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Ancient Greek Wikisource

[edit]
See also the second request (verified as eligible).
submitted verification final decision
This proposal has been closed as part of a reform of the request process.
This request has not necessarily been rejected, and new requests are welcome. This decision was taken by the language committee in accordance with the Language proposal policy.

The closing committee member provided the following comment:

This discussion was created before the implementation of the Language proposal policy, and it is incompatible with the policy. Please open a new proposal in the format this page has been converted to (see the instructions). Do not copy discussion wholesale, although you are free to link to it or summarise it (feel free to copy your own comments over). —{admin} Pathoschild 06:39, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Proposal summary
Please read the handbook for requesters for help using this template correctly.
  • Approximate number of speakers: 2200
  • Locations spoken: Official language of Autonomous Monastic Republic of Mt Athos, Greece, and official Language of Greek Orthodox Church
  • Closely related languages, if any: Modern Greek; this is an indo-european language, so has some links with many others.
  • External links to organizations that promote the language: None, really, as a spoken language. However, as a written language, there are various organisations, from the JACT to the Perseus Project and the Scared Texts Archive which might be worth noting.

grc is not currently available for WikiSource. This seems bizarre, as, while the language has no native speakers, we have texts that are considered among the foundations of western literature. At the moment, (as far as I know) all we have across Wikimedia are translations of works like the Iliad, the Odyssey, the New Testament (bar a few example scraps on WP). While there are other projects, such as the aforementioned Perseus which do have texts online, the format is difficult to read, as texts are cut to one small webpage, and is more geared towards reading and vocabulary tools than simple source text transmission.--Nema Fakei 15:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've just been directed to el where some texts can be found. I must say, it's not ideal: for a start I'd searched for texts on el before posting this and couldn't find them.--Nema Fakei 15:56, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The database at el: contains 150 articles in Ancient Greek plus Odyssey and Ilias Andreas01:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Great! --Nema Fakei 10:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Biblical texts (NT, septuagint) are here. Andreas198.168.139.157 16:50, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose- There are already a lot of texts in wikisource:el:Main Page so this would be duplication, unless somebody would bother to move all these texts. In any case nothiing should be done before discussing this with the people working on the el: project. In my opinion, our effort should go to improve the categories in the el: project. Andreas20:19, 24 May 2006 (UTC). I posted a notice there. Andreas20:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
There's no need for duplication: just move them transwiki to grc. That way, we can build on existing efforts, while making the texts more accessible to people who don't know Modern Greek.--Nema Fakei 20:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You do not have to know Ancient Greek to navigate: there is a box on the main page labelled "Κατάλογος συγγραφέων", you click on the first letter and get a list of authors. Have also a look on the list "Νέα κείμενα" just below it, there are constantly uploading new Ancient texts. Andreas01:59, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think grc: is a duplication of el: because they are two different languages as latin and italian. Hi! Francesco Gabrielli
  • Strong Support. We could move any appropriate sources, but the idea is to diversify. Let's extend Helenic culture even further into cyberspace. BTW, I wish that there was some way of putting rough and smooth breathing marks into our Greek texts on Wiki.--Drboisclair 20:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Rough and smooth breathings can be entered with polytonic keyboard settings, or by copying and pasting. They're all unicode characters, and many articles on en:WP have them.--Nema Fakei 20:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This language is necessary, it's (with latin) the foundations of western literature, and western culture!!! Francesco Gabrielli
