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Language committee/Archives/2007-12

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For a summary of discussions, see the archives index.

Spanned discussions

The following discussions span multiple months and are archived in the first applicable archive:

Wikipedia Extremaduran

No decision was taken on the request for an Extremaduran Wikipedia.

  1. Jon Harald Søby
    01 December 2007 23:07

    Hi all!

    I propose the final approval of Wikipedia in Extremaduran. They are done localizing the interface, and have almost 400 articles ready in the Incubator, as well as an active community. As far as I can tell, all our requirements are met, so they should be approved.

  2. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    02 December 2007 07:38

    Hello,

    Some very important interface messages have not been translated, including the session loss error message, email confirmation messages, and the watchlist lag warning. Once these (and a few others) are translated, I'm all in favour.

  3. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    02 December 2007 10:31

    Yes, that stuff needs being addressed

Wikipedia Crimean Tatar

The second request for a Crimean Tatar Wikipedia was approved.

  1. Jon Harald Søby
    01 December 2007 23:17

    Hi all!

    I propose the final approval of Wikipedia in Crimean Tatar. They have translated all vital parts of the interface, in both Cyrillic and Latin (might be automatically converted, I'm not exactly sure); there are still a few messages here<http://translatewiki.net/w/?task=untranslated&group=core-500&language=crh-latn&limit=100&title=Special%253ATranslate>that still aren't translated, but these are not vital ( e.g. I, a very experienced user, have rarely or never bumped into them) for the interface at all, and they will probably translate them sooner or later. They have an active community that has created close to 500 articles in the Incubator, and as far as I can see, they meet all of our requirements.

  2. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    02 December 2007 10:40

    If the main msgs are translated they’re welcome in. Hopefully this will be a peaceful place, and not yet another battlefield among Tatars, Russians and Ukrainians.

  3. Jon Harald Søby
    14 December 2007 23:02

    Since no-one has had any objections about the final approval of this wiki, I will go ahead and email Erik notifying that we will be approving it.

  4. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    15 December 2007 01:39

    <this comment is marked as private.>

  5. Jon Harald Søby
    14 December 2007 23:06

    Hi!

    Following the customs of the village, this is to notify you [the board] that we [the Language Committee] are about to approve a Wikipedia<http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/crh> in Crimean Tatar <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Tatar_language>, as the community has fulfilled all of the requirements for new languages.

Supporting localisation of MediaWiki for languages that are not proposing Wikimedia projects

A proposal for the subcommittee to control localization of MediaWiki was rejected.

  1. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    06 December 2007 13:15

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  2. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    06 December 2007 13:22

    Hello,

    The language subcommittee plays no role at all in MediaWiki localization, except insofar as we require it for new projects. If someone wants to translate it into Tolkien Elvish, they are allowed to. Since it is an aspect of MediaWiki development, it is the developers who decide whether or not to add translations to the codebase.

    "Language subcommittee" is a little bit misleading; "new language subdomain management subcommittee" would be a less confusing name (although, of course, "language subcommittee" is much easier to say).

  3. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    06 December 2007 13:29
    • What it does mean is that we will ask for documentation of the linguistic entities that MediaWiki
    • supports and information on who asked for the support of the additional linguistic entities.

    Hmmm... a bit vague here. What docs exactly?

  4. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    06 December 2007 13:31

    Untrue. We don't rule "domains only". We have a much wider scope (including "anything language") since the very start. You may have missed that bit since you weren't part of the starting team, but whatver deals with languages IS our bag.

    Then, what we do exactly is a matter for discussion, obviously.

  5. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    06 December 2007 13:37

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  6. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    06 December 2007 15:00

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  7. Jon Harald Søby
    06 December 2007 16:05

    2007/12/6, GerardM:
    <this text is quoted from a user who has not agreed to public archival.>

    Yes, we do allow that. We do not accept WMF projects in extinct languages, but we do accept localisation for such languages. (By "we" I mean the community; the langcom has no say over what is allowed a localisation; if someone wanted to localise Wikipedia to Pig Latin or Elmer Mudd or Leet, they are free to do so - it is none of our business.)

    So in other words, I do not see what the problem is?

  8. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    06 December 2007 16:30

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  9. Jon Harald Søby
    06 December 2007 16:46

    2007/12/6, GerardM:
    <this text is quoted from a user who has not agreed to public archival.>

    That we don't accept these projects doesn't mean they can't or won't be made; someone that gets turned down by us because their proposed project is for a historical or extinct language may still have a wiki at Wikia or somewhere else. And the fact that localisation for Pig Latin or Leet might not be interesting for end-users - should that mean that people are not allowed to localise MediaWiki? (E.g., we don't need to provide these translations with the main MW package, but as an "extension" of sorts.)

  10. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    06 December 2007 16:56

    Localisation and projects are 2 different things. One is for WMF, the other is for mediawiki users (myself included in a number of external projects). Also, when MLMW comes around, you will need separated localisations for different dialects of a language (to name the most evident case, a localisation for en-uk as opposed to en-us). It is quite couterproductive to force users to either be english or americans, and this happens in basically every language. Content is content, UI is the UI.

Tajikistan wiki subdomain change

An OTRS volunteer asks for advice about a ticket to change an existing subdomain ( OTRS ticket#2007120310004099).

  1. Michael Bimmler (Mbimmler) Wikipedia information team
    03 December 2007 10:24

    Hi Sabine, hi Gerard, hi langcom!

