Well, that was not what one would call a good start for our vote. Okay, never mind. Since we decided to revisit the discussion a little, I would like to propose an alternative questionnaire. Because frankly, I think the current questionnaire is needlessly chaotic, complex, unclear, and long. The odds are that the final result would be a set of criteria that are so complicated that no one will be able to control everything, and that's pretty much beside the point of this whole operation. Let's not forget why we started this: because anybody could call anything "non-notable" just on the basis of this own sentiments. What we want is to provide a set of objective criteria that can decide whether a conlang is notable enough for inclusion.
On the basis of the TOC, I have grouped the fourty question under a few headers:
- NUMBER OF SPEAKERS
- 1 Has 10 speakers
- 2 Has 30 speakers
- 3 Has 100 speakers
- 4 Has 300 speakers
- 5 Has 1000 speakers
- COMPLETENESS
- Language
- 21 Has a complete grammar
- 24 Has a sufficiently large vocabulary
- 28 The language can be used to define its own grammar
- 29 The language can translate the Babel Text
- Corpus
- 33 Has been used in at least 5 translation relays
- 34 At least 10 original texts are published in the language
- 35 At least 20 original texts published in the language
- 36 Has a public corpus of at least 10,000 words
- 37 Has a public corpus of at least 100,000 words
- UNIQUENESS
- 27 Has an extreme grammar or vocabulary
- 30 The language has a unique script
- 32 Sets itself challenging artistic goals, and achieves them
- 38 Demonstates plausible historical derivation from a natural language
- 39 Demonstrates plausible historical derivation from another conlang
- PUBLICATION
- 6 A book has been published about the language
- 7 A book with an ISBN has been published about the language
- 8 A book has been published in the language
- 9 A book with an ISBN has been published in the language
- 25 Has been used in professionally published media
- REPUTATION
- 12 Among 100 most popular conlangs
- 13 Among 200 most popular conlangs
- 14 Been mistaken for a real language
- 15 Caused controversy
- 17 Inspired a notable conlang
- 19 Has caused active discussion
- 20 At least N independent discussions of the language
- 26 Actively supported/developed
- 40 Contributes to the notability of another conlang
- OTHER
- 10 Was created before 1900
- 11 Was created before 1950
- 16 Has an ISO code
- 18 Has a Wikipedia
- 22 Was created by J.R.R. Tolkien
- 23 Was created by Marc Okrand
- 31 Is associated with a well developed conculture
- NOT MENTIONED IN THE QUESTIONNAIRE
- Worked by m people for n years.
- Differential criteria due to purpose
- Has established notability outside of the conlanger community
- Has this language influenced others?
- What is the consensus of the conlang community about this particular language?
- Does this language play a role in a broader work of fiction, like movies, books of fiction, games or Internet-based projects (in other words, not only in books with an ISBN number about or in the language itself)?
- Has the language received any particular attention, for example in the media or the press?
- Can the language be considered the exponent of a particular genre?