Requests for comment/Start allowing ancient languages/Archive

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Rational

Original wording

Currently the only wikimedia project that allows ancient languages is Wikisource and I would like to request that this policy changes.

I’m an editor in Middle English Wikipedia (which can be found in the incubator) and not to long ago someone posted a new request to create this wiki. This request was only open for two weeks but has a lot of comments (if you take into account the get short amount of time that it was open). What’s worse is that they guy who closed this project didn’t even bother to read the discussion (which is evident in this discussion) otherwise he would have seen some very valid reasons why ancient languages shouldn’t be rejected solely for the fact that they are ancient.

I will repeat some of them here. Having wikis in ancient languages (especially if there is actual effort to promote the wiki among people who are interested in ancient languages) will cause more users to join the Wikimedia Foundation and they might expand to other projects as well. I can to you that I joined in order to contribute to Middle English Wikipedia and that’s where I’m mostly active but I also edit English Wikibooks from time to time and even have uploader rights there. In addition from my understanding, ancient languages are not allowed because supposedly nobody would be interested in editing them except vandals but Middle English Wikipedia proves that it doesn’t have to be that way. If you go to Middle English Wikipedia and press check test wiki activity you will see that there are at least three non greyed out users consistently over the course of 5 months which means that according to your standards it’s an active wiki. Also, I think that having Wikipedias in ancient languages is beneficial because that way it will empower speakers of small language to create wikis in there languages become Middle English could do it why can’t we. Now, to be clear, I don’t expect Middle English Wikipedia to get a subdomain right away - I recognise that it has several milestones before that dream can be achieved.

All I request is that you take those requests seriously and don’t reject them just because they are ancient languages. In my opinion every test wiki should be considered individually and not get rejected just because it’s an ancient language. I recognise that creating a wiki in an ancient language is more challenging than creating one in a modern language but as can be seen in Middle English Wikipedia there’s a substantial number of users (including me) that accepted the challenge. However I realize there are valid concerns about this so I propose a new policy about ancient languages: Once a new request for an ancient language is created, instead of rejecting it right away, just put the request on hold for a certain amount of time or until it has a substantial amount of content and then contact linguists to verify that it’s actually this language and if it is, there’s a substantial amount of good quality articles, and the test wiki is active, the wiki will get a subdomain. It’s also possible to just verify them as eligible or to create a new status specially for ancient languages that explains that because it’s an ancient language it will be harder to get a subdomain but if the test wiki is active enough its still possible. You must understand that moving those projects outside of the Wikimedia Foundation will cause a migration of users interested in ancient languages to wherever you plan to move it to and it’s impossible to say for sure will they return or not. Keeping the ancient languages here though will be beneficial as they might expand and contribute to other projects as well.

Thanks for understanding, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:27, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

Edit: it’s also possible to categorize ancient langages together with constructed languages. The argument that there’s no point in having a wiki in an ancient language because there’s no any reason to think someone will search for info in them applies equally to constructed languages (even Esperanto). It will also take minimal effort for change the policy - just remove the section for Ancient or Historical languages and change artificial languages to Ancient, Historic, and Constructed languages. Then, it can say “ Yes, there can be wikis in ancient and constructed languages. There are already wikis available in Classical Chinese, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Interlingue, Lojban, Volapük, Novial, Latin, Lingua Franca Nova, Old Church Slavonic, and Old English. See the relevant note under the prerequisites concerning fictional languages and reconstructed proto-languages.” Middle English isn’t a proto languages. Proto Indo European is since it was reconstructed based on modern langages and not on historic documents because it was spoken before writing was invented. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 11:00, 25 May 2021 (UTC)

DISCLAIMER: Allowing wikis in ancient language doesn’t mean they get a subdomain right away! They will still need to be active and to get reviewed just like any other language would! So saying that one specific test wiki that you don’t like isn’t active in your opinion or that you think it’s articles aren’t high quality enough isn’t an argument! In the same way it’s possible to ban many modern languages because their test wikis aren’t active. If they really aren’t active they will just stay in the incubator till they become active - this is what the incubator is for. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:09, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

More organized

Since I have published this request for comment, many arguments have been written in favor of this - not all of them are listed above. That’s why I decided to list all the arguments (list may expand in the future) in a readable list. I will include both arguments listed above and arguments listed by supporters in the comment below. Here is the list:

1. Not all “ancient” or “extinct” languages are really “dead” languages as they hold immense cultural significance. Though some languages like Rongorongo glyphs found in Easter Island remain undeciphered and probably won’t be deciphered in the foreseeable future, there are other so called “dead” languages (Middle English, Ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Ancient Meitei Langage, Classical Chinese, Old Church Slavonic, Old English, list goes on) These languages as mentioned before are all culturally significant in at least several ways.
2. International Auxiliary Languages are allowed. Now I know many people in Langcom don’t approve of this argument but listen me out anyways. The vast majority of people who would be willing to read a wiki in an international auxiliary language or to contribute to it are enthusiasts or ideologists (WMF being politically neutral can’t favor certain ideologies). That being said the argument against this request that says that only enthusiasts will enter this is thrown out of the window. In addition, following this argument it’s possible to ban Wikibooks about arduino for example stating that only tech enthusiasts will read them
3. The goal of WMF is to spread knowledge. Having a wiki in an ancient languages helps achieve this goal as long as the wiki is active enough (see argument below). For one, it will help the study of these languages. People who learn these languages will be able to practice their skills in these wikis. In addition, it will increase the amount of content available in these specific language and everyone who has learned a language knows the importance of having available texts. This isn’t the purpose of theses wikis (unfortunately for the people who used this statement as an argument against this request) however an additional benefit.
4. Wikis in ancient languages will have to pass the same process any other wiki would before they get a subdomain. If your argument that wikis in ancient languages can not be active enough or can not have a sufficient amount of content (which isn’t btw as is evident by the test wikis), then you have nothing to worry about as they will never get a subdomain. This is why the incubator exists - they will only get a subdomain once theirs a sufficient amount of content and activity - just like any other wiki would.
5. There will almost certainly be content that can be found exclusively in these wikis. Someone has listed content that can exclusively be found in Esperanto Wikipedia as a good reason why it’s useful. The same will almost certainly happen with Middle English Wikipedia as well once the amount of articles is larger and I’m almost certain is true in Ancient Greek Wikipedia.
6. It will attract more users to WMF. I think that it’s undeniable that if WMF starts allowing wikis in ancient languages and starts advertising them among experts and students that many of the new users who will join will also contribute to other wikis.

Anyways, this is far from being a complete list. I will add more arguments to it as time passes. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 11:26, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

This is not about Wikisource (for concerned Chinese Wikisource users)

DISCLAIMER This RfC is not about Wikisource. I know that there were rumors floating about that the purpose of this RfC is to harm Chinese Wikisource in some way by moving a lot of it’s pages to a separate Classical Chinese Wikisource. This is not what this RfC is about. It’s about Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, etc. Classical Chinese Wikipedia already exists and I think nobody will dispute the fact that it’s content can’t be just moved to Chinese Wikipedia as it is just like content from Old English Wikipedia can’t be moved to English Wikipedia as it is. If this RfC is approved though, it will open the way to Classical Chinese Wikibooks and Classical Chinese Wikivoyage (all of which will have to pass incubation so inactivity isn’t a valid response - if they are inactive they won’t get a subdomain). BTW, I gave Classical Chinese as an example because the concerns were expressed by users from Chinese Wikipedia and Chinese Wikisource. The same applies for other ancient languages as well. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:46, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Please consider temporary hatting your this section, due to larger-than-universe concerns from zhwikisource: s:zh:Wikisource:写字间#文言文維基文庫可能會被分割出來創立了，中文維基文庫中的文言文文章將何去何從？ Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:27, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226, sorry I have missed your message. Sure I will do that. Next time if you want me to react I would greatly appreciate it if you pinged me. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:52, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Wait, does it make the entire section invisible? Isn’t there a better way to leave a notice while still being transparent about what was written there? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:55, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226, do you know a way to mark this section while sill being transparent about the actual text that was there? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 15:12, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Support

• Support I support the allowing of ancient wikis to be able to have their own projects, so long as they have editors, good pages with significant comment and a significant corpus. --PastelKos (talk) 15:44, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support I support this proposal also. It has been easier for the Language Committee to have a simple rule -- no ancient languages -- but life and sociolinguistics aren't quite so simple. Languages like Sanskrit, Latin and classical Chinese are currently used for many well-defined purposes: linguists who are aware of these uses consider them special languages, not "dead" languages. Some of those uses fit well within the range of Wikimedia Foundation projects. (I have intentionally chosen examples that have a longstanding and active Wikipedia, set up before the rule about ancient languages was introduced. These examples show that such a project can work!) I fully agree with PastelKos that a proposed project needs to have active editors, good pages, and active discussions; and I'll add that proposers need to show why the project will be a useful addition to the Wikimedia family. Those should be the real tests. Andrew Dalby (talk) 16:27, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support Ich unterstütze mit Nachdruck das Zulassen von Wikipediaversionen in alten Sprachen v.a. allem auch wegen ihrer Internationalität. Sie bewiesen bereits in der Vergangenheit auf beeindruckende Weise, daß sie ganze Völkerschaften - oft über Jahrhunderte hindurch und über weite geographische Räume! - verbinden können. Es ist nicht rechtens, heutigen Autoren solcher Sprachen ihr Recht auf Kommunikation und somit auf eine Wikipediaversion abzusprechen. Giorno2 (talk) 15:54, 27 May 2021 (UTC)
• Partial support I do think a sound case can be made against wikis in ancient languages. Nobody needs them, that's right. But I see absolutely no reason to allow wikis in such marginal auxlangs as Lingua Franca Nova or Kotava and refuse an Ancient Greek Wikipedia. Moreover, the Ancient Greek test Wikipedia was started (and thriving!) before the current policy was implemented, so they have been treated quite unfairly. So to be brief: I support the creation of an Ancient Greek Wikipedia, though I'm not so sure about other ancient languages. There's more on this matter in this (partially dated) essay of mine. Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 09:57, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support The goals of Wikimedia movement (to share and freely spread knowledge) are fulfilled in every active enough project. It's not up to us to decide which languages will other people use to fulfill that goals. If there is a community - and this is proven by an active incubator project - dead languages are just as fine as any other language. Furthermore, the cost of adding a new project is tiny so the argument that it won't be as useful as the English Wikipedia (or the 50 largest Wikipedias) is irrelevant.--Pere prlpz (talk) 11:09, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support I support the proposal; I am a professor of Ancient Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit and would be happy to have Wikipedias in all three of those languages -- we've got 2 so far. A. Mahoney (talk) 11:57, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@Amahoney: Great! Thank you very much! You can edit Middle English Wikipedia but it’s still in the incubator (here). Also if you know anybody who is knowledgeable in Middle English please send them this link: https://incubator.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/enm. Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 07:38, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

