10 ms·

He created a Wikipedia article per day for a year, including on his wedding day

150 points by The_ed17 9y ago

Abishek_Muthian 9y ago
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.
- Frondo 9y ago
  Just FYI, Telugu is spoken by like 70 million people. It's nice that there are 365 more articles written in it, but there is also a wide variety of media being churned out in Telugu every day, like Tollywood cinema.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  What would make one regional language older than another one?
  - _jgdh 9y ago
    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 9y ago
      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.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - _jgdh 9y ago
        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.
        Grustaf 9y ago
        >Would you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old? If by Spanish you mean the modern history of the language, since its branching off from the other Romance languages, then you could say it's younger, but this is just an accident of naming, caused by the extrinsic fact that there are other surviving dialects of Latin with their own nation states. If Latin had only survived in the form of Spanish, we would probably either call it Latin, or see Latin as Old Spanish. Either way we wouldn't see it as less old than Basque. And from a linguistic point of view, unless you think Basque and IE languages derive from separate innovations of language (sort of like wings have evolved separately in birds and bats - analogy rather than homology), the language that is today called Spanish is of course just as old as the language called Basque.
  - wsxcde 9y ago
    In India, it ends up being the availability of records that are (a) decipherable and (b) recognizably in that language. Among the so-called Indian "regional" langauges, the oldest Tamil records date back to about 2300 BC, while the oldest available records of Kannada/Telugu are a few hundreds of years younger. It's quite likely these languages existed long before these written records, but records are what decide the oldness olympics.
    - thaumasiotes 9y ago
      There are no records recognizably written in any modern language from 2300 BC. They can be recognizably written in an ancestral form of the language, but no language can remain self-intelligible over 4300 years.
      - wsxcde 9y ago
        I made a mistake. I should have said 300 BC not 2300 BC. Also, yes, they are in an older form the language.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pamqzl 9y ago
What is the benefit of preserving rarely-spoken languages?
- HappyKasper 9y ago
  It's often said [0] that every language is conducive to a unique worldview - in my personal experience, I see the world very differently in Polish than I do in English. Yet even if that worldview perspective may be intangible (i.e. hard to prove), the simple cultural value of each language is tremendous. Losing a language is like burning the Mona Lisa - along with every photo, copy, or file of her ever made. [0]: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/why-save-a-language.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/why-sav...
  - klodolph 9y ago
    Your personal experiences are probably swamped by the fact that individuals have different personalities when speaking in different languages, due to the experiences that they've had speaking those languages. For example, it's not uncommon at all for an immigrant to have a very confident and assertive personality in their native language, compared to their personality when speaking the language of the country they live in. I know some people who are like this. When I speak other languages I tend to be more serious. Perhaps this is because I was very serious when I was studying them? (Perhaps causation goes the other way?)
- Stanleyc23 9y ago
  What's the harm?
  - cgag 9y ago
    Of a guy writing wiki articles? Nothing. It's a pretty valid question in general though as people do receive grant money for language preservation projects I'm pretty sure.
- swatkat 9y ago
  What makes you think Telugu is a rarely-spoken language?
ubernostrum 9y ago
How many were immediately deleted citing bureaucratic reasons?
- necessity 9y ago
  It's not the English Wikipedia.
- WikipediasBad 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    Care to elaborate what's the problem? I'm a happy end user and I don't notice this at all.
    - WikipediasBad 9y ago
      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).
alexkavon 9y ago
15 minutes of fame acquired
chris_wot 9y ago
Yeah, I tried to contribute to Wikipedia and I almost died.
- chris_wot 9y ago
  I did actually. I tried to commit suicide.
cm2187 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.

150 points by The_ed17 9y ago

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.

Frondo 9y ago
Just FYI, Telugu is spoken by like 70 million people. It's nice that there are 365 more articles written in it, but there is also a wide variety of media being churned out in Telugu every day, like Tollywood cinema.
thaumasiotes 9y ago
What would make one regional language older than another one?
- _jgdh 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - _jgdh 9y ago
      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.
      - Grustaf 9y ago
        >Would you claim that Basque and Spanish are equally old? If by Spanish you mean the modern history of the language, since its branching off from the other Romance languages, then you could say it's younger, but this is just an accident of naming, caused by the extrinsic fact that there are other surviving dialects of Latin with their own nation states. If Latin had only survived in the form of Spanish, we would probably either call it Latin, or see Latin as Old Spanish. Either way we wouldn't see it as less old than Basque. And from a linguistic point of view, unless you think Basque and IE languages derive from separate innovations of language (sort of like wings have evolved separately in birds and bats - analogy rather than homology), the language that is today called Spanish is of course just as old as the language called Basque.
- wsxcde 9y ago
  In India, it ends up being the availability of records that are (a) decipherable and (b) recognizably in that language. Among the so-called Indian "regional" langauges, the oldest Tamil records date back to about 2300 BC, while the oldest available records of Kannada/Telugu are a few hundreds of years younger. It's quite likely these languages existed long before these written records, but records are what decide the oldness olympics.
  - thaumasiotes 9y ago
    There are no records recognizably written in any modern language from 2300 BC. They can be recognizably written in an ancestral form of the language, but no language can remain self-intelligible over 4300 years.
    - wsxcde 9y ago
      I made a mistake. I should have said 300 BC not 2300 BC. Also, yes, they are in an older form the language.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pamqzl 9y ago

What is the benefit of preserving rarely-spoken languages?

HappyKasper 9y ago
It's often said [0] that every language is conducive to a unique worldview - in my personal experience, I see the world very differently in Polish than I do in English. Yet even if that worldview perspective may be intangible (i.e. hard to prove), the simple cultural value of each language is tremendous. Losing a language is like burning the Mona Lisa - along with every photo, copy, or file of her ever made. [0]: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/why-save-a-language.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/why-sav...
- klodolph 9y ago
  Your personal experiences are probably swamped by the fact that individuals have different personalities when speaking in different languages, due to the experiences that they've had speaking those languages. For example, it's not uncommon at all for an immigrant to have a very confident and assertive personality in their native language, compared to their personality when speaking the language of the country they live in. I know some people who are like this. When I speak other languages I tend to be more serious. Perhaps this is because I was very serious when I was studying them? (Perhaps causation goes the other way?)
Stanleyc23 9y ago
What's the harm?
- cgag 9y ago
  Of a guy writing wiki articles? Nothing. It's a pretty valid question in general though as people do receive grant money for language preservation projects I'm pretty sure.
swatkat 9y ago
What makes you think Telugu is a rarely-spoken language?

ubernostrum 9y ago

How many were immediately deleted citing bureaucratic reasons?

necessity 9y ago
It's not the English Wikipedia.
WikipediasBad 9y ago
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 9y ago
  Care to elaborate what's the problem? I'm a happy end user and I don't notice this at all.
  - WikipediasBad 9y ago
    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).

alexkavon 9y ago

15 minutes of fame acquired

chris_wot 9y ago

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

chris_wot 9y ago
I did actually. I tried to commit suicide.

cm2187 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.