[Wikipedia-l] Opinion about constructed minor languages and inclusion in encyclopedia

Mon Oct 4 10:10:22 UTC 2004

>Hi

>Thank you Mark for your open approach of the request.

>Anthere I will take bake my candidature for the two new languages.

>As I did discover yesterday this background mailing list (I did all the time
>suppose that all the talk where open talks in the open-talk pages; I know,
>it was naive) I was chocked.

I think we do not give openess the same meaning François.
Openess is not blindly saying yes to any proposal.

I do not understand why you are chocked.

You started a new language on meta. This is not the right place to do so. I could just have deleted it, I do not think anyone would have complained.
However, I did not delete your content on sight, instead I blanked it and I asked you for more information.
I forwarded your answer on this mailing list and invited you to discuss it. 
You are free to talk as much as you want here. We are free to listen to you (to read you), to answer, and to have a personal viewpoint.

I think openess is very much this. You are given the opportunity to talk through several media (meta talk page and this mailing list). We also provide a mean for editors to answer you. We guarantee the freedom of all contributors to have their own opinion and to be able to offer it publicly.

But it is up to you to convince us.
Openess does not mean anarchy.  Openess does not mean we have to blindly accept proposals. 
If the community supports it, then so be it; if not, then your language will not find room among our projects. 

-----------------------

>I did think about this matter during the evening and the night and I think
>that different important points of view in the Wiki world are extremely
>problematical.

I do not think that people having different view points is problematic. 
I do think people having all the same point of view is problematic.

-----------------------

>I will now take my distance from the Wiki movement.

Wikipedia is not wiki.
You may exist as a wiki, without belonging to Wikipedia project.
There are many wikis aside us, and you can start a wiki project whenever you want.
If you wish to do so, you may use the mediawiki software, which is a free soft.

-----------------------

I was a long time thinking about the yes or the no to become a co-worker at
Wiki. Why?

The "no":

The open character of information ressources may be a potency but it is a
danger at the same time because there is no indicator of quality. If you by
something at ebay, you know that the partner is registered, you can look for
his evaluations and  you can even look what other user did criticize. You
can open the other young article and look the texts concerning the
problematical transaction. All that has no equivalent in Wiki. You consulte
an information, perhaps an important information with consequences on your
comportement because that and for the next development of your life, and
there is no evaluation or possibility of any control. It would be possible
to enter problematical information with the objective to influence. What to
influence is a question of the specific detail.
Two example:
The World Fact Book
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/fr.html writes for France:
"Languages:
French 100%, rapidly declining regional dialects and languages (Provencal,
Breton, Alsatian, Corsican, Catalan, Basque, Flemish)
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 99% male:
99% female: 99% (1980 est.)"
The site http://www.educationnationale.com writes "Pourcentage des 16 à 65
ans éprouvant des difficultés à lire et à comprendre des textes de la vie
quotidienne enquête OCDE, 1995) : Suède 7,5 ; Pays-Bas 10,5 ; Allemagne 14,4
; Canada 16,6 ; États-Unis 20,7 ; France 40,1 ; Pologne 42,6".
Between the 1 % of illeterate people of the WFB of the official institution
CIA (one information source of the President of the USA to start wars and
anihilate populations and cultures - Irak was a really problematic country
but Irak was not fundamentalistic and was theoretical lay/secular like
Turkey!) and the information of the other source (you can click on the link
"Quid" - French people considere Quid as an "eprouved" Wikipedia not as an
experiment!), there is a world of difference....
An you can see yourself in the differente wikis that the affirmation
"rapidly declining regional dialects and languages" is not certain! And if
this information would be correct why did you give in wiki the ok to start
new wikis in those declining dialects and languages? Only to disturb the
unity of countries like France or Spain etc? Or did you do that with the
conviction to help people to develope somewhat, that is precious to protect,
somewhat with a great valor? Today your restrictive conviction concerning
solresol is for me an indicator more of the first as of the second:
Soleresol was a great invention. But different people don't want to allow
that other languages as national language can exist parallel to the national
language. For this reason especially in France did a law forbid the use of
special languages as the national language. Please enter following words
into the search motor www.yahoo.fr "loi fabius congrès de milan" and you
will see a fantastic number of link on the problem that AS YOU today in
wikipedia the most important part of the population of France through his
leader as on the list wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org did refuse to handicaped
people MORE THAN 100 YEARS ALONG the legitimity to develope own educative
solution especially signs languages to help the poor persones to live in the
dignity. See please http://www.a2mains.com/historique3.html . It is only a
little more as TEN YEARS legal to do that in France: propage an universal
language including a sign language: You will restrict the liberty with terms
like "audience" - "editors"- Well!

I am not entirely sure you will gain my sympathy by citing my country as one of these highly censoring countries.
Just as I am not entirely sure you gain my sympathy when confusing my giving a personal opinion as a lack of openess above, or me citing "audience" as "refusing handicaped people the legitimity to develop own creative solution to live in the dignity".

I think that on Wikipedia, we recognise and respect very much diversity of opinions because this is the essence of our project. We certainly often disagree and we will sometimes be a bit "hot" in trying to "win the case". But we generally try to accomodate and generally this means for us to have the right to speak our own mind with NO FEAR, before a consensus emerge.

The best way to irritate people and block in the most definite way an open and friendly discussion is to use fallacious arguments.
Example : implying that France refusal to welcome special languages as national language denies handicaped people a life in dignity is a bit slippery.
Example : implying that Wikipedia refusing to welcome a very minor constructed language denies handicaped people a life in dignity is certainly boosting our ego, but a bit slippery as well.

Now, it is up to you to go on this slope, but I doubt it will help.

