[Wikipedia-l] Re: Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia

[Evan Prodromou]

On Wed, 2004-24-11 at 08:51 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:

> I agree, however apparently there is some reason (which I do not yet
> fully comprehend) that we must be very careful with Wikipedias in
> different languages.

I think the big thing to understand is that each wiki takes time,
effort, and money to maintain. Each wiki is a security risk, both
technically and legally; an active community can offset this risk as
well or better than fancy technological security measures.

An analogy: leaving the door to your house unlocked when you're having a
backyard barbecue is the right thing to do. There's lots of people
around, and they'll need to get in and out, and there's little risk of
problems. It'd be really inconvenient to have to keep locking and
unlocking it. Leaving the door unlocked when you are the only one home
is probably OK. Leaving your door unlocked when no one is home is asking
for trouble.*

A wiki without an active user community is an unlocked house with no one
home.

You've repeatedly pointed out that you don't want to spend the time,
money, or effort to create and maintain wikis without any active
participants, yet you insist that the Wikimedia Foundation does so. You
haven't really made a case for why, except that these languages exist
and have speakers. I don't think anyone debates those points; I also
don't think that "a language exists" has "there should be a Wikimedia
wiki for it" as a necessary consequent.

Even if the disadvantages are low, the advantages of having empty,
unused wikis don't seem to outweigh them. I find it hard to believe
that, say, gv: is a huge source of pride for Manx speakers. If that was
my native language, I'd think to myself, "Man, nobody really gives two
shakes about us, do they?" And the idea that any unused Wikimedia wiki
is a scholarly resource for the language is absurd. I guess there's a
intellectual exercise in reading the list of ISO 639 codes, seeing which
ones don't already have a Wikipedia, looking up the language, and then
making a request on this list, but... I don't think that gratification
is enough to offset the disadvantages.

> So apparently every single language or dialect has to go before the
> board and waste their time...

I'd say that having a clear set of rules about how and when to start a
Wikimedia wiki would obviate the need for a Board vote on each one.
Like, I dunno, say: having a single person step forward willing to work
on the wiki in the language, and maybe having one edit per 30 or 60
days. That seems like a pretty low threshold to me.

~ESP

* In some cities and countries. In other places, it's perfectly OK to
leave your door unlocked when you're not home.

-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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