Hallo!

On Sat Mar 1, 2008 10:21 am, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> On 29.2.2008 Sai Emrys wrote:
> > Whereas you assign (primary?) value simply to its
> > existence in its historical *form*, which to me is
> > completely irrelevant. I respect those who have done that
> > work before, and I want to preserve their *functional*
> > contributions (i.e. the information), but I do not value
> > the *form* thereof at all. (And even feel that if
> > preserving the form means it languishing unread or unused,
> > it's being done a disservice.)
> >
> 
> The problem is that even if I think the form of some
> articles on FW is suboptimal it is the form their authors
> have given them, and as such the authors are attached to
> them. Even though in theory anyone can edit any article the
> practice is not to make 'improvements' to what others have
> authored, out of respect for their creative choices.

Yes.  The point is that the person most knowledgeable about
a particular conlang or conworld usually is *the author himself*
- what he says is as close to a canonical source as it can be;
he and no-one else knows what he *intended*.  Hence, it is
good tradition on FrathWiki, KneeQuickie etc. to refrain from
editing articles on someone else's projects.

The only case I remember when I edited a FrathWiki page on
a project I wasn't involved with was when I deleted the
suggestion on the page on the Oligosynthesis Project that
the resulting conlang could be a part of the League of Lost
Languages.  I deleted it because the rules of the LLL (which
is a project which I *am* involved with) require that the
languages are naturalistic - which rules out any
oligosynthetic languages.  I left an explanation on the
talk page why I made that deletion.

>       It 
> would be a whole other thing if someone *asked* someone
> else to touch up their articles, which AFAIK hasn't
> happened any much.
> 
> That's why I said that an amalgamation project as you
> suggest would require *everyone's* cooperation. Even if one
> doesn't share or understand other people's feelings towards
> their work it behooves one to respect it.

Exactly.

>        Surely the share- 
> alike license would allow one to make a new site *in
> addition* to the old sites where one massages their content
> ruthlessly to conform to one's ideas of optimal form, but
> doing so would create chaos and resentment.

Probably.

> It may be that in this case the good is the enemy of the
> best, but since we are not Vulcans it must be so.

Yes.

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