Talk:Requests for comment/Start allowing ancient languages/Appendix III: Current Ancient language assessment

Questions to be answered (a)

"Would contributors to ALWs work on other projects if ALWs did not exist?" This could, of course, be asked of the contributors to all wikis. It wouldn't be a bad idea to think through why one would ask it of ALW contributors in particular -- bearing in mind that practically all contributors to all the smaller wikis are at least bilingual.

A supplementary question, equally good to know, would be "Do contributors to ALWs work on other projects also?" We don't know enough about how many projects, in how many languages, individual active editors typically work on ... Or, if this information exists, I don't know where to find it :) Andrew Dalby (talk) 13:30, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

It won't be asked of Wikis that are considered useful in and of themselves. It will get asked when proposers of X Wiki threaten to leave if they don't get their wiki, to which "okay, well, it's been nice knowing you" or the likes is probably a better response.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:57, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Questions to be answered (b)

"How do the [ALWs] attempt to ensure a high standard of the language is used?" Many contributors to all the language wikis are not fluent speakers or writers of that particular language: this is a question for all wikis. But definitely there are special reasons to ask it when there appear to be no mother-tongue contributors (as recently with the Scots wiki) or when the language is no one's mother tongue (which includes artificial languages, ancient languages and some other existing wikis). Andrew Dalby (talk) 13:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this has come up in part because of that incident. It does seem to me a bit of a special case – neglectful of the Scots editors not to check what was going on via their recent changes page, and possible as a good faith attempt largely because of the proximity of English and Scots. Most AL's are probably not close enough for that, although they could be the subject of some kind of nonsense just as any project could. There may be some sensible mitigations available for all smaller wikis to look out for these problems and ensure quality control. It might be helpful to have an expert AL (and minority langs?) advisory committee or similar that links experts to the wikis in question to help their development. --JimKillock (talk) 18:06, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the Scots edits were in good faith.

If there were to be an advisory committee I would volunteer, for what that's worth. Andrew Dalby (talk) 14:41, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you @Andrew Dalby:, that is a very useful offer :) I will add something about what this advisory committee would ideally need; it should extend across the languages currently within WM if at all possible. --JimKillock (talk) 01:06, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd say, based off the previous discussion here, that the Middle English Incubator was subject to a similar problem of being filled with adapted English instead of proper Middle English. I could see it happening to Ancient Greek as well, with adapted Modern Greek being added by Greek speakers with a little bit of Ancient Greek knowledge, but that's probably not going to be a big problem for Ancient Greek. Another problem that Scots has is an ill-standardized language that blurs at the edges with English; is that Scottish English or Scots? Is that spelling wrong or just from a different orthography? Is that word made-up or from a different dialect than mine? It's a lot harder to patrol than more standardized languages. Again, Middle English would have that problem, with huge spelling and vocabulary variations over a few centuries, and I suspect many other languages would.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:21, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes I agree with that assessment. That was a large part of the motivation for FutPerf's suggestion to add Wikis are allowed only where the ancient or historical language exists in a widely accepted standardised form at 3 in the proposal. I don't think any of the current cohort fall outside of this category tho. --JimKillock (talk) 01:10, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

On Scots and Middle English I agree with @Prosfilaes:. Although encylopedic works in Middle English exist, my personal impression was that the Middle English test wiki was written in the style of English Wikipedia without drawing on any existing tradition. The same might be true of the Scots wiki but I can't say for sure. And it could be true of some other minority wikis too -- the style of en:wiki is so pervasive it's hard to escape from! Andrew Dalby (talk) 12:28, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Ancient language wikis that could be assessed

Shouldn't classical Chinese be in there? Andrew Dalby (talk) 13:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Andrew, feel free to make modifications like this :) I will add. --JimKillock (talk) 17:13, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Looking at the new table I made some additions to the usage field for Latin, partly adapting what you had already said for Sanskrit. I made smaller additions to Pali and Classical Chinese. I think one could equally claim church Slavonic has a large recorded literature, but I have practically no knowledge of it so I made no change. Feel free to revert any or all changes if I've overdone it. Andrew Dalby (talk) 13:47, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Andrew Dalby:; while I have your attention, could you have a look at the extra section I've added on the main page, which is about developing content and audience for ALW proposals? --JimKillock (talk) 14:23, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock: Hmm, the just-moved-and-expanded section "Ancient language wikis that could be assessed" is the one I'm talking about in my last comment. Is that the extra section you mean? If you mean somewhere else, plase give me a link :) Andrew Dalby (talk) 14:52, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

@Andrew Dalby: I was thinking about the main RFC page, Audience development and producing specialist content section, sorry for being confusing! --JimKillock (talk) 15:00, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Ancient Greek (wiki)

@Prosfilaes: Just to note that I haven't proposed to assess any of the wikis that are not currently part of the official releases, so Ancient Greek is not on the list for Wikis to look at. I think that is the right approach, as these Wikis are long established (or at least, long available) and have had a chance to decide their working practices in a live environment. Ancient Greek would show the problems of an in-development project and would be much harder to diagnose.

