This is an archive of past discussions about Template:Infobox language. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I wish to request an edit for this template to include the classication of a given language's danger of extiction, given by UNESCO, as described on this article. There are already some articles that hack it in using the |map= paramater (see Adyghe language), but I believe that it should be included for completeness and as a useful metric to gauge a language's healthiness, compare the vulnerability classification on {{Speciesbox}}. Juwan (talk) 12:00, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
IIRC, there's some uneven consensus that we do not include that classification in the infobox. I do not think it adds much concrete information; moreover, something really rubs me the wrong way about presenting sociological data like language vitality identically to biodiversity metrics (though I'm not against the UNESCO schema in itself). It is also not a widely adopted schema IIRC. Remsense ‥ 论12:05, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
@Remsense sociological data is something that I look for often and, in my opinion, would better these articles. would you mind explaining a bit more what is your issues and ideas about these types of classifications? the biodiversity metric are only an example of what to think about but it doesn't need to be exactly that! Juwan (talk) 13:46, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
In general, infoboxes are designed to communicate key facts at a glance (cf. WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE); details that are significantly nuanced or require additional context to understand should be omitted. This classification is not quantitative, and is based on specific criteria that are not universally accepted, which is not adequately clear when listed alongside more quantitative or otherwise objective data about a language like number of speakers or uncontroversial phylogenetic relationships. Given this schema is not universally accepted, it requires additional context and thus should be omitted from the infobox in favor of being discussed in prose. Remsense ‥ 论22:43, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
I agree that language vitality is not easily captured by a one-dimensional scale, whether it is the UNESCO scale or the more detailed EGIDS. It fails to include vital aspects such as internal and external language attitudes, degree of bilingualism, presence in mass media, etc. I have observed communities speaking languages that formally appear as 6b on the EGIDS scale, but are more likely to persist than languages classified as 5 and 6a.
Also, as of now, most articles that fell victim to the senseless, disruptive mass-edit stunt of abusing the map-parameter blantantly violate WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE, since they don't have a matching prose section about vitality status. Adding a dedicated parameter won't solve the issue, but rather might invite more additions to the infobox mechanically copied from UNESCO Atlas. –Austronesier (talk) 23:23, 21 September 2024 (UTC)
I support the idea of adding a language's endangerment status to the infobox. It's also something that I as a language researcher look for.
I don't think it's correct to say that these scales aren't quantitative; it's just that the metric doesn't capture all the relevant parameters. I also don't think it's true to say that the scales aren't universally accepted. They're not universally accepted in the literal sense, and all linguists acknowledge their shortcomings, but they're still a legitimate effort to provide an objective standardized metric aimed at assessing endangerment, and these scales are widely adopted and referenced among linguists. Endangerment scales are used for determining priority in grant funding, for example.
It seems to me like endangerment rating is a perfect fit for the purpose of the infobox. But I also acknowledge there's a lot of details in language infoboxes already, and there are tradeoffs to just how much info you can stuff in there before it defeats the purpose of an "at a glance" look. Plus, since there are multiple endangerment scales, there's the question of which to include. Including all 3 of the major ones seems a bit much. Glottolog's Agglomerated Endangerment Scale might be a good choice though, because it's an aggregation of all of the other scales. Dwhieb (talk) 23:41, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
