Talk:Toytoy's proposed policy for wiki closure

English Wikipedia

en probably would have failed at least three of these tests (market and both usability) early on. Perhaps a test taking into account the number of literate speakers with Internet access should be added. 151.196.235.226 07:12, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Strong dissent

I dissent strongly from this proposal.

Even small Wikipedias:

1. may be good sources of articles for translation.
2. may be the seed from which something more substantial later grows.
3. link well into the rest of Wikipedia and form a piece of the larger whole.

Also, a wiki with a small number of contributors, but where that small number are good at what they do, may be excellent. The Catalan Wikipedia is a case in point: I would say from experience using it that its standards are generally quite high, that its coverage of specifically Catalan subjects much exceeds what we have in other languages (including Spanish, English, and French), that most of this would probably never have been written if we did not welcome articles in Catalan, and that most of what we have about Catalunya in the English-language Wikipedia is due to a number of us making translations from the Catalan Wikipedia.

Similarly, the few individuals writing in the Asturian-language Wikipedia have written some very good articles on Asturias that have been translated into other languages.

Many of us who are multilingual think of Wikipedia as one big system with articles in many languages, not as a group of separate monolingual encyclopedias. It may be important to post, prominently, a language-specific disclaimer based in part on en:Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia that gives further warnings of the pitfalls of a particular language-specific Wikipedia.

If someone wishes to carry on dialogue about this with me, please get hold of me at en:User talk:Jmabel, because I do not monitor Meta. -- Jmabel

Min Nan Wikipedia

I strongly disagree with this line of attack.

Minor technical details:

• The author cites relatively trivial imperfections ("21 vs. 22") as an argument for the smaller editions being of worse quality than the largest editions. (On the other hand, it'd be a huge and serious mistake to state the value of PI as, more or less, 31.4 rather than 3.14, or that Einstein was the Anti-Christ.) (It's almost as if the author had trouble coming up with good arguments to defend his radical proposal.) The truth is that no doubt other mistakes and errors exist. No doubt some will not be weeded out for quite some time. Neither should suggest the inaccuracies, discrepancies, contradictions, mis-representations, and other errors (i.e. systematic mistakes and biases) and simple mistakes are permanent. This applies to wikis large and small, and numerous examples exist for wikis along the size spectrum. Moreover, the fact that such a numerical discrepancy exists on the main page does not necessarily suggest poor workmanship. Indeed, apparent mistakes (usually spelling and grammatical) are sometimes deliberately left behind or even inserted to encourage participation.
• To criticize a one-year-old wiki for having many fewer editors than wikis based on the top-ten languages (out of some 5,000+ human languages worldwide) is to wield an unfair yardstick.
• To single out specific editors for being "hyper-active" (relative to other editors on the same wiki) strikes me as a bit odd. All things being equal, participation is always a good thing. An example of unwelcomed "hyperactivity" is the use of bots to dump junk on Wikipedia. That's not the case at all. The real measure stick is in the quality of the edits.
• The real motivation behind this proposal is shown by this statement: "As a native Chinese speaker living in Taiwan, I can show you some problems created with unneeded dialect versions." i.e. the proposal is motivated by a subjective bias against certain language varieties deemed by the author to be "dialects". It is a view that is fundamentally socio-political and cannot be resolved by analyzing numbers (as the proposal tries to do).

A-giâu 10:09, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

These "relatively trivial imperfections" are easy to spot and created by your own edits. Yet for the past five months, they are not fixed. Now tell me something about quality.

"Indeed, apparent mistakes (usually spelling and grammatical) are sometimes deliberately left behind or even inserted to encourage participation." Now just tell me did anyone participate?

I don't really care about hyper-activitism. So far you like it, there's no way to stop it. The point is I don't see USER BASE GROWTH. If this is a well-functioning wiki, the list of active users shall grow by, possibly, one per month or so. Within a year, there will be several active contributors and even more passive users. If people are using this wiki, they will fix your mistakes.

I did not wield an unfair yardstick at a minor language. As you have said, Min Nan users are everywhere. It's on the 21st/22nd (whatever) place. So the speaker base is not a problem. And many of them are highly educated and reasonably wealthy. So the actual point is they don't come to your playground. And that's your policy's problem. -- Toytoy 12:26, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

NPOV

This whole proposal strikes me as very POV against smaller languages. A language with a smaller number of speakers will have a smaller pool of authors to draw from - some of the smaller Wikis may have a higher proportion of editors:speakers than do en, es and fr for example.

Certain languages are very important in national identity, and to close down a wiki because it isn't "performing" would be interpreted by some as a major slur against their identity. For example also, the Welsh language is a very political topic having been banned for many years and thus for Wikipedia to "supress" it (as this is how it would inevitably be seen by some) would be a PR disaster.

See also the en:Sapir-Worf hypothesis which states that the language someone speaks influences their world view. How is declaring someone's view of the world as "failing" or "insignificant" compatible with NPOV? Thryduulf 13:25, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

With lots of money and many experienced translators, I can translate the whole or the core part of English Wikipedia into many small languages. If you rule out philosophical, historical, political and religious articles, most other articles can be translated without much POV infusion.

With the English Wikipedia, people are talking about NPOV. But with these small wikis, you expect some local POVs. What are you thinking? What's your point? Wikipedia is not a think tank. You may speak Albanian or Zulu in your brain, but when it comes to calculus, you do it almost the same way as everybody else.

My point is, if a wiki is contributed by only a few users, we see the contributors' personal POV rather than the general speakers' native POV or logical framework. Let's say if the English Wikipedia was written by Jimbo magically overnight, do you really think this 650,000-article Jimbopedia shall reflect the the POV or NPOV or world view of average English speakers?

Sapir-Worf hypothesis is almost irrelevant when it comes to individual. Karl Rove and Michael Moore both thinks in English. Do you think an English wiki written by Karl Rove shall be the same as another one written by Michael Moore? Some fundamental frameworks inside their brains may be the same (objects, subjects, verbs ...), however, their views are too different for anyone to notice the fundamental similarities.

Wikipedia is not a language ICU. It also shall not be a national identity nursery. If a wiki fails to attract a reasonal amount of writers and readers, let's close it. If they want to publish, there are other wikis and blogs.

I know a mass killing of small wikis is bad PR. Only if people had not been creating non-functioning wikis so carelessly and so quickly ... -- Toytoy 14:21, 24 July 2005 (UTC)