A pure question: is there any means we have a multilingual website for those Classical language rather than saying the default is English?
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 2:58 AM, Milos Rancic <mill...@gmail.com> wrote: > This issue was discussed a number of times here. As some changes has > happened, you should know that. > > Requests for Wikisource in Ancient Greek and Coptic have became > eligible, as well as request for Ancient Greek Wikiquote. The > condition for those projects is to keep default interface in English. > > Rationale: Both languages have large amount of texts and it is > reasonable to keep them separately. At the other side, languages are > not living, which means that interface can't be written in those > languages. As the heritage written in those languages belong to the > whole humanity, there is no common modern language for those who use > those languages in scientific or cultural purposes, and English is > world's lingua franca, the default interface should be in English. > > Consequences: All requests will be considered on case by case basis. > For some ancient languages there is a sense to have separate > Wikisource and Wikiquote, for some it is reasonably to have just > Wikisource, for some it is not. And it is because of various reasons. > > For example, request for Wikisource in Classical Chinese has been > rejected. Written Chinese is not very different for millenniums and WS > in Classical Chinese would have interface in modern Chinese (probably, > in Traditional Hanji), as person who knows Classical Chinese has to > know modern Chinese. Thus, it would be just a fork of Chinese > Wikisource. I find here a wrong assupmtion. First wrong assumption is "Written Chinese is not very different for millenniums", they aren't same, and consequently Edo period Japanese who were taught Classical Chinese already found difficulty to understand the contemporary which was similar to the modern one. Second wrong assumption is "person who knows Classical Chinese has to know modern Chinese." In East Asia, Classical Chinese had been lingua franca of the literate for millenniums, and there are many written sources, the earliest of them are dated at mid 19th C. And it is still taught in some countries including Japan. I, as a highly educated Japanese, read Classical Chinese to some extent, but I don't understand modern Chinese beyond the tourist level. I know many people who can enjoy zh-classical-Wikipedia but cannot (modern) zhwiki. So I object your statement and it wouldn't be just a fork of ZhWS but preferable to be a multilingual project. > The other example which would be rejected is Wikisource in Old Church > Slavonic. There are less than 20 preserved documents written in Old > Church Slavonic and thus there is no need to create a project for such > amount of texts. At the other side, Church Slavonic Wikisource would > have sense and the default interface would be in Russian -- as the > most of those who know to read Church Slavonic, know to read Russian, > too. > > Requests for Wikisource and Wikinews in Esperanto have became > eligible, too. Esperanto projects are treated as projects in any other > language, as Esperanto is a living language. > > Rationale: Esperanto is a living language with significant number of > native speakers. > > Consequences: Esperanto is an exceptional case for artificial > languages. It is the only artificial language which has significant > culture behind itself, as well as there are numerous examples of > Esperanto as a native language. As it is a living language, it can > have the full set of Wikimedia projects. > > The only comparable case with Esperanto is Latin, although Latin is > not an artificial language. As it is a living language, it can get the > full set of projects. > > Request for Wikipedia in Ancient Hebrew has been rejected. It is not > possible to have article about train in Ancient Hebrew and it is not > living language, which means that article about train won't be created > at all. > > Consequences: It is not possible to get Wikipedia in ancient language. > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