    The message below arrived in OTRS, where someone is asking why the Tajik Wikipedia is at tg.wikipedia.org instead of tj.wikipedia.org

    I would be grateful for some input (or even a fully-drafted response) that I can send him afterwards. Otherwise, if you have OTRS access, feel free to just take over the ticket ;-)

    <this text is quoted from a user who has not agreed to public archival.>

    <this text is quoted from a user who has not agreed to public archival.>

  2. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    03 December 2007 11:04

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  3. Michael Bimmler (Mbimmler) Wikipedia information team
    03 December 2007 11:08

    Dear GerardM,
    Thanks a lot!

    I just discovered that someone else already answered the email while I was forwarding it to you. Luckily he responded along the lines of your answer, thus this should be fine ;-)

One subcommittee member does all the work

  1. Arria Belli (Maria Fanucchi)
    11 December 2007 14:01

    For those of you who may not have checked meta lately: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Special_projects_subcommittees/Languages#One_subcommittee_member_does_all_the_work.3F

    I would do more myself, but whenever I talk about any of the projects it always takes a long time for consensus, or someone may object to the approval/refusal for some reason or another, and a discussion ensues that doesn't really arrive at any conclusion. Those cases that are closed or approved are handled by someone else because I have no idea how to go about it. If someone could teach me how, I would like to learn, to ease the workload.

    Also, it looks as if the newer members of the LangCom are being left behind. They have not posted to the list in months. I myself am often intimidated by the conversations here, and often feel a bit left out; it may be their case as well.

  2. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    11 December 2007 21:24

    Well, anyone is welcome to contribute. We wouldn’t have invited new members if we were not willing to hear from them. We lately invite even non-members to particular discussions, so... BTW, nice to read from you :-)

    It is true that a procedure that can be managed to a single person is intrinsically weak, though. I would welcome the idea that Jesse would involve someone else, too. We all are busy/sick/away sooner or later, and such situations may lead to paralysis. Moreover, it may be a way to better involve some of the silent members.

Wikisource Low Saxon

No decision was taken on the request for a Low Saxon Wikisource.

  1. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    12 December 2007 07:14

    Hi,

    No reason to disagree. If things are like this we owe these guys our excuses. No discussion about it. When we are late, we ARE late.

    Cond-approval should be automatic in this case, as the ISO code is there. If we ever manage to pass to an OTRS style management for cond-approval at least this sort of things should be over.

    In the meantime, feel free to write me directly to signal such events. You can tell the guys that cond-approval is automatic for "individual" "living" ISO 639-3 codes, so there's absolutely no reason to worry about it.

    The only data we miss for final approval is:
    1) checking the localization (which should be a formality)
    2) counting the pages (one more formality)
    3) checking the number of active contributors.

    I have been working for 2 days no stop at the moment, so I cannot promise I'll check it today, personally. Hopefully someone else will.

    If nobody does it before that, I'll keep it at the top of my list for tomorrow.


    -----Original Message-----
    From: Johannes Rohr [<email censored>]
    Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 8:59 AM
    To: Berto 'd Sera
    Cc: langcom-l <email censored>; node.ue <email censored>
    Subject: Re: new projects in general

    Berto 'd Sera schrieb:
    >
    > Hi!
    >
    > > while failing to process
    >
    > > an ever larger pile of requests from real
    >
    > > communities which generate real and
    >
    > > valuable original content.
    >
    [...]
    >
    > So, sorry… I’ll rather wait one more month and make sure they mean
    > business, when some new guys on the block ask for server space J
    > Server space is only for those who can afford it, and the only
    > currency we accept in payment is REAL human labor, we don’t trade
    > futures here. It takes 1 minute to pile up yet another dummy request,
    > then it takes many man/mo to real volunteers to care for a project
    > nobody’s actually using (and nobody CAN use, since it’s not even
    > localized).
    >

    I am referring to cases like the Low Saxon Wikisource: The interface has long been fully translated. The eligibility of the language itself is beyond question. There is a test projectd with several hundred pages of real content. And yet, not even conditional approval has been granted. In August, one of the proposers asked when he could expect that to happen, yet he doesn't appear to have received even a single sentence of a reply five months later.

    If I said that I feel something has gone wrong in this case, would you disagree?

  2. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 04:35

    Hi!

    For the record I cond-approved the Low Saxon wikisource request here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikisource_Low_Saxon

    Based on http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=nds

    I’m pretty sure I have done it wrong There must be something more than just adding a template there, but I can’t recall what. Can anyone point me to a step-by-step procedure for dummies?

  3. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    13 December 2007 06:41

    Berto,

    There's a guide at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_subcommittees/Languages/Handbook > (available from the navigation template on [[langcom]]), but it's outdated now. I'll correct it when I have time.

    I simplified the process a few months ago, so that's almost all you need to do:

    1. Change the template on the request page to "conditional" (done).
    2. Change the template on [[requests for new languages]] to "conditional" (not done).
    3. Let the rest of the subcommittee know about the change (done).
  4. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    13 December 2007 05:47

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  5. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 08:08

    I’m not doing it :-) cond-approval is mechanical and only ISO based, final approval is not. Final approval is based on actual results.

    Personally I don’t think that there can be two identical situations in this field, so I would avoid building the “conflict regulation template” based on ready-made receipts. I know what I want: warranties and a mechanism for managing conflict without originating furious mobs on meta. Then HOW this can be achieved largely depends on the involved communities, their sizes, internal organization and personal relationships. Here is where you hardly will find twice the same thing. So what they will invent to provide warranties should be largely up to them.