thanks -- I've been to Old English Wikipedia and didn't know Middle English was in the works: that will be fun. A. Mahoney (talk) 14:46, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Amahoney: looking forward to seeing you in Middle English Wikipedia. :) -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:48, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support I support the proposal: the quality deterioration of the Ancient Greek project adduced by the opponents is squarely due to the long quarantine of the project, which has given the opportunity to one-issue inept editors to infest it and do their thing. Legitimizing the project, however, will quickly improve its quality and attract serious contributors. The project already includes numerous creditable contributions. I see no structural reason for it to not rise to the standards of the Latin site. Cuzkatzimhut (talk) 13:18, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support: I support allowing ancient Wikipedias to be able to have their own projects, as long as they have enough editors and good pages. In general, it has been the same people over and over again who have managed to hinder these projects by not allowing them to develop further. If a project is adequately active and has a significant number of articles already, it should just be allowed to proceed further. Heracletus (talk) 19:20, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
• Weak support, we should find a place for ancient language on the Wikimedia Galaxy (and existing project in ancient language - created before the current policy - are a proof it can work quite well). I'm in favour of amending the Language proposal policy but ancient languages probably need specific and stronger criteria. As a first step, we should written down and discussed these criteria (and probably also talk about small/minority/constructed languages). Cheers, VIGNERON * ^discut. 10:58, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@VIGNERON: thank you very much for your comment! Users who are against this request, if ancient languages have stricter requirements than current languages (for example requiring ta least one thousand articles) this will make sure that low quality wikis don’t get a subdomain. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:10, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Support: I don't see any sensible reason why the criteria for inclusion in Wikipedia should be different for certain categories of languages. If Latin should not be allowed (apart from being grandfathered in), then there is no good reason to allow e.g. Breton: There is hardly anyone left having learned Breton as a mother tongue and just searching for information who would go to the Breton Wikipedia. Those who could do that would know French as well and have a much better chance to find what they need in the French Wikipedia. If you go to the Breton Wikipedia, you necessarily do it for the language. You want some substantial information on a concept, but you also want to know the way to explain it in Breton and the whole related terminology (not just the translation of one word, which you could of course also find in Wiktionary). That's why people go to the Breton Wikipedia. There is a community out there that feels that need. I think that's legitimate, and as minority languages are allowed under the normal criteria, I assume many others agree. But guess what: People go to the Latin Wikipedia for the same reason, only very exceptionally because something is explained better there than in some other language they master. It may be an ancient language without native speakers, but it does have a community with that kind of need. I can't understand why to respond to that need would be less legitimate because the language in question is an "ancient" one. Now, I don't have any clue whether such a community exists for Middle English, but if a Middle English Wikipedia can pass the test of the usual criteria (recalled in the disclaimer of the original request), then the community exists. Otherwise, the wiki would necessarily fail the test anyhow. The distinction made by the current policy between, say, Limburgish or Lojban on the one hand and e.g. Ancient Greek on the other is completely arbitrary, because the kind of use made of such wikis is the same one for all these languages. The idea that someone only looking for encyclopedic information would turn to the Limburgish Wikipedia "naturally", just like people go to the German or Russian one, is frankly laughable. Et quod licet bovi, licet Iovi (ac caprae, cani, monstro vermiculato volatili ...). Sigur (talk) 13:37, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support I am unconvinced by the rationale that because very few readers will naturally read the wiki there is no reason for its existence, which is the most plausible objection I have read. There are plenty of Wikimedia projects that readers rarely, if ever, visit. Wikidata, Incubator, Test-Wiki, and likely many others are not entirely reader-focused and are valuable in other ways. A lot of people are expressing a narrow viewpoint on the value of Wikimedia projects. Creating a corpus of material for ancient languages is valuable in and of itself (and for machine learning, for language learners, for people studying the region in in question), and if there is a community willing to maintain and create it I do not see any valid reason that the project should not be allowed. Zoozaz1 (talk) 23:19, 29 May 2021 (UTC)
• Support The reason why i support is that a new Wikipedia of any ancient language is that it is strong power to let that ancient language get a sort of revival. Such as Classical Chinese, it is not just ancient language or dead language, it also being taught in China mainland and has a large number learning. Also it is written as a kind of unconventional blends language（網絡文言 or Network Classical Chinese） on china internet. This is the reason why i support start the Ancient Language Wikipedia. 吾舉之，蓋啟新典為一強力，而令古語復生也。若文言者，其非古語亦或死語，�諸夏庠序師之，修之者眾也。亦其書以非範式而綜攝他語之法而顯然於網絡也（或曰網羅文言）。此實吾舉啟古語新典之因也。--扎姆 (talk) 15:09, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
• Strong support: "Ancient Wikipedias" could host unique contents concerning the ancient phases, the etymologies and the ancient names of places and things, becoming a catalyst for cultural interests that the other versions of Wikipedia often do not capture or neglect. I have already experienced this benefit of the Latin Wikipedia. Furthermore, unlike many other languages already present in Wikipedia, ancient Greek, though an ancient language, is also a living language (as well as Latin and Sanskrit): there are even monolingual classes provided in this language (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU1WuLg45Six4gYLaBrTAIvfjXWKJ1EkN). Thus, I too don't see why we shouldn't have more Wikipedias in ancient languages. The adversaries of this project are probably people who are ignorant in this matter and, therefore, cannot appreciate its value. Anaxicrates (talk) 15:26, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
• Strong Support: I strongly support this request because there are many ancient languages which are still not extinct. Denying those languages just because they existed right from ancient times isn't good, I think so. In fact, simple:Ancient Meitei language (lang-code:omp) is still in present day generations' tongue, regularly chanting and singing in the months long simple:Lai Haraoba festival every year in India, Bangladesh and Myanmar. It's in the Wikimedia incubator too. Same case for many other languages. But it's very unfortunate that those still surviving ancient languages got viewed as dead or extinct. We should give them a chance to develop, construct and promote like other languages evolved in modern times. Haoreima (talk) 04:39, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I think you misunderstood the scope of this proposal. An "ancient" language in the sense of this discussion is, by definition, an extinct one. If it still has native speakers, it's already allowed (no matter how "ancient" it is). But of course "Ancient Meitei" is also extinct, because it doesn't in fact have native speakers – Modern Meitei has. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:00, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
    • @Future Perfect at Sunrise: no I think he understood the proposal. He suggested that an Ancient Meitei Wiki should be created. It’s technically an “extinct” language because it has no native speakers but it’s still being used so it isn’t really “dead”. @Haoreima: did I get you right? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:56, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
      • @Gifnk dlm 2020: Absolutely, you are right. I think @Future Perfect at Sunrise: has some misunderstandings with my statement. BTW, thank you Gifnk for clarification. Haoreima (talk) 18:26, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
        • @Haoreima: you are welcome. Glad to help. :) -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 20:52, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
          • Comment @Haoreima: BTW I’m impressed by the amount of content that was created in incubator:Wp/omp. 463 articles in less than 3 months! If you manage to get other people contribute to the test wiki as well, I don’t see any reason why it won’t be a total success. Keep up for good work! --Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:04, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
            • @Gifnk dlm 2020: Oh yes, in fact, we are planning to create at least 200-300 articles in the "omp" test wiki every month from future. And it will be an appreciation if the current policy changes and this test wiki gets approved, that it will draw attention to more and more people in taking part of developing the online encyclopedia better and wider. Haoreima (talk) 13:45, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
              • @Haoreima: great to know! Wishing you lots of luck! -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:04, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support younger generation can learn ancient language. A Mangang (talk) 11:54, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
• Support To corroborate Steinbach's argument, I've seen too many hobby IALs have their own Wikis when the languages of people who existed before and whose descendants do exist now get ignored. Kotava, for example, has a mainly Francophone following and the dictionary on their website is all in French. I don't know of any Kotava speakers. Lingua Franca Nova (LFN), I speak it. I'm in the FB and Reddit groups. The Volapük Wiki. Few speakers and inflated with poor quality articles by a bot. Who here has heard of an Interlingue? Or a Novial? Perhaps the nerd in all of us, but certainly not the average Wikipedia reader. The underlying current in all of these IAL Wikis is they're all supported by fringe hobbyists. Not people who spoke their first words, wooed their mates, gave sermons, commanded armies, and overall passed down culture from generation to generation. For at least Ancient Greek not to have a Wiki while their speakers have played a significant role is a shame.--Robbinorion (talk) 03:54, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Robbinorion: Are you really sure you're not someone's sockpuppet? This is your first ever edit at Meta-Wiki, so where are you from? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:47, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Liuxinyu970226: I think that it’s highly unlikely that he’s a sockpuppet. Check out Special:CentralAuth/Robbinorion. The account was created in 2017. Even if it’s a previous account someone used and then abandoned I don’t think they keep the password for such long time. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:55, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

