Wikipedia:Conlangs/Differential

Well, one of the problems discussed here is the bias of auxlangs over artlangs. It seems that criteria used for auxlangs do not include artlangs, while criteria used for artlangs might include too many non-notable auxlangs.

I propose a rough classification of constructed languages:

1. Languages designed for actual human communication (mainly auxiliary languages)
2. Languages designed to prove communication theories or other philosophical pursuits
3. Languages designed for being used in fiction scenarios
4. Languages designed as intellectual or artistical endeavours

For the first type, notability is achieved by how the language has been received and learned by people (sheer number of speakers) or how it has influenced other similar works.

The second type: philosophical and logical languages, originality of the idea, academic reviews etc. add to the notability even if it has very few or no speakers.

The third type, their notability can be inherited from the work in which they take part. Probable not all languages in a work deserve an article but be part of an extended list or the article about the race that speak it.

The fourth type: artlangs, might need some kind of per-peer review to judge notability, with some kind of limit to ensure that there is no artlanger's conspracy to include too many personal endeavours. Some parameters like completeness, originality, influence and goodwill in the artlanging community might apply, and probably articles should be limited to 20 such projects. — Carlos Th (talk) 04:18, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I think a set of objective criteria for completeness (grammar covers most or all the points in the Lingua Questionnaire, lexicon size >= 2500 words, existence of corpus of 10-25,000 words in the language, etc.) would be better than the peer review you propose. And whatever criteria for completeness or artistic merit we come up with need to be supplemented with criteria for noting how famous and influential the language is.

What structure do you see this peer review of notability taking? I just don't see how that would fit into the general way Wikipedia works. Would every new conlang VfD be delayed for a week while the peer reviewers review the language and decide whether it's notable, then they make their recommendation and the VfD proceeds...? I don't think that would go over well if we proposed it. We could accomplish a similar purpose much more effectively by moving outside of Wikipedia entirely: start a site similar to Langmaker but consisting of independent, detailed reviews of conlangs. A language would not be listed unless it's deemed interesting by the people writing reviews for the site. More third-party reviews of conlangs would mean more languages for which the secondary research has already been done and one can write Wikipedia articles without original research. (E.g., something like Rick Harrison's Journal of Planned Languages but with emphasis on artlangs instead of auxlangs.)

I strongly oppose your proposed maximum quota on the number of artlangs represented in Wikipedia. I think if we come up with reasonable objective criteria the number will be limited at first but can grow over time as the number of really notable languages grows; there's no point in arbitrarily setting a limit to how many articles we'll allow on a certain kind of topic. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:43, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Languages designed for actual human communication

Criteria: Almafeta's original proposal.

Languages designed to prove communication theories or other philosophical pursuits

Criteria: Almafeta's original proposal, plus idea originality or representativeness of the idea.

Languages designed for being used in fiction scenarios

Criteria: Almafeta's original proposal plus notablity by proxy.

Languages designed as intellectual or artistic endevours

Criteria: Almafeta's original proposal plus peer review and limitation.

As an avid (rabid?) twenty-year artlanger, why do you expect artlangers to bother to jump through hoops to get the "accepted by wikipedia"-stamp on its papers? We're not doing it for wikipedia, we're mostly doing it for ourselves (some have to do it the same way some people have to write fiction). Though it is nice to be respected and well-known in the conlanger community, wikipedia doesn't have the same status as getting a personalized addy in jrk's list, or a review by Jeffrey Henning, or drooling admiration by newbie fanboys :) I would rather perfect my language and discover its sisters than jump hurdles so that other langs can get their own page on wikipedia. Though, there might be people with the extra time and energy on their hands to review of course. (For the record, if anyone adds my conlang to wikipedia I'll request it be deleted. It's not ready and won't be for several years yet.) -- Kaleissin 21:50:42, 2005-08-16 (UTC)

You'll see below that I opposed Carlos' proposal of a "peer review" structure within Wikipedia as a gatekeeper for artlang articles. But I think it would be a good idea to start another site (or more likely a subsite of an existing conlang wiki) for independent reviews of conlangs.

"We're not doing it for [W]ikipedia, we're mostly doing it for ourselves" — mostly true, but there have been cases of conlang creators adding articles about their language to Wikipedia. My impression is that auxlang creators are more likely to do this but some artlang creators have done so as well, if I'm not mistaken. --Jim Henry | Talk 15:20, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Counter-proposal

Counter-proposal: Almafeta's original proposal plus minor criteria for completeness of phonology, grammar, lexicon, size of corpus, etc. And maybe a lower bar for number of speakers (10 for artlangs, 50 for auxlangs) as a minor criterion. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:43, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I am of the same opinion. While I agree with Carlos that artlangs are a completely different beast than auxlangs, I'm not sure the distinction is very workable in our situation. There are plenty of languages that are both artlang and engelang, auxlang and engelang, artlang and fictlang, etc. Not even too mention those to tried to justify their artlangs by calling them auxlangs. No, much as I would like to, I don't think the distinction is workable. Well, we might work with different bars for number of speakers: for languages that claim to be auxlangs the bar would be 500 (major) / 50 (minor), for other languages it would be 100 / 10. Or something similar. --IJzeren Jan 10:27, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Note that I do not actually use the word "auxlang" or "artlang" in defining my categories. Just intentions: actual human communication, experimentation of scientific or filosofical theories, works for fiction, and all others. You might call the respectively auxlang, engelangs, ficlangs and artlangs but those hibrids like and artlang+auxlang usually is either a language actually intented to be used in communication with an artistic favour (therfore category 1), or a personal quest disguised as an auxlang (therefore category 4).

