Re: [Foundation-l] What to do with moribund languages?
2009/1/5 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com: 3. A language with ~1-10M speakers from Sub-Saharan Africa. Such language probably has a written form made by some missionaries during the past centuries (or a very similar language has a written form which may be used). However, the most of the population probably don't know to read and write. This is a kind of task where WMF should be connected with other global, regional or local educational initiatives. Such language should get all projects, but at the time when they are able to handle that. Preservation tasks may be useful, too. I agree with all your points from this email, but especially with this one. -- 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] What to do with moribund languages?
2009/1/4 Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com: As far as I know, _all_ new languages are supposed to show their possibility at the incubator nowadays, which to me means that there is no need for a separate policy on these languages. My proposal would be: * Give a warning to the proposer that the language edition is likely to fail * Maybe be a bit stricter before allowing the language out of the incubator (larger languages might get away with a bit lower requirements because there is some 'expected future activity' to compensate) Indeed, no new policy is needed, but the massive multilingualism of WikiMedia could become a ground for revitalization of moribund languages. I'd be glad to see WMF supporting such initiatives, if the people who propose them prove that they are serious. Many such languages are spoken in Russia, for example. So, how much would this cost: * Plain ticket to Russia. * 10 laptops * A few days of training: how to login to WP, how to edit, how to scan, OCR, and proofread. Wouldn't that be a tiny small fraction of those $6M? -- 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] What to do with moribund languages?
Hoi, The notion that a language is moribund is problematic. Choosing a level of 100 speakers is arbitrary, because who says so. The requirements are that someone who speaks the language natively is part of the starting project is already tough. When people have created an incubator project, the language committee does check if the language is indeed what it is said to be. In the end, small languages do not cost us much anyway. New projects start nowadays with at least some 200/300 articles and consequently new projects are bigger then the bottom 40 Wikipedias What I find more problematic are the people who suggest new project because they just think it a good idea. They waste our time. New languages are welcome, but we really need a community to support any language project. Thanks, GerardM 2009/1/4 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com I realized that at Requests for new languages [1] we have a number of proposals for projects in moribund languages [2]. In brief, when roughly less than 1000 dominantly older persons speak one language, this language will be dead when those speakers die. Even some larger languages [than mentioned ones], like Lower Sorbian [3] is (with ~15.000 of speakers) are deeply endangered and it is almost predictable that this language won't be alive in the next century. But, cases like Lower Sorbian one is -- are border cases -- and I don't see a problem with creating such project inside of the standard procedure. However, we have some number of cases where project is requested for a language with less than 100 older speakers. My proposal is to do the next in the cases of moribund languages: * Reject proposal for project creation. * Suggesting them to put their language corpus at [multilingual] Wikisource. * Allowing them to work on Incubator if they really want to spend some efforts on language revival. * If a project at Incubator shows possibilities to be a live one, they may ask for project again, when they will have to pass all necessary steps (localization of MediaWiki and so on). This is a kind of a political issue, so I prefer to see discussion here before discussion at Language subcommittee. [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death [3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Sorbian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] What to do with moribund languages?
Hoi, The notion of redundancy of articles in minority languages coming from you Milos is painful. There is typically an article of a majority language that arguably covers the subject best. All other articles are redundant because you can use something like Google translate to share the benefit of the best. While the article in Lower Sorbian may not be as good as the German or Polish article, it is still part of the maze of articles that makes up this encyclopaedic effort. Given that all projects have their room to grow, we should let them and be happy when they do. It is not for the language committee to opine about the relative value of a language. When it is a living language, it is eligible and when the other requirements are met, it is for the people who support their project, their language to make it as good as they can. The requirements for new projects have one aim and one aim only; to prevent more moribund *projects*. It it painful and stupid to have Wikipedias that never got a first article or are not in the language they are supposed to be. When a language is extinct or almost extinct, we might allow for a Wikisource in such a language. These are conservation projects. I have no opinion if Wikisource and MediaWiki provide the appropriate environment for such a project. I would not be surprised when other platforms do a better job for such languages. Incubator is in and of itself a temporary affair. This is its original purpose. Thanks, GerardM 2009/1/4 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com I wasn't precise while describing my intention, so I'll try to do it now with responses to the previous emails. * About moribund languages: It is not a precise term, but it is possible to make some description and to realize where are the borders of the term. For example, a language with ~15.000 speakers would be a very alive language if it is spoken at some Pacific island. However, if it is spoken inside of much stronger culture with a different dominant language (the case of Lower Sorbian) or the population is too disperse inside of some area (let's say, dialects of Ladino at Balkans), such language is at the edge. The good side of that position is a possibility for the revival of that language (like in the case of Welsh). But, any kind of our positioning is related to the contemporary linguistic situation, not to a future one. * Policy: Just to say that I am not talking about new policies, but about preferences of LangCom members. As it was mentioned, in the most of the cases such language wouldn't get a new project. In the mean time we did nothing. Even there is really one person who is a native speaker, such person would loose the initial enthusiasm after a couple of months of waiting for the project. * Intention: So, i think that in such cases we should think about what is more important to a particular endangered or moribund language. For example, having an article about the Earth in Lower Sorbian is fully redundant. All of the speakers of Lower Sorbian are able to read much better article in German. Similar situations are with the most of endangered and moribund languages. Those languages are usually not endangered or moribund because of physical extinction of the population (except in Paupa New Guinea and some other similar places in the world, but it is not so hard to predict that we won't get any native speaker of those [endangered or moribund] languages soon), but because of dominance of surrounding culture(s) and language(s). If we want to help to such linguistic group, we shouldn't force them to pass our standard procedure. One-person project may work just if it is a life dedication of that person. In almost 100% of the cases, we won't get MediaWiki localized, we won't get more than ~50-100 articles at Incubator and so on. So, our response should be: Don't waste time with making your own Wikipedia (by passing our measures made because of completely different reasons), but try do something important for your language. Writing oral literature, writing dictionaries and similar are much more useful task than trying to write the article about the Earth. We have enough resources (particularly, Wikisource and Incubator) to help to the speakers of endangered and moribund languages. My intention was not to forbid such projects, not to make some new policy, but to make some more efficient procedure for such cases. The other option is to wait for years in the process of discussion about some proposal. And such languages are in the position to loose 1% of speakers every month. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] What to do with moribund languages?