    Judging the results is a challenge for us. If we are to help solving such situations we must (on our side) invent a way to measure the “degree of stable peace” they achieve. This is OUR problem. And yes… not an easy one.

    Anyway, speaking in pure theory… I would not expect the amount of Dutch material to be as big as the amount of German material, given the sizes of the respective communities. But this doesn’t worry me at all. What worries me is the general attitude and the way in which they will address the problem. First of all I am curious, if you want a totally sincere answer. Curious and willing to learn. It’s a chance we have to solve a problem. Maybe we will make it, maybe not, but it’s worth trying.

  6. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    13 December 2007 08:12

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  7. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 08:33

    We have a misunderstanding here…

    1. German or Dutch only means geography.
    2. cond-approval goes to a formal request only, if we judge ANYTHING but formality then we have no way to define automated responses.
    3. Whatever is “behaviour” and not just formality is judged during the follow-up phase.
    4. The nds code IS legal for cond-approval, and such is any request based on it.

    The use they make of the code is subject to judgment, which happens in the follow-up phase. By any means, in such situations we cannot involve the responsibility of a project (wikisource) over another (wikipedias) on which they have no way to exert control. The request may even come from people who are totally unrelated to previous projects, so… we cannot load this request with responsibilities it cannot bear. If they do NOT mess up the code in their own project, whatever happens with the wikies is none of their bag. On the opposite, a proper use of the code in this project may serve as a guide for the wikies.

    All we can do is judge actual results. If they can give us a project that is satisfactory in its usage of a legal code, then it’s green light from me, if not… they can remain in the incubator until they get satisfactory, as anybody else. I would not put particular pressure on them. This is no recent bleeding cut. 18 months have passed since the split; they all had time to relax. Let’s see what they can offer. As they say in Italy “do not put bandages on your head before it’s hurt” :-)

    FMI, when you define what orthography is “correct”, what are the guidelines? I know the language is recognized at govt. level on both sides of the political borders, is there anything like a normative definition? I know I should just read en.wiki for that, but my work-day has already started and my Low Saxon time is well over for today.

  8. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 05:09

    Hi!

    I’m adding this for the benefit of Johannes, mostly, since all LangCom members are familiar with this stuff already.

    Here we care a lot about consistency. When we applied a criterion to make a certain decision, this criterion remains as an “established precedent”, to make sure that we treat each and everyone in the same way. If and when a change is made in such a “tradition”, it means that all precedent decisions made according to that principle must be discussed again and put in “equal conditions” according to the new principle.

    Now, I do share your opinion that a wikisource is a much less risk prone environment than a wikipedia. The kind of work involved is not likely to generate conflict as such, unless people DO generate it at sheer personal level. So this is a wonderful place to establish a “success case” that will serve as a template for future references. I wouldn’t start experiments with a pedia, and I’m pretty convinced that what I ask to nds.wikisource would probably be insufficient to manage a conflict like be.wiki, but we need to start building a “precedent” that points conflicting (or potentially conflicting) communities to generate internal structures for effective consensus building within their own projects.

    I’m not so naïve to believe that all wars on our planet can be solved like that, but when you deal with small projects this size one must also be aware than more often than not you talk about ten people clashing with 6-7 from the “opposite side”. So this is not something for NATO or for the UN, but rather a thing that can be managed at “small club” level. When it becomes evident war is just an “everybody looses anyway” game, people *may* start to look for an “everybody wins” strategy.

    I hope we can count on your help to achieve this result.

  9. Johannes Rohr guest
    13 December 2007 06:44

    Am Donnerstag, den 13.12.2007, 07:09 +0200 schrieb Berto 'd Sera:

    [...]

    > I hope we can count on your help to achieve this result.

    Thanks, however, I wonder what you expect me to contribute. Maybe, there is a misunderstanding: I am not personally involved with this project and I do not plan to get involved, as I do not speak Low Saxon (even though I can understand most when I read or hear it).

  10. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 08:57

    Well, wish everyone good luck, then :)

  11. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 10:44

    Hi!

    Welcome :-) We have a couple of issues we need to discuss about the project. As you probably know, the current policy would NOT allow a split of a project. One ISO code is ONE project, with no possible exceptions. Since there has been a precedent split in the community, we want to know what you are doing to prevent such a problem in your wikisource project.

    Specifically, to warrant a final approval it has been requested that:

    1. all sort of contents must be present in the proposed material (“should/would/may be there” is not a fact, “are there” is a fact. We will check as much as it takes to make sure that we deal with facts and not with theoretical options)
    2. active contributors must be come from all sides of the (hopefully former) barricades
    3. there must be an achieved consensus in the proposing community about the admin structure (i.e. representation for all sides in the management)
    4. there must be an approved policy signed by all conflicting sides in order to manage such conflicts INTERNALLY

    I suppose this gives a general idea. A wikisource is a far less dangerous environment than a wiki, so basically a solution should be much easier to achieve.

    The discussion is open.

    Bèrto ‘d Sèra

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Slomox [<email censored>]
    Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 12:05 PM
    To: Bèrto 'd Sèra
    Subject: Meta E-Mail

    Moin Bèrto,

    On the request page for a Low Saxon Wikisource you asked for contacting you. What are your questions?

    Sincerely
    Marcus Buck
    User:Slomox

  12. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 12:53

    I just noted that Langcom was not among the addressees. Find Markus' mail at the bottom of my answer.

