[Wiktionary-l] Klingon Wiktionary closed

[Dmcdevit]

Muke Tever wrote:
> Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>   
>> Dmcdevit wrote:
>> (...)
>>     
>>> Your notion that Klingon, the language of a fictional alien race on a
>>> popular American television show, has some kind of existence separate
>>> from its origins is absurd. It only needs to be rejected for its
>>> present: which is as a linguistically unimportant, functionally
>>> nonexistent, and educationally useless language to write a dictionary in.
>>>       
>> I agree with the closing of this Wiktionary, and this argument says it all.
>>     
>
> It is not an argument, it is rhetoric.  And very weak, at that.  It can be used
> with equal force by the other side, e.g.
>     >> Our language is considered linguistically unimportant, functionally
>     >> nonexistent, and educationally useless. It is thus all the more imperative
>     >> that we produce a dictionary in it.
>
> Prejudice like that against a natural language (which is very often expressed in
> the world) would, I hope, never stand here against the opening of a wiki.  The only
> remaining part of the agreed-with argument is that it is a constructed language, and
> we have not been deleting wikis merely because they belong to constructed languages.
>
> 	*Muke!
>   
You are under the misimpression that I don't like Klingon *because* it 
is a constructed language. Nowhere have I said that. I have given actual 
reasons, including its lack of speakers, lack of literature, lack of 
significance, lack of educational use. On the other hand, if your 
argument *is* "Our language is considered linguistically unimportant, 
functionally nonexistent, and educationally useless. It is thus all the 
more imperative that we produce a dictionary in it" that's not a 
problem. The problem would be using that argument to create an 
admittedly "educationally useless" dictionary as a WMF project rather 
than on an external site. Inclusion guidelines are not prejudice; if you 
are against any vetting of supposed languages at all, I think you are 
fighting a losing battle. Wiktionary is not for promotion of your pet 
project, so this is beginning to sound rather like the sort of argument 
I hear when I delete some kid's protologism on Wiktionary, of some high 
school band on Wikipedia ("The world doesn't know about it/us yet; 
that's why we need an article!"). In fact, it *is* important that our 
work support educational purposes, and it's not unreasonable to demand that.

Dominic