[Foundation-l] On Arabic and sub-language proposals.

Sun Oct 5 13:05:12 UTC 2008

Hello,
It is a well known phenomenon, and interesting to read from you about
it in the Arab world.

In principal, I tend to be as liberal as Gerard: Let people do what
they like to do. On the other hand, practically, I strongly advice
people to think twice about starting a project that has little chance
to grow out to a respectable encyclopedia.

If there is no standard grammar, orthography, dictionary, it is very
difficult to contribute to an encyclopedia in that idiom. In Bavarian
WP (bar.WP; Bavarian is a dialect of German) there is a cleavage
between those who want to conserve the old local dialects, and those
who would like bar.WP to be the forum to create a unified Bavarian
language. In fact, the latter view can be seen as "original research",
and I know of a West Flemish Wikipedian who critisized similar
tendencies in vls.WP with that argument.

So, if there is no linguistic community already that uses the idiom as
a written language in formal situations (like writing an encyclopedia
or scientific works)... then it seems to me not impossible, but very
unlikely that the Wikipedia in that idiom will grow.

Kind regards
Ziko van Dijk

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Manual_for_small_and_new_Wikipedias#Should_I_start_a_new_project.3F

2008/10/5 Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at gmail.com>:
> On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 10:04 AM, Muhammad Alsebaey <shipmaster at gmail.com> wrote:
>> For a language/dialect that has only
>> been spoken till now for the most part, Wikipedia turning it into a written
>> language would be 'original research'
>
> This pretty much sums it all up. If there is no published grammar of a
> language and if there's no written literature in it, then there
> shouldn't be a Wikipedia in it. *Unfortunately*, the time hasn't come
> yet for Wikipedia to be the first publication in any language.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
>  I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
>
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-- 
Ziko van Dijk
NL-Silvolde