But you may have other views, or another way to look at the problem, eg take general external advice on the criteria as applied to Ancient Greek, as opposed to the project itself. --JimKillock (talk) 01:40, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

What needs to be done

I've done this before and examined Wikis for discussions like this. It's a lot of work, and nobody has even done the preliminary of copying basic statistics. Moreover, I don't see how it will inform anything. Look at the Old Church Slavonic Wiki, and hit Random Page a few times. https://cu.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%84%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C is Єсть / Estonia, and I can't imagine why someone would come to this page instead of any of the 250 other Wikipedias that have an article. I found page after page like this. https://cu.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EA%99%80%D1%A1%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D1%8C%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%BA%D1%8A%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%B0 is Ꙁѡграфьска кънига / Codex Zographensis and is much more directly connected to the language. And still I shrug; the Wikipedia articles seem to be either 100 words long or 500-700 words long, and the Old Church Slavonic article is part of the first, shorter set. Is there anyone, anyone at all, who speaks Old Church Slavonic better than English, Russian, German, Italian, Bulgarian or Macedonian?

The Main page shows what the Wikipedians have put forward as best and the Random Page shows random choice, not biased towards the best, but ignoring what the Wikipedia doesn't even have articles on. I could spend some time formalizing that, but I don't see that anyone would learn anything from it. Once you poke around enough, you realize that that OCS and Gothic look like every other WP at that place in the List of Wikipedias, with hundreds but less than a thousand articles. They might replace a small desk encyclopedia, but virtually only for monolinguals. Pali Wikipedia is slightly different; it seems to have empty boilerplate for every single year, and four word articles for somewhat random things. Again, I don't feel like this will change anything, so why should I waste my time on it? You've spent all the words on this page and asked questions on Quora without apparently looking at the WPs themselves. "Are there areas that Ancient Language Wikis cover better than other wikis?" It doesn't take a linguist to look and realize that, for several of these Wikis, their best articles are obviously worse than the coverage of English and several other Wikipedias, and Pali WP has almost a complete lack of content; I found w:pi:क्श्हतरिय, which has 36 words, so it has at least one article with more than one sentence of non-boilerplate. Again, it could be a huge time sink for me; I've spent way too long on this post already.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:35, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Prosfilaes: I posted to Quora because I can't read these languages. I shouldn't prejudge what I cannot read. There will be good and bad in everything; I can only recognise the obviously bad. A long page looks good, it may be terrible. I also found it gives a sense of the potential usage, whether there is any awareness of the projects and the strategies the wikis have employed, such as concentrating on topics more relevant to the language, or easier to write in.

Quora is just dip testing.

The other thing I have started to do is to reach out to the projects themselves and ask them to join a support group, ALPES. This will let us get onto an internal track, to understand their ideas for strategies. This is outlined on that page. So far, we have as you would expect, some progress finding people involved with Sanskrit and Classical Chinese, but nothing yet from the very small projects.

Yes, if one is not interested it is a time sink. If you are interested, and want them to do better, then it is potentially fascinating.

The question of meeting WM's mission is really important. I suspect as you say many of these projects cannot and will not. Some may do in ways that surprise us. Either some of us take time to find out, or not, but nobody is asking you to do that work. Your help in framing scope and questions might therefore be the best use of your time, if you wish to give it. --JimKillock (talk) 08:24, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

It is fascinating; that is part of the reason it is a time sink. But you're frustrated with LangCom not being interested; well, you're going to have to do your own promo work. The very least it would take to be interesting to everyone is a willingness to call out the obviously bad, and point to those that have a possibility of being good.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:09, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

I have tried to say this! (Looks like I took that section out at some point, or it is in the support page, so I have added something here.)

On LangCom, all I / we need to move ahead with this is a modicum of recognition, input, so that it isn't seen as a whacko project on the margins, unrelated to LangCom's official role as policing these issues. --JimKillock (talk) 09:32, 18 September 2021 (UTC)

It occurs to me that there are some tensions between offering support and identifying problematic projects – these are necessary corrolaries of each other, meaning that sensitivity will be required. --JimKillock (talk) 07:16, 19 September 2021 (UTC)