[Wikipedia-l] Re: I want to start a new language... with the code"eg" please.

[Peter Gervai]

On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 08:32:45AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Peter Gervai wrote:
> > On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 11:14:58AM +0300, Prince of Egypt wrote:
> > > No, it's a new conlang (well not really a conlang) called the Modern 
> > > Egyptian Language. Is there any other language that has the abbreviation of 
> > > "EG"?
> > 
> > Which wikipedia article describes the language you would like to have? If
> > there isn't any maybe there isn't much people interested in?
> 
> What is our policy on constructed languages?  I ask because I'm really not sure.

Ad-hoc. :)

> My general feeling is that unless there's some very good reason not to
> have a particular language, we should have it.  Some good reasons that
> I can think of: (1) the language is a joke or vanity project (2) the
> language is just a slight change of dialect from some other language.

My question was aimed exactly at point one: is that a joke or vanity
language? If a language does not have a Wikipedia page which at least
vaguely describes the language, should I consider it more than a joke,
or a one-man experiment? (It's the same as creating original but completely
useless and irrelevant articles in Wikipedia, which is - when I last checked
- advised against, frowned upon. We have a wikipedian who created a conlang,
would anyone agree to start a wikipedia for him?)

In this particular case it seems that this language doesn't even have an
article (not even a stub) on Wikipedia. 

> For example, it would be bad to have a Klingon Wikipedia, I think. 

Klingon probably have more detailed description and vocabulary than, say,
Toki Pona. (It is interesting for me to observe how these "extremely minority
language" wikipedias live their lives. Even Latin seems to be half-dead, I
have no illusions about other smaller ones.) 

Not that I am for or against Klingonese (or, in fact, Modern Egyptian)
wikipedia. If it's small, it doesn't need much disk space, and if it's big,
then there's a reason for it to exist. Only problem is to have 197
wikipedias containing "huhuhu ahahhaa", "kilroy woz here" and "flip you all"
messages... anyone checked for orphaned languages lately?

> And finally, I think that it's very very convenient for us to avoid
> arguments about this by reference to ISO standards.  We could, in some
> cases, make exceptions, but we should be cautious about doing so.

Sounds logical to me, and tough luck for modern egyptian...

Peter