[Wikipedia-l] Request for new Wikipedia: Friulian

Sat Oct 30 18:57:42 UTC 2004

Mark Williamson wrote:

>On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 07:37:19 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 23:20:37 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I'd like to request a new Wikipedia for the Friulian language.
>>>      
>>>
>>I don't feel that one person who admits to being rarely online is
>>enough to justify the creation of a new language Wikipedia.
>>    
>>
>If you read it, you'll see that this person claims to have another
>Friulian person interested in working on it.
>
The big problem here is that it's neither of these two people who are 
carrying the advocacy.  Both supports appear passive.  These people are 
likely to write a few very good articles, but they are not the people 
who are likely to carry on to make the wiki operational for other 
Friulian speakers.  I would feel much warmer to the idea if this request 
were being made by a Friulian speaker.  Often if you ask someone whether 
they would be willing to help with a project you will get a very polite 
yes, but that does not easily translate into real work.

>>>This would be my third request for an Italian minority language
>>>Wikipedia... having requested only a few Wikis, I find it quite
>>>strange that three of them should be Italian minority languages (1.
>>>Sardinian sc:, 2. Sicilian scn:, 3. Friulian)
>>>      
>>>
>>Sardinian and Sicilian have only 28 articles between them. The lack of
>>success of these so far should be taken into account when deciding
>>whether another minority language should be started without a more
>>significant number of supporters willing to edit that Wikipedia.
>>    
>>
>Sardinian is admittedly a dud. Sicilian is still growing steadily, and
>I'm sure they'd not appreciate the not-so-nice things you seem to
>think of them.
>
Mark, how many articles have you contributed to either of these?

>>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.
>
I don't particularly think that the 5 contributor proposal is the best.  
If they are all passive it will still get nowhere.  Having even just one 
person who is both willing and able to do the work goes a lot further, 
especially if that person has a proven track record in one of the other 
wikis, perhaps even sysop experience.  And even so that should be the 
person making the request, not Mark.

>Also, my definition of "potential contributors" means all the people
>who speak the language and have Internet access, which in the case of
>Friulian is well over 5.
>
What fraction of the world's English speaking population is currently 
involved in the en:Wikipedia or any other English language sister project?

>And how many people speak Kannada? Is it a language with only a couple
>hundred thousand speakers, like some of our active Wikipedias with
>over 100 (or even 1000) articles? No... not really... Well, what about
>under 1 million? No, not really. Under 10 million? Not really.
>
Far more than speak Friulian.

>Just as if we required people on en: to request a new article we would
>have much fewer articles, it takes more time and effort and may be
>confusing to some to figure out how to request a new language.
>
Educated Friulians also speak Italian.  Educated Karnatakans also speak 
English.

>And how are they to know if there are already two people who would be
>interested in the creation of such a Wikipedia?
>
By discussing it with the people they know.

>If you are interested in multilingualism, internationalism, and
>ultimately the building of an NPOV encyclopaedic resource in *any*
>language, it makes no sense to advocate such restrictions.
>
These "restrictions" are designed to promote the idea that a new wiki 
should have a chance to succeed.

>But if we pursue such a policy, I do believe a fork with more liberal
>policies regarding multilingualism is in order
>
What makes you think that the operators of this hypothetical fork will 
not face the same problems?

>If we deny such an opportunity
>to them, then I can no longer in good faith claim to support this
>organisation fully and will consider creating a new site and a new
>foundation with similar principles but with a stronger interest in
>having policies more greatly favouring multilingualism than what you
>have proposed.
>  
>
You absolutely have that right, but I doubt that it will go beyond 
"consider".  :-)

Ec