  • Mild Support I agree that -grc is quite different from -el, that a -grc wikisource is a needed achievement to pursue, and finally that an interface in a different language would make navigation easier (but that's another problem: see s:la:Vicifons:Scriptorium to have a grasp of the Babelic discussions in a latin language environment). My main concern is about Unicode input. While el.source seems to have all the correct organization to let users of greek keyboards input seamlessly ancient texts, Ancient Greek (in Unicode) is currently a big trouble for my activities: I have to use BabelMap to type very very slowly. I can't think of myself inserting and correcting long Greek texts... that keeps and shall keep me far from el.source. if technical problems are resolved my concern disappear instantly. - εΔω 08:43, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Ναὶ ναί (Support) -grc and -el are quite different and Ancient Greek deserves a place on Wikisource. Technical problems can be adressed rather easily. The Liégeois keyboard is a good choice for French or Belgian AZERTY users. I have no doubt similar tools exist for QWERTY keyboards. w:fr:Utilisateur:Jastrow10:05, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Support A large body of important non-copyright text that deserves a category of its own. The current -el resources aren't really very easily accessible or noticeable which is presumably why so little is available. Regarding technical manners, if you're using windows, also try Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. It's very quick and easy to create a custom keyboard layout from scratch or based on a current one or there's the built in Greek Polytonic keyboard.--Lo2u 11:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Cicero dicebat, Plato docebat.... --Philx 11:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Τὶ γάρ; Ancient and Modern Greek texts should be separated. As to the technical difficulties, there shouldn't be any if you have Windows XP or 2000. Just make sure to define the built-in Greek keyboard as "Polytonic", and you'll be able to write Greek just as easily as any other language. 87.49.107.105 13:03, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support Ancient Greek is one of those languages that many people would be interested in, for cultural, religious, or literary reasons, but the scarcity of resources outside of universities and seminaries presents a great impediment. --65.79.36.130 18:22, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support- 158.143.185.169 23:39, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral I feel that the problem is not the lack of Ancient Greek texts from Wikisource but where to find them. I'm one of the el.wikisource users and we were contributing with Ancient Greek texts from the first day our subdomain was created. Different or not, most Greeks are able to read (but not write) ancient greek up to some level even if they were never been taught ancient greek in school (just like me), but I'll leave the linguistic aspect to linguists. Besides that, I wonder who will put ancient greek texts in grc.wikisource after what will be transwikied from el, and why they didn't put them in el until now. For people contributing to el.wikisource (most of them are also contributors to el.wikipedia) dividing the project will mean one more wiki to participate and I'm not sure if all would like to follow. It seems very probable that this will result to a grc.wikisource with only ancient greek texts and an el.wiki with both ancient and modern texts. --Geraki 10:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't quite follow. Why would would it result in Ancient Greek texts on a Modern Wikisource, once they have their own home? Surely you'd have the Ancient Greek texts on grc and a translation on el, like at it--Nema Fakei 11:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I imagine a lot of the contributors will be non-Greeks who aren't part of the el.wikisource community. A new grc resource would be (ideally) linguistically neutral. Most Greek texts already available online come from either English, French or German sources.--Lo2u 16:06, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What you don't get is that these already could be contributors to el. Why would it be difficult to someone who has some texts available to think that if the only greek wikisource is el then ancient greek texts are hosted on el? It is not a long time ago since wikisource subdomains were created, and it was clear at that time, that all greek texts would be moved to el. And about translations you could understand better from this: el.wikipedia articles when quoting or citing ancient greek texts, link straight to the original ancient text in el.wikisource as there is no great need for a translation. --Geraki 09:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral- One would have to search two wikisources (grc and el) in order to find a text in Ancient Greek. It would just complicate things unnecessarily. -- Ravenous75@en.wikipedia
