[Wikipedia-l] Request for new Wikipedia: Friulian

Sat Oct 30 11:15:31 UTC 2004

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 00:11:02 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I propose we adopt Wikitravel's policy of requiring at least five
> > potential contributors before starting a new language. See
> > http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Language_version_policy
> 
> Hmm, how many of the Wikipedias with currently over 100 articles
> started out with more than 5 contributors? From personal experience
> alone, I can guarantee you that lb: (with currently over 1000
> articles) and kw: (with currently over 200 articles) did not, and I'm
> sure many or even most other Wikipedias are in the same situation.

Looking at the statistics
(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediansContributors.htm),
I find only 6 Wikipedia languages with 5 contributors in the first
month of their 'real' existence: en, he, fa, ast, be and tokipona. In
the second month this was reached by de, pl, fi, bg, ro, uk, ur. For
all other Wikipedias there was more difference between the time of
their first and their fifth user, although in reality there may be
some more because there might be non-registered users as well.

My own opinion is that a non-dead natural language with an ISO 639
code would in principle be okay for Wikipedia. There can of course be
exceptions, but to me at that moment the burden of proof lies with
those who disagree.

Andre Engels