Re: Langmaker and FrathWiki (was Re: Wikipedia:Verifiability - Mailing lists as sources)
| From: | Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, February 28, 2008, 21:55 |
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Hallo!
On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:16:08 -0800, Sai Emrys wrote:
> FWIW IMO: Essentially, registry, encyclopedia, and primer are indeed
> different *functions*, but they need not be different *sites*, and
> making them the latter would cause stubbing and other problems.
Sure. They need not be on different sites - but they also need not
be on the same site if they are well-linked to each other.
> Whereas if they're in the same place, all languages could more readily
> get the a good, thorough treatment.
But will they?
> The main article could be, essentially, Wikipedia-ish (if it worked
> :|) NPOV, third person descriptions. Subpages from that could be the
> full first-person elaboration and showcase, in some semi-templated
> form so that it's consistent and well-described.
It would indeed be nice to have encyclopedic articles on conlangs
written by someone else than the authors of the languages; Wikipedia
frowns on articles people write about their own projects for good
reasons. The problem, of course, is that with many conlangs, the
author is the only one who knows the language well enough to write
an encyclopedic article on it :) However, if the language is
published, one can use the published material as source material
for a third-party article.
> And that's the other reason not to separate it. If it's all in one
> place, then you can much more easily get the critical mass (as it
> were) of people needed to make it self-sustaining. If it's separated,
> then it gets too fragile and dependent on individuals who will
> inevitably get overwhelmed by other things in life from time to time.
I don't see how a merger will change this.
> I think we all agree that Jeffrey's done an awesome job. His work
> should be preserved and merged. But it shouldn't *rely* on him to
> continue to be a valuable (and fresh) resource.
Yep. Langmaker needs more contributors.
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:08:31 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> What you say is Good and True, *except* that both Langmaker
> and FrathWiki have been around for years, and merging them
> and/or start a new site which would wholly or partly
> replace them would require the agreement and cooperation of
> a lot of people -- essentially everybody who have ever
> contributed to either of the existing sites --, while in
> reality a large segment wouldn't bother, and another
> segment would be upset. If the old sites still exist there
> will inevitably come people along and add content to them
> being unaware of the new site.
>
> Still it could be done with a lot of work, a lot of
> canvassing, the Preloader extension and a lot of scary
> transclusions/soft redirects. If enough people are
> interested in doing such a projectI might definitely open
> conlang.se for it.
What makes sense to me is to start with Langmaker, turn it
into a collaborative project, and add more information (such
as typological data) to the Langmaker records. Maybe even
a grammar sketch if there is none on a public web site already
or what is already there is too messy to be useful as a work
of reference.
> But what to call it, as Conlang Wiki is
> already taken. Conlang index? (Or Conlang windex as in
> Conlang clearinghouse? :-)
I don't know. "Conlang Index" would be good.
> FrathWiki could clearly live on as a more informal site for
> presentation and self-expression, but Langmaker would
> essentially be eclipsed by such a new project, which could
> upset or relieve the people involved with Langmaker,
> depending.
Yes.
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:38:38 -0500, Jim Henry wrote:
> Where are the encyclopedic articles on the art of conlanging
> at FrathWiki? There are a few such articles linked from the main
> page at
http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page, but I can't
> easily find such articles, if they exist, on FrathWiki.
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