Re: Wikipedia:Verifiability - Mailing lists as sources

Hallo!

On Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:22:45 -0500, Rick Harrison wrote:

> I think auxiliary language enthusiasts seek a Wikipedia presence for their
> projects in hopes of attracting users. I know of a couple of auxlangs that
> sought/are seeking ISO 639-3 codes because having one is viewed as proof of
> notability by some Wikipedia editors, and is a pre-requisite (I think) for
> getting a Wikipedia _in_ the auxlang.
Sure, that's what auxlangers are after: peddling their scheme to anybody
even remotely within reach - after all, they want the whole human race
to speak their language.  We artlangers ought to be aloof of such
aspirations.

> No doubt it was the same desire for attention/participants that prompted one
> person to use a bot to generate 100,000 article stubs in the Volapuek
> Wikipedia. This raised the Volapuek Wikipedia's position in the list of
> Wikipedias sorted by number of articles, attracting a lot of attention, not
> all of it favorable. (One response was a proposal to delete the entire
> Volapuek Wikipedia.)
Rotflmao!

> Presumably some artlangers would want their favorite projects to be listed
> for similar reasons: a feeling that one's art is recognized as significant
> and valid, or the possibility of attracting participants to collaborative
> projects.
While I'd appreciate if the art of conlanging and conworlding was to
gain more recognition, I am not taking it all too seriously.  And the
best way to popularize an artlang still is not a Wikipedia article,
but a good book which features that artlang.  After all, that's the
way Tolkien's conlangs became popular.  If JRRT had not written
_The Lord of the Rings_ but instead _A Historical Grammar of the
Eldarin Languages_, his languages would probably have been completely
forgotten, if he had managed to get that book published at all.

> But Wikipedia is such a battleground I believe one has to think carefully
> about how much energy one is willing to put into it. The influential editors
> communicate with each other via secret mailing lists (see "Secret mailing
> list rocks Wikipedia" in The Register, Dec 4 2007, linked from
> wikitruth.info) so that they can gang up on anyone viewed as a heretic.
Secret mailing lists!?!?!?!?!?  Jeepers Creepers!  I seriously don't
want to get involved with any business of that kind.

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