[Foundation-l] Please REJECT the latin wikinews project. inmediatly

Sun Jun 22 22:58:34 UTC 2008

On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 5:20 AM, Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I am not so happy about the rules for allowing new Wikipemia
> projects... as Latin Wikipedia has proved to do very well (much better
> than many languages with many native speakers), and as there are Latin
> news e.g. at Finnish radio, I don't see a problem with allowing
> Wikinews in Latin.

For a 'pedia to be doing "well", it needs to be creating content that
would not have been created elsewhere.

Projects in languages which have native speakers are able to easily
attain this, as contributors may speak no other language, and thus the
project brings them into the fold.  The same can't be said of Latin,
as all contributors will have been able to contribute to a different
'pedia.

The Latin Wikipedia provides an opportunity for people of different
native languages to collaborate in Latin, but in reality, this is
rarely happening.  It is not a beacon of free content creation.  It is
a social experiment that is self-sustaining, and I am sure it will
become more useful as time goes on.

I very much doubt a Latin Wikinews will be self-sustaining.  I would
be more inclined to believe the proponents if they were high volume
Wikinews contributors, or they were highly active in other Latin
projects.

--
John