[Wikipedia-l] Policy draft: Wikimedia projects are not the place for national constitution

Mon Nov 13 20:03:34 UTC 2006

> You showed extremely high level of irresponsibility. As well as all
> people from the community forgot to say me that you are a kid.
> However, I see that it seems that you became mature now... And this is
> good for you. Because your relevancy in talk with other people will
> increase.

Whether or not I am a "kid" is was and is completely irrelevant.
Having a sense of humour is not limited to kids.

> Mark, just read. Some people may want to use Wikipedia in the process
> of nation building. At least, two times people tried that. Zlatiborian
> didn't pass, Siberian passed. However, wish to build a nation is a
> legitimate (I hope this is the right word) wish and people were doing
> that in the past, are doing that now and will be doing that in the
> future.

Zlatiborian was a request for a Wikipedia in a new _language_ same
with Siberian. Yes, they are both the languages of newly-created
"nationalities" which did not previously exist. But a language is a
language.

> One of the importan part of a nation is a national language (of
> course, there are exceptions). And one who wants to make it's own
> nation will try to make a language, too; and, then, to make Wikipedia
> edition in that language.

Yes, but as I said before, Wikipedia requests are to be judged on the
merits of the language itself. Zlatiborian was and clearly is far too
close to BCS to be allowed to have a separate WP; Siberian might be
allowed a separate WP as long as they keep to NPOV and there are no
objections from real Siberians (so far I only see objections from
non-Siberian Russians).

> So, we came to language.
>
> Language may be constructed/artificial or it can be formalized
> dialect. In both cases 5-10 people are enough to force opening
> Wikipedia in such language (cf. Siberian Wikipedia). And their only
> intention was to make national identity around the language and
> Wikipedia in such language.

No -- it doesn't seem to be the actual intention. The primary
intention is furthering and promotion of a language. The secondary
goal may be to legitimize a national identity, but that's not
particularly relevant.

> I hope that it is more clear now or you will continue to pretend that
> you are not understand that?

Not the way you've said it, no. It has nothing to do with nations.
Siberian should be judged as a language alone:

1) Is it in Ethnologue? No.
2) Can it really be found in Google? No.
3) Are there any secondary sources (referring explicitly to Siberian
as codified by Volgota group)? Some recent newspaper articles, so it
does exist, but no books or anything to make it notable.
4) Does it have support from majority of Siberian people? So far,
Siberians in general have not given their opinion.

> Mark, Wikimedia Foundation as well as local chapters, including
> Wikimedia Serbia, are involved as a party in Russian internal politics
> as it supports a group of self-proclaimed separatists because there
> were 10 people who wanted to work on Siberian Wikipedia. Maybe there
> are some principles for which we should fight, but this one is very
> foolish.

We could say the same thing about the Kurdish Wikipedia. Quite simply,
it is at the sole discretion of the WMF to decide what languages it
would like to have and which ones it wouldn't. We can't bend to
pressure from political entities to not have certain languages. They
must be evaluated internally.

> So, there are some other things then number of speakers, too.

As I said before, there are as of yet little opinion from real
Siberian people. I think this is important, and we need to wait for
it.

Mark

-- 
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