[WikiEN-l] Unnecessary Wikipedia languages

[David Gerard]

On 18/01/2008, Ian A Holton <poeloq at gmail.com> wrote:

> Why am I against such languages? A) They are an additional cost and
> Wikipedia isn't exactly swimming in money and B) the contributors of
> these Wikipedias would be making contributions to the larger more
> popular and also more necessary standard version of the language. I know
> this from several cases that good editors switched from Standard German
> to their local dialect, for "a laugh".


The money argument doesn't have much to it - setting up a new wiki is
a one-off in developer's time, with the volunteer developers usually
doing it.

The argument to bilinguality isn't as strong as it might sound, e.g. I
recall Arwel Parry pointing out that although everyone in Wales speaks
English, Welsh is nevertheless his first language and so he thinks in
it more easily than in English despite his English being perfect. (If
I've recalled correctly what his point was - correction welcomed if
needed.)

As for channelling volunteer effort - volunteer effort isn't a
commodity. Volunteers will work ten times as hard as any paid
employee, but *only on what they want to*. e.g. getting rid of Pokemon
articles won't send their contributors to work on history articles.
The same applies to languages.


> Of course, this doesn't apply to all dialects and all dead languages.
> Latin for example is still used in academic circles and is therefor not
> dead in my opinion. However, I don't see many people writing in Goth
> anymore.
> What is the general opinion on this, am I alone in thinking that this is
> maybe an issue that needs to be addressed?


I don't think it's actually a problem.


- d.