[Wikipedia-l] Re: Starting a new wiki

[Mark Williamson]

On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 15:44:39 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Oh, also there is the additional option of setting up shop at a
> > Wikipedia that has had little or no action. This is *not* something I
> >  would encourage! Please exhaust all other options first. Depending
> > on which language you choose though, it could take a very short time
> >  or a very long time for anybody to realise what you're doing. And if
> >  you can round up a good sized group of contributors, and you get up
> > a sizable number of articles, when you *are* eventually found out
> > there is a good chance the content will be kept, but moved to a
> > different subdomain (most likely ang:).
> >
> 
> I don't mind if people squat on empty wikis, since their secrecy means
> that they won't be able to request help writing language files, or to
> ask for help in making interlanguage links. In fact, I'll happily create
> any wiki if the potential contributors agree in advance to use a
> language file which is already mature, and that you refrain from
> requesting interface customisations which require developer attention.

Not nessecarily. I think it's quite possible somebody could take
advantage of the system and request help writing language files; do
they have to actually tell the developer that it's not for the right
language? For some languages ie bo:, I can see that the fact it wasn't
written in the right script would be a dead giveaway, but if somebody
used some sort of conlang phonotactically similar to Tahitian on ty:,
I can't imagine anybody could easily pick up on it.

Anyhow I would be quite happy to help people with language files.
Interface customisations I'm afraid I can't help with, but I can help
people with language files if they/you want.

Also, what you said about creating any wiki where the contributors
agree to (your terms)... does that extend to *all* languages, or only
languages that have already been discussed on the ML? While I
personally do not see the existance of say got: doing much harm to
anybody, others obviously have objections to its creation. Would you
"happily create" a wikipedia for a language in this situation? What if
the original requester had asked you before the ML?

Also, I'm curious as to why there was only one serious objector to
ang:, but got: seems to have turned into a hot topic...

--node