[Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Wikimedia

Tue Nov 8 09:02:21 UTC 2005

Direct contribution is indeed very important, but I
think supporting endangered languages is something we
can do without too much pain and is something that
should be done.

As to the 250 Wikipedias are better than 40 argument,
what I was referring to is the fact that what sets
Wikipedia apart from other encyclopedias - one of the
things that sets is apart - is that it is available in
so many languages, many of which don't normally
receive Internet exposure. I find it amazing that
there's a Wikipedia in Voro, or that there's a
Wikipedia in so many Filipino languages, or in Breton,
or in Cornish!

Of course, having a Wikipedia in dialects or accents
shouldn't be done at all. The things that's worrying
me is that people are now starting to say that as long
as we reach all people with the languages we've got,
that's OK. In Europe, if you have a Wikipedia in every
national language, you've reached 99.99% of people.
But is that the climate we want at Wikipedia?

That's why I say that for every new proposal, we need
concensus on whether that proposal is a language, but
nothing else - none of this "is it necessary?"
business, which I think sets a dangerous precent. The
Low Saxon Wikipedia is useful, the Frisian Wikipedia
is useful, the Voro Wikipedia is useful. All of these
Wikipedias should stay and similar cases should be
approved in the future.

As I said before, there's a difference with proposals
such as Zlatiborian, "Bostonian", etc. In fact, I am
also against languages being renamed for political
reasons, like Moldovan, Montenegrin, etc. I'm also not
particularly favourable to projects like Bavarian,
etc. *However*, as long as we force speakers of
legitimate regional languages like Samogitian, Vlax
Romany, Megleno-Romanian, Sorbian, etc, that haven't
yet got a Wikipedia, to go through an over-rigorous
proposal phase, we're going too far.

I think most of us here are smart enough to
distinguish before languages which are never mentioned
on the internet and have no written standard - and are
therefore "invented" by the person who proposes them -
and legitimate minority languages that need all the
help we can get (if for every paragraph typed arguing
about the Zlatiborian hoax someone wrote one
template-based article at the Voro Wikipedia, we would
have had about 40 articles extra and helped save a
wonderful part of Europe's lingustic heritage...)

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