Talk:Developing new language editions of Wikipedia

First line

I disagree with the first line. We should not be focusing on Wikipedia, most of the languages which ask a new subdomain nowadays would be better served by starting with Wikisource or Wiktionary. --Nemo 20:45, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I've intentionally put "Wikipedia" instead of "Wikimedia projects" because of two reasons:

1. Wikipedia is our flagship project and people want Wikipedia, not Wikisource. Besides the fact that, following your reasoning, we don't need even Wikisource (as we have a multilingual one), neither Wiktionary, as preserving languages would be done much better on larger Wiktionaries, as we'd have description of those words in a language with much larger number of speakers. But that would be the conflict between our attitudes: my, to give ethnolinguistic communities what they want, and your, which supports more functional way of doing things. --Millosh (talk)
2. However, I have data now and they are much more optimistic than I thought previously. --Millosh (talk) 17:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't want to force anyone, but most people asking a Wikipedia just do not know that starting a Wikisource or Wiktionary is much easier and equally or more effective. Often, newcomers are clueless about Wikimedia (that's the point after all: expanding to new audiences).

I don't see how the English Wiktionary or Old Wikisource are related to my statement: I very much support the creation of autonomous communities and fully-localised wikis, moreover people definitely want a Wikimedia subdomain with their language code for status reasons. --Nemo 07:45, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Any language preservation effort is about increasing status (popularity). Interwikis are the greatest advantage Wikipedia has in this regards. It was easier to motivate myself to contribute into Tatar Wikipedia, as opposed to Tatar Wiktionary (a provincial language in ethnologue classification). -- Frhdkazan (talk) 12:55, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

A couple of years ago I split languages into the logarithmic categories according to the number of speakers. And the result was that something less than 3000 languages are spoken by more than 10,000 of people and something more than 3000 languages are spoken by less than 10,000 of people. That's on the line I promoted last few years: 10,000 is reasonable number of speakers and it's likely that all of them could survive with our help. But, things are, actually, much better. --Millosh (talk) 17:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Ethnologue has information called "Language status". They are: 0) International, 1) National; 2) Provincial; 3) Wider communication; 4) Educational; 5) Developing; 6a) Vigorous; 6b) Threatened; 7) Shifting; 8a) Moribund; 8b) Nearly Extinct; 9) Dormant; 10) Extinct. --Millosh (talk) 17:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

If our goal is to something realistically, the line is between 6a and 6b. It's reasonable to work on getting knowledge, giving knowledge and preserving languages which are "vigorous". Then I wanted to know how much languages belong to 0-6a category. And the number positively surprised me: ~5200 languages are in 6a or better status. Then I counted 0-5 languages and got ~2500 of them. So, even we wouldn't deal with 6a category, there are more than 2500 languages which are developing or are in better position. --Millosh (talk) 17:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

If a language is a developing one, that means that: (1) there is no urgent need to preserve it; and (2) we can eventually get a living Wikimedia community, which is the basis for having "interactive" projects, like Wikipedia is. So, there is no need to impose on them limit to Wikisource and Wiktionary, but we should help them to create a tool which they would actively use, like the rest of us are using Wikimedia projects. --Millosh (talk) 17:40, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

When you say "the line is between 6a and 6b", do you mean that all points 1–5 should be included? That list of status doesn't seem an ordered set to me, in particular (2) is hopeless if speakers don't perceive the language as usable for "serious" things (as much as we might disagree), or don't know how to read/write it. --Nemo 07:45, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Languages of the type (2) are generally in much better position than languages of the types (3), (4), (5) and (6a) (and others, as well). It's about languages which will likely survive next few hundred years. In relation to your point, I think a group of enthusiasts interested in developing their language could use Wikipedia to make the language "more serious". At the other side, if speakers have negative attitude toward their native language, it's not about us to tell them to use it. BTW, even some languages of the type (9) are interesting, as it could mean "reviving" and Welsh was that kind of language in the past, while it's not (2) and it's in pretty good shape (better than Scottish Gaelic, which is our most vibrant community if we count editors per million of speakers). --Millosh (talk) 19:10, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Wanted topics

From the title, this page would be overlapping with Manual for small and new Wikipedias and I'd advise a merge. From the content, however, it seems to be about what content to create: is this what you want to focus on? If so, I'd suggest a rename.

This has different focus than the manual has. The manual is half prescriptive and fully internal to Wikimedia projects. This page, which will be developed and include the links to the manual and other relevant pages, should have recommendations and examples of how to do things not just on Wikimedia projects, but in interaction with the outside world. In other words, like it acknowledges that there is significant amount of work besides editing wikis. This manual, as well as the most of our manuals, assume that people willing to edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects appears magically, from The Unknown. --Millosh (talk) 18:01, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree our lists of articles to have are entirely useless, because they are 1) biased, 2) original research, 3) unpractical to use or simply irrealistic. A more practical approach is either Mix'n'match (authoritative lists in a nice interface) or on-demand cheap targets ("most frequent failed searches this week", "most visited stubs this month", "translate a missing article determined to be useful by means of magic"). --Nemo 20:45, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I like the idea of the most frequent failed searches. It could be very useful for small Wikipedias. More authoritative lists are good idea, as well. But we have to start with the knowledge those people have and willing to share. Otherwise, we'd get typical colonialist approach of imposing immediately our own worldview. --Millosh (talk) 18:01, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Sure. Hence they should choose their own authoritative list, or their own criteria. :) --Nemo 07:46, 13 June 2015 (UTC)