
He created a Wikipedia article per day for a year, including on his wedding day - The_ed17
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/09/07/pranayraj-wikiyear-challenge/
======
Abishek_Muthian
Amazing, apart from obvious benefits of being Wikipedia article it's necessary
to note that it was written in one of the oldest regional Indian language -
Telugu; so it will serve as good medium for language preservation as well.

~~~
thaumasiotes
What would make one regional language older than another one?

~~~
nindalf
I think there are a couple of ways to prove this. Archeological records of
say, inscriptions in one language would help. If an inscription is older than
any inscription in another language, it's possibly older. Another way would be
linguistic analysis that demonstrates that one language is derived from
another. For example, in India many languages are influenced by Sanskrit so
Sanskrit is probably older than all of them, with a few exceptions like Tamil,
which show much less influence.

In India this is a pretty contentious issue. People like to claim that they're
a part of a much older tradition and that makes their culture better. This is
related to the claim by people who speak more widely spoken languages that
these languages should replace the older, less popular languages - for example
"why can't you Tamil speakers learn to speak Hindi?"

~~~
thaumasiotes
Two regional Indian languages spoken today are, by necessity, equally old.
It's not so common for new languages to form.

> in India many languages are influenced by Sanskrit so Sanskrit is probably
> older than all of them

Sanskrit is older than modern languages in the sense that it is from a
premodern period. That doesn't apply to living languages. We can say that
Latin is an older form of Portuguese; it is nonsensical to say that Portuguese
is older than Spanish. They're both Latin.

Spanish has a noticeable amount of influence from Arabic, since Arabic
speakers conquered the south of Spain and ruled there for a while. I don't see
how this is evidence that Arabic is an older language than Spanish is, though.

~~~
nindalf
No, I don't think so. If people have been speaking Language A for 2 millennia,
it's 2 millennia old. If they've been speaking Language B for 15 centuries,
it's 15 centuries old. Just because A and B are both spoken today doesn't make
them equally old. That's as absurd as saying you and I are both alive today so
we must be the same age.

It's interesting that you mention Spain. Are you familiar with the Basque
language? It has almost no influence from the Romance languages spoken in all
areas surrounding Basque country like French and Spanish. It's the last
descendant of the pre-Indo-European languages spoken in Western Europe. Would
you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old?

Influence doesn't imply that the influenced language is younger. A language
being entirely derived from another, like Hindi from Sanskrit and the Romance
languages from Latin, does imply that they're younger than Sanskrit and Latin.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Would you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old?

Think. How could it possibly be otherwise?

> If people have been speaking Language A for 2 millennia, it's 2 millennia
> old. If they've been speaking Language B for 15 centuries, it's 15 centuries
> old. Just because A and B are both spoken today doesn't make them equally
> old.

But you just made that up. As has already been pointed out, _all modern
languages_ have been spoken for exactly the same period of time, with a few
rare exceptions. The fact that two languages are both spoken today is
sufficient to conclude that they are equally old, unless you happen to know
exactly when one of them originated.

~~~
nindalf
Ah, I think I'm beginning to understand what you're saying. So Spanish might
have have evolved from Vulgar Latin after the Romans brought it to the Iberian
peninsula in 210BC, but in your eyes, its the same age as Latin itself. So
although the Romans conquered Gaul (France) in 50BC, beginning the evolution
of French, you reckon that French and Spanish are the same age.

Let me know if I've understood you correctly. If I have, then I think that's a
perfectly valid way of looking at it.

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cm2187
It may not necessarily mean a new original article every day. A huge number of
articles are simple translations of the english version (or vice versa). Which
doesn't make them any less useful. But it makes it easier to produce a large
number.

~~~
smsm42
And this btw where a lot of people could contribute - just translating a good
article into an under-represented language (or, alternatively, an article
unique to some language into more languages) would be much easier for an
unexperienced contributor than writing a good one from scratch, and the impact
is pretty much as large.

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ubernostrum
How many were immediately deleted citing bureaucratic reasons?

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WikipediasBad
Seriously right? smh. The frustration from that is where my HN username comes
from if anyone is wondering...To this day there's no real alternative
encyclopedia that is a legit competitor to Wikipedia unfortunately.

~~~
kowdermeister
Care to elaborate what's the problem? I'm a happy end user and I don't notice
this at all.

~~~
WikipediasBad
Have you ever tried to make a page? Like genuinely tried to make a page? Not
spammed them with bs. I am not bitter because I couldn't spam them with low
quality nonsense. Just the opposite actually, I am a longtime Wikipedia
editor. I love the site to be completely upfront (contrary to my username),
but their notability guidelines is mind bogglingly frustrating. They've
deleted pages I've tried to make for local ice cream shops, ma and pa stores
that have real stories (and real citations!), and local
investors/entrepreneurs who might not be as famous as Mark Zuckerberg but are
notable. It's maddening when you're work gets deleted. I've given up making
newer pages and let the higher ups do it and just improve the pages once they
are fairly mature. There are no real alternatives to Wikipedia with the same
altruistic base vision unfortunately. The only notable sites are RationalWiki,
Everipedia, InfoGalactic, and Wikia (if you can really even count that), but
all of these are a mere fraction of a fraction as big and reputable as
Wikipedia, so back to them I keep going (and back to deleting my articles they
continue to do).

~~~
dllu
Even a page [1] made by Jimmy Wales himself was deleted 22 minutes after
creation [2]. It was later undeleted and nominated for deletion again,
sparking a rather lengthy debate [3].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mzoli's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mzoli's)
[2] [https://www.quora.com/Has-any-article-created-by-Jimmy-
Wales...](https://www.quora.com/Has-any-article-created-by-Jimmy-Wales-on-
Wikipedia-ever-been-deleted-or-been-nominated-for-deletion) [3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Article...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mzoli%27s_Meats&oldid=161854477)

------
pamqzl
What is the benefit of preserving rarely-spoken languages?

~~~
sharmi
It is not a rare language as it is spoken by more than 72 million people[1]

Yet, there are languages that are in decline, because the population has
dispersed or has been assimilated into other cultures. Some have less than 100
speakers, some are extinct. These languages are not just only tools for
communication. They have evolved along with their speakers and thus reflect
their culture and history.

Just as examining the DNA of a species can shed light on where it originated
from, its habitat, challenges it evolved against and so on, so can the
morphological analysis of the language text and word etymologies, enable one
to map out invasions and associations with different cultures, periods of
famine and plenty, the important aspects of the culture etc. For example,
Eskimos have numerous words for snow because their lives depend on nowing the
nuances of different types of snow and adapting to it. The movement of people
in Central Asia, thousands of years ago, can be deduced from the tree of
languages that have branched out from the original settlers. I will try to add
references soon.

Languages are a part of history, a part of human culture, a part of us. Death
of a language is death of a civilization, a way of life (though the people
themselves may live on). Preserving the vestiges of a dying language is a
noble act in service of the human civilization, future and past.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu_language](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu_language)

Edit:fixed typo

~~~
CamelCaseName
I apologize if I misunderstood your post, but I feel as though you still did
not answer the parent's question. (And I'm aware Telugu is not a dead
language, but I ask following questions in general)

What is the tangible benefit (in excess of the time investment) of dead
languages?

And this may be a little naive but, it is nice to preserve human history in
its original format, but how can that help the average person?

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chris_wot
Yeah, I tried to contribute to Wikipedia and I almost died.

~~~
chris_wot
I did actually. I tried to commit suicide.

------
alexkavon
15 minutes of fame acquired