Let's recap.

Wikipedia is not particularly the best solution to teach language signs. And providing information in musical form is not either the best idea on Wikipedia. And for all I know deaf people can read a screen just as well as I. Well, actually better, because I have poor eyesight.

The number of readers of this language is extremely limited, but I agree, more information on the language might be meaningful.

The number of potential contributors to this language is even more limited. For all I know, contributorS would be "you". It makes little sense to set up a wiki just for one editor. Even for two. The interest of a wiki is mostly to work collaboratively.

Wikipedia aims at providing knowledge and making it available to the highest number of people. Good. Now, my own feeling is that most people using solresol also speak and/or read at least another language.  So, not making available solresol is not denying them access to information. If they can READ a screen, they can very much read the screen in english or in spanish or in any other language for general information. And I suspect the quality of encyclopedic information will always be much much much better in english or spanish than in solresol. This goes as well for languages such as Klington language. 

Now, I think that what is most important for this type of language is
* helping people be aware that the language exist.
* helping people learn the language.
* possibly provide some good ressources in that language.

This does not suggest me that setting a full encyclopedia is a good idea. The encyclopedia is likely to stay just a bunch of stubs, and I doubt much that it will be ever seen as a good ressource.

This suggests me this
* to promote the language : write good and comprehensive articles on wikipedias
* to help people learn the language : write a wikibooks on the topic. This book, as a free ressource, could contain all the relevant information you wish available on this language. This book might contain description, history and grammar of the language for example. When the book is ready, you may even consider printing it and distributing it. Or it might just become a great online ressource, with audio (sounds) included (you may include sounds in the book).
* to help people learn the language : a wiktionary might be eventually interesting. For example : english/solresol and french solresol
* to provide good ressources for people to train themselves (my library has some books written in big letters, or books for blind people) : write or translate books in this language. Consider translating public domain books from old authors. Or consider writing a book on disability. Or set up a cooking book with special tips for disabled people. Or whatever. Any good book will be far better than any cripled stubby-encyclopedia.

If you wish to help Wikipedia at the same time than helping SolReSol, a book which become a world wide reference on this language, will help Wikipedia get positive feedback much more than any 150 articles pseudo-encyclopedia. 

And this is overall my position on many very minor languages.
Wikipedia may appear to be the royal road; but it would be nice to be realistic. A bunch of very good, very comprehensive, very well-research books and a wiktionary to help understanding, will do much more for a very minor language, than any supposed encyclopedia of less than 100 stubs.

---------------

Now, the "yes", my devise in the web,

A lot of idealists works in these pages, do her best to make a lot of
possibilities accessible for a great number of other persones. Different
editors, not all, have a great experience and qualification and invest a lot
of time for other. Different editors of course reinvente only the wheel (and
it seems you prefer those editors: A encyclopedie book oder CDROM costs only
10 Euro in Germany today) but not fully round rather with a lot of corners.
But other give access at the knowledge to persones how would be have
difficulties because of the language of because of the deficit of the
production or import of book ware in her part of the world; I did already
explain that medicine students in West Africa did learn medicine from a
Chinese professor, who was only Chinese speaker... And books where extremely
rare at the same time in this African country. Other give access to non
conventional knowledge with reduced accessibility (like Solresol and
Frater - Try to get the complete sources that I have now...)

For this reason I did in the supposition that Wiki did be a really open and
wide seeing institution say to me: YES, I cooperate also.

Good. This is the correct approach.

-------------------

But I did ignore those back ground tribunals like this access limited
email-list wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org and the opinion, that a persone can
only get a chance if he already did have this chance on a different place,
if he already has a successfull community (* Audience : who will read this
new language, how many people does that represent, if few people, are they
likely to be better served by another language  * Editors : who will work on
that new project, how many people ).

The access to the mailing list is not limited. We ask for registration (which is not difficult to do) only to limit the amount of spam people get in their mail boxes.
Unregistered mails are blocked and require administrators approval. Spam is deleted, and normal mails get through.
Registration is here only meant as a nicety to readers of the list.

--------------

To Anwhere,

if I would have a kind of Catalan-Yahoo ( http://ct.yahoo.com/ ) for
solresol or frater, I would not move to Wikipedia (Catalan also is not a
national language; but they have a own yahoo...) after all the work would be
done and so annihilate my old work and make twice the same!

Good luck with your problematical project... I go away!

Truly ours

François

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to say freely my opinion on minor constructed languages place within the Wikimedia projects. You helped me to see better in my own thoughts on the topic and the opportunity to offer these thoughts to the other editors. Possibly, it won't be the direction the community will follow in the future, but to my opinion, wikibooks and possibly wiktionaries are a best way than an encyclopedia for most of those. But I will accept encyclopedias if there is consensus for setting them naturally.

Thanks for triggering this clarity in me.

Summary

I do think the information is important. I do think it is worth to be included in our project. I just think the encyclopedic project is not the best in your case.

* Setting up an encyclopedia in SolReSol
I will not support it. I do think it would be a loss of time, a very poor encyclopedia (encyclopedia means comprehensive information, it will never happen in this case).
If the consensus is to do such an encyclopedia, I will not oppose it, but do not expect any help from me.

* Starting a wikibook on the topic : very strong support. In particular if the book is done in half french/half SolReSol (you might imagine a bilingual book). In this case, you might host it on the french wikibooks. Of course, it would be worth asking the french community their opinion on wikifr-l at wikimedia.org. But a half english/half SolReSol or any language will have my support as well.
Any further book on any topic in full SolReSol is okay by me as well.

* Starting a wiktionary : neutral to supportive.

Anthere.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!