    Bèrto ‘d Sèra


    -----Original Message-----
    From: Berto 'd Sera [<email censored>]
    Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:51 PM
    To: 'Marcus Buck'
    Subject: RE: Re: Low Saxon

    Hi!

    I'm glad there are no conflicts. This makes things easier and quicker. Anyway, NO split would be possible now, no matter how needed and practical, unless you manage to convince ISO to split the code.

    So it's only two roads available:
    1) you ask ISO to update the code to meet your practical needs and wait until they do so
    2) you prepare grounds to manage whatever practical problems within the boundaries of a single domain.

    If you choose the second option I fully endorse the idea of not using the label "conflict" at all. Let's call it a Technical Problem-Solving Committee, Linguistic Variety Management or whatever you wish. It still needs to be there, because like it or not you will have to remain within a single shared domain.

    Pls note that we intend to use this case as a template for such problems. We are interested in a positive solution. The number of languages that have a wide number of regional variations and border (or reach) a situation of troublesome mutual intelligibility is high.

    Hopefully sooner or later we can reach a multilingual release of Mediawiki, which will definitely allow for more flexibility, but in the meantime flexibility can only be achieved by good old human organization.

    Feel free to request any assistance you may need :)

    Bèrto ‘d Sèra


    -----Original Message-----
    From: Marcus Buck [<email censored>]
    Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:31 PM
    To: Berto 'd Sera
    Subject: Re: Low Saxon

    I think, it is commonly agreed by all Low Saxon contributors, that we have _one_ language. I don't know a single contributor to one of the Low Saxon projects who has contested that fact. But nevertheless there are separating lines, which divide the Low Saxon language in several subgroups. And I guess it is too commonly agreed by the contributors, that it is not feasible for any speaker of the language (when he is not academically trained to do so) to understand all subvarieties of the language. Therefore we made the decision, on pragmatic reasons, to divide the project Wikipedia. A man from Urk just can't understand a man from the Altai, from Paraguay or from Lunow. It wasn't possible to merge it all in one project. But of course that counter-proposal from Mark Williamson, splitting it by linguistic criteria in some twenty Wikipedia editions wasn't that useful. We wanted a pragmatic split. That's it all. There was no real antipathy between the two communities of nds and nds-nl. It was mainly language idealists mostly from outside who made that proposal that tough.

    We _need_ two (three with the to be created Plautdietsch Wikipedia) Wikipedias to bring the most use to our users. On Wikisource the writing method is fixed by the original text. Not everybody will be able to read all texts, but there's nothing we can do about it and so there is no need for splitting.

    I have already contacted the community on nds-nl and they were positive about having one project. The proposers and main contributors to the Plautdietsch Wikipedia too said, they are fine with one Wikisource (but I guess they won't participate much cause as far as I know, there are no or only very few old Plautdietsch texts from pre-1937 authors, which are in the public domain).

    To your points:
    >1. all sort of contents must be present in the proposed material
    That means in the test project, ain't it? There is much material from modern Low Saxon on the German side and too historical material from the Hanseatic times. I asked nds-nl users to submit content too, but for now there is only two texts submitted (if they didn't post more and I didn't notice):
    <http://wikisource.org/wiki/Ho_baos_Julfring_meende_den_Duvel_in_hoes_te_hebben.>,
    <http://wikisource.org/wiki/Zaomensproak_over_%27t_Broabands_opreur>
    (literary production in the Netherlands is less than in Germany due to the size of the readership and started later, so there are fewer texts, but I guess there is room for many more texts to come). Plautdietsch texts, as I said, are not likely to be inserted for now.

    >2. active contributors must be come from all sides of the (hopefully former) barricades
    there are no barricades, only a border. A border between countries, which had an impact on the language and especially on the orthography. But yes, the nds-nl texts were submitted by a user from the Netherlands.


    >3. there must be an achieved consensus in the proposing community about the admin structure (i.e. representation for all sides in the management)
    I have to contact the other projects about this, whether users from those projects want admin status on the new project. But there's clearly nothing speaking against admins from all the Low Saxon areas, which have their own Wikipedia editions. Perhaps the heated discussion about the creation of nds-nl has made some believe otherwise, but there is no struggle between the users of our projects. We are working together side by side very peacefully and all our contacts are in friendship and positive. We didn't split for ideologic reasons, but cause we felt it to be a more pragmatic approach. Based on practical experiences we felt it easier to achieve.

    >4. there must be an approved policy signed by all conflicting sides in order to manage such conflicts INTERNALLY
    Again I have to say: There are no conflicting parties ;-) We sometimes have problems to read our posts one another, but that's it. I oppose a "policy" about managing conflicts, cause that would be a statement, that we are in conflict, which is not the fact. But we could have a help page about discussions, which is a tutorial on how to manage with mutual unintelligible posts in discussions.

    Marcus Buck

  13. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 14:58

    Hi!

    When you know you have a practical problem it is important to have a tool to address it. If you wait until the problem becomes so acute that people get nervous it will usually be too late to react. It is important that people "know what to do" when they face the fact that their language is very different and sometimes it makes it difficult to work.

    If you have such a tool from the beginning chances are that the tool will be far from being perfect, but people will work on it and make it better in time. At this stage nobody (us included) can make a forecast of what this tool will eventually become. Yet it is important that we redefine a potential problem into an opportunity for community work.

