[Foundation-l] "Historical" languages and constructed languages

Fri Jan 25 14:38:00 UTC 2008

--- Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 24, 2008 11:49 PM, White Cat
> <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If people want to write a wiki in a constructed
> language like Esperanto or a
> > long defunct language like ancient  Egyption
> language or Latin (Vatican
> > doesn't count :P), let them. For example a
> "Wikisource" edition for ancient
> > texts in their original language feels like an
> excellent idea.
> 
> I would consider a wikisource to be an exception to
> this rule. People
> on wikisource aren't creating new content, they are
> simply uploading
> and preserving it. I would venture to suggest that
> the "language" of a
> wikisource project should only represent the
> language that the members
> speak and use for organization, and not necessarily
> the language in
> which the texts need to be. For instance, I think
> it's perfectly
> reasonable to include old latin texts on
> en.wikisource. A multilingual
> wikisource, similar to commons but for source texts,
> still might be
> the far better option then the current
> implementation.

It is not acceptable to put latin texts on en.WS. 
Seriously such a policy have a famous laitn text
repeated over all subdomains with various editions
proofread while others have errors.  Having interwiki
link to the ONE version on la.WS, as is currently
done, works much better.  However some one what you
say is true as Middle English and Anglo-Saxon texts
are perfectly acceptable on en.WS with a regular
english interface.  And el.WS has texts in ancient
greek while the interface is modern. 

You might be interested to know a multilingual WS does
already exist and hosts a number of texts which do not
and active community warranting their own wiki.  I
imagine some of these texts will never have a wiki of
there own, and the multilingual WS will always have a
niche for them.  However it was not the best idea to
keep everything there, like Commons, with an English
interface.  After splitting off the subdomains into
wikis with native interfaces, many of the languages
like French and German had a great amount of success. 

Birgitte SB

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