One thing that grabs me about this is the Languages section, 750,000 speakers appears to be a rather high bar. To explain there 2.5m people in Western Australia most of could be classed as speaking nys at a basic level because of the way the Noongar language has been adopted into the English and continues to be taken up more as well as being taught in schools. The other side of the equation is that the primary source for Indigenous language speakers uses a significantly flawed methodology to identify those who use the language, the primary source being the ABS who ask only what is the main language spoken at home then lists 9 languages(6 European, 2 Asian, 1 middle east) with a 10 option of other in which the person is then asked to identify their language. Indigenous language speakers have a significant hurdle to actually be counted, and would suspect that this issue isnt unfamiliar to in many other countries with colonial histories.
It would better if the bar be a two fold thats looks for a significantly lower number of native speakers with a secondary level of partial speakers..... but I'm not sure there are reliable means even flawed ones to identify partial non native speakers of any language.
Additionally I think counting misses what can be large number of immigrants who arent no longer a residential part of the speaking community.
On 28 September 2017 at 12:24, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
On 9/27/2017 1:39 PM, Ariel Glenn WMF wrote:
Would a name like "emerging knowledge communities" be clearer? Yes, you'd think that in the context of Wikipedia and related projects, the word 'knowledge' would be a given, but perhaps it isn't?
Yes, let's keep brainstorming about this. No, I'm afraid this combination is problematic, but thank you for the idea.
Specifically, the issue is that in this formulation, "knowledge" works to modify "communities", but now "emerging" appears to modify "knowledge" instead, and that doesn't work. The potential implication that knowledge is only just emerging in these communities could appear condescending, much like the terminology we're trying to get away from. I'd argue that we operate on the assumption that as our communities grow, they already have a great deal of knowledge, it's a matter of sharing and making it accessible to all.
--Michael Snow
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