    My suggestion is that you guys define the tool (whatever you call it) and a procedure to evolve it based on practical community needs, with the declared goal of keeping all your linguistic varieties toghether. Having a small number of test users vote is far from being simple, yet if you don't make it a vote you are likely to give people the impression that they are "forced" to do something. It's much easier if people understand the situation and feel in command from the very start. Involve your users in the process, otherwise it will never work.

    Bèrto ‘d Sèra

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Marcus Buck [<email censored>]
    Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2007 3:59 PM
    To: Berto 'd Sera
    Subject: Re: Low Saxon

    What are your thoughts on how to proceed? Will the project be created and then admins and (if necessary) that committee will be elected on the project or should I create a page on Meta for electing admins? Would be nice, if you could elaborate, cause I thought the project would be created and then on-project work would start normally, and I was not prepared for setting up committes or making policies or being a showcase project setup.

    Marcus Buck

  14. Marcus Buck (Slomox) guest
    13 December 2007 15:39

    Okay. But tell me one more thing: this whole thing is still prerequisite for setting up the project? It is not possible to do this coordination on the project _after_ it is set up?

    Cause I am thinking about the place to do these discussions. Any local project wouldn't be appropiate and I would like to avoid using Meta if possible, cause it has several disadvantages: English environment, which could scare off users or could force them to using English in discussion, possible influx of non-involved, but opinionated users etc.

    This whole thing really would be a good opportunity for having a local Meta, like I asked about just a few days ago on Meta <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Babel#Local_Meta>. I will cite my post on that page here (which got no replies up until now):

    ----

    Was there ever any proposal or discussion or something about creating own per language Meta-wikis? This wiki is for all Wikimedia projects in all languages and that's a good solution. But I wonder, whether it wouldn't be useful to have per language Meta-wikis too. For example a fr.meta.wikimedia.org for Meta-work regarding the French-language projects. For example, if the French Wikipedians want to give an introduction into the work of the Wikimedia Foundation, this page should not reside on fr.wikipedia, it would be useful for fr.wiktionary too. Of course such a page can be hosted on this wiki, but it would have many advantages, if such a page would be placed in fr.meta.wikimedia.org instead. A user speaking French only can easily get lost in this multilingual, but English-dominated wiki. A French-only environment would be a place where that user would feel much "safer". Or even think of a lesser-used language. Like Sami. A Sami-speaker only speaking Sami or only interested in Sami content will have a very hard time in this wiki. There are very few Sami pages (when there are any, I don't know) scattered in a big m(a

  15. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 16:12

    Hi!

    There are two aspects:
    1) procedural (as per LangCom)
    2) practical

    The procedural part says that we approve a project in two phases:
    1) cond-approval, based on ISO code
    2) actual behavior, based on what a project produces in the incubator phase

    Now, since you have a possible problem, your capability to deliver a solution is definitely a component of part 2. As we often said, here we don't trade "futures", people can only pay in cash, i.e., in real results. We cannot open a credit line, not even for a showcase. The solution must come before the project is accepted and delivered. If we accepted a promise from you we would have to accept a promise from everybody else, which is not possible.

    --------------

    Now the practical side. What follows has nothing to do with LangCom, so have it as an absolutely personal communication from user to user. I don't know if calling it "meta" is a good idea. Meta is supposed to be the place where people from all projects meet, it *might* give you a bad marketing if you propose to split it.

    Yet, it makes sense to have a Low Saxon Forum, or whatever you'll want to call it. Whatever may succeed in putting all Low Saxons toghether is going to help, IMHO. Even if the WMF does not host you, putting on a forum somewhere shouldn't be a big problem, and I would definitely do it, if I was in your place.

  16. Marcus Buck (Slomox) guest
    13 December 2007 16:08

    Thinking about it a bit more, I would say, it would be best, if we could set up a non-Wikisource-specific solution. I already got signals from nds-nl, that we should cooperate on Wikinews too. And for Wikibooks I also got positive resonance for a single project. A single wiktionary seems feasible too. (The good thing about all this projects is, they are all not exclusive. You can only have one Wikipedia entry for a specific topic and massive redundancy of Wikipedia contents on one wiki is highly discouraged. But it is easily possible to have two Wikibooks on related topics or to have two News items with similar content in two different writings standards.) Every single of this projects will be not too big on its own. If we could create a committee or a policy - or whatever will stand at the end of further discussion of the topic - for all those 'shared' wikis together, it would be much more easily implemented, cause there is a wider community. An extended solution would make a common coordination site like a local Meta even more necessary.

    Do you think, a local Meta would be implementable?

  17. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 16:18

    Hi,

    I think interproject co-operation is the right way to go. I will do whatever I can to help you guys getting the space. This includes giving you server space myself privately, if for any reason the WMF refuses to do it.

    Since you plan to have more unsplit nds projects it may make sense to involve these other potential community in the development of the "union tool". In this way the time you invest on it will be reused by them and they will also learn from your experience.

  18. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    12 January 2008 22:23

    Hello,

    Could someone please summarize the status of the Low Saxon Wikisource? There is a note at the top of the request page to contact Berto about it.

  19. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    12 January 2008 23:09

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  20. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 January 2008 07:52

    The contact happened, we spoke with them (it's in the records). They have been requested to state how they will address the internal differences within their language.

    They said they'll think about it and so far never got back.

