Toki Pona Forums

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_pona

toki ponans! Wikipedia (well 1 person) wants to delete the article. So we need to :

1) Track down references to the language, especially ones that go beyond brief mention
e.g. - viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1438&p=10362&hilit ... cle#p10362
- Get rid of reference that only mention toki pona in a list.
- The Russian "Speed of Thought" reference is bogus-- the author says he doesn't know squat about toki pona.
- toki pona got brief mention in Arika Okrend's book

2) Improve the quality of the article
Here is one discussion of quality issues: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1610&p=8869
- The provenance stuff should have been a post on the forum, a blog, wiki books or what ever.
- The comparison to New Speak is misleading, unfair, uninformed. Might as well compare it to ... well fill in the blank.
- The "fluent speakers" bit implies that fluency means the same thing it might mean in French or English proficiency. Being fluent in toki pona is more like being fluent in C# or competent at playing card games.

3) For people who have standing to vote on keep/delete, please vote.

The russian wikipedia wanted to delete too.

I voted to Keep the article. I don't know if I have standing; I better - I've had a membership on Wikipedia for over 10 years.
I also added a section in the article on ROILA and gave a reference.

I also voted to keep.

There are numerous published mentions in news that I found through the archive.org backlog. These can at least combat the "it's a personal project that is not notable" claims:

Moncton native creates unique 'good language' article in the Times & Transcript, New Brunswick Pulled photo from this URL "hundreds of people have become fluent"
She's talking in a new tongue article in the Telegraph-Journal Pulled photo from this URL "Toki Pona is emerging as one of the most accepted."
Canadian has people talking about lingo she created article in the Globe and Mail Pulled photo from this URL

Sonja also did audio interviews, I haven't found them yet.

Blurb about Toki Pona in Politikin Zabavnik (popular Serbian magazine) Pulled photo from this URL

thechuff wrote:
Sonja also did audio interviews, I haven't found them yet.

Yes there was interviews from Canadian Radio Stations ( both French and English ) but i don't know if they are back online.
They were pretty interesting.
( But this was from 2007/2008 and we don't have NEW references in medias )

I voted to keep, although I don't know if I have standing.

My reasoning mostly focused on refuting the points made by the delete nominator. My response in full:

"Numerous mentions in various media (e.g., newspapers, radio, academic journals) over multiple years. Insisting that these mentions in the media are "trivial" seems short-sighted: If journalists and academics believed the topic to be "trivial," they wouldn't have reported/researched it in the first place, and a broad-brush rejection of their judgment--especially by those who have no particular academic credentials in the field(s) in question, nor any particular experience as a journalist--seems inappropriate. The allegedly poor construction of the article does not justify deletion; at best, such poor construction would merely justify improving the article, not deleting it. The ISO 639-3 rejection by SIL is neither surprising nor compelling: SIL ultimately is a Christian organization, and one of it main goals is to use language to spread Christianity by translating the Bible into many local, natural languages. Conlangs simply do not support SIL's explicitly stated mission, so discrimination toward conlangs--or at least the potential for such discrimination--is altogether unsurprising and even expected, especially for a deliberately simple conlang that would not be exceptionally suitable for translating large sections of the Bible (i.e., Toki Pona)."

Feel free to elaborate on these points on the deletion talk page, etc.

-- Pije / Bryant

Actually, tp hasn't done that bad in Bible translations. We've done a bunch of the stories. We may not be as good at the condemnatory minutiae that are the heart of SIL Christianity.

Why a non-neutral organization is leading the ISO stuff ?

I updated the links to the Globe & Mail article and the LA Times article, so they are no longer broken.
Dave