[Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

[Mark Williamson]

Oh also I would like to add that I'd be very happy to help anybody
wanting help setting up a new Wikipedia, beyond the most technical
aspect I can handle it very well, and I think I have a fair grasp of
that too. Of course dev tasks I couldn't do, but beyond that...

best,
node


On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 19:40:04 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> The difference here Tim is that while Klingon is 1. a conlang with a
> fairly small number of speakers intended as the language of an
> imaginary alien race from a scifiseries 2. afaik completely without
> native speakers altogether, save maybe a handful, while Gothic is a
> natural language with perhaps 4000~5000 speakers, the only well-known
> East Germanic language and as such very important to linguistic
> reasearch (the others ie Vandalic and Burgundian are known only from
> proper names), a language with its own unique and beautiful (well at
> least I think it is) alphabet, and has a (though not clustered in the
> same neighbourhood, city, or even country as most such movements are)
> revival movement going to teach the language to children as a native
> language with (supposedly) upwards of 400 children so far. In the near
> future it is forseeable that these 400 children (and probably teens
> too by now; I think this started in the 80s or something) will be
> ready to use an encyclopedic resource which they would benifit a great
> deal more from if it were in Gothic; then what about *their* kids if
> they are raised in Gothic as well? This could eventually lead to
> upwards of 10000 native gothic speakers (perhaps up to 2 million if
> the movement eventually finds a geographical location they can use as
> a gothic-only environment) in the foreseeable future.
> 
> Latin, however, (ttbomk) has no such movement (which is surprising, in
> the very least), and the chances that somebody will be able to read
> Latin sufficiently better than any other language with an extant
> Wikipedia are fairly low (Latin has other justifications though I
> believe).
> 
> Of course its still up to you to decide whether or not you'll
> ultimately be OK with supporting such a language or not, but I do hope
> you'll reconsider.
> 
> best,
> node
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 12:23:03 +1000, Tim Starling
> <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > > Tim Starling wrote:
> > >
> > >>People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki.
> > >
> > >
> > > Could you provide an estimate in the number of work hours?  Either
> > > more could be done in automating parts of the task, or the required
> > > work on your behalf could be paid for with money that has to be
> > > collected by the community (of Klingon speakers, say) before the new
> > > wiki can be set up.
> >
> > I suggest you read my post again. I'll quote it here in part.
> >
> > Tim Starling wrote:
> > > People underestimate the cost involved in setting up a wiki. Most of
> > > the tech support I do seems to be supporting new or small wikis.
> > > Adding the wiki isn't hard, the bulk of the work is in authoring the
> > > language file, mucking around with namespaces and fixing interwiki
> > > links. From establishment to maturity, there's probably an hour of
> >                                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > developer work involved.
> >
> > That's just a very rough guess. Some wikis take a lot more than that. I
> > just finished writing a new feature specifically for the Finnish
> > Wikipedia which probably took 6 hours alone, although you wouldn't see
> > me giving that level of service to Gothic or Klingon.
> >
> > The task of creating a wiki is already automated. As I explained above,
> > the problem is in ongoing tech support and system administration, not
> > creation. There are ways to reduce that too, but there's always going to
> > be someone who doesn't bother reading the manual.
> >
> > That's why I suggested that if anyone is interested in providing ongoing
> > support for this wiki, they should offer themselves as a point of
> > contact. They should do their best to fix any problems, but *never* pass
> > the problem on to the rest of the community.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling
> >
> >
> >
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