• Support If there enough of a community for a Wikipedia for a language it should be allowed to be created, even if it is an ancient language.Jackattack1597 (talk) 19:46, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support Tentatively, and with few exceptions, I would support this proposal with the caveat that most such ancient language proposals should remain on incubator. Only ones with significant historical use, like Ancient Greek, in my opinion justify being moved out of incubator. But there should not be a formal policy banning all ancient language projects. --Sailor Ceres (talk) 02:45, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support If an ancient language( such as Middle English or Ancient Greek )has enough interest, then i think that it has at least as much of a reason to be on as auxlang does. Whycantusernamesbe21 (talk) 03:03, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
• Strong Support Just because a language is ancient (or liturgical or constructed) doesn't mean that it can't host useful content and a lively, active community. Latin is one of the best examples. Old English is also doing fine, so I don't see why there is a bureaucratic need to disallow Middle English. It's also about time that Ancient Greek (with almost 2,000 articles) and Coptic (with 1,500 articles) be allowed to have their own wikis. Both users and editors will definitely find Coptic, Ancient Greek, Middle English and other ancient language Wikipedias to be interesting and useful. What happened to the Wikimedians' goals of just going ahead and building content ("ignore all rules"), rather than boggling themselves down with self-created red tape and byzantine bureaucracy? Sabon Harshe (talk) 01:53, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
•  Support The reason I'm supporting can be seen in the Oppose header. Mainly because there is no reason to not allow Ancient Languages to have wikis, principally languages that are still learned to this day. They can still contribute to humanity knowledge by keeping resources of the language, and how it should be used (although this depends on user knowledge, it's useful for large communities of ancient languages). Also, some old languages are/have plans to be revived, wikis can help them too. - Iohanen (talk) 12:47, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support, per above arguments. I think it would be useful to a lot of people.Sahaib3005 (talk) 12:24, 1 August 2021 (UTC)
•  Support As stated in my another RFC, projects like Wikipedia in Latin, Old English, Classical Chinese are also ancient languages, however, their Wikipedia versions were proposed before the adoption of current language proposal policy, and they have achieved varying degree of sustained flow of contributor and readers so it could be said that there are people that would be benefited from existence of these ancient language projects, and thus I don't get why, Wikipedia of for example, Ancient Greek, should be denied from existence simply because they were proposed later than the cutoff day of creation of the language policy. C933103 (talk) 10:14, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
• Support, it would help historians and other people who want to know more ancient languages/learn an ancient language --Oofas (talk) 21:55, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

•  Strong support I contribute to Middle English Wikipeida from time to time and I'm shocked by the fact that it can't get a subdomain even if it has 2,000 articles. As of now, it has 352 articles which is more than the smallest open wiki with a subdomain (NOT A TEST WIKI). Also Ancient Greek Wikipedia has nearly 2,000 articles and a clear consensus in the request page. How it still doesn't have a subdomain is beyond me. BTW, I have some knoledge in Biblical Hebrew and would like to start a test wiki in the language. it has an ISO code (hbo) and I see that a test wiki did exist but was deleted. Is it possible by any chance that it will be reopened so that me and other interested users will be able to contribute to it? I would greatly appreciate it if you just gave a chance to prove that it can work. I hope you reconsider your policy. Thanks in advance,Vikipad (talk) 22:14, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

@Vikipad, that’s a very interesting question (the one about Biblical Hebrew Wikipedia). I wonder if someone here can answer it. Alternatively, you coule try to create a few articles under your namespace (User:Vikipad/תנין) though I’m not 100% sure so don’t take my word for it. I suggest to try to ask people who are knowledgeable in this topic. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 19:08, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

• Support as mentioned by other users here, many people will benefit from this RfC. In addition, I think that if a language has enough content it shouldn't be barred from getting a subdomain just because its ancient. Especially since made up languages are allowed. - EvilPita (talk) 21:21, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
•  Support: Some ancient languages meet all 6 of the criteria at Language proposal policy (like Ancient Greek (please see my support there.) AnotherEditor144 ^{t - c} 10:36, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

@User:AnotherEditor144 thank you very much for your support! If I’m not mistaken, that’s the first time such an argument was told but indeed there are ancient languages that pass all of the criteria. For convenience, I will summarize them here:

1. The request must be of a project that doesn’t exist (duh why would some one request a project that was already created😅. It doesn’t make sense).
2. The language must have an ISO 639 1–3. (Many of them do)
3. The langage must be sufficiently unique so that it can’t be just merged into an existing wiki. (Middle English texts most certainly can not be mixed in English Wikipedia. Period.)
4. The language must have a sufficient number of fluent users to form a viable contributor community and an audience for the content. This is evidently the case for Ancient Greek Wikipedia and Middle English Wikipedia. When I tried to contact experts, one of them, wrote back to me and told that it really fired his students enthusiasm. Also there are YouTube videos about articles in Middle English Wikipedia which is also evidence of interest).
5. There must be an active test project. (Both Ancient Greek and Middle English have active test wikis).
6. There is a continuing effort to translate the MediaWiki interface into that language so that nobody is excluded from participating if they do not understand the English-language user interface. (This is true about Ancient Greek Wikipedia, but with Middle English Wikipedia, unfortunately I don’t understand how wikitranslate works. If someone explains I would be fake to translate at least parts of it).

Also BTW, the requirement for at least 90 edits a month is news for me though Middle English Wikipedia has well over that for every month since January this year. I though the requirement is to have at least 3 non greyed out users a month but Middle English Wikipedia fulfills also this requirement since January of this year. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 19:43, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

•  Support : For Example sample Classical Chinese is very different from Standard Chinese. --Kitabc12345 (talk) 13:33, 22 August 2021 (UTC)
•  Support : per User:Kitabc12345, and why not ask some people from Classical Chinese wiki? They may more familiar with this subject.I wish zhwiki could be saved. | Pavlov2 (talk) 14:37, 24 August 2021 (UTC)
•  Support : There is not a logical or simple division between knowledge deployed through one or other medium, nor between one or other class of language, or language community. As soon as such a division is placed, prejudicial judgements will arise. Think about Sanskrit, which has speakers and writers, but is ancient and (more or less) a second anguage for all. Refusing Sanskrit a platform would be obviously prejudicial, as would excluding Cornish or Manx, both of which are “revived” and formerly classed as extinct. Criteria for inclusion therefore have to be objective and verifiable, such as, whether enough competent writers are curating the content. The issues that the ME wiki are accused of and the Ancient Greek wiki is believed may suffer from having fall into this class, and can be dealt with in an objective way. That is, Wikimedia should ensure that a high standard of linguistic competence is evidenced and applied, and the project advances to official and more public visibility on the basis of quality content and quality control, just as all other wikis do. --JimKillock (talk) 16:07, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
•  Support : All arguments have already been worded, I simply join them. --Mmh (talk) 18:10, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
•  Support, but only Wikipedias and Wiktionaries in ancient or recently extinct languages. It would allow us to create unique texts, even short ones, which may be helpful for people who deeply involved in linguistics studies, or for language revitalization activists - last ones are not always kind of marginal interest groups, we know example of successful attempts of revitalization of recently extinct or even ancient languages. Of course, we will need to put more effort to determine the accuracy of spelling/vocabulaire of a proposed language, how good a dead language studied and if it could be ever studied more by linguists, so of course, the hypothetic Galindian Wikipedia would be an obvious nonsense comparing to Ancient Greek or Middle English Wikipedias. In the end, I would support the maintaining of stricter policy (!) for acceptance of Wikiprojects in dead languages, rather than complete eradication of any chance to have active projects in such languages. Thanks. --Wolverène (talk) 13:11, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose If you want to cause more people to join the Wikimedia Foundation, we should open Pokemon and Animal Crossing wikis. That would have hundreds of times the impact that adding the Middle English Wikipedia would. Will there be someone who you stick around and contribute productively to other Wikimedia projects if and only if we add these projects? I doubt it; certainly not many, since there's few editors for these projects to start with. If the goal is recruitment, there are many other things that would be way more effective.

I see that you speak of Esperanto without knowledge, as the Esperanto Wikipedia has many pages on works and authors not covered by other Wikipedias. On the other hand, last time I checked, the Sanskrit and Classical Chinese Wikipedias did not seem to have any coverage that would lead readers to use them. These projects aren't working, IMO, and these are the "special" languages, according to Andrew Dalby. I see no reason to open the door to languages that are just dead, by any definition of the word, like Middle English. Ancient Greek is about the only "special" language that doesn't have its own Wikipedia, so these proposal is far too broad for that issue.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:20, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: just check Sanskrit Wikipedia statistics, Ancient Chinese Wikipedia Statistics, and Latin Wikipedia Statistics. These are highly active wikis. Also I think there’s a misunderstanding in my suggestion. I don’t request you to create enm.wikipepedia.org or grc.wikipedia.org right away. All I suggest is that those languages get a chance to get their subdomain. Test wikis already exist in the incubator and they will get a subdomain when they have enough content and activity. Middle English Wikipedia is an active wiki and I don’t see any reason to keep the doors shut for this language if there’s an interested community. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 09:22, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Comment I suddenly don't know that, if you know that these wikis already exist, why don't you ping their administrators, as their benefits are also largely affected by your RFC, fwiw, they are: angwiki @Gottistgut:, arcwiki @334a:, cuwiki @ОйЛ:, gotwiki @Zylbath:, lawiki @Adam Bishop, Alex1011, Alexander Gerashchenko, Amahoney, and Andreas Raether:@Aylin, Helveticus montanus, Ioscius, Iustinus, and Lesgles:@Mattie, Neander, Rafaelgarcia, Schulz-Hameln, and Sigur:@UV, Utilo, and Xaverius:, sawiki @Eukesh, NehalDaveND, Sayant Mahato, and Shubha:, and zh-classicalwiki @Davidzdh, Itsmine, MintCandy, WAN233, and 丁子君:. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 09:34, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: it seems that you have written this in multiple edits so I’m not sure on which one to press thank😅. Anyways, thank you very much! -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 11:48, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

