[Foundation-l] Sakha Wikipedia passed 7000 articles

[Mark Williamson]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 1:42 PM, Michael Peel <email at mikepeel.net> wrote:
> Erm ... huh?
>
> 1) If you're interested in helping, and have experience/knowledge of languages, then get involved with the committee.

I have wanted to be part of the committee since before its inception,
but back then I felt I would probably not be welcome. Now, I'm not
sure what the process is and I'm also unsure as to whether or not I'm
wanted there.

> 2) They're getting things achieved - they're fostering the development of new language projects, making decisions, getting the projects started, and doing this in a very effective way. Compare this with the ineffectual procedure for starting an entirely new project in any language, which hasn't gotten anywhere in the last 3(?) years.

Let's see how many successful language versions of Wikipedia were
started before the language committee was created... hundreds. Now
let's see how many have been created in the last year:

North Frisian (10000 speakers in a wealthy Western European country)
Karachay-Balkar (400000 speakers in the Caucasus, again, as far as I
can tell, Europe)
Picard (perhaps 500000 speakers in another wealthy Western European country)

That's three. It is my firm belief that some of the requirements of
the language committee set the bar too high for new language editions,
requiring infrastructure to be built, interface translated and content
created, all to degrees that seem unnecessary to me. Yes, these
measures often ensure that a new Wiki will be successful within a very
short period of time, but at what cost? The exclusion of dozens of
requests in languages that already have content and community dying to
get started.

> 3) Please point to _recent_ examples where they've made a bad choice (i.e. Klingon doesn't count, as that was before their time). I'm not aware of any.

Inaction and setting the bar too high, as well as excluding Ancient
Greek WP against what seemed at the time to be community consensus
against such exclusion, count as bad decisions for me. Overregulation
of the Incubator, including deletion of painstakingly created content
(for example, the Riverense Portuñol test WP) just because there is no
valid ISO code yet also strikes me as not only counterproductive but
also cruel, although I'm not sure this is within the remit of the
language committee.

> I agree that it's not good that they have a hidden discussion forum; as much as possible of the discussion leading up to a new project should be public, and i can't see a reason for secrecy. Apart from that, though, I don't understand these (somewhat bitchy) comments at all...

Debates about languages have been going on since nearly the beginning
of Wikipedia. This is just a continuation of the same old stuff.

-m.