[Wikipedia-l] Starting a new wiki

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

Ewen Caroline wrote:
> If we (luxembourgish wiki, around 10 regulars so far, working on it :) had 
> to go that way to get our own wiki, I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten it, 
> since noone would have found us etc. Now at least we have a chance to create 
> something original in our language (for those who aren't that familiar with 
> lux, we're only about 250.000 native speakers :)).

There would be no question about setting up a wikipedia when there are
250,000 native speakers.  There would be no question, in fact, for
much smaller language communities than that.

Node tends to engage in invalid FUD.  It's a very different thing to
contemplate a population of 250,000 native speakers who actually use a
language, versus an academic exercise.

The question is more about dead languages and conlangs which are
spoken only by very small numbers of people, and especially when those
speakers primarily from the perspective of language preservation,
academic interest, or just as a fun subculture.  For those types of
communities, it is certainly in line with our educational mission to
assist them, but it is fairly clear to me that setting up an
encyclopedia project is not likely to be the best way to help.

It is my opinion that we should revisit some of our existing wikipedia
projects for which no community has developed or seems likely to
develop, and see if we might not better serve those communities (and
the goals of Wikimedia more broadly) by encouraging wikibooks and
wiktionaries first.

--Jimbo