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Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Lak Wikipedia 3

< Proposals for closing projects

This is a proposal for closing and/or deleting a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is subject to the current closing projects policy.

The proposal for closing lbe: is currently open for discussion by the community.

Proposal to close Wikipedia in Lak language

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Хоть Лакскую Википедию уже предлагали закрыть в 2008 и в 2012 годах, но всё же этого не сделали, я всё равно предлагаю закрыть данный проект.

Википедия на лакском языке была открыта 30 сентября 2006 года. По состоянию на ноябрь 2010 года число статей равнялось 70, большинство из которых посвящены населённым пунктам Республики Дагестан. (Источник: Викиреальность) Сотая статья была создана в декабре 2010 года, в тысячная в июле 2011 года.[1] По состоянию на 4 марта 2021 года на Лакской Википедии есть 1228 статей.[2] Но я не упрекаю проект в медленном росте. Пусть лучше будут нормальные статьи, а не представленные далее недостабы, хоть и я очень сильно сомневаюсь в высоком качестве и тех 228 статей за 10 лет.

На Лакской Википедии не осталось ни одного администратора.[3] Большая часть интерфейса на русском языке.

Надо также привести примеры статей: Хьхьахьхьари – стаб из одной строки про лакское блюдо. Разве о блюдах почти ничего нельзя сказать? В категории Лакрал дукрарду можно найти больше похожих статей от турецкого участника lbe:Гьуртту хьума:Kmoksy. Этот участник был самым активным на Лакской Википедии, он создал около тысячи статей. Он явно не владеет лакским. Статьи либо делаются путём взятия уже имеющейся статьи на похожую тему и замены нескольких слов для соответствия с использованием словарей, либо же копированием из сторонних страниц в Интернете на требуемом языке без изменения. Это объясняет существование статьи Щунудагъ-2009. Содержание скопировано из приведённого источника.[4] Такая статья не продержалась бы долго в нормальной вики, так как эта статья совсем не является энциклопедичной, а новостной. Даже не зная лакского, можно понять это. Поиск в Google по запросу "шунудаг 2009" является очередным доказательством. Статья была создана 20 декабря 2010 года.[5] Прошло 10 лет, а ТАКОЕ всё ещё есть. Вот ещё примеры шедевров от Kmoksy на очень значимые для лакцев темы: Инюпиак мазрал Википедия, РяхцӀаллий арулва, Категория:Туркиянал районну, Бириба.

Я признаю существование нормальных статей, как Лакрал авиатортал Хъун Дяъвилий, Лакрал щархъурду, Ислам. Но пока раздел Википедии на лакском языке лучше перенести в Инкубатор на доработку. Дополнительно можно удалить большинство статей.

Cheburator000 (talk) 16:21, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]


Although Lak Wikipedia has already been proposed to close in 2008 and in 2012, but still they did not, I still suggest closing this project.

Wikipedia in Lak was launched on September 30, 2006. As of November 2010, the number of articles was 70, most of which are devoted to the settlements of the Republic of Dagestan. (Source: Викиреальность) The hundredth article was created in December 2010, the thousandth in July 2011.[6] As of March 4, 2021, there are 1,228 articles on Lak Wikipedia.[7] But I do not blame the project for its slow growth. Let it be better to have normal articles, and not the shortcomings presented below, although I very much doubt the high quality of those 228 articles in 10 years.

There is not a single administrator left on Lak Wikipedia.[8] Most of the interface is in Russian.

It is also necessary to give examples of articles: Хьхьахьхьари - one line stub about a Lak dish. Is there almost nothing to be said about the dishes? In Лакрал дукрарду category, you can find more similar articles from the Turkish member lbe:Гьуртту хьума:Kmoksy. This contributor was the most active on the Lak Wikipedia, with about a thousand articles he wrote. He clearly does not speak Lak. Articles are either made by taking an existing article on a similar topic and replacing several words to match using dictionaries, or by copying from third-party pages on the Internet in the required language without changing. This explains the existence of the article Щунудагъ-2009. Content copied from the source cited.[9] Such an article would not last long on a normal wiki, since this article is not at all encyclopedic, but news. Even without knowing Lak, one can understand this. A Google search for "шунудаг 2009" is further proof. The article was created on December 20, 2010.[10] 10 years have passed, and SUCH is still there. Here are some more examples of masterpieces from Kmoksy on topics that are very important for Lak people: Инюпиак мазрал Википедия, РяхцӀаллий арулва, Категория:Туркиянал районну, Бириба.

I acknowledge the existence of normal articles like Лакрал авиатортал Хъун Дяъвилий, Лакрал щархъурду, Ислам. But for now, the Lak section of Wikipedia is best moved to the Incubator for revision. Additionally, you can delete most of the articles.