Not at all! Modern Greek would go on the Modern Greek wikisource, ancient Greek on the Ancient Greek Wikisource. You'd only have to search one, just as you don't have to search it.wikisource.org for Latin texts.--Nema Fakei 11:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, in that case, it should be done with close cooperation with the el.wikisource.org guys, in order to avoid duplicated contents. Also, I believe we need to explicitly clarify the borders between Ancient Greek and Hellenistic (Koine) Greek (I presume the latter will be considered as "Modern Greek" and be listed in the el wikisource). I changed my opinion to "neutral" -- Ravenous75@en.wikipedia--195.134.76.249 12:55, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The change from Ancient to Modern Greek is conventionally put after the Hellenistic period. Putting Hellenistic text into the el database would mean that the biblical text also would end up there. In fact, most readers would expect them to be in the Ancient Greek section. Andreas14:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Andreas is correct; incidentally the ISO considers Ancient Greek to end 1453, so the NT would fall well within the category of 'grc'. Of course, the linguistic change is gradual, and there're no precise boundaries: indeed, while Dante is considered to have written Italian, the tradition of writing in more archaic Latin continued after his work. I'll see if I can do some digging into the linguistics and find a better benchmark than date - though we'll obviously have to debate contentious texts individually, just as with any other wikimedia policy. --Nema Fakei 14:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I can see a use for, and am interested in, this wiki. Based on the Latin wikipedia, I don't think that this would be too hard to manage. Also, would this be the first wiki-language to have started with something other than the wikipedia? -en:User:Dbmag9/la:Usor:Dbmag9
  • Oppose at this time From reading the above comments it seems the proposer has not even tried to work on the el.wikisource. I suggest that work be put put into el and if after some effort there it is found to be impratical we should reevaluate this. The en.wikisource currently hosts old english as well as middle and archaic english documents right along side modern documents. Since wikisource hosts static documents this is not a problem as it would be on a wikipedia. Please try it out first. --BirgitteSB 14:03, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The el.wikisource has existed for some time and still doesn't have a very impressive collection of ancient texts - it's not something Nema Fakei can really be expected to sort out on his own. I think the time has already come to try something new - a source that doesn't assume an understanding of modern Greek and that encourages contributors who speak languages other than Greek who will probably (if the rest of the internet is any guide) outnumber native Greeks.--Lo2u 15:49, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Given you've read the above comments, you'd know that I'd not managed to find the Ancient Texts in el. While I can now see them, it doesn't help the many non-Modern-speaking users who can't be expected to translate a whole main page to find the one correct link. Furthermore, I cannot defend my changes or additions, nor question those of others. By the way, [1] is not Old English: it's a modern(ish) translation. Middle English remains on en, I'll grant, but we're now taking about the difference of a few centuries (plus the fact that Modern English writing reflects Middle English more than current pronunciation anyway), not the two and a half millenia that separates the classical and modern periods. However, I accept your point that this is less of a problem on Wikisource than Wikipedia. (Incidentally, I wouldn't presume to touch it:WP, but I have made the odd anon edit to la:WP).--Nema Fakei 16:37, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
En WS does have old english [2] as well as modern english translations of old english such as your example. I think it is a benifit to be able to offer both although all the Wikisources have a lot of growing to do. I respect your goals here and that you want to contribute with ancient greek. I am just more familar with how things work differently at Wikisource and am advising against the fork. Truthfully in a small project you end up wasting a lot of time on tedious admintrative tasks and I think this would simply double the amount of this kind of work for greek contributors and take their time aways from working on texts. I would really suggest trying to work on el.wikisource categorize all ancient greek texts and link that category prominently on the main page as "Ancient Greek"(In ancient Greek not English) or make a portal. If it doesn't work we can always fork later. I realize there are hurdles, but they are much smaller than setting up a new Wikisource which will have duplicated texts on el. And yes el will duplicate them, because the modern greek editors will show the whole scope of greek literature at el. The thing about wikisource is that what is enjoyable is setting up the whole scheme. The texts are what they are the editing comes in how you sort them and link them and show variations and translations. el will still want these texts even if there is an ancient greek domain for these reasons. I am not explaining myself well, but at Wikisource it works well keep all these texts in one domain. I know the el needs a lot of growth as do all the Wikisource sites, but forking an ancient greek domain will be less sucessfull than working to improve el. I know I could be wrong, but I feel quite sure about this. Just setting up the most basic policies and templates takes ages. You will be much happier carving a niche out of el. Ask someone at el to help you get started and