I have discovered (among tons of anti-spam spam) a mail from a Wikipedian asking for collaboration on the discussion about some controversy regarding an article on Dnghu’s project, about Indo-European language revival – as far as I’ve read, it seems to deal with the question “is Modern Indo-European as Modern Hebrew?” – Even if I wanted to participate, I don’t know what else could I say, that is not already written down in our grammar.
Some months ago I saw that some links were coming from the Wikipedia article “Europaio” – of course, I felt excited about it, but then I read the talk page, the first entry log was a certain user CrCulver (now disappeared, I’ve found the same user in Citizendium) trying to delete immediatly the entry saying “Non-notable conlang project, and it appears that the initiator of it himself has put up this article (and put links to it in inappropriate places), so it’s also vanity“. That had already happened weeks before, and the question appeared to be solved, but it still bothered me a lot when I first read what was written about me and the project, and in the most visited online Encyclopedia.
I looked for the creator of the article, and it was a Mr. Extremaduran – hence probably from Extremadura, and apparently a new user created just to add the project. So, OK, there were signs that it could be me or one of us, and a bad day is a bad day, and all of us have accused or suspected from others, but that guy left his comment publicly “non-notable” “conlang” and “vanity” – two strikes against the project (without even reading it, as it was minutes after the addition), and one against me personally, without even giving me the possibility to answer – a personal mail could have made the difference (even a post in our forum like “hey dude, you fucking spammer, I’m insulting you and your stupid project publicly, just in case you wanna answer me”, that could have saved me the annoyance).
Then some others have tried to discuss in the talk page about our project, trying to ascertain what is exactly all about, and some absurd comments about what we really mean and do and want (which is what we clearly state in our website) and the rest can be seen in the discussion page.
Then I received incoming links from a discussion page in the German wikipedia to this personal blog, and again some were talking about our “conlang” – I showed up and (using one of our IPs, so there could be no confussion) I said I didn’t want the project to appear as a conlang. They eventually deleted it – “not even the creator thinks it is notable” – yes, that was the point, not even reading my comment…
Adapted from a R. Galli’s post I read some time ago (in http://mnm.uib.es/gallir/):
I think wikipedians can do whatever they think appropriate with their project, I understand it and think we should support this free project. But when they begin to 1) accuse others of spamming (without us being even aware of what is going on), 2) take arbitrary decisions like deleting articles because of “spam” (even after they have been vandalized), without following its own rules and “consensus”, 3) that even the same persons (a certain Mr. Christian Culver and others) dare to criticize the projects and works of others from the most profound ignorance, and 4) that they use their own opinions as arguments to justify their public editions in a work read by many – Now, even after some wikipedians tried to solve it (moving it to “Modern Indo-European”), other wikipedians are trying to delete it for “not notable enough” – so, now eventually using their self-defined rules -; That whole mess could discourage everyone.
And all this is brought to you without having even asked or tried to be there.
I don’t know if I wanted the project to be there one year ago, but I certainly thought before that it was a honour to be written about. Now I don’t – just see the discussion page on the German Wikipedia article, where dozens of personal “conlangs” were talked about as ‘personal shit’ along with our serious revival project of a language reconstructed by Indo-European scholars. Today it can happen that someone brands you as spammer, and that people think you are a spammer, or that wikipedians (just by creating an account) become judges of thousands of hours of work even without reading or knowing first what is all about.
Unless you are a very famous person, a friend of the administrators, or some project related to them, preferably North-American (or British), and that you or your project falls near the environment of some administrators, you might have it very hard to defend an article, it seems — some seem to know about everything, to the point they can decide about what is relevant and what not: I would really like to be an administrator, with all that knowledge about everything.
They can do with wikipedia.org whatever they like, they have the right to do it, and the Internet doesn’t end with the Wikimedia Foundation.
But things should be clear. One day you may wake up and see that because some well-minded person (or not so well-minded) wanted you or your project to be there, you are a “spammer” and a “vain” “conlanger” – and you still drinking your first coffee…No, I don’t want to be there editing articles and participating in discussions with their administrators. If they want to talk about the project, they will have to read first about it (in our websites or in the press) – if they have questions, there is an open forum. It’s better not to be there and being able to work hard on the own projects, instead of trying to convince others that this or that account is not you, that this or that information is notable enough, or even care about your article just to apologize because some have considered your project “notable”, and have used their time to work a neutral and brief description of it. No, thanks.
Edit: By the way, what some Spanish media have done, vandalizing the Spanish Wikipedia to show how easy is to change it, showing it on TV, is a shame, and indeed I support wikipedia.org against such stupid examples of how to bother an online project.