Cheburator000 (talk) 07:09, 5 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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Support

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  • Support - I may have said that all the hard work will be ruined if it closed for the Nauruan Wikipedia but since most can't understand Cyrillic; its best to close it, unlike the Nauruan wiki where it is latin script. TravelAroundOz (talk) 10:48, 5 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't understand your reasoning. Just because the Nauruan Wikipedia is in Latin script does not mean that more people will understand it or be able to read it. The question is whether there are speakers to support the project. We shouldn't be shutting down projects on the basis of them using a non-Latin script. Aŭdrea (talk) 16:34, 6 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not a matter of who can read Cyrillic script or read Latin script. It's a matter of who can understand this particular langauge. Merely knowing the Latin alphabet confers no ability to understand Nauruan (same for Cyrillic and Lak), contribute, correct errors, etc. To take an extreme example, consider the recent scandal with the Scots Wikipedia, in a language much closer to English, where the similarities not just in alphabet, but lexicon and grammar, did not prevent non-Scots speakers from bungling the language.
  • The Latin script should not confer any privileges to a language project in regards to a closure request. I don't have an opinion either way on Lak Wikipedia, but I wanted to point this out specifically, as I think this would set a very disturbing precedent for minority languages that happen to use non-Latin scripts. Aŭdrea (talk) 14:38, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Support from scrolling through some articles most of them are just number articles with an image of the number and the words (from what i can understand from google translate) "number 2" and stubs. I think these people should just read Russian wiki. Max20characters (talk) 20:38, 11 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Support Clicking on lbe:Special:Random just yields some stubs (lbe:Лезгилал маз, lbe:Юсуп идавс and lbe:Арулва for me). AnotherEditor144 t - c 23:44, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    For more extensive reasoning, see User:AnotherEditor144/lbewiki closure (updated regularly). AnotherEditor144 t - c 23:47, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Update: On 19 August 2021, there is 1 fewer edit than 19 April. A slow decline. Mitigate, or close the wiki? AnotherEditor144 t - c 12:01, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support. We should stop the trend of opening new projects in every minor languages. If it has no readers or editors, it is not useful. They should focus on project in the national language that is more widely used. Enjoyer of World (talk) 09:35, 7 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support The articles are mechine translated from ruwiki, so they are copyvio. --120.6.9.47 23:17, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Machine translated? There are no machine translators for Lak. AnotherEditor144 t - c 16:15, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Per above, too dozens of copyvio, Soft closure is even not enough, this language should be re-incubated. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:48, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      Comment: This has been sitting around for a year, and the discussions have died down. In my opinion, it is time to suggest proposals. AnotherEditor144 t - c 16:14, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support During the almost 3-year period, the number of articles increased only by a few dozen. Half of the interface is not even in Lak, and almost all articles consist of only one sentence. БудетЛучше (talk) 17:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    1) Circa 70 new articles for 3 years are not the smallest number for a Wikipedia in a minority language. 2) 86% of the most-used interface messages are translated; although it's just 12,88% of all MediaWiki core messages are translated it is not a high priority to translate everything. 3) I am able to make rough estimates, too -- I have looked through 20 random articles. 13 (thirteen) articles are 1-sentence sub-stubs, 3 (three) consist of 3 sentences, 3 (three) consist of 2 sentences, 1 (one) has 11 sentences. Almost all articles consist of only one sentence? ~65 % ? All the best. --Wolverène (talk) 06:02, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Wolverène In principle, news belong to Wikinews, not Wikipedia, although important events deserve to have WP articles, indeed. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:20, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What do you mean? These were not news articles. --Wolverène (talk) 04:26, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Low activity for years, needs re-Incubation. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Пан Хаунд (talk)
    17 active users for the last 30 days, this is not the worst number within the category of Wikipedias containing 1K-10K articles. --Wolverène (talk) 06:40, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

