The goal *is* to create content in Anglo-Saxon. Sorry if I wasn't clear.
James
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Pablo Saratxaga Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 3:24 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FW: Wikipedia for Old English
Kaixo!
On Thu, Aug 05, 2004 at 01:19:44PM -0400, James R. Johnson wrote:
OE is still active as a language, with new works being writteneven now, and translation projects going for the Bible, Shakespeare, and other works of literature.
But consider that wikipedia goal is not to be a compialtion of litterary and translation works (wikibook, on the other hand, is), but a medium to serve information on all (or at least a wide range) of topics, in a given language.
Transposed to classroom analogy, wikipedia is not a class given in English about Anglosaxon culture, but it is mathematics, physics, biology etc classes teached in Anglosaxon language.
You should ask if your main goal would be to create content *in* Anglosaxon, or *about* Anglosaxon (that can be in the same langue too but that's not the point). In other words, do you plan to have at some points articles about computer science, biology, space travel, modern history, etc. written in Anglosaxon, or is your plan to focus on litterary/linguistic topics related with the langue? In the second case, maybe wikibook with a small encyclopedia-like section for those topics would be a better idea.
James R. Johnson wrote:
May I ask why Klingon, and Esperanto have Wikis?
Esperanto is a living language that a lot of people use to communicate and share knowledge on all sort of topics.
As far as I know Klingon and Anglosaxon are only used by a very small community, and not for normal everyday communication, not to share knowledge in all sort of topics, but rather to communicate and share knowledge on some topics only, very related to the langue itself.
So, indeed, I think that, for exactly the same reasons as I exposed above, Klingon should maybe have been on wikibook rather than on wikipedia.
wikibook and wikipedia are, technically, exactly the same (it's exactly the same software used); however, on wikipedia you can expect to have some sort of symetry between the languages, on the long time tending to a similar content (detailed data on a majority of topics), only in different languages. As I doubt that languages not used for normal everyday communication nor normal knowledge transmission would ever get very developped wikipedias, those will look "incomplete" in comparaison with others.
On the other hand, a wikibook site is more or less independent of other wikibooks, its content doesn't reflect nor has to reflect nor is expected to reflect the content of wikibooks in other languages; and so can be shaped and target the content and topics best suited to the culture vehiculated by the language.
objection to your plan. Unless there's some reason to think that it's a bad idea (Klingon, for example, was and is controversial), then if people want to do it, they should do it. "I would enjoy working on it" is a perfectly valid reason.
But I think some people may request a wikipedia because they don't know ther would be a possibility to have a similar functionality without the burden of the requirement to build an encyclopedic general purpose content.
-- Ki ça vos våye bén, Pablo Saratxaga
http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/ PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466 [you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto] [min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]