Talk:List of articles every Wikipedia should have

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[edit] en:Portuguese Language

It is strange that among 18 languages the 6th most spoken it's not included? Japf 23:13, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Good point, some languages are there for historical reasons but I think we should replace en:German Language with Portuguese since for a modern language it not as popular (important). --MarsRover 07:09, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not that strange. There is no one that speaks Latin as their mother language, but it is still included for historical reasons. Size is a criterion, certainly, but it is not the only one.

Andejons 07:53, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

And why Tamil and Turkish is in the list?Portuguese is spoken in many countries. --Santista1982 21:03, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

They are 19th and 21th in number of native speakers so they are not silly suggestions. My guess is there was a desire to avoid having most the languages be European languages (or even Romance languages). And try to have a broader selection. --MarsRover 03:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Purplebackpack's two cents:

The following languages should be on the list, in order of importance

1. English
2. (Mandarin) Chinese
3. Hindi
4. Arabic
5. Spanish
6. Latin
7. Greek
8. French
9. Russian
10. German (IMO, German stays; it is also more spoken than Turk, Tamil, or French as a primary language)
11. Hebrew

Anything else you can take or leave Purplebackpack89 00:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I would like to keep Esperanto in the list, being a representative constructed language. -- Yekrats 16:14, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Kind of a hard sell for me, since Esperanto is a "made-up-language", and the first language of very few. It has between 115,000 and 2 million speakers total (let's say 1.5 million for argument's sake), not even a tenth part of either German or Portuguese. Also, on the English wikipedia, Esperanto had less hits than Portuguese, and considerably less hits than German. Mars, Japf, Santista, maybe toss Esperanto for Portuguese? Toss something else besides Esperanto or German? What do you think? Purplebackpack89 19:57, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Andejons that there should be more than one criteria so I am not sure it as clear cut as tossing the fewest speakers for one of the most. We should with the short list try to touch as many topics as possible. Esperanto is there to touch on constructed langauges. There are so many European languages already that if editors completed the list I am sure with 99% certainty they would have covered Portuguese. But the same cannot be said for Esperanto or some of the foreign languages like Tamil. Anyway I wouldn't disagree with the suggested change, or replacing Turkish, or just leaving it the same. --MarsRover 21:49, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the list is not to mention all the largest things, but a hint to write the first interesting content of a new Wikipedia edition. If so, Esperanto is good on the list, since one can write in the article something less banal than number of speakers and countries where it's official.

If it depended on my will, I would cut down from the 1000 list as much „template articles“ as I could. Adding (often with a bot, or even by hand but without much thinking) articles with a large template full of numbers is the weird way how many smaller editions now start. While we know very well that those editions look at this list, we might influence those new Wikipedias with a good advice on writing Wikipedia. Amikeco 06:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion, Esperanto undoubtedly should stay in the list as as the most important representant of constructed languages, in the same way as Latin is there as a representant of important historic languages (although it is spoken by a small number of people today). --Petrus Adamus 17:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Middle East

Having just written the article at one of newer editions of Wikipedia, I've noticed that in many editions the article becomes rather lexicographic. I mean, a large part of the article is about how the term is used, who has called Ethiopia or Lybia part of Middle East and how right he has been, etc. Since Wikipedia is not a vocabulary, I propose to change the (very English-centered btw) article en:Middle East by something more clearly existing (there are many proposals, I suppose). Amikeco 06:01, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

All wikipedias will get lexicographic somewhere, especially considering most languages are living languages with distinctions in meaning that change from century to century and region to region; that does not mean they are inappropriate for the list. Almafeta 19:26, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Something like "OPEC" is a list of countries but there is some history specific to the topic like decisions made about raising quotas. Middle East is just a list of countries. The en.wp managed to make it into a decently sized article by explaining how the term came about (which has an English/American origin), duplicating/summarizing information and using it as an outline article. Maybe there are so many events we need a summary article about the area but it doesn't fit this list's goal of having articles about specific topics. --MarsRover 20:45, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Amikeco, the thing to do would be to post your proposal on the talk page of that en:Wikipedia article. Regards, Guido den Broeder 16:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)