Hoi,
When having only 60 articles is a criterion for deletion of a Wikipedia
project, there are many more projects in the danger zone. 50 of the current
250 Wikipedias do not have this number of articles. This is as far as I am
concerned no valid reason.
The Klingon was ended because of the many people who were of the opinion
that it was a blemish on the reputation of Wikipedia. When the end of this
project was announced people cheered.. The good thing is that it ended an
issue that people were quite happy to ask for it to be ended again and
again.
Given that the tlh.wikipedia was ended by the board, it is and was final.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 17:20:29 -0600, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit(a)cox.net> wrote:
Oldak Quill wrote:
I, for one, object to the closure of projects
based on elitist
concerns as to the origin of the language. What matters is the place
of the language in the world now. This language is, crucially,
recognised as a language by the International Standardisation
Organisation
There is no sense of "recognition" in the ISO code designations. As they
say for the 693-3 codes, "it is a goal for this part of ISO 639 to
provide an identifier for every distinct human language that has been
documented, whether living, extinct, or constructed, and whether its
modality is spoken, written or signed." There are 7,589 currently.
tlh is also in ISO 639-2 as well, whose scope is more limited, codes being
added to it "when it becomes apparent that a significant body of
literature
in a particular language exists."
The full criteria are here:
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/criteria2.html
(in brief, "that there is a significant body of literature in the language
or describing the language".)
So I repeat, your choices are either to have a
dictionary define
wordsusing words it does not define (Klingon words) or to define
words
(Klingonwords) that cannot be attested according to normal dictionary
standards.
First off, what kind of attestation are you seeking here? There are
published
reference books on the language and several translations into Klingon have
been made:
Gilgamesh and a couple of Shakespeare plays are in print; online of course
there's
more, such as extensive selections from the Bible (linguist Nick Nicholas
has
the full text of the book of Mark on his website, among other
things)... This is
as much as if not more than many minority natural languages have.
I agree with Oldak about "elitist concerns as to the origin of the
language".
If Klingon (or any other language) is to be rejected it should be on at
least
moderately objective criteria, which would pertain to the language's
present,
not its origin--the bar can be higher for a constructed language, but it
should
at least be presented an opportunity to rise above its birth.
It seems [from what I can tell now] that the Klingon Wikipedia was closed
down not
because of any demerit in the language itself, but chiefly because it was
not being
used (having 60 articles at time of closing). tlh.wiktionary, it seems,
has at
least two currently-active users (its admins) and 2,311 content pages.
*Muke!
--
website:
http://frath.net/
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