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  1. Oppose Lak Wikipedia is a vivid example of a situation when the WMF in the 2000s opened projects according to very liberal criteria, and, of course, now this project could never become a new Wikipedia edition. The situation is even worse since the language does not fulfill the very important requirements for projects in the Incubator – it has only 12% of the most important messages translated in MediaWiki. The absence or presence of administrators is not important, but it is much more important to find editors, authors of articles – native speakers. Several Russian editions of Wikipedia are now in a similar situation. However, sometimes it is enough to host one or pair Wiki-meeting, hold a seminar and/or workshop, and the Wikipedia edition can be revitalized. For example, recently, on April 3, I held a seminar in Kudymkar, and on April 24 a workshop on creating articles in the Komi Permyak Wikipedia is planned. Perhaps this could be the new birth of this Wikipedia edition. Moreover, the people who attended the seminar, as it turned out, were personally acquainted with the most active editors of the Komi Permyak Wikipedia in the past. The work needs to be done. Lak Wikipedia is very important for the Wikipedians of North Caucasus User Group. In 2019-2020, we were able not only to revive Avar Wikipedia from stagnation, but its author (and now – Administrator) Omarov M. has already taken part in several international competitions (Asian Month, Wiki Loves Caucasus). I believe that we will be able to carry out similar work with the Lak language community in the near future. Now there is a request to intensify work in the Incubator from native speakers of the Dargin languages (in particular, the Tsudakhar language), and our contacts in Dagestan could help us to establish connections with Laks as well. So, yes, of course there is a problem, but I believe that it can be solved in the short term. — Soul Train (talk) 10:55, 12 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose It'd be a shame to loose this Wikipedia edition, since the language exists, has literature and a newspaper, this Wikipedia could be a working one. Let us try to find new members for the project first. Amikeco (talk) 19:13, 18 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Currently Moscow Youth Organisation of Lak "Lakia" is working on translation of Lak Wikipedia interface to Lak language and I am speaking from them - deletion of Lak Wikipedia puts a cross on our current actions. We join to this work in bad time just because we did not about existing problems of Lak Wikipedia.
  4. Oppose per above. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 00:20, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose after reading through Soul Train's points above. Rubbish computer Ping me or leave a message on my talk page 00:32, 3 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Oppose The project should be allowed to continue developing --Andrijko Z. (talk) 17:30, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Oppose. Lak is not an extinct language and that wiki should be open. --Agusbou2015 (talk) 23:39, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Oppose Now it has active users and 1 admin. AlPaD (talk) 14:45, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Oppose. Nowadays, the Lak Wikipedia isn't appearing to be inactive or of blatantly poor quality. I see the evidence of recent meaningful edits. The language itself is spoken by circa 150K people (of all ages), there are literary works and mass media in the language. There's no reason to move it to the Incubator. --Wolverène (talk) 06:16, 16 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Oppose per comments by User:Soul Train, and recent comments above. Frzzl (talk) 05:24, 26 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Oppose Has a viable community, interface has been translated. Unlike, say na.wikipedia, lbe has potential to grow. --178.237.222.85 16:07, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Oppose According to Soul Train's comments. Ταπυρ (گپ) 16:56, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Oppose Agree with the above people. Таёжный лес (talk) 17:05, 21 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Oppose The project is no longer inactive. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:30, 19 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Oppose --Fenikals (talk) 14:11, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Oppose While the activity is low and most pages are very short, those are not good reasons to close the project. The articles are in the correct language, there are some native speakers involved, the interface has now mostly been translated according to Soul Train, and there is not excessive vandalism/spam. Kk.urban (talk) 05:14, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Oppose Still has hope, there are very few vandalisms, decent amount of native speakers, UI mostly translated, not many problems except short pages, decent, but it has a low activity count (<20). Just try to improve the short pages using Lak dictionaries and try to call native speakers that want to help this Wikipedia. !!asa,njgh (talk) 12:59, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Yes, the wiki isn't very active. But it seems to be self-managing and not causing any problems that require it to be closed. * Pppery * it has begun 18:37, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Current events

