[Wikipedia-l] Re: Gothic Wikipedia

[Mark Williamson]

I find it quite sad that anybody but the creator and sole speaker of a
conlang would have to set up their own Mediawiki-based encyclopedia
because of lack of support from the Foundation. (the same goes for
conlangs in my mind unless they have at least 500 speakers and maybe
even past then)

Of course the nature of this project means that the community will
decide on things like this, so however much I may disagree with the
ultimate decision of the community and/or Jimbo, I accept that it is
final.

Now Lars, some of the Wikipedias you give statistics for are deserving
of explanatory notes.

If you were looking for "dead languages" and conlangs, that would
exclude Breton, Faroese, Latvian, Kashubian, and Nynorsk (Nynorsk is
basically an official codification of rural SW Norwegian speech forms,
it can hardly be considered a conlang).

If you were looking for Wikipedias with small numbers of articles,
perhaps it should be noted that Nynorsk got started very recently and
the fact that they already have 528 articles is something we should
admire them for. The Faroese wikipedia does seem to be... well... a
bit dead that the moment, as does the Breton wikipedia. The Klingon
wikipedia was very controversial. It too appears to be dead - I wonder
why we have a Wikipedia whose very existance is controversial, which
is not even being worked on anymore, that has not been trashed or at
least moved elsewhere? If it had over 100 articles maybe I would feel
differently, but it has *47*. Similarly, Toki Pona which although at
the time of its creation was not controversial many Wikipedians appear
to resent today has only 190 articles and has not been growing really
at all for quite some time. If this does not change in the near
future, I would suggest that we ask for it to be moved to the Toki
Pona official website.

best,
node

On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 05:55:32 +0200 (CEST), Lars Aronsson
<lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Mark Williamson 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
> 
> See, these are the tiresome arguments that we have to hear over and
> over again for every little language or project idea.  So much time
> and effort is wasted in this boring argumentation that could be better
> spent if you just started to write some 250 encyclopedic articles in
> Gothic and then said:
> 
>   "Here is what I have assembled on my own without any wiki.  Could I
>    please have a wiki so that my friends could help me in this
>    project?  My friends have collected these $500 to help it happen."
> 
> Can you imagine how much more convincing that kind of argument is?
> This way, instead of fighting against the arguments of other
> wikipedians, you would have to fight against your own abilities.
> 
> Current articles in Latin: 2648, Nynorsk: 528, Kashubian: 266,
> Toki pona: 190, Latvian: 137, Faroese: 51, Klingon: 47, Breton: 28.
> 
> What if you cannot write 250 articles on your own?
> What if your friends cannot collect $500?
> Then what are your chances of ever writing an encyclopedia?
> 
> What if the Wikimedia Foundation still would not accept your 250
> Gothic articles and $500?  To heck with them, run your own wiki!
> You've got the contents and the resources.  You're strong.  Be happy!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Lars Aronsson, lars at aronsson.se
> --
>   Aronsson Datateknik
>