[Foundation-l] Fwd: Tokipona

Mon Jan 21 23:08:14 UTC 2008

Nathan,

No, the subcommittee is discussing how to deal with constructed
languages in general. Currently, any natural language must have both
an ISO 639 code and living native communities (that is, extinct
languages are not allowed). Constructed languages are a gray zone;
should we allow all constructed languages with ISO 639 codes, or
require native users as we do with natural language, or invent a new
objective requirement just for constructed languages?

If we do make a new requirement just for constructed languages, it
must be objective; for example, we can't just require "a lot of
speakers" without defining "a lot" and "speakers", and explaining such
details as whether "I spent ten minutes learning Esperanto on a
tutorial site" counts as a "speaker". ("Speakers" would also disallow
signed languages that meet the requirements, which we don't want to
do.)

I personally favour making no exception at all for constructed
languages, so that the requirement for native users applies to them as
well. When a constructed language becomes so useful that native users
pop up, it would be eligible for a project under this policy.

What would you suggest?

Mark,

The question of historical languages has to do with the goals of the
Wikimedia Foundation. For example, it would not be a huge problem to
make a SocialNetworking Wikipedia, and maybe it would even have
benefits for social networking or the community, but it is outside
Wikimedia's stated mission (below) to do so.

The argument against wikis in historical languages is similar, based
on the Wikimedia Foundation's mission of providing information to
people. If there are no native users of a language, creating a wiki in
that language would not provide information to more people; it would
simply be an academic exercise or promote and develop the language,
none of which are Wikimedia goals. Instead, we should open projects in
languages that people speak today.

While one can argue that constructed languages are used today and
allow many people to collaborate on a common resource, this cannot be
stated for historical languages.

As for Coptic, I imagine the classification can be corrected if you
provide reliable sources for it having native speakers. A batch of
corrections and additions were approved just this week.

-- 
Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
(No messages by those on the language subcommittee are official.)