  21. Marcus Buck (Slomox) guest
    23 January 2008 19:05

    On the public archive of the list I read the last post of *Bèrto 'd Sèra <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:B%C3%A8rto_%27d_S%C3%A8ra>* from 13 January:

    >
    > The contact happened, we spoke with them (it's in the records). They
    > have been requested to state how they will address the internal
    > differences within their language.
    >
    > They said they'll think about it and so far never got back.
    >

    It's not that I have forgotten about it ;-) I'm still struggling to get the prerequisites done, to organize it all in the best manner possible. It will take me some more time, but I'm progressing (so I hope).

New projects in general

  1. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    12 December 2007 03:08

    Hi!

    > while failing to process
    > an ever larger pile of requests from real
    > communities which generate real and
    > valuable original content.

    If there are that many communities producing that much content, then why we don’t see much localization done? We are not here to establish an Olympic record in empty abandoned projects per hour. If a community wants a project they must prove they can manage it on their own at 360 degrees, no matter how nice their potential content may be. Content is “potential”, spam is “for sure” and the number of international volunteers who can spend their lives cleaning up rubbish for careless natives is far from being infinite. If you look at the number of “wiki-deserts” that lay low at the bottom of our project list you’ll see what I mean. All of them were supposed to produce “great original content”, yet they eventually failed to just even delete entries about Viagra

    So, sorry I’ll rather wait one more month and make sure they mean business, when some new guys on the block ask for server space :-) Server space is only for those who can afford it, and the only currency we accept in payment is REAL human labor, we don’t trade futures here. It takes 1 minute to pile up yet another dummy request, then it takes many man/mo to real volunteers to care for a project nobody’s actually using (and nobody CAN use, since it’s not even localized).

    So, they

    1. build localization with a minimum of decent content (not just stuff pasted in from a near-by wiki and not even translated, as it has already been the case),
    2. get to a basic understanding of what publishing and managing a wiki is like,
    3. build a small community with at least a basic idea of what the administrative load is going to be, and how to cope with it

    at THAT point they get released as an independent project. Not a second before that :-)

    Yes it takes time and even like that is far from being a warranty:
    http://bcl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Espesyal:Recentchanges <http://bcl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Espesyal:Recentchanges&hidebots=0&limit=500> &hidebots=0&limit=500

    Yet at least people passing by gets this decent welcome:
    http://bcl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenot_na_Pahina

    plus at least a couple of real users are here, the interface is done and we can hope to get more audience in the future. We gave server space to a project that IS usable for a native and delivers a clear idea of what a wiki should be like.

    Here, for example, more time has passed and things seem to go a bit better already:
    http://kab.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uslig:Recentchanges <http://kab.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uslig:Recentchanges&limit=500> &limit=500

    See what I mean? We do not “get rid of a standing pile of requests” we deliver a full-fledged internet site. When the people fail to prepare the site, there is no product we can deliver and in that case all the request can do is stay where it is until it becomes “deliverable”.

    Bèrto ‘d Sèra

    _____

    From: Johannes Rohr [<email censored>]
    Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 1:22 AM
    To: Berto 'd Sera
    Cc: langcom-l <email censored>; <email censored>
    Subject: Re: Moldovan Wikipedia

    2007/12/11, Berto 'd Sera <email censored>:

    Hi!

    According to ISO it IS a distinct language, according to policy (which is automatic on ISO codes) it has the right to have a wiki. This is the letter of the law. You may not like the policy, but that's not in discussion. It's your POV and you are welcome to have it, yet it's no grounds for a decision.


    What you call "your POV" is simply the scholarly consensus on the topic. Even the Moldovan Academy of Sciences does not dispute that Moldovan is Romanian (despite the fact that Moldovan lawmakers have always upheld the different name). Anyway, this would be a ridiculous thing to dispute the identity of Romanian and Moldavian when you use the same vocabulary and grammar. And as I noted before, Ethnologue.com has acknowledged this and mapped the mo code to Romanian.

    Furthermore, as noted earlier, if is was a distinct language, you would need translation, not transliteration. What is your response to this?

    Please provide links to the ISO information. I cannot find it.

    After all, I do not care too much about this topic. I'm just struck by surprise by the fact that several members of langcom appear determined to invest considerable time into a project, which has no community and no audience, while failing to process an ever larger pile of requests from real communities which generate real and valuable original content.

    Thanks,

    Johannes

  2. Johannes Rohr guest
    12 December 2007 06:59

    Berto 'd Sera schrieb:
    >
    > Hi!
    > > while failing to process
    > > an ever larger pile of requests from real
    > > communities which generate real and
    > > valuable original content.
    >
    [...]
    >
    > So, sorry… I’ll rather wait one more month and make sure they mean
    > business, when some new guys on the block ask for server space J
    > Server space is only for those who can afford it, and the only
    > currency we accept in payment is REAL human labor, we don’t trade
    > futures here. It takes 1 minute to pile up yet another dummy request,
    > then it takes many man/mo to real volunteers to care for a project
    > nobody’s actually using (and nobody CAN use, since it’s not even
    > localized).
    >

    I am referring to cases like the Low Saxon Wikisource: The interface has long been fully translated. The eligibility of the language itself is beyond question. There is a test projectd with several hundred pages of real content. And yet, not even conditional approval has been granted. In August, one of the proposers asked when he could expect that to happen, yet he doesn't appear to have received even a single sentence of a reply five months later.

    If I said that I feel something has gone wrong in this case, would you disagree?