if they are resistant to having an Ancient Portal or titling ancient texts with Ancient Greek and don't have any alternative solutions to help; then we probably will need to fork. But as long is everyone is willing to collaborate, Wikisource is set-up really well for having all this kept on el. BTW I could really use your help with the Septuagint, if you are interested leave a mesage on my talk page and I will give you details. --BirgitteSB 21:01, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, sorry. Either articles are less easy to search for in WS than WP, or I'm being a dunce and I'm missing something obvious. But you make good points. --Nema Fakei 23:00, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes the search feature at WS is worse than useless. Always use google. What can you not find? Anyways, I am really not trying to stand in the way here, I just feel you will better off working at el. I know I have said this ten times already, but Wikisource is different. Trust me :) --BirgitteSB 23:20, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support I agree with posters above concerning Ancient Greek's core role in Western Civilization being a reason to support the proposal; I also think that having the metalanguage in Latin or in Ancient Greek will exclude a lot of users from ever understanding anything going on; might be nice practice for writing in Ancient Greek, where edits will reveal the errors; but there will be lots of errors, and lots of edits.24.84.82.139 20:48, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support Ancient Greek is taught in a number of countries around the world and I believe that this will contribute to their understanding of a language that might resemble modern Greek but has significant differences that hinder the Ancient Greek student's ability to navigate and use relevant information, plus the fact that I believe that we should take a step towards raising awareness of this language to the users of Modern Greek. Dr. Manos 20:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. -- Flauto Dolce 22:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support An ancient greek Wikisource would be great, and there is many texts that we could put here. The communication between contributors seems to me not a problem, and can be in any language like in the latinae Vikipaedia/Vikifons. Many persons speak English and I think that persons who speak/write latin or ancient greek speak/write also some other language than their native language (I saw on latin Wikisource two persons who speak each one in their native language (french/italian) and understand what the other said). ~ Seb35 23:19, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral If navigation is your real problem you should ask a multi-language interface in el:wikisource. Anyway a grc wiki for ancient greek sources seems to me addressing at a very spesific audience with academic background. Editors of this wiki should be quite aware of categorizing texts as taxonomic units and I think that this kind of editors are a minority at the present time. Some of you are trying to understand why there are so few texts in greek wikisource. Well wikisource is a cooperative project and everybody is trying to do his best, don't forget this. On the other side copying-pasting is not the best and only practice for ancient greek texts. We go back many times correcting using critical editions and we are never sure that everything is correct. I wish you luck in your project. s:el:User:Kalogeropoulos

Comments

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  • If such a resource is created, what will be the meta-language? Ancient Greek? Latin? English? Andreas 01:18, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Presumably Ancient Greek. There's no need for diacritics on the talk page, though: ερωμεν ως νυν λεγω. Like la: there's no reason why you shouldn't post in other common languages, but there's no guarantee anyone will be able to understand you.--Nema Fakei 09:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Utopia! Have a look at la.source or la.wiki. Latin is surely known by more people than Ancient Greek, and yet the're's a babel of languages, and a big lack of service pages in latin for lack of clever translators (whom I envy! I Think about translating "sockpuppet" or IP or technical modernities in ancient language... and I state my ignorance). I'm afraid we'll have to pay this drawback... before being too ὑβρισταί. User:OrbiliusMagister
Yes and no. Technical and modern language has almost entirely sprung from English into other spoken languages anyway. So yes, we'll be discussing IP (or ΙΠ) addresses, but that's no more a problem in grc than in many modern languages. Indeed, even in English, much of our technical terminology is simply anglicisms of Latin and Greek approximations. I mean, Internet Protocol?--Nema Fakei 14:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Many technical terms can be borrowed from Modern Greek. I made a tentative translation of the Main Page at s:el:Κύρια Σελίδα/Αρχαία. My Ancient Greek is lousy, but most words stayed the same or I changed just the endings. (I did not change everyghing to polytonic). Andreas 15:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I added interwiki to the English wikisource:en:Iliad pages. If you click on the double-arrow besides the Ελληνικά link, you will get English and Greek side-by-side. Try it out, or click hereto see the result. Andreas14:15, 25 May 2006 (UTC) Some additional work is neede, though, to align the paragraphs correctly. Andreas14:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
