"Let all the pretty flowers bloom" Toytoy.
I think Mao said something like that once.
The way I see Wikipedia is just one Encyclopedia with many language
versions. To deny other languages on the basis of not enough members
contributing, or not enough fast growth is to deny a voice to the few
who when added up all together make up a big part of this encyclopedic
project.
Let all the pretty flowers bloom, it adds to the beauty of the garden,
to take these away makes it look like a bed of silk flowers, pretty to
look at from a distance, but up close the spirit is dead. Let the
minor languages coexist with the others, each language brings a shade
of color, and especially, there's beauty of expression and culture
that can only be expressed in one's own mother tongue.
Jay B.
en:User:ILVI
14:20, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
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Apology, but you obviously did not read what I wrote. Please read it again.
I also totally support all the language wikipedias blooming and never asked for any to be
closed (but for a bunch of minor artificial languages admitedly which I think could belong
somewhere in our projects, but NOT as encyclopedias)...
...but for me an encyclopedia is a flower... and a person is a flower as well.
If you let only flowers of a unique color, of a unique size and of a unique flowering
period bloom, then you get a very beautiful but also very flat and boring flower bed
during one month, and a carpet of crushed and drying petals the rest of the year.
When the color of a flower is not pleasant to your eye, you could just avoid having on in
your garden, or avoid looking at it. But destroying it is just not a good solution.
And what I observed on meta was exactly that : the proposal did not please, it could have
been left aside without caring, without giving it any more attention. What I object to is
that the proposal was "closed", not to be discussed any more by *anyone*,
threatened to be *deleted*, and the author treated like a *paria*. This reminds me of
1984. Unique thought and careful removal of people faces on pictures. To avoid anyone
disturbing the perfection of a consensual flower bed.
I do not put glyphosate in my garden to remove all weeds.
anthere
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