Brion-
There are also many endangered languages with *fewer*
speakers than
there are active speakers of Toki Pona or Klingon.
Well, considering Toki Pona has about a handful of "speakers" (none of
which speak Toki Pona exclusively or even for a substantial amount of
their time), I doubt that they would be worth including.
Getting _them_ to
put together some encyclopedia material in their native languages would
probably earn somebody a nice PhD in linguistics or anthropology, and
would be very very worthy of our support.
Why? They can set up their own wiki (or use my affordable wiki hosting
service). Wikipedia is about building an encyclopedia, not about earning
PhDs in linguistics. You are entering original research territory here.
Not everything that some people may consider worth doing is worth doing on
Wikimedia's property.
The cost is minor,
I disagree. If we lose professionals because of our Elvish or Klingon
factions, that is a major cost. If this whole multilanguage thing gets out
of control, that is more and more likely to happen.
and we've got plenty of "real languages"
with fewer
interested contributors (total speakers or not), with dozens of
barely-scratched wikis already set up and unused.
Most of the inactive wikis at least have the realistic potential to become
highly active when the respective speaking population gains Internet
access, and they can read whatever it is we produce (given a print
edition).
If you want to
improve the signal/noise ratio, I humbly suggest you concentrate on
boosting the signal.
Concentrate, yes. Ignore the noise, no. We have to draw the line
*somewhere*, and if you do not suggest an alternative to the 10,000
speaker requirement I have to presume that you want to draw it *nowhere*.
The inclusion of Toki Pona sets a highly questionable precedent.
Regards,
Erik