On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, The notion that a language is moribund is problematic. A language is moribund as long as no-one speaking natively that language is objecting. This non-arbitrary definition has become de-facto standard since the street paving process in the hitchhikers' guide intro. Mathias ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] What to do with moribund languages?
I wasn't precise while describing my intention, so I'll try to do it now with responses to the previous emails. * About moribund languages: It is not a precise term, but it is possible to make some description and to realize where are the borders of the term. For example, a language with ~15.000 speakers would be a very alive language if it is spoken at some Pacific island. However, if it is spoken inside of much stronger culture with a different dominant language (the case of Lower Sorbian) or the population is too disperse inside of some area (let's say, dialects of Ladino at Balkans), such language is at the edge. The good side of that position is a possibility for the revival of that language (like in the case of Welsh). But, any kind of our positioning is related to the contemporary linguistic situation, not to a future one. * Policy: Just to say that I am not talking about new policies, but about preferences of LangCom members. As it was mentioned, in the most of the cases such language wouldn't get a new project. In the mean time we did nothing. Even there is really one person who is a native speaker, such person would loose the initial enthusiasm after a couple of months of waiting for the project. * Intention: So, i think that in such cases we should think about what is more important to a particular endangered or moribund language. For example, having an article about the Earth in Lower Sorbian is fully redundant. All of the speakers of Lower Sorbian are able to read much better article in German. Similar situations are with the most of endangered and moribund languages. Those languages are usually not endangered or moribund because of physical extinction of the population (except in Paupa New Guinea and some other similar places in the world, but it is not so hard to predict that we won't get any native speaker of those [endangered or moribund] languages soon), but because of dominance of surrounding culture(s) and language(s). If we want to help to such linguistic group, we shouldn't force them to pass our standard procedure. One-person project may work just if it is a life dedication of that person. In almost 100% of the cases, we won't get MediaWiki localized, we won't get more than ~50-100 articles at Incubator and so on. So, our response should be: Don't waste time with making your own Wikipedia (by passing our measures made because of completely different reasons), but try do something important for your language. Writing oral literature, writing dictionaries and similar are much more useful task than trying to write the article about the Earth. We have enough resources (particularly, Wikisource and Incubator) to help to the speakers of endangered and moribund languages. My intention was not to forbid such projects, not to make some new policy, but to make some more efficient procedure for such cases. The other option is to wait for years in the process of discussion about some proposal. And such languages are in the position to loose 1% of speakers every month. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] What to do with moribund languages?
Well, I remember I read some very interesting articles, mainly from ethnologists in Scientific American about language conservation. Personally I think that language conservation is something that is meaningful and should be done. But I have doubt if WikiMedia can or should host projects for this purpose. In most cases these languages don't have their own writing system. And as you said, most people that are still speaking these language are old people and most likely less educated. They don't have the expertise to write down these languages and to systematically catalog and conserve these languages. So this work is mostly done by ethmologists that work on these projects. Personally I don't think that amateurs can really help here. Most likely would amateurs do more harm (just like the amateur archaeologists of the 19th centory, who indeed destroyed a lot). This is for the first thing. As the word language conservation already implies. It is a matter of conserve. These languages can most likely be used to describe the near places and peoples where the languages are used, maybe folklores and myths and such things. You cannot use it to describe high energy physics or construction of microwavers or Taiwan conflict. So, I don't think that Wikipedia is a right place for such projects, nor any other projects we currently have. If there are scientific institutions that want to talk with the Foundation about collaborations of language conservation projects I think it is worthwhile a consideration. But if it is only some amateurs who want to do it. I don't see any reason to treat such projects with another set of standards as we are now using. Ting Milos Rancic wrote: I realized that at Requests for new languages [1] we have a number of proposals for projects in moribund languages [2]. In brief, when roughly less than 1000 dominantly older persons speak one language, this language will be dead when those speakers die. Even some larger languages [than mentioned ones], like Lower Sorbian [3] is (with ~15.000 of speakers) are deeply endangered and it is almost predictable that this language won't be alive in the next century. But, cases like Lower Sorbian one is -- are border cases -- and I don't see a problem with creating such project inside of the standard procedure. However, we have some number of cases where project is requested for a language with less than 100 older speakers. My proposal is to do the next in the cases of moribund languages: * Reject proposal for project creation. * Suggesting them to put their language corpus at [multilingual] Wikisource. * Allowing them to work on Incubator if they really want to spend some efforts on language revival. * If a project at Incubator shows possibilities to be a live one, they may ask for project again, when they will have to pass all necessary steps (localization of MediaWiki and so on). This is a kind of a political issue, so I prefer to see discussion here before discussion at Language subcommittee. [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death [3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Sorbian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
