[Wikipedia-l] Saterlandic Frisian Wikipedia + smaller language wikipedias in general

[Boris Lohnzweiger]

Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 06.03.05 22:23:39:

> I for one think that a smaller community (even a "microcommunity"
> perhaps) is more conducive to the Wiki concept because unlike such
> large communities as Dutch or German speakers, it is very conceivable
> that /every single speaker/ of Saterlandic Frisian could become
> involved in such a Wikipedia.

It certainly would be desirable, but conceivable, I don't so. You know, just like the Hopi, rural East Frisians tend to be skeptical of any new ideas coming from the outside. A Lox Saxon proverb in northern Germany goes "Wat de Buur nich kennt dat freet he nich." (=a farmer doesn't eat anything he doesn't know). Your conception of "/every single speaker/ of Saterlandic Frisian" becoming involved is extremely optimistic. Knowing the East Frisians, I am not sure whether we could convince even one single speaker. And I think you can find similar attitudes among among many smaller ethnic groups. Maybe it's a problem in general if "outsiders" (however committed and well-meaning they might be) are trying to start such projects. Why don't we let the Saterfrisians and the Hopis decide for themselves if they have a need for a wikipedia insteed speculating about what they might want or not. Me, I consider them intelligent enough to request their own wikipedia when they deem it useful.!
  After all, they are the only people who can write it. You mentioned the term "linguistic imperialism" here some time ago. Maybe telling language minorities that they need to set up a wikipedia in order to preserve their language could be considered linguistacally imperialistic, too.

> I once had an idea, that we could set up a Hopi Wikipedia, and then
> work on promotion of it on Hopi, get elders and teenagers involved,
> try to get middle-aged people involved as well, and eventually hope
> for 90% community involvement of Hopi speakers. When such a point is
> reached, it is a virtual mirror of the real-life community, except it
> is also working towards building an encyclopaedia.
> Unfortunately I don't have the time or the resources to begin such a
> project, and generally Hopi people are very distrusting of white
> people in such matters (and with good reason, too) and although a
> medium level of involvement may be reached, it might be hard to get
> elders involved in what they see as a possible attempt by whites to
> poison or kill Hopi language and culture.

I was just trying to understand why you're refering to ideas that didn't work in order to convince me that a very similar thing will work well. Sorry, but I don't get it.

> Most of these Wikipedias were requested by people who had the notion
> "I have heard of this language. There is no Wikipedia in it. It should
> be created." but were never followed up after their creation.

That's perfectly right. And that's why I think that some native speakers should express their interest in starting their edition of wikipedia before we do anything. As I mentioned above, they are basically the only ones who can write it and as soon as they are plainly not interested (because they prefer English or German encyclopias or because they prefer doings sports over sitting at a PC in their free time or whatever) more new wikipedias will end up dead or half-dead like too many before.

> In addition, even these ill-requested Wikipedias are picking up speed,
> one-by-one... look at the flurry of activity on ka:, li:, hy:, etc.
> which had previously been inactive for months (li: actually had 0
> pages)! ka: and hy:, two important languages of the Caucasus region
> (Georgian and Armenian), now have over 100 articles and are quickly
> growing more! Unfortunately it seems that such success is limited
> almost exclusively to European languages and more recently Indic
> languages to a certain degree, although African languages (examples
> are Bambara bm:, Wolof wo:, Amharic am:, Lingala ln:) have seen some
> unexpected activity recently.

I have seen those successes and promising signs, too. And I rejoice every time I seen them. And I'd like to see many more of those and I'd like to see it last, for I am 100% pro-multilinguilism. But again I think you're too optimistic there. Matter of fact - at least according to the way I count it - half of the wikipedias are completely or almost inactive. Even a lot of editions for which 50 or so articles are indicated contain nothing but headlines with blank pages below them or similar rubbish (often pitiful attempts of non-speakers to create at least some pseudo-activity). This is the cold hard truth. Everything else would be wishful thinking. And I we really care about the success of this unique project called Wikipedia we should care about that truth.

Boris



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