I understand what you're trying to do. I don't see those as highly active wikis; compare Classical Chinese WP recent changes with Estonian WP recent changes. And as Andrew Dalby said, those are "special" languages. I might understand changes for "special" languages, but I'm not at all interested in opening the door to Middle English and friends, for thoroughly dead languages that are just likely to produce badly written useless text. That could in fact hurt Wikipedia, as users who do know Middle English are turned off Wikimedia as a whole by the bad impression from the ME Wikipedia.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:53, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: I have repeated this several times but apparently it’s not enough so I will repeat again. Opening the door to those languages doesn’t mean to give them a subdomain right away! Before they can get one they will need to get a substantial amount of content and also to get reviewed! If we follow your argument about this that it can “hurt Wikipedia” why not close the entire project? I mean w:Province of Georgia says that it’s original land gran extended to the Pacific Ocean. This sort of nonsense will deter people who study this time period so let’s delete this article. Why not? Also as another user pointed out it doesn’t make sense to allow conlangs like Lingua Franca Nova but not ancient languages. This is why I suggest to classify them together. If the quality of the test wiki isn’t high enough we should improve it not delete it. And there’s a system in place already to make sure that only high quality and active wikis can get a subdomain cancelling all your arguments to why they shouldn’t be allowed. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:04, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Yelling the same things over and over is not the best way to try and communicate. I'd rather shutdown the discussion here instead of waste the time having the same discussion over and over. Please apply the same rules to my wild hypotheses that you would apply to yours; if it's possible and matters that we could gain users from these Wikipedias, then it's possible and matters that we could lose users from these Wikipedias. Conlangs have nothing to do with this conversation, nor does errors in Wikipedia, if that is in fact an error.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:26, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: To begin with, it’s indeed possible and even likely that if wikis in ancient languages get deleted users who are interested in them will just leave. Conlangs are related to the discussion since there’s no any more reason to think someone will search for info in Lingua Franca Nova than there is that someone will search for information in Ancient Greek. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:35, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Comment I wonder what means the "deleted users" from you, @Gifnk dlm 2020:, because as far as I know MediaWiki originally doesn't support deletion of user account, and even such a mechanism is added, it won't be enabled on Wikimedia wikis, as we need user accounts recorded in pages' histories, and keep the sane attributions due to CC BY-SA licensing. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:30, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: if the test wiki gets deleted, users who are interested in ancient languages will just leave. That’s what I meant. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:37, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

And it's possible and even likely that if we create wikis in dead languages, that users who feel that's being silly will leave. Or that users who would be productive on a major project will move their time to an ancient language that nobody uses. Either way, it'll be marginal and irrelevant, but you're picking just the directions that help you. Conlangs aren't relevant because the proposal doesn't include conlangs. Make your proposal on your own terms.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: conlangs are not included in the proposal because they are already allowed. BTW, I will also reply to the other comments you left today here. Conlangs are relevant because a wiki in a conlang isn’t any more "useful" than a wiki in an ancient language however they are still alive. The same arguments you make about ancient languages can be made about conlangs. Why to let users "waste those time and resources" for Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia when they can be "more productive" in English Wikipedia? Your suggestion that users who feel it’s silly will leave is much wilder than mine. It’s highly likely that users will frustrate that their hard work was deleted and just leave. Idk why you don’t like bulbapedia but just because you are not interested in Pokemon doesn’t mean the wiki isn’t useful. We don’t write Middle English like a relaxed form of Modern English - we try to be as accurate as possible and I didn’t say that I support the creation of an Ancient Egyptian Wikipedia - only that I think it should be allowed if it’s possible to use WikiHiero also in page titles and they can get a sufficient amount of content. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:57, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Except that we've had editors leave because of Klingon and at least threaten to leave because of the Scots fiasco. Bulbapedia is useful; that's why it's relevant as an example of why not every Wiki needs to be with the WMF, and what we should be adding if adding members is our sole concern. I didn't say "relaxed"; I said "relexed". You said that an English speaker could write Middle English with just a dictionary, when that will merely get you Modern English written with Middle English spellings.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:23, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: where do I even start? For one I strongly oppose deleting Scots Wikipedia just because of few people who don’t speak the language. It’s not a good reason to delete the hard work of other users who do know the language. With Klingon Wikipedia at least their was the argument that it’s a fictional language and that the copyright matter is disputed. With Middle English such arguments don’t work. BTW, I checked what I wrote and I said “learn the differences between the languages and find a good online Middle English Dictionary“. To learn the differences means to read about Middle English Grammar online. this page links to several online resources for learning Middle English Grammar. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:44, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

You could start by reading and responding to what is written. Whether or not you believe the Scots Wikipedia should be deleted is irrelevant to the fact that a person did threaten to leave all Wikimedia projects unless all existing text was deleted. It doesn't matter whether or not Klingon should have been deleted; it only matters that people dismissed Wikipedia because of it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:06, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: I have read your comment. You haven’t written that a user threatened to leave unless all content is deleted -you made it look like he threatened to leave if all content is deleted. Is Scots Wikipedia was deleted, much more than one person will leave. When Klingon was deleted many users left and this was obviously harmful for WMF, but at least they had some justifications, and there are no such for neither Middle English Wikipedia, Ancient Greek Wikipedia, and definitely not for Scots Wikipedia. I have responded to what is written - if Scots Wikipedia gets deleted much more than one user will leave and it is true that users left when Klingon Wikipedia was deleted and I think that it’s bad but at least there was some justification. Thanks., -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:08, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

CommentOne obvious fact is Classical Chinese is not a dead language, and also Classical Chinese wikipedia is not as you say that "did not seem to have any coverage that would lead readers to use them".In fact the user of Classical Chinese wikipedia are creating new word and content of this language, and until today it is totally create 17,094 pages in this language. Also Classical Chinese as a language that it is has large number of people are learning it from elementary to university in China Mainland, Taiwan, Hongkong and etc. Most people can read it and few people can write with it. So it is hard to call it a "dead language", but only that it just not have ability to create new content.

一事明者，蓋文言非「死語」，大典亦非汝所言「無用以人謁而用之」也。若大典之諸士，創制新詞，共修大典，迄今得文萬又七千九十四文，此可言「無用以人謁而用之」邪？夫文言之為辭也，修之者眾，多見於諸夏，自童而蒙，不止於大學，維其可閱者眾而書者寡，惟撰文而言者有數，故難謂其「死語」也。--扎姆 (talk) 14:26, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

If it's not a dead language, then it's irrelevant here, but show me one user who doesn't read modern Chinese and some reason to use the Classical Chinese Wikipedia instead of the modern Chinese Wikipedia.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Classical Chinese is not a dead language is not equal to it isn't an ancient language. Such as I just has said, most of classic Chinese learners only can read classical Chinese and write some text in "modern classical Chinese" or so called "internet classical Chinese", in republic of China, the classical Chineese is still being used in official document. Also the page of ancient stuff on classical Chinese Wikipedia is more better than modern Chinese Wikipedia, and describe ancient stuff in classical Chinese is more effective and easy to read. And it's seem like you didn't know there is a translation style called "classical Chinese translation style",such as in classical Chinese we say “甲光向日金鳞开”, and this sentence translate into modern Chinese is "阳光照耀铠甲，一片金光闪烁", for the Chinese readers, it's totally two kind of conception.And also classical Chinese are used as Lingua franca before 1912, it is just one hundred years ago, so most of Chinese text at that time are written in classical Chinese not modern Chinese. English is not my native language so the logic may has some confusing.--扎姆 (talk) 17:08, 3 June 2021 (UTC).

I'd note that I wouldn't argue against Ancient Greek anymore, and I don't support the LFN Wiki, though I tend more towards neutral on both. But I will stand strongly against Middle English and Ancient Egyptian and any like language that will produce bad text for a project without the usefulness of Bulbapedia and other wikis excluded by the WMF.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:23, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose another attempt at shoehorning Ancient Greek in by the back door per users @Prosfilaes and Future Perfect at Sunrise:. ——SerialNumber54129 07:36, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

That's not a valid argument to oppose the proposal.--Xaverius (talk) 11:20, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

