[Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

Thu Feb 10 17:08:47 UTC 2005

Pablo Saratxaga wrote:

> If there is a real will to write an encyclopedia, then it should be
> accepted, whatever the language;
> but if there isn't a will to write an encyclopedia of human knowledge,
> then it shouldn't (and I insist on *human* knowledge; while an
> encyclopedia on the world of the Middle Earth would be a very nice
> project, it doesn't fit Wikipedia).

As I tried to indicate earlier, even that concern should take a back 
seat to whether there's a need for an encyclopedia in a given language 
from the reader's perspective.  What makes Wikipedia work isn't so much 
the writers, but the readers -- because the readers BECOME the writers 
when they realize that something they want to find in Wikipedia isn't 
there, or isn't complete.

That's how I got started in editing Wikipedia: I looked up information 
about a dinosaur, out of idle curiosity, and saw that it didn't yet 
exist.  I ended up creating the article in English because that's the 
language in which I was looking for the information.  How many people 
will be able to say that about Quenya?  I think it's telling that the 
first we heard about a Quenya Wikipedia was someone who has been sitting 
around accumulating self-written articles, and not someone that said 
"Hey, I was looking for an article about such-and-such in this language, 
but there's no listing for the language.  Can we fix this?"

Nobody's going to put much effort into writing encyclopedia articles 
(for very long) that nobody's reading.

--
Chad