Saturday, May 13, 2006

Languages ... languages ... languages ... and contents

Working on WiktionaryZ brings up many, many questions. Today, considering rare and minority languages we encountered a problem: these languages don't have a place on where to publish articles, contents (like in Wikisource), create encyclopaedic contents like in Wikipedia ... definitely we don't have a place for that right now.

One possibility, considering that Multilingual MediaWiki is being programmed, could be to create one wiki per project where languages that don't have enough contributing members can create contents in their language. This would mean we have "one general wiki" for minority and rare langauges where people can create their contents. It could also become the basis for a "new language creation policy" - this means: people can create and edit there, grow their user base, and when certain criteria are met they can pass over to their own project ... but: does this really make sense? I mean: having an own wikipedia means that administration work becomes much more than just editing on a Multilingual MediaWiki ... there people can concentrate on creating contents instead of having to loose time to create and re-create substructures. The same is valid for Wikisource and Wikinews ... hmmm ... I know that this is one of those controversial arguments ... one of those where people fight and talk and talk and talk for hours ...

Fact is: we need a place where new languages (and in these times we are mainly talking about rare and minority languages or languages of regions where people don't have easy Internet access) can easily be started, a place where not too many requirements must be met to start off ... a place that welcomes even one new article a month or one edit a week.

Will we be able, open enough and tolerant enough to have such a place? I really hope so.

There is one strange thing: I planned this article, knew what I wanted to write, but while writing my thoughts went a different way and I just wrote what came into mind ... and this is the result.

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