• Oppoose, as before. The main criterion for whether a project is useful is whether it has a natural readership – i.e., a significant population of people for whom this language would be their natural, preferred medium of gathering information. Invariably, dead languages lack such a readership. There is not a single person in the world who would most naturally tend towards a source written in Middle English or Ancient Greek, when they want to learn about the Second Law of Thermodynamics or some upcoming TV sitcom. Every single person on earth would find this information more easily in some of the other, existing projects in a living language. Thus, these projects are invariably doomed to remain no more than linguistic playgrounds for their editors. Projects designed for their writers, not for readers. – A second reason is that projects in dead languages invariably fail to achieve an acceptable level of linguistic authenticity and correctness. Without the linguistic yardstick and corrective of native-speaker intuition, participants in these communities simply won't know if what any of them is writing is linguistically correct and appropriate – they will end up producing rubbish just like the guy who reportedly wrote the Scots Wikipedia without knowing Scots. The "Ancient Greek" wikipedia incubator is just another sad demonstration of this fact. Last time I looked, not a single article there (except the ones which were copy-dumped directly from Byzantine originals) was in any way recognizable as actual Ancient Greek; most of it was more or less Modern Greek (or a mix of other modern languages) relexified with Ancient Greek words. This being as it is, these projects will also remain useless even just as a linguistic playground for readers who simply want to practice their reading skills. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:08, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Addendum: Since the Middle English project has been discussed so much here, I'll also state that its linguistic quality is even worse than the Ancient Greek one. With very few exceptions, articles are generally just as bad as those proverbially bad Scots Wikipedia ones. They are evidently just Modern English "relexified" with a smattering of Middle English orthographic and morphological forms, without any semblance of genuine Middle English diction, idiom and syntax. And it's sloppy and unprincipled relexification on top of that. Sadly, the activities of the initiator of this RfC, User:Gifnk dlm 2020, are in no small part responsible for the further proliferation of this type of pseudo-language on that wiki. Whatever possible educational value for language enthusiasts some outside observers might once have seen in some older articles there is rapidly being diluted and obliterated by the recent bout of over-enthusiastic editing we've seen by him and a few other, similarly self-overestimating editors. I'm sorry to have to criticize him personally here in this way, as this RfC evidently isn't about him personally; it's just that his example is so indicative of what is basically the unavoidable fate of all such wikis, given that the measure of a contributor's footprint on the total quality of the wiki is dependent only on their enthusiasm, not on their competence. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:10, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: based on your comment it’s possible to make two conclusions (correct me if they are wrong). The first conclusion is that you are knowledgeable in Middle English and the second conclusion is that you have time to pass through Middle English Wikipedia, and it’s recent changes. My question to you is if so why don’t you try to correct at least one or two articles? I don’t expect more than that. I have asked the same question previously when you criticized Ancient Greek Wikipedia - instead of trying to delete a wiki, why not to try to improve it? This isn’t the unavoidable fate of wikis in ancient languages. The lack of activity is probably due to the fact that it’s still in the incubator for such a long time and because of the current policy potential contributors probably feel its pointless to contribute to a wiki that doesn’t have a chance of getting a subdomain and might get deleted at any moment (or just plain don’t know about it - that’s also an opinion). Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 21:03, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Stop being obnoxious. Why would I want to spend my time trying to improve a project that I just explained I consider useless, and which I would consider useless even if it was less bad than it is now? And the problem with this wiki is not its lack of activity – to the contrary; the more active it's getting, the worse it gets. And yes, that is its unavoidable fate, as long as it attracts people like you. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:47, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: You aren’t very pleasant yourself but I won’t comment about that. I will start with commenting to your explanation why wikis in ancient languages are “useless”. For one, you ignored the fact that wikis in International auxiliary languages are allowed and one IAL was actually approved as recently as July 2020, quite some time after the current policy was approved. Internationals auxiliary languages don’t have this “natural readership” you mentioned about and practically nobody would choose to get information in Kotava over getting information in his or her native language. Why isn’t Kotava Wikipedia “doomed to remain no more than linguistic playgrounds for their editors“? Why is Ancient Greek Wikipedia useless when Kotava Wikipedia isn’t? I’m not the only person who holds this opinion as is evident in the support section. And yes the problem is inactivity. If Middle English Wikipedia was more active, then the footprint of “users like me” would be much lower. In fact, if Middle English Wikipedia had more activity coming from experts and students, I wouldn’t have joined at all. Do you have any comments on the current state of Ancient Greek Wikipedia after PastelKos has joined? If it as significantly improved that it proves that this isn’t the unavoidable fate of wikis in ancient languages. And besides this isn’t relevant as they will have to be revived by independent linguists before they can get a subdomain anyways (this policy already exists - I didn’t make it up). About my edits, I decided I would temporarily stop creating articles and instead focus on improving the grammar in existing articles. If you are knowledgeable in Middle English and Ancient Greek it would be more constructive to help improve them (or at least not to try and get them deleted). -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:25, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Your "improving the grammar" is making things even worse. It only shows how little you know about Middle English, and how utterly unaware you are of what the actual linguistic faults are in those articles. Edits like this are really hopeless. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:55, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: it would be much more constructive if you at the very least mentioned some of the linguistic faults. I tried to improve the article based on this website. If you claim that my edits didn’t improve the article you could tell what the “actual linguistic faults” are. It seems to me as if you are purposefully trying to hinder the development of these projects by mentioning that there are faults without ever mentioning the main ones in case someone decides to fix them. That’s just my impression could be wrong. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 21:03, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: then why a wikis in constructed languages allowed? Esperanto is the only conlang in which you might make an argument that it’s for the readers, but what about Lojban for example? Nobody speaks Lojban as a native language so everybody who knows Lojban can theoretically get this information also in their native language. FYI, both Middle English Wikipedia and Ancient Greek Wikipedia are much more active than Lojban Wikipedia. Based on your comment about Ancient Greek Wikipedia, it seems to me that you are knowledgeable in Ancient Greek so it will be more constructive IMO to improve at least some articles. From my understanding, current @PastelKos: is fixing the pages one by one and if you know Ancient Greek you can also contribute. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 11:05, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Time is a limited resource; why should they contribute to the Ancient Greek Wikipedia instead of the much more useful Ancient Greek Wikisource? Actually, the Middle English collection of the English Wikisource is pretty bad; in sheer terms of value, if creating the ME Wikipedia leads one users to it instead of the ME section of the English Wikisource, that's a net lose for the project.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

You're assuming that people actually would rather contribute to a non-ancient language, but that's not necessarily the case for everyone. Some people come to wikipedia only to add to (e.g.) the Latin wiki.--Xaverius (talk) 11:29, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

No, I mentioned existing ancient Wikis; editors can add to the Latin Wikisource or the Ancient Greek Wikisource or older appropriate languages to the English, German, or Dutch Wikisources. And if they're here for only (e.g.) the Latin Wiki, why does it have to be here? There are any numbers of free wiki servers, and you can roll out an AWS MediaWiki container easily enough.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:23, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Das Argument von Future Perfect at Sunrise, daß es sich oft nicht um echtes Altgriechisch handelt, ist nicht ganz von der Hand zu weisen. Vielleicht wäre allen geholfen, würde man eine Wikipedia in neugriechischer Katharevusa machen. Dazu müßte der Anstoß am besten aus Griechenland selbst ausgehen: ich weiß, daß dieses Diglossie-Problem noch heute politisch aufgeladen ist. Aber immerhin sind ja schon einige Jahrzehnte (1976) verflossen, daß Dimotiki sich überall offiziell durchgesetzt hat. Ich könnte mir gut vorstellen, daß es nicht wenige (heutige, lebende) Griechen gibt, die dennoch gern zu einer solchen Katharevusa-Wikipedia beitragen wollten. Für die Altgriechen und Philhellenen im Rest der Welt wäre das auch eine Möglichkeit, eigene Griechischkenntnisse zu zeigen. Bekanntlich gibt es ja unterschiedliche Grade von "Attizität" innerhalt der Katharevusa, also progressivere aber auch traditionellere Sprachstufen. Auch könnte man als Textgrundstock gemeinfreie Katharevusa-Lexika einarbeiten. - Giorno2 (talk) 15:10, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

I have copied @Giorno2:’s comment to google translate and here is the result: “Future Perfect at Sunrise's argument that it is often not real ancient Greek cannot be completely dismissed. Maybe everyone would be helped if a Wikipedia was made in the modern Greek Katharevusa. For this, the impetus should come from Greece itself: I know that this diglossia problem is still politically charged today. But at least a few decades (1976) have passed since Dimotiki officially established itself everywhere. I could well imagine that there are quite a few (today, living) Greeks who would still like to contribute to such a Katharevusa Wikipedia. For the ancient Greeks and Philhellenes in the rest of the world this would also be an opportunity to show their own knowledge of Greek. It is well known that there are different degrees of "atticity" within the Katharevusa, that is, more progressive but also more traditional language levels. Public domain Katharevusa lexicons could also be incorporated as a basic text base.” To begin with, I suggest that you discuss this with the contributors to Ancient Greek Wikipedia as they know more about this specific case than I do (after all I’m an editor in Middle English Wikipedia). However, my suggestion would be to try to stay as close as possible to actual Ancient Greek not just a conservative form of Greek (maybe a separate wiki for Katharevusa? Idk how different they are though). Again you should discuss this with contributors to Ancient Greek Wikipedia. @PastelKos, BILL1, and Aureliiuss: what do you think? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 18:14, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

•  Oppose Some supporters are trolling here, this violates wmf:Terms of Use. --223.104.228.36 03:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Who is trolling? Seems to me you are the only one that is..... -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 07:34, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

The Heracletus, which their only 3 edits are votes, so likely someone's sockpuppet. --117.136.55.108 07:57, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Check out Special:CentralAuth/Heracletus. He/she has many edits in English Wikipedia. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:30, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Gifnk dlm 2020: Umm, I also checked it, plus for other supporters, looks like ~5% edits are overlapped (i.e. they edited same pages in different timestamps), I have no interests on en:WP:SPI but if this is increased... --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:42, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: I don’t really get what you wanted to say.😅 Really so Idk how to respond. What do you mean by saying that they edited the same pages in different timestamps. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:12, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

• Rich words coming from an anonymous IP. Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 12:59, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah lol also two different ips. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:09, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose I find the reasoning behind this proposal very unconvincing. There's no evidence anyone other that you was or will be convinced to join the Wikimedia community by the existence of Wikipedias in ancient languages, and the Middle English test wiki does appear to be mostly inactive (you are one of only two people who has made a non-trivial number of edits in multiple consecutive months), and you only have ~200 edits outside of incubator, which is mostly trivial compared to the size of the wikis you are editing.

  Most of the rationales for supporting this seem to be simply unexplained "I like it" or appeals to mistakes that have been made in the past, whereas Fut.Perf explains what will likely happen if this gets implemented. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 03:42, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Pppery: Enter any request for a new language. What will you see? The text "The community needs to develop an active test project; it must remain active until approval (automated statistics, recent changes). It is generally considered active if the analysis lists at least three active, not-grayed-out editors listed in the sections for the previous few months." Then yes, it is considered active according to your rules.

In addition I think there’s a misunderstanding that is common among the majority of people who oppose this request. I don’t suggest you create a Middle English Wikipedia, only open the door for this. I acknowledge that it needs a lot more content before it can get a subdomain, but look for example on Ancient Greek Wikipedia - it has 1,733 articles. Yes I know Ancient Greek is considered a special language but also Jewish Babylonian Aramaic can be considered a special language since there are still people who learn it. And yes, there is a test wiki in this language and there people who edit it. However the main problem is how to determine what is a special language and what isn’t. That’s why I suggest that you judges based on the activity and the content. As I see it this is the only objective way to do this. Once a test wiki gets a substantial amount of content and activity it gets a subdomain. If it doesn’t, it stays in the incubator. Can’t be simpler. Saying that in your opinion this one test wiki isn’t active enough it’s an argument as this isn’t about Middle English Wikipedia - it’s about ancient languages in general. Also this isn’t an argument in general since there’s the incubator so non active wikis won’t get a subdomain anyways. As @Steinbach: it doesn’t make sense to accept wikis in Lingua France Nova and Lojban, but not wikis in Ancient Greek and Middle English. Again the argument that it’s for the readers and not for the writers is not valid. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 07:34, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

• The assumption that dead languages have no place as a Wikipedia is NOT because it is assumed that nobody has an interest.. It has more to do with the notion that modern society cannot be expressed by a language that is dead. That does not have a natural way of including new concepts.