  • For all those worried about contributing in polytonic, the instructions for doing so are here. I'm used to using a home-made MS Word template to write polytonic unicode, but I've decided to go the whole hog. Lo2u's excellent link above is worth trying, if you want something a little more personalised. --Nema Fakei 15:03, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • If this project goes ahead I propose the copy-and-prune method: first make a copy the entire el: wiki (we need the help of s:User:ThomasV here), prune all the modern pages and irrelevant categories, and then change the categories etc to polytonic (since most will be the same) and start translating the interface. Apparently there is software that translates automatically from monotonic to polytonic, but I do not remember where I saw it. Andreas19:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC) Here is such a program, but it is not free. Andreas19:59, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
As far as names are concerned, an automatic translation bot might indeed be useful - I think the differences in that respect between Katharevousa and Ancient are small. Otherwise, manual translations will be more appropriate, I think: the words we use are going to be prone to idiom, never mind the mant semantic changes.--Nema Fakei 19:27, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting question for you all: Fικι-, Οὐικι-, Ὑικι- ἢ τί; El has Βικι-, but I don't think that's appropriate for a period when /β/ was pronounced [b], even if it's ok in Koine.--Nema Fakei 10:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC) Additionally, what do we call the 'source' project? I suggest we go for 'πηγή' rather than θήκη, which falls a bit flat. But please do suggest alternatives! --Nema Fakei 20:30, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
How about Οἰκι? This is similar to οἰνος which was originally spelt with one of those early letters and pronounced something like w. -en:User:Dbmag9/la:Usor:Dbmag9
I'm not particularly fond of the digamma for these purposes. I suppose οὐ is the standard classical transliteration but I'm quite taken by Dbmag9's suggestion. There is an οικ-, wik- precedent too - Greek οἶκος and Latin vicus are derived from the same root.--Lo2u 13:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No need for digamma: As Plutarch translitterated Roman names, Οὐαλερία Οὐεργίλιος for Valeria, Vergilius IPA [wa'leːriɐ, wer'gi:ljʊs], we can have Οὐικιθήκη. as for vicus, read Plutarch, Lucullus, 37, 6: ἐπὶ τούτοις τήν τε πόλιν εἱστίασε λαμπρῶς καὶ τὰς περιοικίδας κώμας, ἅς οὐΐκους καλοῦσι. - εΔω 14:07, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree ou is probably the nearest to a standard transliteration, certainly in later Greek, and it's what I would have gone for if I hadn't read Dbmag9's comment. My problem with it is that it looks very much like a transliteration of Latin - I don't know of many genuine Greek words that begin with ou followed by a vowel. I'm not sure if there's any precedent for turning wi to oi (to make οἰκιθήκη) but the digamma followed by an ι tended to become οι: compare οιδα & video, οινος & vinum and οικος & vicus.--Lo2u 15:16, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What you're describing is (I think) simply the loss of digamma from *woida, *woinos, *woikos, not a /wi/>/oi/ change - the participle is Fιδων>ἰδων, the aorist ἐFιδον>εἰδον, while the o was the o-grade ablaut from the perfect aspect. Remember that from early to classical Latin, sound changes included a load of diphthongs monophthongising to long i, including ei (*deiko>dico) and oi in certain positions (e.g. 2nd declension masculine plurals). That said, we could pretend there used to be a digamma there and have a ikisource!--Nema Fakei 16:17, 27 May 2006 (UTC) Edit: Sorry, I think that may be rubbish. Italic *oi went to 'u'. --Nema Fakei 18:06, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, I stand corrected. There was presumably a wik>woik>oik change though? I mean these oi sounds were originally wi weren't they? To be honest I'm fine with ου although I don't think it's ideal. Pretending ablaut or some change in vowel quality and then a loss of digamma seems a bit silly and icipedia even more so.--Lo2u 16:38, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I'm not entirely sure about the other examples, but oida is perfectly regular ablaut: we have the e-grade and 0-grade stems in the aorist and present respectively, and Liddel & Scott have no compunction about lising 'FΙΔ'. Plus if Gk /wi/ goes to /woi/, how does ἴς/vis happen?--Nema Fakei
