Re: Langmaker and FrathWiki (was Re: Wikipedia:Verifiability - Mailing lists as sources)

On 05/03/2008, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
>
>
> True.  What we need is a stronger culture of discussion and assistance
>  among users of the various conlang-related wikis.  The way it is,
>  little use is made of the opportunities the wiki technology offers.
>
>
>  > Second, people could help categorize and standardize each others'
>  > content simply to make it, again, more accessible. Suppose you want to
>  > look up a (say) naturalistic artlang that has clicks and translation
>  > of the Babel text. Doing so now is difficult; you have to rely on
>  > someone knowing someone who's done it. If it were categorized well, it
>  > wouldn't be.
>
>
> Yes.
>
The problem is probably pithily summarised in a word: fear. Not
outright I'm-afraid-he'll-kill-me-if-I-touch-his-page kind of way, but
in a am-I-getting-it-right or maybe a what-if-it-isn't-what-he-meant
way, which pretty much overrides any possibilities wikitech gives us.
I've faced the problem myself, having edited so many Pedia articles
that the first time I came across Frath I had an urge to edit (or at
least copyedit) many of the articles therein, but kept hesitating. For
the above reason.

I think even if there were an explicit purpose, it wouldn't help much
with encouraging edits. Who's to evaluate fulfilment of said purposes?
I tried it once with my friend, with whom I shared intimately my
knowledge, vision etc. about my conworld (Ilethes), and we promised to
add information to each other's pages we could think of. Much of what
we added ended up being shelved anyway because details didn't fit, or
because there was something else like that already, or due to any
number of reasons.

In any event there was even that bit of a tentative step towards
mutual editing, I think, only because we were comfortable with and
confident in each other enough (we practically discussed our conworlds
every day on the phone for a few hours each time, and eventually we
merged them--though sad to say updating has trailed off). An example
of how mutual editing wouldn't work with such intensely personal
creations would be how (I am sure) no one would absolutely dare to
touch any of Ms Caves' work on Teonaht. The temerity! (:

Slightly tangentially, I like to think that my friend and I sparked
off the previous round of updating on Frath that propelled the wiki
from 400+ pages to the current >1000, and be secretly proud of it.
Haha. Mini-ego.

Eugene