Linguifex:Honoured language

Honoured languages This page describes the concept of honoured languages by the Linguifex community.

General information

The Linguifex Wiki is a site to display and share your personal constructed language, as well as detailing commercial and famous conlangs. Whilst this is done purely for the discussion, sharing and entertainment, the wiki also allows official honouring of exceptional conlangs.

Through processes of nominating and voting, languages receive the honour of being portrayed on the main page, giving them more publicity and fame.

There are three honours a language may receive, a language may be featured through election by the community for the main page after nomination and voting according to criteria and rules, or selected by the administration for exceptional features, work, thoroughness or the like. The third honour is being labeled completed, where a language should possess a close to full degree of completion and a very high degree usability.

Featured language

Featured languages are elected by the Conlang Wiki community. At the end of every other month, a nomination process is started, where all users of the Conlang Wiki may nominate an exceptional conlang to be featured. Nominated languages should immediately translate and gloss the following sentence, which will be displayed on the voting page:

This language was once featured. Thanks to its level of quality, plausibility and usage capabilities, it has been voted as featured.

When the nomination has ended the round of voting starts. All users have one vote, and one may only vote for a language, and not against it. All votes ought to be accompanied by a motivation, consisting of about one sentence. The authors of the nominated languages may not vote for their own conlang, but may choose to elect a competing language. The voting generally lasts for about one week, after which the victorious language is pronounced and displayed on the front page.

To win however, users and voters should observe the following criteria:

• Intention - How well the language serves its intention, if any.
• Naturalism - Depending on the intention, the language can be judged naturalistic or unnaturalistic.
• Grammar - How are the various grammatical components cooperating? Is it complicated, too complicated or simple? Depends on its intention.
• Usability - Is the language usable, functional or difficult to use? How are the texts glossed? How many texts/words are there?
• Completeness - "Perfection is many small details done well" - Marco Pierre White

Winning languages and authors receive the honour of being mentioned at the front page, an immortalisation on the template of featured languages, and a badge to put on the user and article pages.

Selected language

Selected languages are autocratically chosen, or picked, by the administration, which currently consists of the administrators Chrysophylax (talk), Emperor Zelos (talk), Pá mamūnám ontā́ bán (talk) and Waahlis (talk). These languages are either nominated to the admins by the author or any other user, or the administrators choose a language on their own. Selected languages need not to be constructed, but may be an article on a natural language, possessing special features, a notable history, or it may simply be very well written. There are however a number of criteria for selection by the administrators:

• Intention - How well the language serves its intention, if any.
• Naturalism - Depending on the intention, the language can be judged naturalistic or unnaturalistic.
• Grammar - How are the various grammatical components cooperating? Is it complicated, too complicated or simple? Depends on its intention.
• Features - Does any phonological or grammatical components stand out as interesting, well integrated or innovative?
• Usability - Is the language usable, functional or difficult to use? How are the texts glossed? How many texts/words are there?
• History - Does the language have an interesting or well written history?
• Sound changes - If a posteriori, does the language have a credible set of sound changes?
• Quality - If a natural language, how is the article quality?
  • Possessing links to proper articles.
  • Containing numerous examples.
  • The article is concisive.
  • It is not to long or too short.
  • The article is well organised.
  • It is not heavy in text.
  • Categorised properly.
  • The article has been reviewed by the users.

When a language is selected by the administrators, it receives its own mention below that of the featured language, and a special badge for the author. Selected language may not compete in the elected votings, unless the content has changed substantially since its selection.

Completed language

Completed languages achieve that which most conlangers dream about: perfection, completion and use. While no constructed language ever achieves absolute perfection, it might be excellent in many ways.

The language should excel in all of the criteria mentioned above, the article or articles ought to be exhaustive and the texts and examples abundant. Nomination for honouring of a conlang works similarly to that of elected languages. However, when nominated, the language receives one week of voting, in which all Linguifex users may vote. All users have one vote, but in these circumstances one may vote either for the language, or against it being labelled "completed". All votes ought to be accompanied by a motivation, summed up in a sentence or two.

When nominated for completion, the language must translate and gloss a fairly complex text, decided upon by the administration.

When the voting has ended, the for and against votes are counted and the language has the chance of being honoured with the badge of completion. Should the language fail to do this, the author may improve it and nominate it yet again.