Yes I suppose oida isn't very relevant and thinking again I admit oik is probably a bad idea so feel free to ignore the rest of this. In the case of oikos and oinos I'm really not sure. Perhaps you know better than me but I'd assumed that the digamma caused the pronunciation of the i to be articulated further back - I suppose ablaut is much less likely in this case? As for ις, Fις and vis and why the same thing didn't happen (if that is what happened) I've even less idea. I'd like to know more though.--Lo2u 18:51, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry. I've checked it up, and it's definitely the case that *woi was the original and all the examples of 'wi' were as a result of the change oi>i. The change to u which anfused me was oe>u, which happened later. Although *woinos isn't indo-european, apparently, but is thought to be of semitic origin. There was no sound change wi>woi, so no Oikipedia. Ouiki remains, of course. --Nema Fakei 15:43, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. It's good to know--Lo2u 19:14, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment about choice of metalanguage: I would support a separation between a Modern Greek and a Classical Greek Wikisource, but I'd prefer English as a metalanguage. Few people can be proficient enough in Ancient Greek to be really able to write a good Wiki user interface in it, and for most of the future readers (who may want to check the occasional quote in the original but may not be terribly fluent) finding their way through such a site would be a hassle. It seems somewhat artificial to me. I mean, even professional modern printed editions geared at classical philologists these days no longer have their meta-texts in Latin, let alone Greek. LukasPietsch, 14:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. I notice the Sanskrit wikisource seems to be using English. --Nema Fakei 16:17, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • comment the concept of organizing a library by text language is deeply flawed. well, ws went ahead and did that, so the system is broken now. Therefore I have no strong opinion on this, but ask yourself, do you really want to fragment ws both by language and by historical period? Will there soon be separate "Byzantine Greek", "Early Modern Greek", "Homeric Greek", "Doric Greek" and "Lesbian Greek" wikisources? it doesn't matter what the subdomain of a text's url is, as long as people make intelligent indices pointing to the texts. The creation of such indices has been encumbered by the split into subdomains, and is further encumbered by further splitting. The correct thing to do, imho, would have been to split ws indices by metalanguage. texts are texts, and all sorts of people want to access all sorts of texts, regardless of their first language. what you want are indices in English, Modern Greek (but hardly in Ancient Greek), German, French and what not, all pointing to texts in Ancient Greek (and all possible other languages) en:User:Dbachmann 20:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it would have been nice if WS had worked a bit more like Wikispecies does. But now we've gone down that route, we may as well be consistent. I'm not advocating splitting by historical period, however. Just as Latin and French/Italian/Spanish/Romanian (take your pick) are not the same language, just as Proto-Germanic and English are not the same language, so are grc and el not the same language --Nema Fakei
(Later interpolation: Dbachmann wrote: "The concept of organizing a library by text language is deeply flawed... Well, WS went ahead and did that, so the system is broken now..." With all due respect, these betrays complete ignorance of the flowering and growth of WS since the separation into language subdomains -- the great leap in numerous languages happened immediately in the months following language wikis, including languages that hardly budged at all before language domains, and larger languages that sudently took off exponentially. It is clear to all involved that this is precisely because of the existence of language wikis. This has been an absolutely outstanding success story.
Now, even things which are spectacular successes in practice may not always be conceptually perfect, and the case of Ancient Greek shows that the concept does not work perfectly everywhere, for reasons that are self-evident in this particular case. So a particular solution will be found. But to lambast an extraordinary success because of an important exception is to misrepresent reality. As far as Wikispecies, it's language problems and growth versus the multilingual flowering of Wikisource simply proves the point. Dovi 07:07, 8 June 2006 (UTC))[reply]
  • I agree with Dbachman and Brigitte. If Nema Fakei did not find the Ancient texts in the first place, this has two reasons: one technical: collation and the other lingustic: polytonic/monotonic. Collation: When searching in Wikipedia and Wikisource, all diacritics must be correct, else nothing is found. It is up to the editors to make redirects for all the different spellings. Therefore, s:el:Ὅμηρος redirects to s:el:Όμηρος, but this is not done throughout. Google does not care, it is even possible to find German words such as "Gemütlichkeit" by typing "Gemuetlichkeit" Unfortunately, Google does not know anything about polytonic Greek: if you type "ομηρος", you will find "Όμηρος" but not "Ὅμηρος".