When you consider Ancient Greek and Latin, they are languages that have been continuously been taught in schools and arguably they are not really dead (I am not of that opinion). In the case of Middle English, the culture the concepts have ended. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 07:45, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

The great thing about Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit is that they are classical languages, not merely ancient languages, which means that they survived the cultures in which they originated. Latin was originally a farmers' language which then grew into a full-fledged Kultursprache. It was subsequently used for the world view of Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages from Early through High into Late, as well as the Early Modern Age and to some extent our age. It is not tied to any obsolete world view, like Middle Dutch (where water can also mean 'one of the four bodily humours'). Its use evolved with changing scientific insights.

On top of that, any language can be used to express modern concepts - if necessary. Calques, when applied carefully, do not violate the logic of a language - unless, maybe, it's a really primitive language lacking numerals above two or words for colours. Of course you can argue that this calquing would be pointless - but then again, any more pointless than doing the same in Lojban or Kotava? Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 07:59, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Steinbach: thank you very much for your well crafted comments! @GerardM: please read this comment above. ^ -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:18, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Lojban and Kotava are not dead languages, they are artificial languages; different logic applies. Middle English is not a "classical" language. Dead languages are not allowed as part of the language policy. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 09:02, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@GerardM: Nobody told that Lojabn and Kotava are dead languages.🤦🏻‍♂️ I know what the current policy says and in case you didn’t notice yet I requested that the policy will change, not that those wikis will get a subdomain right away. If wikis in ancient languages are pointless, what’s the point in wikis in conlangs. Practically no one goes and searches for info in Lingua Franca Nova but this wiki still exists. If you point out it’s active community- then this logic should also apply to ancient languages. If they have an active community they should also be accepted. This is why I suggested to group ancient languages together with conlangs that the rules that currently apply on conlangs will also apply on ancient languages. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:48, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

A dead language is not a conlang. A language reflects a culture, writing middle english does not make it middle english. At best it resembles middle English. This has nothing to do with communities, this has to with what a language represents. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 11:55, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@GerardM: ok let’s go on with your logic. If it has nothing to do with the communities that what does it have to do with? What exactly does a conlang represent? Why is a wiki in a Lojban better than a wiki in Middle English? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:06, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Gerard, excuse le mot but that's essentialist bullshit. Saying that something isn't Middle English because its author is not sympathetic with those who historically spoke it is like saying that a Westerner can never truly learn Navajo because Western and Native American communities are so different. This argument was fashionable in the 19th century but not in today's linguistics. A language is defined by a set of features - grammar, phonemes, words, idiom - which can be learnt. That's all there is to it. But starting from your argument, classical languages like Ancient Greek are not confined to their former communities. So what you might argue against a Middle English Wikipedia (and what I alluded to through my example of Middle Dutch) does not apply to Ancient Greek. Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 12:58, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Steinbach: thank you very much! Exactly what needs to be said and how it needs to be said. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:07, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

You can learn Navajo; it is a living language. You may even be understood by Navajo and recognised for speaking essentially correct Navajo. There is nothing that anchors Middle English in a way that would make sense in a middle English context and we are expected to believe that what is new to be good enough. There is no such conundrum with constructed languages. I already made a point about ancient greek, latin and sanskrit as there has been continued interest for these languages over time. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 14:10, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@GerardM: you can also learn Middle English, Ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Ancient Egyptian, etc. Middle English actually in my opinion has an unfair advantage as it is ancestor of Modern English and if you already know English, all it takes is to learn the differences between the languages and find a good online Middle English Dictionary. With reconstructed proto languages like Proto Indo European we don’t have an anchor it’s just speculation. However, with languages that left behind written documents and were studied by linguists we do have an anchor. Thanks, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:46, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

That's exactly why we shouldn't have a Middle English Wikipedia, because as while I wouldn't go as far as GerardM, as Steinbach says, a language includes grammar and idiom, and Middle English is not merely a relexed Modern English--anyone working through Shakespeare, much less Chaucer, knows how massively the idiom has changed--and labelling a Wikipedia full of relexed English Middle English is actively damaging to world knowledge. There's no value in opening Wikipedias full of texts not really in the language.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: One interesting thing: Special:Diff/21583566, no idea if this behavior is from Gifnk or not. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:07, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: don’t worry it’s not from me. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:05, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

GerardM, Have you checked wikis like Classical Chinese Wikipedia or Latin Wikipedia and their ability to create articles for Modern Popular Culture and describe those modern information using ancient languages? C933103 (talk) 10:35, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

@GerardM, what are your thoughts on the comment above? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:01, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose I believe that most ancient languages are extinct or are on the brink of extinction. With little to no contributors left to create or edit the wikis, creating them will be a waste of resources (there's definitely a better way to phrase this) and will require an additional pair of eyes to actually check the wiki for vandalism/spam. Another issue is that language accuracy/neutrality might be a problem, if this can happen on a wiki with a supposedly large number of speakers, it can also happen on small wikis. --Minorax^talk 08:08, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Minorax: I can’t speak for other test wikis but here in Middle English Wikipedia we rarely receive vandalism. The same can be said about any wiki because any wiki can receive vandalism. The vandalism that did happen was reverted so there’s no reason to worry. And again, saying that there are no contributors left is a subjective statement. In my opinion, the only objective way to measure a wiki is by its activity. If it’s active it gets a subdomain - else it stays in the incubator. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:14, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

The probable reason why the Middle English Wikipedia isn't receiving as such vandalism/spam is because it is situated in a relative big wiki and has the necessary infrastructure to combat them. ace.wiki, ab.wiki, rmy.wiki & mwl.wiki are some examples of some wikis that are a vandal/spam magnet currently. For the section portion of your reply, the wiki can be active enough now to have it's own subdomain but once everything dies down, it'll be pretty difficult to move it back to incubator AFAIK. --Minorax^talk 08:22, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Note that I generally oppose the creation of subdomains of languages with a small number of speakers, be it ancient of not. --Minorax^talk 08:24, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Minorax: I never requested to delete an article as I always choose to improve the article instead of deleting it, so it doesn’t have to do with this that it’s in a large wiki. You must also understand that despite the fact that I would really be glad if those wikis got a subdomain, my main goal is to shield those wikis because I don’t want the hard work of many people to get deleted. I would accept it if Middle English Wikipedia stayed in the incubator, but not if it got deleted. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:40, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Putting vandalism/spam aside. Like I've said before, "another issue is that language accuracy/neutrality might be a problem", how are we going to address this issue when there are only a small handful of people that actually know the language or are at least at a level 3 proficiency? --Minorax^talk 13:22, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Minorax: sorry I missed your comment. This is why I suggested to invite actual Middle English experts to contribute to this wiki. If we try contacting them, I’m sure we will find at the very least one or two interested in staying and becoming active contributors. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:56, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Minorax: If we can get an actual Middle English expert to become an active contributor will that address your concerns? To be honest, I would have contacted them but I’m not sure what’s the best way to do so is. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:04, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Note that by long-live vandalisms, not only test wikis can be largely moderated, the existing wikis may also be nominated for closure, an example is just Northern Luri Wikipedia, that their articles (if you were able to visit em before this year) were only spammer's perfects before closure. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:35, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

It's unlikely the Middle English Wikipedia will be deleted from the Incubator, but even if it does, it's all CC-BY-SA, and you can move it anywhere you want.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:23, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

•  Oppose Vandalism, community activity, quality control, that all are things that can in theory affect all projects in any language and should therefore not be the primary arguments against or in favor of allowing "dead language" projects. The actual issue separating these projects from those in living languages is something running much deeper. The point of wikipedia and the other WM projects is to present all of humanity's knowledge in a way that is accessible to all of humanity. Any extinct or "ancient" language has, by definition, no (native) speaker community. (This can not be said of some of the constructed languages, that is why I strongly suggest to keep these two categories separate and not derail the discussion by comparing apples and oranges.) Thus, whichever extinct language you take, and regardless whether they developed into a modern language (like Old or Middle English into Modern English) or not (like. e.g. Tocharian which simply went extinct), there is no one alive who depended on having access to information in any of these languages. Who ever "speaks" Middle English or Ancient Greek nowadays or in the foreseeable future will with absolute certainty not be a monolingual native speaker in these languages and will most likely have the same information available to them in their primary language. While it might me "nice" or sometimes even "cute" (I have seen people making fun of Middle English articles on social media) to have knowledge available in these languages, it is not making productive use of our resources and it does not contribute to making human knowledge any more widely accessible. What exactly is the added value of having a WP article on any given topic in a language that is not actually spoken, other than artificially creating a corpus of unauthentic texts? Who, exactly, would benefit how, exactly, from a Wikipedia in an(y) extinct language? That is what needs to be answered. And I have serious doubts it can be answered in a compelling way. --✍ Janwo ^Disk./_de:wp 09:45, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

@Janwo: I started contacting experts and though I haven’t yet succeeded in asking a Middle English Expert to actively contribute, one of them actually replied to my email and told: "Thanks for reaching out. I think I’m probably not that much use to you as I’m much more of an OE specialist. But I just wanted to thank you (all); my students *adore* the ME Wikipedia (and its offshoots, like the YouTube videos of animal entries), and it’s really fired their enthusiasm for engaging with and playing with medieval language and literature." This proves that even a wiki in an ancient language is valuable and to be honest I still don’t see the practical difference in between Middle English and Lojabn in terms of having a wiki project. Sure there are a few people who speak Esperanto as their native language however I’m 99% sure that all of them fluently speak at least one other language fluently so it’s possible to ask why can’t they get info in this language. BTW, also conlangs like Lojban that don’t have any native speakers are also eligible for new wikis. I know there has been the argument that those wikis should be moved away from WMF however theoretically all wikis can be moved from WMF an theoretically also gain readers and contributors. Anyways, to conclude, I think that there is as much benefit in creating a wiki in an ancient language as there is in creating a wiki in a constructed language (and depending on the conlang maybe even more). -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:01, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