Now, a 100/10 bar for languages not intented for actual communication is quite a high bar, so the meter is meningless. That is why other meters should be called.

OTOH, if we just add meters to include category 4 languages applying to all kind of constructed languages, like "competeness", I can easily device a new Euroclon that would be quite complete yet non-notable... I could easily say that it is an artistic endeavour not to be compared to auxlangs (with their higher standards for inclusion).

That is why I propose different standards, not just different bars for the same meters. In category 4 languages a case-by-case review might be necesary so my machine generated euroclon would be doomed as non-notable and worthless for en:wikipedia, while those language that we all arlangers admire or respect would have a place: brithenig, verdurian, teonaht, ...

Now, clasification would not be closed. A particular language might be metered in different categories: e.g. Volapük might compete as category 2 language if we consider IALism as a philosophy, and as it was the original proposal for IALism. Klingon (cat 3) might compete as category 1 language as it is actually spoken. My proposed euroclon would compete in category 1, 2 and 4 and would be included by none of them.

— Carlos Th (talk) 14:23, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

OK.... can you provide more detailed suggestions about how "peer review and limitation" would work? I am not convinced that it fits well with the way I understand Wikipedia to work.

I suspect that when the vote comes, I won't be voting for all the various completeness criteria I devised; Robert West has about convinced me that his verifiability criteria (can we reference any discussion of the language in any detail by people other than the creators?, etc.) are better. They also have the advantage of being much simpler than the complex criteria Almafeta, IJzeren Jan, myself and others were coming up with. But most of a month remains, and you or others might convince me differently in that time. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:32, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

I will vote for anything that is not to exclusive and not to inclusive, that does not favour auxlangs too much, and that is relatively simple to use. Much as I understand the reasoning behind Carlos' proposal, I think practically it difficult to use. Don't forget that the average person has probably heard of Esperanto and Klingon and perhaps Quenya, and doesn't want to be bothered with all kinds of subtle subdivisions. Besides, there are still languages that belong to more than one category (take Toki Pona for instance). --IJzeren Jan 21:29, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Artistic languages vs. other artforms

A question regarding artistic languages: what is the inclusion criterion for other artforms? For instance, in Category:Paintings there are 153 articles, not all of which are about specific paintings (Cyclorama, as an example). Now, there are clearly more than 153 paintings in the world; obviously there exist criteria for what makes Mona Lisa absolutely acceptable for Wikipedia, the collected life time paintings of Richard Frooman probably not acceptable for Wikipedia even as a single article about him, and the still life of a boot I painted 4 years ago absolutely unacceptable for Wikipedia. I believe artlangs should be given a fame and significance outside the conlang-world criterion equivalent to that all other art is held to, otherwise we're turning Wikipedia into an art gallery for conlangs.

I don't know much about visual art, and haven't looked into or worked on the Wikipedia articles about it. But Wikipedia does seem to include a fair number of articles about fairly minor novels, comic book series, even characters in the same. It seems to be routine practice to linkify all titles mentioned in an article about an author, implying that eventually, when someone knows enough and cares enough, we will want articles about all those books.

Now you could argue that most professionally published novels or comic books have an audience of at least 5,000+ readers, and there are probably only two or three artlangs that have ever had an audience that large. But I would suggest you should judge the size of the audience for a particular work of art relative to the audience for that artform as a whole, not relative to the general population.

I am also mostly persuaded by Robert A West's suggestion that we based inclusion on verifiability (whether an artlang has been written about significantly by people other than its creator), and not try to establish any other bar for broad fame or artistic merit. --Jim Henry | Talk 12:09, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

As for engelangs, again, look at Category:Thought experiments or Category:Physics experiments. 25 and 20 articles each (including a few that are candidates for transwikiing or deletion, or deal with experiments in general and not specific ones). Are those the only experiments ever? Of course not! But they're really important ones - as proved by their results and their impact on human knowledge. Same thing should go for engelangs. The Literate Engineer 23:02, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I would hardly say that the lack of articles on paintings is an indication that said paintings and painters don't deserve an article; I think it merely an indication that no one has put up an article yet and that paintings and painters have a lesser Wikipedian base than more pop-culture subjects.--Prosfilaes 18:31, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

There is a significant difference between conlangs and paintings. How long does it take to make a painting? It depends of course on the artist's style, but there are painters who make five paintings a day. On the other hand, you won't easily find a painter with only one or two paintings on his name. My point: paintings are part of an oeuvre, and it's the oeuvre that counts, not the individual painting. Therefore, in encyclopedic works you will find a lot of painters, but rarely paintings. Same goes for poets, composers, sculpturers, photographers, etc.
A conlang, on the other hand, is often the result of a life's work. There are conlangers with dozens of conlangs on their name, but they are exceptions, and even then only one or two are really significant. A conlang is nót part of an oeuvre, and therefore tends to overshadow its creator in importance: everybody knows Klingon, but who knows Marc Okrand? From this point of view, conlangs are best compared with series of comic books: Tintin is far more famous than his creator, Hergé, and in the case of comix that is a common phenomenon. --IJzeren Jan 21:39, 5 August 2005 (UTC)