  3. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    12 December 2007 20:17

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  4. Johannes Rohr guest
    12 December 2007 20:46

    2007/12/12, GerardM:
    <this text is quoted from a user who has not agreed to public archival.>

    Hi there, my remark was about the Low Saxon Wikisource, not Wikipedia. There, such matters should be of no relevance, as texts should be reproduced verbatim in whatever variant of Low Saxon they were originally written. This issue had already been clarified at the discussion page, after you asked. It is surprising that you still treat the issue as unresolved.

    [gracefully ignoring the rest of this message, which truly shocked me]

  5. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    13 December 2007 04:09

    Hi!

    As promised, I woke up early to deal with Low Saxons, so we already assessed that cond-approval IS there according to all precedents and policies, so let’s move further.

    We have a “bad precedent” within this linguistic community and we must address it. While we do “presume good faith” when no such precedent exists, here we need to make sure that the precedent remains where it should be: buried in the past. So, before I vote in favor of final approval my personal conditions are:

    1. all sort of contents must be present in the proposed material (“should be there” is not a fact, “are there” is a fact. We will check as much as it takes to make sure that we deal with facts and not with options)
    2. active contributors must be come from all sides of the (hopefully former) barricades
    3. there must be an achieved consensus in the proposing community about the admin structure (i.e. representation for all sides in the management)
    4. there must be an approved policy signed by all conflicting sides in order to manage such conflicts INTERNALLY

    As you certainly understand, under the current policies on domain naming a “spawn” is not an option anymore. There is but one domain code they can use, and if one of the sides (no matter which one) takes over, the result will be an endless war with no available practical solution for us to warrant space to all and everyone. In the past we refused to process a request from a conflicting community (cfr BY), because there was no evidence whatsoever that the two sides were willing to co-operate. This IS an available option for conflict management, based on established precedents. This must be extremely clear.

    I understand from your message that there is a strong will to achieve positive results for all involved parties in this project, so it should not be a problem to deliver a factual demonstration that these goals are in fact achieved and that the way is paved for a decent (if not happy) co-habitation under a common roof. Can you put us in touch with a couple of representatives of the community coming from the two opposed wiki-sides? If not, I will contact the community myself as soon as you say you cannot, in anyway, not any later than tomorrow.

  6. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    13 December 2007 05:47

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  7. Johannes Rohr guest
    13 December 2007 10:34

    Am Donnerstag, den 13.12.2007, 06:47 +0100 schrieb GerardM:
    <this text is quoted from a user who has not agreed to public archival.>

    Looking at the list of proposers, there is at least one Dutch participant, the last one in the list. Haven't checked the others.

Wikipedia Saterland Frisian

The request for a Saterland Frisian Wikipedia was approved and created.

  1. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    14 December 2007 14:25

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  2. Jon Harald Søby
    27 December 2007 14:21

    Hi!

    I propose the final approval of Wikipedia in stq Saterfriesisch (Saterland Frisian). They have translated all MediaWiki messages (see Localisation statistics <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Localisation_statistics>), and have a active test project with more than 500 articles in it.

    If there are no objections in 24 hours, I will notify the board of the approval, and after that post a bug requesting its creation.

    --
    Jon Harald Søby

  3. Jon Harald Søby
    29 December 2007 21:27

    Hi, Florence!

    This is to notify you (the board) that we in the language subcommittee are about to approve a Wikipedia in Saterland Frisian (Saterfriesisch) [1]<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Saterland_Frisian>, as they have fulfilled all of the requirements of the language proposal policy [2] <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP>. If you have no objections within four days, we will go ahead and approve it and file a bug to create it. If you need more time to

    Now, about this email: we used to send it to Erik to notify the board (as is required by policy), but since he is no longer a board member that won't work, obviously. So he told us to send it to you on this adress; but if you want us to send it to some other adress, that is of course fine.

  4. Florence Devouard (Anthere) Board chair
    29 December 2007 23:00

    Thank you Jon.

    I recommand rather using <email address censored> as an address.

Batch conditional approvals

Several requests were conditionally approved.

  1. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    15 December 2007 14:43

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  2. Shanel Kalicharan
    15 December 2007 15:07

    On Dec 15, 2007 9:43 AM, GerardM wrote:
    <this text is quoted from a user who has not agreed to public archival.>

    *raises eyebrow* You mean I get to threaten people in all sorts of languages? Cool. :D

  3. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    15 December 2007 15:11

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

Wikipedia Krio

The request for a Krio Wikipedia was conditionally approved.

  1. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    19 December 2007 12:53

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

Code conflict between Alemannic Wikipedia and Tosk

GerardM proposed moving the Alemannic Wikipedia from als.wikipedia.org to gsw.wikipedia.org to fix a conflict with Tosk. The discussion was later moved to the Foundation-l mailing list.

  1. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    20 December 2007 23:05

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  2. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    21 December 2007 11:15

    Hi !

    Politics are not a factor we take into any consideration, editorial assets are. While I wouldn’t spend a second considering anyone’s national or separatist fellings, I did take the time to count the existing links to the domains «as they are». We all know that links are one of the best factors to push an edition high in the searches, so THIS is something we must care for.

    So...

    Alsatians: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en <http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=als.wikipedia.org++-site%3Awikipedia.org&btnG=Search> &q=als.wikipedia.org++-site%3Awikipedia.org&btnG=Search (~19K links)

    Tosk: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en <http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sq.wikipedia.org++-site%3Awikipedia.org&btnG=Search> &q=sq.wikipedia.org++-site%3Awikipedia.org&btnG=Search (~57K links)

    We deal with a consolidated asset of ~76K external links, which is no joke.

