Re: A proposal to bring together the conlang communities

li_sasxsek@NUTTER.NET wrote:

> I'm just wondering if this isn't just reinventing the wheel.
> There already is a conlang wiki out there at Langmaker.com.
> Unfortunately it hasn't been too well maintained lately (server
> failures, etc.) but it's a perfectly good resource.
There's also FrathWiki, which I prefer because it also covers
concultures and world-building. Languages are the main focus of my
interest, but a language needs people to speak it, who need their own
culture and a world to live in. So I end up with pages like my Zireen
music page (http://wiki.frath.net/Zireen_music) with very little conlang
content.

> Ideally, I'd say it would be nice to have a wiki for news and
> information.  "Journals" could be posted in PDF form for cheap
> and easy distribution so those that need paper can still print
> them out.  Discussions could be on a blog, but with an e-mail
> option, and maybe even mirrored on Usenet or vice-versa.  The
> site could include sub-categories for those with more
> specialized interests like auxlangers, conworlders, loglangers,
> Tolkien-fans, and even specific languages if there is enough
> demand.  The biggest thing though would be to get rid of all
> these little groups dedicated to general conlang discussion and
> combine them into one forum.  Currenly I'm a member of at least
> a dozen conlang-related groups on Yahoo, in addition to Conlang
> and Auxlang, and I do still participate on
> alt.language.artificial.
The PDF thing could be good for more polished articles with
illustrations, more professional-looking typography, etc. but it would
also be convenient if the text of those journals would be available in
an alternate web-page format for quick browsing. I don't know about the
blog format for discussions. I guess I think of blogs as discussions
directed mainly by one person with comments from visitors to the site.

> This does bring up one question though.  How would we fit in our
> non-anglophone conlangers into the picture?  One of those groups
> on Yahoo is in Spanish.  The this überlist be a free-for-all
> with people posting in all (nat+con) languages?  It would be
> hard to say no to that since people will want to use their
> creations as well.
How do other wikis deal with languages? I know that Wikipedia has all
kinds of cross-linking between languages, but I don't have any idea how
that could be managed (someone who's bilingual must set up each link?)
Or it could be more of an association of related sites in different
languages like the Encyclopaediae Pokémonis (English articles on
bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net, German articles on www.pokewiki.de, etc).

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