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Reviving Wikipedia:Conlangs

From:Sai Emrys <sai@...>
Date:Saturday, January 26, 2008, 2:57
So... at this point, the conlangs wikiproject is back up, functional,
and fairly well tagged:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Constructed_languages>.

The old attempt can be seen at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conlangs> - and fwiw, my (>2
years old but still basically representative) opinions on it are at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conlangs/Sai%27s_two_cents>.

It seems to me  that, essentially, the problem on wikipedia for
conlang articles now is notability - though it is officially only a
'guideline', it has been interpreted more and more as a 'policy' (see
e.g. one current deletion discussion:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lingua_Franca_Nova>
among many:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Constructed_languages/Edit_wars_and_deletions>).

By extension, it is assumed that all conlangs or conlang related
resources that are primarily known only within the community and
online are by definition non-notable and thus should be deleted...
which, let's be honest, is pretty much all of it, given that the 'net
is our primary means of communication these days.

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.

2. Abandon Wikipedia as a place to have conlangs discussed when they
don't meet notability criteria, in favor of documentation on a
conlang-centric forum and focusing on a small number of high quality
omnibus articles (e.g. on each genre of conlang and on the handful of
most notable examples that have gotten press). *

3. Make conlangs both notable and verifiable, by publishing academic,
peer-reviewed articles in a conlang-centric journal. *

I'd like to hear any other proposals of course, if you have an idea
for a way that would be stable.

Comments? Which should we do?

- Sai **

* These two will be elaborated on in separate threads, so here please
confine discussion to the 'what should we do about wikipedia' aspect.
** I am writing as myself-personally, not as an LCS representative.
When I do the latter, I always sign with my LCS title.

Replies

Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>