    The code for Tosk is improper, but it’s not downright wrong. The code for alsatian is downright wrong, it should really be GSW (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsatian_language ).

    An «ad hoc» move on Tosk would only be likely to generate trouble from all POVs, as long as internal relations are concerned (and internal realtions ARE an editorial asset). Moreover, no such move can even be planned before we free space for Tosk to land upon. I would exclude that any macro-code general reordering should become necessary at any point (it would also mean disbanding Oc.wiki, to quote an immediate example, as they are EXACTLY in the same situation). IMHO, all we need to do is avoiding such new «risky» codes to be issued in the future. Individual languages are okay, macro aren’t. One would really like the ISO guys to be a bit more careful in defining as «individual» entities that are «macro», anyway we aren’t here to judge them, but only to apply their imperfect standard.

    This thing with ISO 639-3 macros is a first clear sign of the trouble 639-6 will lately generate in loads. Anyway, I will not be here if and when 639-6 is used :-) I have headaches enough in my life for me to be wishing to take up the whole lot of linguistic related political trouble on earth :-) So don’t count me in, in case you start using 639-6 for any purpose at any time. I have better plans for my coming years than being lynched by endless uproars of hysterical street mobs :-)

    As per the move ALS -> GSW, my suggestion is that we wait for them to say they are ready to move. They have been informed and hopefully will request renaming as their OWN decision. It’s in their interesting to have spiders catalogue their content for what it is, after all. Nowadays one can hardly imagine google to use the language tag, but today is today, tomorrow is something we all make grounds for.

    If they do we can require a GSW domain to be open, while freezing ALS.wiki. I suppose all pages in ALS.wiki can carry a site announcement telling people about the new domain. If we live it there for 1 year, chances are that most of those 19K links will get updated. We also have to investigate about the amount of interwiki updates we generate. The operation is possible, although far from being easy.

  3. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    21 December 2007 11:35

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  4. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    21 December 2007 12:00

    Well... I will not be here anyway. What you forget if the 639-6 will say «what is part of what» and that 99% of the people will make a political use of that data, which is something I will never want to be involved inI will be more than happy if we can have a consistent use of codes for a few years, before looking for a quieter life. :-) Never forget that a tool is only a tool. It’s people who use tools. Those same people who kill each other and starve each other to death out there in the name of their «moral principles». I hope you’ll eventually prove that I’m wrong, but I have a VERY bad feeling about hierarchical classifications in general and I will not be part of a committee that uses them to classify people and people-related subjects. I do appreciate the pure logics behind the idea, but I’m afraid you totally overlooked the «human factor» and you will have to face a very bitter outcome from this. I always stay out of what I perceive as «troublesome», yet this is a strictly personal choice and it’s not supposed to involve anyone but my own self. When the time for it will come, I will just wish you good luck and resign.

    MLMW is mostly needed because the requests we get come from language communities that are smaller and smaller. The «classical wiki» model clearly is not fit for them. I wonder if MLMW can solve the problem, but at least it is a step towards a lesser need for admin work and it will solve a lot of tense situations we have here and there.

  5. —
    08 January 2008 01:17

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  6. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    08 January 2008 09:37

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  7. —
    09 January 2008 23:43

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  8. Sabine Cretella
    10 January 2008 16:51

    Hi, just a short note: I'll write SIL and ask for clarification for both codes - that is: what the exact definitions mean. I'll use my wikimedia.org address for it and write for LangCom. I'll be able to do that during the week-end.

  9. —
    11 January 2008 01:07

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  10. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    10 January 2008 08:39

    Hoi!

    As a native from an Alemannic area I wish to protest :) Where is Italy in your list? :)))

    I'm from the pms community, so basically there is very little Tutschi I can speak and even just understand, but the Valleys north of Biella and the the Gressoney Valley in the Aosta Valley are defined as Walser and even recognized as such by local and national powers (which includes school education in the language).

    Ethnologue and SIL are (currently) the same people. But this may change tomorrow. I myself will say certain things when I wear LangCom's hat and other things when I'm home. Ethnologue is a very interesting site, but it doesn't have any normative function that we can use.

  11. —
    10 January 2008 21:11

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  12. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    10 January 2008 21:25

    Hi!

    It's VERY bad that walser is separate... this is a death penalty, actually. I was hoping to push them into the alemannic wiki, but they will never have the forces to have a project as an independent lang... anyway... such is the will of ISO. So be it.

  13. —
    11 January 2008 00:50

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  14. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    11 January 2008 05:14

    Hi!

    I confess being absolutely unable, and not qualified, to represent the Walser community. My suspicion is that judgment here may be simply influenced by political borders. Possibly, if both sides of the mountains were Swiss, or Italian, this would not happen.

    Anyway, this is none of LangCom's business. If it gets to the point in which they feel they should be classified as "Alemannic" I'll point them to you, if you don't mind :)

  15. —
    11 January 2008 17:54

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  16. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    12 January 2008 06:26

    It's really OT, but since languages in the end are people... I thought some of you may be interested in seeing this: http://www.walsertreffen.org/fotogallery.htm http://www.walsertreffen.org

Wikipedia Sranan Tongo

The second request for a Sranan Tongo Wikipedia was conditionally approved.

  1. Jon Harald Søby
    30 December 2007 22:40

    I marked the request for Wikipedia in <srn> Sranan Tongo as conditionally approved, as it meets all the formal criteria for cond. approval.

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