Timwi-
myself, I respect Toki Pona and believe that having a Wikipedia in it is OK; not because it has a high number of Google hits, but because I came across the language, found it interesting, and realised that it is a much more complete and serious conlang project than most other conlangs.
That's nice, but it effectively turns Wikimedia into a promotional agency for a language which doesn't have any active speakers yet. It is not our job to judge which languages are "worth learning" and set up projects so people can do so. We need to define objective criteria rather than subjective ones. The criteria Andre proposed seem reasonable.
Analogously, you might say we could have articles about persons on Wikipedia who have a high potential for doing something meaningful in their lives, in order to let people learn about it so they can get in touch. Of course we don't do that, because judging who has a potential for doing something is a highly subjective endeavor, and a promotional one to boot (and therefore POV).
(2) You mentioned that people who come across the English (or any other major language) article on some popular topic, and see an "Elvish" or "Klingon" or "Toki Pona" link at the top in the "Other languages:" row, would take this as an indication that Wikimedia is not serious enough or has no credibility. This is your opinion that you are generalising to all (or most) people. Myself, I think most people would react in a more positive way: "Whee, they have a sense of humour too, just like Google." Speaking of which, according to your logic Google would not be taken seriously either because it has Klingon and h4x0r translations.
That is an invalid comparison. Google is merely an indexing service which is not directly associated with the information it provides. We, on the other hand, are the direct providers of knowledge on a variety of highly sensitive subjects. Some of these are subjects which people kill over and die for, in other words, subjects people associate strong emotions with and do not like to see portrayed in a whimsical light. If you try to find out credible information about a terrorist attack in which you have lost one of your loved ones, for example, having Elvish or Klingon prominently featured at the top and the bottom of the article may immediately turn you away from the project, it may feel like a mockery of your pain. That reaction is not entirely irrational, furthermore, it is completely justifiable.
In addition, in Google's case, the language appears in a single list of UI translations, in this case, it would appear (if the projects are successful to any reasonable extent) on hundreds of pages in dozens of languages.
The important question here is whether or not the amount of people recruited as a result of this fun factor outweighs the amount of people driven away
Yes and no. You also have to look at the kind of people you will attract with any "fun project". It's not like we have a shortage of Tolkien fans. Again, if we just wanted high numbers, we could as well run a gameserver. There are lots of skript kiddies who have plenty of time at their hands.
Regards,
Erik