[Wikipedia-l] Re: Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Tim Starling wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>>  I wish that
>> we do not go backward and isolate minor projects and minor languages.
>> It is very important that we discuss these topics globally.
>> Minorities also are welcome on wikipedia and they need attention. Not
>> the darkness of an intl-l list again. We do not need more lists. The
>> issue of whether we want wikipedia to become only a list of 20 major
>> languages, or if we want wikipedia to be also a resource in many
>> minor languages, and in that case what we should do for all languages
>> which are currently non active, is a global issue. It needs to be
>> here.
>
>
> Does it have to be discussed here case-by-case? We've made no progress 
> whatsoever towards useful principles, and there's been no consensus on 
> anything. The Board has been silent on this despite repeated requests 
> for a decision. All we need is some sort of decent decision-making 
> process -- for example a committee or a vote of those concerned. I've 
> previously suggested that major dialects as listed by SIL could be 
> automatically accepted.
>
> There's tens of thousands of dialects in the world, do we have to have 
> a flame war about each one?

I sympathize with Tim on this.  For anything other than a conlang, all 
that should be needed to get a pedia going is one hard-working 
individual who is able to work in the language in question.  One hard 
worker is worth far more than a dozen individuals who merely support 
that pedia without any personal familiarity with the language.  If one 
serious individual is there let's give him the chance.  He can be 
started with a major language interface of his choice that he can 
translate at his leisure.  If that project is getting nowhere, or 
appears abandoned it can be harmlessly frozen until someone else comes 
along with enough interest.  We all want these projects to succeed, and 
that can't happen if a proponent needs to be flame-war tested before he 
can start anything.

Ec