Wikipedia:Conlangs/Why conlangs should be covered

Conlanging is a minority artform - that is a form of artistic endeavour that has not achieved the same level of public awareness as better known artforms, such as painting or music. Wikipedia is well suited for the encyclopaedic documentation of minority artforms, as it is not subject to the space limitiations of a printed encyclopaedia.

For the coverage of any arform to be truly encyclopaedic, it is necessary for significant bodies of work and notable individual works to be covered. It would be inconceivable that any encyclopaedia would seek to cover the topic of painting without a substantial article on Pablo Picasso, or to discuss Picasso's work without making articles on significant individual works such as Guernica or Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. So it is with conlanging. It would be absurd to discuss conlanging without reference to J.R.R. Tolkien, and impossible to discuss his contribution to the art without articles on Quenya and Sindarin.

Encylopaedic coverage of the field of conlanging therefore requires articles on significant individual conlangs. First and foremost, such articles should be able to demonstrate, from verifiable sources, why the conlang is of interest.

Surely though, all conlangs should be covered as all languages should be covered. Some real world languages are now spoken by a single elderly speaker and it is not written, and yet it is researched and covered like German or English. All languages, whether natural or constructed are tests of how we describe the universe around us and how we describe what we feel. What makes a conlang, especially one used in daily life, even by a single person, any different from a natural language under the same circumstances? 20:07 GMT August 2nd 2008 - Wikim3