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Proposals for closing projects/Archive/Latin Wikibooks

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Moved from Proposals for closing projects/Archive. SPQRobin (inc!) 20:23, 23 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]


I've struck this out, as a small group of wonderful people seem to have adopted this as their own and are performing CPR on it right now. As such I feel that this discussion may close.

It has no useful content (everything is already or belongs at Wikisource, and no active users. I was a temporary admin there, but I couldn't fix it. It ought to be deleted. Daniel () Check out Wikiscope! 16:38, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  1. Support. The difference between Wikipedia and Wikibooks, as I see it, is that Wikipedia is academic and Wikibooks is practical. Latin isn't spoken natively anywhere in the world, isn't designed as an interlingual auxiliary, and doesn't have words for anything that didn't exist in ancient times. Hence, it's not a practical language of instruction, even though it's a perfectly good academic language. Seahen 07:15, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support as proposer (for reasons at top of section). Daniel () Check out Wikiscope! 09:39, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose simply because la.wikibooks is hardly a major project at all by any measurement. There are only 12 pages of content in all. You can perhaps suggest these need to be moved to Wikisource. O.K., that may be a good idea. However, this seems to be an indictment of all Latin language projects, and there is no need to single out Wikibooks in this circumstance, nor should it be singled out simply because there isn't too much activity with this project. There are over 60 different Wikibooks projects in other languages that each have less than 50 pages, nor any active users creating content. If this project is to be closed, all 60 should be closed too! A decision to close this project should be based on a larger policy issue to close all minor language projects. --Roberth 14:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    This is not by any means an indictment of the Latin projects. I was quite an active contributor to the Latin Wikipedia a while ago (I've moved on more to Meta at the moment), but the fact remains that the Latin Wikibooks has no useful content. Those 12 pages are all either useless or Wikisource material. I think that the project was started overeagerly, out of a desire to have lots of projects in Latin, without thought as to how to would work. Perhaps there is a place for Latin Wikibooks. But at the moment it is a complete waste of the Foundation's valuble space. Regarding your mention of the other small Wikibooks, I believe that project deletion should be done on a case-by-case basis. The Latin Wikibooks is what I'm talking about, and that I believe is not useful, and should be deleted. Daniel () Check out Wikiscope! 16:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    I hardly call 12 pages of content to be something taking up enormous amounts of hard disk space. Nor does la.wikibooks appear to be chewing up too much bandwidth other than web crawlers that go through and copy everything... even then it won't be much because there isn't much to crawl through. I guess what I'm trying to see is exactly why this very ligitimate language is to be excluded, and to see if you really do understand what Wikibooks is about. Even if all it had is the Latin translations of the Wikijunior books, it would still serve a very useful function. Those books do not belong on Wikisource, and I do see original content being developed in the Latin language, even if it is just for historical language preservation. Certainly an original Latin grammar primer written in Latin would be something that would have a purpose on la.wikibooks, for instance. That is something that (presumably) shouldn't belong on la.wikipedia nor on la.wikisource. --Roberth 23:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Does this statistic (number of articles) count subpages in the article namespace? The Vietnamese Wikibooks uses subpages for most of its books I think, so this might impact its standing in List of Wikibooks. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    the number of articles (or modules for Wikibooks) does count subpages, but it doesn't count things in alternative namespaces like the user pages, help, or project namespace like b:Wikibooks:Staff Lounge. Moving the b:Cookbook to its own namespace has hurt this count for en.wikibooks, for instance. The other issue that affect the page count is that the algorithm also doesn't count smaller pages by doing a character count. The module count for some languages (notably Chinese and other CJK ideograph languages) is adversely affected by this criteria where these languages can express the same ideas in considerably fewer characters. In the case of the Vietnamese Wikibooks, that languages uses a Latin derived alphabet so I would consider the module comparisons to be fairly accurate compared to other Wikibooks projects. --Roberth 18:45, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support: I'm very sad about it (who knows me knows also the reason), but if an active Wikipedia and an active Wikisource in Latin plus a Wikiwide notice by Daniel haven't raised anything but a few loath proposals (mine included), I'm afraid the project will remain a dead branch forever, with a further chance to be mistaken for what it has been mistaken (i.e. Wikisource), and one more spam trap to look after. - εΔω 14:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  5. Oppose. Please keep it. I've explained my opinion there: la:Vicipaedia:Taberna#Caveat (deletion_of_the_Latin_wikibooks). --81.189.27.64 19:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC) (la:Usor:Roland2)[reply]
  6. Oppose : don't close it ; it is a great project, even if it grows slowly (but surely and peacefully !) --Goelano 01:14, 23.09.2006
  7. Oppose: per Goelano, even if it grows slowly, it's not hopeless. As for the interface, I've been working on getting the one at Vicipaedia up and running. Most of it can be directly transferred to Vicifons.--Josh Rocchio 01:04, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Oppose let us try again. It wont be a spam trap or a waste land becouse I, every 2 or tree days, ceck RC The Doc 16:58, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Oppose for the time being: Things have changed and The Doc is now administrator on the Latin wikibooks. He volunteered to rebuild and relaunch the site. There is a number of pages on the Latin wikipedia that could/should be moved to the Latin wikibooks. Let us give the relaunched site some time to flourish. --UV 22:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Oppose Is now used a basis for Latin grammar book. la:Usor:Alex1011
  11. Oppose Excellent resource, even as sparse as it is right now. -Tombrend
  12. Oppose It will get bigger in the future, I just added an Icelandic language page there- and even though it grows slowly, it does grow. I don't see any reason to shut it down. 81.15.30.2 20:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've struck this out, as a small group of wonderful people seem to have adopted this as their own and are performing CPR on it right now. As such I feel that this discussion may close.