everybody
> should be free to start a "candidate reference wiki" in any10.000
> language or dialect, hosted by WMF or elsewhere.  We now have 35
> languages with more than 50,000 articles and 80 languages with
> more than 10,000 articles.  Any of these numbers (35 or 80) is
> more useful than the 264 languages that are currently listed as
> Wikipedias.
>
> As it works now, anybody with an ISO language code and some
> wishful thinking can get the trademark "Wikipedia" on their hobby
> project, and the failure will belong to the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> With my scheme, anybody can start a hobby project of their own but
> the name Wikipedia would be something you deserve after spending
> some real effort.
>
>
>
> --
>  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
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