As I said, conlangs are an entirely different thing since they are mostly meant to be second languages, although there are native speaker of some of them. That bis not what the RFC is about, according to its title. Let's therefore focus on the "ancient" languages here. You say that there were benefit(s) in creating, say, Middle English WP. Then, please, enlighten me as to what exactly these benefits would be. Not opposed to other wikis, but in themselves. --✍ Janwo ^Disk./_de:wp 03:41, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

@Janwo: I only suggested categorizing them together with conlangs as a possible way to implement this suggestion. Creating wikis in ancient languages can have multiple benefits. For one it can empower speakers of small languages to create wikis in those languages. In addition it can also cause people otherwise not interested in WMF to join. Also it could be incredibly useful for people studying Middle English. I image it’s possible to invite them to read, correct, and create new articles Middle English Wikipedia as a way to improve their skills. This will be beneficial not only for them and for Middle English Wikipedia but for the entire WMF as they might start contributing to other wikis as well. Sure people studying Middle English can read the wiki even if it’s moved to Incubator Plus but the same can be said about any wiki. As @Zoozaz1: mentioned above creating a corpus of material in ancient languages is also valuable and if there’s a community willing to maintain it then there’s no reason why not. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 11:53, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

I entirely agree that the "point of Wikipedia and the other WM projects is to present all of humanity's knowledge in a way that is accessible to all of humanity;" ancient languages themselves are a crucial part of humanity's knowledge. Creating a resource that has the potential to teach these languages and inspire people to learn them is how we are making this part of humanity's knowledge accessible to all, and by extension the rich resources, texts, and materials only available in these ancient languages. Yes, there primary goal isn't to teach people encyclopedic information, but the information they do teach (in machine learning, which will have benefits for all down the road, or for people studying the region/time period), is valuable nonetheless. "No one alive depending on having access to information in any of these languages" (which I would quibble with and say there will almost certainly be information only present on ancient wikis) does not mean giving up on "present[ing] all of humanity's knowledge in a way that is accessible to all of humanity." Zoozaz1 (talk) 14:22, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

@Zoozaz1: thank you very much! I couldn’t have said it better myself! -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 19:12, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

That is at best an argument for Wikisources in those languages. Not the other projects. --✍ Janwo ^Disk./_de:wp 06:18, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

@Janwo: no it’s also for other wikis like Wikipedia and Wikibooks. Anyone who ever learned a langage knows the importance of reading text in this language. Wikisource in an ancient language is limited only to ancient texts written back when the language was spoken in people’s day to day life which is very important however having new texts in this language can also help a lot. As I have already stated above, students who study Middle English love Middle English Wikipedia and it increased their enthusiasm (I can give screenshots of an email discussion that proves it). Wikisource is also very important however the importance of having new texts can’t be overstated. In addition, a Middle English Wikipedia can also give the opportunity for people who have learned Middle English to write new original texts in this language. I know I wrote about Middle English but it’s true also for other ancient languages. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:12, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Learning a language takes years of study. Virtually anything would be better to study than a dead language that you have no interest in reading the texts written in it. Moreover, students should be reading correct material in a language, and I don't see any reason to think that the people writing in the Middle English Wikipedia will be any more knowledgeable in the subject than the students; as you said, the current Wiki has links to grammars and dictionaries and implies that it's okay for people to write articles in the Wiki using that knowledge.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:38, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: If you are concerned about a lack of linked resources, feel free to link additional resources (can be books in the archive library or a link to a page in a amazon where it’s possible to buy a book). In addition, I have suggested multiple times before that to invite experts to contribute to Middle English Wikipedia. As a response of your comment that it might expose students to incorrect Middle English, I suggest to invite them to start contributing once they get to a certain degree of fluency. Writing texts in a language that you are interested in learning can help boost the language learning experience by a lot. Also, because of the collaborative nature of a wiki you will have other users correcting any mistakes that you might make and that will further boost their learning experience. Not to mention it will bring more interested user to WMF. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:35, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

No. No. No. No. It is definitely not the purpose of Wikipedias to be a training ground for people to "(write) texts in a language that (they) are interested in learning". And it is also not the purpose of the "collaborative nature of a wiki" to give such people free language lessons or feedback or correct their mistakes. An online encyclopedia is not a language classroom. Training belongs to classroom settings and/or self study scenarios. Neither contributing to a live online encyclopedia nor its collective quality control are meant to be tools for that kind of "learning experience", unless it is in a dedicated wiki that is especially made for that purpose — which Wikipedia (etc.) is not! Just take a look at what non-speakers of a language have done to Scots WP and how much energy had/has to be spent to clean up their mess. --✍ Janwo ^Disk./_de:wp 04:48, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

@Janwo: to begin, the collective quality control will help correct grammatical errors. About Scots Wikipedia, that sort of thing can happen to any wiki - not just language that are similar to English. FYI, in Israel there’s this project where they give school students to write an article in Hebrew Wikipedia. This is done not only in order to expand WP, but also that students will practice writing and improve their grammar. Also, I have suggested to invite experts and students (people who know Middle English) so your argument about “non-speakers” isn’t relevant. If “ It is definitely not the purpose of Wikipedias to be a training ground for people to ‘(write) texts in a language that (they) are interested in learning’”, then could you please explain me why is Lojban Wikipedia allowed? There’s no any reason to expect someone to search for information in Lojban so the only readers and/or contributors of this wiki interested in learning Lojban. If you check out the recent changes of Lojban Wikipedia, you will see that it’s almost nothing compared to Middle English Wikipedia, not to mention Ancient Greek Wikipedia. If we follow your logic, could you please explain me why is Lojban better than Middle English? Please not the argument “you can learn Lojban” because you can also learn Middle English and Ancient Greek. This is why I have suggested to categorize ancient languages together with conlangs. Sure, some ancient languages like Etruscan aren’t fully understood yet but not all conlangs are fully developed. Sure they are different I don’t suggest to claim that they are the same however practically for a wiki I think they have much in common. Just like fictional languages are not allowed, it’s possible to allow well researched ancient languages like Middle English and Ancient Greek but not poorly researched ones like Etruscan or Rongorongo. In addition, there are Middle English and Ancient Greek classes at universities but no Lojban classes. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:40, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

As for the Scots Wikipedia, that can happened to any wiki with too many language learners and enthusiasts, and not enough actual language speakers. In Israel, they speak Hebrew, so at least those school students are writing in their native tongue. The Lojban Wikipedia is irrelevant; it was opened before the current rules were created. "Other stuff exists" is not an argument for your stuff. (Though one of the arguments for Lojban over Middle English is that an ungrammatical Lojban Wikipedia is nobody's problem but Lojbanists, where as an ungrammatical Middle English Wikipedia is actually making the world worse by creating an display of ungrammatical Middle English to trick and confuse students.) I'm not for a bunch of new Wikis opened for constructed languages, and I give up on arguing against Ancient Greek, but I stand strongly against opening the door to creating Wikipedias to be writing and learning exercises for students, especially as those goals are in conflict.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:55, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: first of all, I would like to know which articles you use to base your claim of an “ungrammatical Middle English”. Not to long ago, it was praised by an actual Middle English expert so I don’t think your claim has any factual base. In Israel, we speak Hebrew but with grammatical errors that cause grammar enthusiasts to lose their minds. Also this project is done before we start learning Hebrew Grammar for our final exams. Ok I get it, Lojban Wikipedia was opened before the current rules were made, however what about Lingua Franca Nova? It was approved in December 2017. Those “writing and learning exercise” aren’t the sole purpose of Middle English Wikipedia, I just suggested them as a positive benefit from this. If a wiki in an ancient language gets a sufficient amount of content and is verified to be in correct grammar, would you agree to give it a subdomain? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 09:07, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

@Gifnk dlm 2020: Fyi, Lingua Franca Nova's eligiblity was discussed at [1]. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:40, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: I have looked in there a bit and I noticed the message “I am for consistent explicit (if possible) or implicit rules. If one of the relevant rules is the usefulness, then Ancient Greek is definitely more useful than any constructed language.” How do you comment to it? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:50, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

"In Israel, we speak Hebrew but with grammatical errors". This is linguistically absurd. The grammar of a language is defined by its speakers.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:35, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

To go after the now-listed arguments one by one:

• 1: It's playing semantic games. Why does holding quote-unquote "immense" cultural significance matter?
• 2: As if the speakers of natural languages don't have their own political biases. And the writers of artificial language wikis are more likely to be the most competent at the language, unlike ancient languages.
• 3: It will not help the study of these languages. If you want to learn a language, read the texts written in the language. If you'd rather read about computers, don't learn Middle English. If you have to read a simplified reader, read a simplified reader, which is usually very carefully ordered and written by someone with skilled knowledge in a language. What is the purpose of these Wikipedias?
• 4: Most Wikis that are started aren't very active. I'm happy to let marginal Wikis start in languages that people actually use, in languages that people writing original writings in is productive and helpful. I'm not so happy to have arguments over Middle English.
• 5: There will almost certainly be content that can be found exclusively in these wikis. Prove it. The Old English Wikipedia has been open for a decade; show me the proof. w:ang:Bēowulf should be a great article for the Old English Wikipedia, but it's a stub. Maybe some of the larger ancient language Wikis have useful material, but it hasn't been shown, and, again, Latin and co. are special in ways that Middle and Old English aren't.
• 6: It is not undeniable. As I've said, WMF has apparently lost users from the Klingon and Scots Wikipedia, and in particular because of the poor condition of the Scots Wikipedia. There's no evidence more than a handful of people will be active in these Wikis, and no evidence that this will reach anyone not already familiar with Wikipedia. The effect, if any, will be marginal.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:35, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: replying to your commments:

1. If conlangs are allowed (not all of them have that significance) then why not ancient languages that have an immense significance?

