Wiktionary talk:Votes/2018-02/Moving Lojban entries to the Appendix

Needs specific change

I'd say this need a specific change to CFI, and that CFI should mention Lojban and how it is being handled.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:27, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

There is a specific change to CFI that would occur: Lojban would be removed from the list. Why should it be mentioned as having been removed? Communicationssprache doesn't get a mention. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:11, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

What about the following change in WT:CFI#Constructed_languages?

Old:

Languages originating from literary works should not be included as entries or translations in the main namespace, consistent with the above. However, the following ones should have lexicons in the Appendix namespace: Quenya, Sindarin, Klingon, and Orcish.

New:

The following languages should have lexicons in the Appendix namespace: Quenya, Sindarin, Klingon, Lojban and Orcish.

Languages originating from literary works should not be included as entries or translations in the main namespace, consistent with the above.

What I did there is that I separated the list sentence from the sentence about literary works, enabling the inclusion of Lojban on the list. I also switched the order of the sentences to prevent any unwanted semantic leak from the sentence about languages from literary works to the list sentence.

--Dan Polansky (talk) 06:54, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: I have no real opinion regarding that change; the whole paragraph as it exists is completely unneeded and we would be better off removing it from CFI. Just above, there is a list of the only constructed languages acceptable in mainspace, so it is repetitive to specify some that are unacceptable. Similarly, many such languages are in the appendix; it is pointless to specify a few that "should" be in the appendix. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:02, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: What are some other languages that have lexicons in appedices? Do we have a complete list? --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:05, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@Dan Polansky: Category:Appendix-only constructed languages. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:07, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: Thank you. I wonder whether the intent of the list in CFI was to regulate these appendix-only constructed languages. Admittedly, the CFI wording does not explicitly say that all other constructed languages should not have an appendix, but that could have been the intent. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:13, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

The wording seems to be the result of sequential compromises and votes. I think I once proposed tightening up the wording here in a BP discussion, but it got derailed by people confused about the content of it. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 07:15, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

The substance of that wording was added via Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2007-04/Fictional languages; the discussion was at Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2007/April#Constructed languages. There, I do not see any discussion suggesting to limit Appendix-only constructed languages. Thus, I probably agree with you that the change I proposed is unnecessary or undesirable. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:30, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

LDL instead of an appendix

I wonder whether we could declare Lojban to be a less well documented language on the Internet. For such a language, we already do have a badge of shame ({{LDL}}) for mainspace enties and relaxed criteria. Thus, Lojban could continue to make use of the regular infrastructure of the mainspace. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:46, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't think of {{LDL}} as a badge of shame. Making it an LDL would make it easier for Lojban words to be in namespace, since a single mention (not even use) would be sufficient. I'd much rather see Lojban shunted off to an appendix with the other conlangs that almost no one genuinely uses. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 08:16, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Sure, making Lojban a LDL would make it coverable via a single mention, which would address the concern raised in the rationale of the present vote that it cannot get three attesting quotations.

Could not there be a different badge for Lojban? Why should Lojban be shunted off? Is this because hardly anyone uses Lojban? --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:33, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, yes, that and the fact that it's a conlang, not a natural language. If a natural language were in the situation described in the rationale, that would make it a perfect candidate for being an LDL. (In fact, any natural language like that would have already been an LDL ever since we introduced the concept of LDLs.) But for a conlang, IMO, the situation described in the rationale makes it a perfect candidate for being appendix-only. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 12:34, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes sense. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:00, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm sad I didn't notice this vote; I would have voted against. I don't see how the rationale supports the proposal, either: The scantness of corpus and usage seems to be an argument against greater inclusion of the language. Perhaps some voters thought the choice was between appendix or mainspace, when rather it would probably be a choice between appendix or nothing?__Gamren (talk) 09:48, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Before Wiktionary:Votes/2018-02/Moving Lojban entries to the Appendix, Lojban entries were in mainspace, and now they're in Appendix space, so the choice was between appendix and mainspace. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 14:12, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, but I got the impression that if we hadn't moved them to appendix, the vast majority would have failed RFV, and then the rest would be insufficient to support its WDL status. Then we could have scrubbed it all the way out, like we should with the rest of Category:Appendix-only_constructed_languages.__Gamren (talk) 14:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

We can still do that. Now that Lojban is an "Appendix-only constructed language", we can have a vote to get rid of all "Appendix-only constructed languages", and that would include Lojban. --WikiTiki89 14:44, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I guess so.__Gamren (talk) 15:37, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Some suggestions

Here are a few small things that could be added:

• Re voting on: WT:About Lojban (which used to contain some terrible proposals, and still does in the notes) will also need a major revision if this passes.
• Re rationale: There is also extremely little Lojban on Usenet [1], which could be used as an additional argument in the rationale.
• Re rationale: Klingon is the copyrighted property of the CBS Corporation, apparently the main reason it isn't included in the mainspace. It may be fair to mention the copyright restrictions on Klingon, as they do not apply to Lojban at all.

←₰-→ Lingo ^Bingo _Dingo (talk) 14:28, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Re voting on: About pages are not official. As a result, it's not really appropriate to vote on them; nobody disputes that they should be changed to reflect reality when needed.
Re rationale: Good point, I'll add that in.
Re rationale pt. 2: That is not necessarily true, as no court in the US has confirmed that a language can be copyrighted. If it were true, there would be no legal difference between us keeping Klingon in mainspace versus the appendix. As a result, those supposed restrictions are a distraction from the main point. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 20:30, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Implementation

Now that the vote's passed, how will it be implemented? Will someone program a bot to move all the Lojban entries to Appendix: namespace? We also need to add type = "appendix-constructed", under m["jbo"] at Module:languages/data3/j, though I suppose we should do that last so as to minimize the number of module errors. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 20:43, 31 March 2018 (UTC)