Therefore, in order to find a text in ancient Greek using Google, you have to use the exact polytonic rendition of each word. Andreas01:31, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The other reason why I did not find the texts is that the UI (namely, the Demotic front page) was somewhat impenetrable. An Ancient front page, designed specifically for finding ancient texts would make things pretty obvious for everyone, across the world, instead of only Modern Greeks and Modern Greek speakers. --Nema Fakei 15:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would have thought that "Κατάλογος συγγραφέων" is pretty obvious even if you do not understand Demotic. Andreas18:52, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
It's not a very elegant solution but would it be practical to have accented and unaccented versions of every text for searching purposes? - the unaccented version could contain links (or maybe redirect?) to the accented version - in that case I could probably provide a simple perl script to take out any diacritics in any text saved to a particular folder very quickly but it would mean that whenever one version was updated the other would have to be too.--Lo2u 14:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Um, you could always have a dozen or so redirects for each text or author, so Homer, Homere, Όμηρος, Ομηρος, etc all redirect to Ὅμηρος.--Nema Fakei 15:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I run a bot today that created redirect pages from unaccented and polytonic titles to the monotonic pages. So, now s:el:Ομηρος and s:el:Ὅμηρος both redirect to s:el:Όμηρος, and so for all the other pages (polytonic only for pages in Ancient Greek). Andreas 19:50, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Although the main page seems quite obvious to me (aprart from the ες endings where Ancient Greek has αι and the like), the user interface as a whole can be more confusing. Changing this to a localizable UI (like the one Google has) would need a major overhaul of the Wiki software that we cannot expect any time soon.Andreas18:52, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Multilingual UI: In fact, the implemetation of multilingual user interfaces where the meta-language can be set by the user is currently in the planning stage as you can see at Multilingual MediaWiki. It seems that soon all our pains about the meta-language will go away (apart from the discussion pages, of course). Ultimately, the split of the Wikisource so deplored by Dbachmann may possibly be reversed. Andreas21:09, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
That sounds like more trouble than it is worth, but this is not the place. If this disscusion has already started somewhere on Meta, please point me to it.--BirgitteSB 18:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Progress

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I've set up a test page, based on Andreas' Αρχαια page on el:, as that seemed to be the appropriate place. However, I don't know what counts as consensus on these boards, and I don't know who moves this stuff from proposal to accepted stage or when. I'd also prefer it if more people from el:ws had come forward, but it's not something we can force. Therefore, at some point during the month, I think I'm going to ask everyone to review their vote in light of the arguments: I'm a little worried that people will have voted 'support' without seeing some of the arguments against which have since arisen. --Nema Fakei 11:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Andreas' Αρχαια page on el: has also been put in the sidebar of el: until this poll is ended, probably we needed such a page. What you say above is correct: Maybe it would be better for new polls to start voting after a week so that there will be time for people to express their arguments for or against a proposal. --Geraki 12:45, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is common practice to start a new wikisource at the Multilingual Wikisource, which is a fully funtioning wikisource for languages that do not yet have their own domain. Generally the editors work on that site untill they have a seed community going and then transwiki it all to the new domain when the request is filled. Since all wikisources started out there and where later transwikied there are experienced editors with bots to help at that stage. As there are so many ancient greek texts at el, I do not know how this particular case should proceed if is decided to make the fork. As to why the el contributors have not come forward in greater numbers, there may not be all that many who are active to begin with. Here are the recent stats on el: tables, charts, and wikilibrarians. Notice there are only two recently active editors with more than 5 edits.--BirgitteSB 17:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not many, but don't count just in stats (I'm also counted as inactive, sorry I was getting married). If you feel that a second subdomain will attract more contributors, then it is a good thing, but what I (you,me,we) don't get is where were these contributors and why they did not contribute before. The best thing would be to find a way to increase the contributors in an existing project than dividing and hope that contributors will magically appear. Let's face it: Most people who droped by and voted for the creation of grc will probably never visit it (not to speak about contributing). Other editors of el, know about this proposal, as we discussed it a litle in wikipedia (where we are more active) and they feel about the same: Neutral, with the main concern the question if this will really bring more contributors and texts. --Geraki 23:38, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also for future reference it might be best to advertise any new requests for Wikisources and the Mulitlingual Scriptorium. I only noticed this because I had a User's talk page on my watchlist on Wikipedia, and this was advertised to him. I don't believe anyone from Wikisource pays attention to this page, because the new languages usually just start adding pages to the multilingual site and do not make a formal request till they are well established.--BirgitteSB 18:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

current progress status?

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just a curious question: anyone who knows about the current status? Apparently the draft has been deleted and apparently there is currently no active contributor working on the project. Or did I just fail to find the place where the project is currently located?

In case anyone wishes to become active, I am sure Dbmag9 would be ready to restore the deleted draft and to move it to the multilingual wikisource, but of course this makes sense only when someone will keep working on it. --UV 22:01, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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