Re: Reviving Wikipedia:Conlangs

On Jan 25, 2008 9:57 PM, Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:

> It seems to me  that, essentially, the problem on wikipedia for
> conlang articles now is notability - though it is officially only a
> As far as I can tell there are only really three options (which are
> not entirely exclusive):
>
> 1. Remove notability as a guideline, either generally or specifically,
> in favor of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-notability type
> criteria. Would be difficult, given the current trend towards
> deletionism.
Not really much of an option.

> 3. Make conlangs both notable and verifiable, by publishing academic,
> peer-reviewed articles in a conlang-centric journal. *
I'd like to see this done (and help with doing it to
the extent time allows), and I've proposed it before.

There's another option, given this:

>>The website or content has won a well-known and independent award
from either a publication or organization.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(web)

If the LCS establishes a set of annual conlang awards
(probably voted on in the early part of the year and
awarded/announced at the LCC, like the Hugo Awards
at Worldcon) then the winners of the award would
have a strong notability argument.

I don't think the conlang awards should be focused
on works published in the last calendar year like the
Hugos, however.  Most conlangs that were first made
public in the last year aren't complete enough to be
award-worthy yet; it usually takes several years
for a conlang to develop enough to be worthy of
admiration and imitation, and these days most
conlangers publish their work incrementally rather
than waiting until the conlang is "complete" to publish
anything.

I would tentatively propose that any conlang be eligible
for the award(s), no matter when it was first published
or when the last updates to it were published,
unless it has already won an award.

Or maybe there could be separate categories for
conlangs still under active development
and older conlangs that haven't been changed recently?
(The latter including conlangs by dead people, maybe.)

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/review/log.htm