[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request

[Stephen Forrest]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:33:35 +1100, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Pablo Saratxaga (pablo at mandrakesoft.com) [050211 00:20]:

> > (I feel the same about some dead non-fictional languages, like
> > classical Latin or Anglo-saxon)
> 
> That's an interesting point, given the precedent of their existence ...
> though Latin still has life in it as an international auxiliary language.
> What do the Anglo-Saxon volunteers think of this argument?

As a contributor to the Anglo-Saxon wikipedia, I appreciate the point
that ang: is to some extent a playground for enthusiasts.  There are
no native speakers of Old English left, so nobody would go to ang:
simply for information, unless it be information about the language. 
This is particularly true since a fair bit (but certainly not all) of
ang: is translated from other wikipedias.

Yet to Pablo Saratxaga's point that there must be a real will to write
an encyclopedia: I have never witnessed any desire on ang: to limit it
to writing about Anglo-Saxon culture or people.  We have nontrivial
articles on scuba diving, number theory, and the Three Kingdoms of
Korea. (We haven't quite gotten to chemistry or Russian literature
yet.)  As for POV, I haven't seen any notable POV issues yet, probably
because the user base isn't large and the effort is more on growing
the encylopedia.

Probably we do give slightly more weight to Anglo-Saxon topics than
most wikipedias with 267 articles: it's easier, as the relevant
terminology already exists and doesn't need to be coined.  But I have
never seen any systematic preference for such topics, or any idea that
we ought to pretend it is 1066 and we are addressing Anglo-Saxons.

For obvious reasons we contributors to ang: are somewhat dependent on
the goodwill of the greater Wikipedia community in having an
encyclopedia at all.  Whether its utility justifies the resources
spent on its existence is a matter for the community to determine, but
I can attest to the fact that there is will on ang: to create a real
encyclopedia.

Steve