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Yesterday, a member of the WMRU, Natalia Senatorova, held a seminar with Lak youth people living in Moscow. She spoke about the current situation in the Lak WP, urged to make edits and translate the interface. This week, I expect the first results of the translation of the most important messages, which I will upload to the Translatewiki. — Soul Train (talk) 13:15, 19 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Weekly report. There is almost no activity on the Lak Wikipedia yet - and no activity among native speakers. I'm slowly translating the interface. The number of most important messages has grown from 12% to 15%. — Soul Train (talk) 20:23, 25 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weekly report. Thanks to the native Lak translator Abdul and the assistance of Natalia Senatorova, the number of most important messages has grown from 15% to 23%. — Soul Train (talk) 10:15, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weekly report. It is now 29 % of the most important messages have been translated into Lak language. — Soul Train (talk) 10:16, 12 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weekly report. It is now 36 % of the most important messages have been translated into Lak language.--Soul Train (talk) 12:18, 22 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weekly report. It is now 53 % of the most important messages have been translated into Lak language. — Soul Train (talk) 21:20, 10 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Via Yandex mechine translation tool? Lol. --120.6.9.47 23:16, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    There are no translation tools (Yandex, Google, etc) for such languages as Lak and other North Caucasian languages.--Soul Train (talk) 20:09, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Not always true, many of them support Azerbaijani (that's also spoken in Dagestan). Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:14, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Azerbaijani is a Turkic language that is very close to Turkish, and it can be easily adapted to translation tools on the basis of the latter. There is not a single local language of the North Caucasus (and the languages of the North Caucasus, of course, including Russian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Ukrainian, Greek, etc. It is obvious that we are talking about autochthonous languages) with automatic translation systems. There are a lot of languages in this territory, but the population of individual ethnic groups is not very large. For example, Slovenian is spoken by 2 million people and they have a separate state; Avar (the largest local language of Dagestan) is spoken by a little less than 800 thousand people in entire the world, and the core of the population is several districts of Dagestan - not even a separate republic of the Russian Federation. So Google or Yandex has no interest in seriously developing versions of electronic translators for these languages. And if Turkic languages (Nogai, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk) of the Northern Caucasus could be potentially adapted to translation tools, then the local languages of the region mainly belong to completely different language families (including isolated languages).--Soul Train (talk) 10:44, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Soul Train In the morning of today I searched for other possible Machine translation service websites, and looks like the Baidu Translate supports (but looks like fairly bad) Ossetian, isn't that also a Caucasus language? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:35, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Likely, supports Ingush?! --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:39, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    So, what is next? This is not a translation, but some kind of set of Cyrillic letters. It can’t even translate basic phrases like “Ingush language” (грагаидДо instead of
    гӀалгӀай мотт‎). North Caucasian languages includes Northwest Caucasian (Abkhazo-Adyghean/Circassic) languages and Northeast Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestani) languages — in sense of a language family, not in a geographical sense. These are extremely isolated languages. The Ossetian language is at least part of the Indo-European languages, and is very-very distantly related to Russian, English, Persian, and Hindi. And here we are talking about a completely different macrofamily. You can find dictionaries of these languages, including online dictionaries, but there is not a single project (I don’t know of any) that would translate North Caucasian languages at the level of Google-translator or Yandex-translator. Yandex-translator does not even have beta versions of the translation of any of these languages. Maybe the translation of interface wasn't perfect, since the translators did not fully understand that it was necessary to strictly follow the glossary etc., but in general, the translation is understandable to native speakers. Soul Train (talk) 23:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Abdul just finished the translation of the most important messages, soon I'll upload them on Translatewiki. Not every language has 100% translated of the most important messages. At the moment, there are already several people who have expressed interest in writing articles for Lak Wikipedia. In the near future, I plan to hold for them a workshop on Skype.--Soul Train (talk) 10:49, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is now 99 % of the most important messages have been translated into Lak language. There are only five messages left, as well as editing and proofreading. — Soul Train (talk) 20:44, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • We reached the level of 100 % of the most important messages in Lak language. One of the first users of the Lak Wikipedia, Ruzanna, began to edit after 11 years-long of break. Here is the example of the article about Wikipedia that she expanded this month. Also, I organised an online workshop, so Ruzanna created a new article using the Content Translation tool. She is currently working on a big article about the Caspian Sea. October is the month of the 15th anniversary of Lak Wikipedia. Together with Natalia, we prepared the press release on this topic at the WM RU site. — Soul Train (talk) 11:20, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is no clear consensus to close it, is not it? I do not think it is a good thing to keep the proposal in limbo for so long. I guess the strongest argument to close the project is like it may be expanded by a machine translation -- sounds somewhat nonsenseful, and an AI tool for translation into Lak is not even proven to be existed. --Wolverène (talk) 05:08, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think this should be closed. There is a very clear consensus here. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
en:wikt:consensus, fyi. --5.227.218.96 20:56, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
5 pro's vs 17 contra's. How easily you devalue the opinions of those with whom you disagree, dear QuicoleJR. --Wolverène (talk) 04:31, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am sure that QuicoleJR mean closing this proposal (and keeping the project open), not closing the project, right? 73.170.137.168 17:24, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, just to be clear, I meant closing the discussion. There is clearly a consensus to keep the project. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:17, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry for misunderstanding. --Wolverène (talk) 19:06, 1 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have applied for the test adminship here. Going to remove vandalism and check if there are clearly non-encyclopedic content. I do not speak Lak but I understand the Cyrillics and can use dictionaries if needed. :) --Wolverène (talk) 06:52, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

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  1. ↑ https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesCurrentStatusVerbose.htm
  2. ↑ https://lbe.wikipedia.org/wiki/Къуллугъирал_лажин:Статистика
  3. ↑ https://lbe.wikipedia.org/wiki/Къуллугъирал_лажин:Список_участников?username=&group=sysop
  4. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20131029193827/http://ilchi.etnosmi.ru/one_stat.php?id=3419
  5. ↑ https://lbe.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Щунудагъ-2009&action=history
  6. ↑ https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesCurrentStatusVerbose.htm
  7. ↑ https://lbe.wikipedia.org/wiki/Къуллугъирал_лажин:Статистика
  8. ↑ https://lbe.wikipedia.org/wiki/Къуллугъирал_лажин:Список_участников?username=&group=sysop
  9. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20131029193827/http://ilchi.etnosmi.ru/one_stat.php?id=3419
  10. ↑ https://lbe.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Щунудагъ-2009&action=history
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