2. I didn’t plan to debate the neutrality of Esperanto Wikipedia nor am I in a position to do so. All I’m saying is that people interested in International Auxiliary Languages are most likely ideologists or enthusiasts. WMF as a politically neutral body can’t say “ancient languages are not allowed because people don’t search for information in these languages but international auxiliary languages are even though people likely won’t search for information in these languages either”. But since you mentioned neutrality in other languages I will address this as well. Writers of wikis in ancient languages as individuals do have their political bias however these political opinions vary from person to person so they will be able to detect bias to the other side and remove it. You can read more in the article Why I Won't Learn Esperanto but basically if a language is created in order to reach a certain ideological goal it’s speakers most likely won’t be an ideologically diverse group. This isn’t true with ancient languages or with natural language. However, I repeat, I’m in no way trying to question the neutrality of Esperanto Wikipedia as I don’t speak the language so I’m in no position of doing. I shouldn’t have added the sentence that WMF should be neutral as it distracts from my main point - that people don’t use these artificial languages.

3. It will help the study of these languages and Middle English Wikipedia was already praised by a professor, and according to w:Latin Wikipedia, experts have praised Latin Wikipedia and swatted that the articles are in fact very good.

4. I understand that most wikis that start out are not active. It’s just the way that it is. That’s why the incubator exists - only active wikis will get a subdomain. Please explain me why is original writing in International Auxiliary Languages “productive and helpful” and then explain me why the same arguments don’t also apply to Ancient Languages? I would love to hear.

5. For example w:la:Index stellarum inter 16 et 49 a.l.m. distantium doesn’t have an equivalent article in English Wikipedia, w:la:Index planetarum extrasolarium has one that is more than 3 times shorter, w:la:Iaponia is actually longer than w:en:Japan, w:la:Provincia Oscensis is much longer than w:en:Province of Huesca. If you claim that: “Latin and co. are special in ways that Middle and Old English aren't” them you also accept the fact that Middle English Wikipedia also has a potential of growing. My question to you is: if Middle English Wikipedia gets exclusive content or pages that are much longer than the English equivalents, would you agree to verify the project as eligible?

6. Again the comment stating that it won’t do this. Sure, by now everyone knows about Wikipedia but it might cause them to get interested in joining Wikipedia and contributing to WMF. Especially if there is work done to promote these wikis among people interested in ancient languages. Do you understand the difference? In additional, I suggest to try and promote Scots Wikipedia among people who actually speak the language and I’m 99% sure there will be an improvement.

Thanks, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:59, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

1: You dodged the question; why do immense cultural significance matter in whether there should be an encyclopedia in the language?

2: WMF can do whatever it wants. I'm glad that people who don't speak Esperanto have a strong opinion on its biases; and that there's no chance of any biases in the group of people who learn a language that has little historical importance except that it gave rise to the language of the British Empire. I'd expect that Middle English is learned by English speakers who tend to have a romantic view of the Middle Ages, of kings and queens, of a time when London didn't have a Pakistani Muslim mayor.

5: I don't know how you found those articles, but you didn't look at them. The first two are obviously split into multiple pages on the English Wikipedia, cf. the links at the bottom of List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs and all of Lists of exoplanets. Look at w:la:Provincia Oscensis and w:en:Province of Huesca; one is filled with links to subpages and the other with links to missing subpages. How big the page on Japan tells you nothing about how much the English Wikipedia has on Japan, and a quick glance shows that the Latin Wikipedia has no article on several prefectures, including Chiba Prefecture, and surely has no pages for many of the thousands of pages the English Wikipedia has on Japan.

6: The Old English Wikipedia has 5 active editors. English Wikipedia has 43 thousand. If all of the Old English Wikipedians stormed out of the English Wikipedia, en.WP would have ... 43 thousand editors. If 0.01% of the editors of English Wikipedia stormed out because of the Middle English Wikipedia, that would be 43 editors, far more, and still insubstantial.

I'm not talking about conlangs any more. Make your case on its own value.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:56, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: I will reply here also to the comment you have left below in order to avoid having two discussions at the same time which is pointless if they are in between the same two users.

• 1: For one, the immense cultural significance of these languages means that more people are interested in them. This means that people are more likely to read them and to contribute to them. I suspect that the lack of people contributing to Old English Wikipedia isn’t because of a lack of interest in the language but simply because they don’t know it exists. I found this wiki purely by chance and for Middle English Wikipedia I had to actively search for it doubting if it exists but still willing to check. It seems to me as if WMF is ashamed of those wikis and is trying to hide the fact that they exist which in my opinion is a shame because they really have a lot of potential.
• 2: I wasn’t trying to criticize the neutrality of Esperanto Wikipedia because as I have told previously I’m in no position to do so. I only mentioned this as a reply to your comment that also speakers of natural languages have a bias. This wasn’t my main point. You complained about me dodging your question however you have several times dodged mine - what is the usefulness of having a wiki in an international auxiliary language? What I meant to ask is why is it useful to host a wiki in a constructed language when you know in advance that the people who know this language are either enthusiasts, ideologists, or both? My point is that there’s no native population speaking these language. I have nothing against Kotava Wikipedia which was approved in July 2020, and I’m really happy for them that they succeeded in getting a subdomain. My question to you is why are Middle English Wikipedia and Ancient Greek Wikipedia considered “not useful” while Kotava Wikipedia is? It’s this double standard that I don’t approve of. I have more to say about this but I will write it as a reply to comment 5 as it’s more fitting there.
• 5: For one, the first article doesn’t have an English Wikipedia article at all so idk what you meant when you said that “the first two are obviously split into multiple pages on the English Wikipedia“. You told that Esperanto Wikipedia is useful because it has “exclusive content”. May I request that in order that we will be on the same level of understanding in the debate, that you will actually link to idk 3 articles that exist in Esperanto Wikipedia, not in English Wikipedia, and you think will cause people to choose Esperanto Wikipedia? Then we will be able to debate the topic of exclusive content. I will now reply to your comment below. “You can't measure the value of an article by its length, particularly when you ignore subarticles and different ways to split articles.” ok but if Middle English Wikipedia covered a topic that isn’t covered in English Wikipedia, would you agree to verify it as eligible? If you think that having stricter activity requirement ps is a bad idea I won’t insist on it. I only suggested it as a possible way to address your concerns. I suggest that wikis in Ancient languages will be verified as eligible if they have exclusive content that can’t be found in English Wikipedia. Then, if they consistently have at least three non greyed out users every month for some time, they will get a subdomain. I also agree to have a minimum number of articles. (1,00 for example) The number will most certainly be arbitrary however I think it’s better to try to reach an arbitrary number than to have Langcom deciding based on their feelings which as human beings are naturally subjective and leaning towards languages that they like.
• 5: see comment 1. I really think that there are more than enough people who would be ingredient in editing an Old English Wikipedia if they knew that it exists however, unfortunately it’s sort of hidden and there is clearly zero effort to try to attract users to it.

In any case, I would love to hear your comments on this. Most importantly, why the hell is a wiki in an ancient language useless when a wiki in a conlang isn’t? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 18:31, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

• 1: Which doesn't seem to be true, as shown by the Old English Wikipedia. You think there's people who want to write an Old English encyclopedia and didn't think to check the massively multilingual, hugely popular Wikipedia? I'm skeptical.
• 2: Is this RFC/Stop allowing constructed languages? No, so constructed languages are irrelevant.
• 5: You gave me a list of star systems between 16 and 49 light-years away. No, the English Wikipedia doesn't have such a list. It has pages of List of star systems within 16–20 light-years and List of star systems within 45–50 light-years. Exclusive content is a gameable rule (as evidenced by your attempts to game it). I'm not interested in setting a set of rules for ancient languages like Middle English; I'd prefer to see a tour-de-force that has to be answered, instead of an attempt to meet a random set of rules.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:12, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: replying to your comments:

• 1: Yes I’m certain there are people who would choose to contribute to Old English Wikipedia over contributing to English Wikipedia. For one, their 3,328 articles had to be created by someone. I admit Old English Wikipedia isn’t “highly active” in any sense like English Wikipedia however it still proves that there are willing to contribute. The same thing is evident also in Middle English Wikipedia and in Ancient Greek Wikipedia despite the fact that both of them are still stuck in the incubator.
• 2: You keep dodging my question. This RFC is about ancient languages and one of the reasons I have listed to allow ancient languages is that conlangs are allowed. I don’t think that ancient languages are fundamentally different than conlangs in terms of the usefulness of the wiki, but because of their cultural and historical significance it can be argued that they have an advantage over most of not all conlangs.
• 5: You were the first user who opposed this RFC and you wrote quote “Esperanto Wikipedia has many pages on works and authors not covered by other Wikipedias”. Could you please send here at least idk 3 of these “many pages” that are not covered in English Wikipedia? If a wiki in an ancient language covered many of the topics listed in List of articles every Wikipedia should have would you agree to give it a subdomain? Another much simpler set of rules would be to not treat wikis in ancient languages differently and just give them the same minimum activity standards that you would give to another non ancient language. How does that sound for you?

Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:01, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if that twisting of what I said is deliberate or careless, but neither is especially helpful. Of course I know about the Old English Wikipedia, and I didn't mention the English Wikipedia; I mentioned the massively multilingual Wikipedia project.

I don't see any point in continuing this. I think it clear I'm not going to convince you, and I think I've made my point.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:25, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: sorry, I don’t quite get your meant. Did you mean to ask why would someone choose to contribute to Old English Wikipedia instead of contributing to any other Wikipedia? There are people who join the WMF specifically in order to contribute to wikis in ancient languages and so long such people exist I don’t see any reason to not at least verify them as eligible. Also, you still haven’t brought even one article in Esperanto Wikipedia that would cause people to choose to get information especially from Esperanto Wikipedia instead of their native language. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:32, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: correction: I misread your comment. For some reason I thought you told that Latin isn’t special in any way that Middle English isn’t😅. Please ignore this part. However, you told that Esperanto Wikipedia is useful because it covers topics that aren’t covered in other wikis. If this is what causes a wiki to be useful in my opinion, I suggest a policy in which ancient languages are allowed but at the time of verification, the test wiki must have at least several articles that either don’t exist in English Wikipedia or are significantly (like twice or three times) longer than the English equivalent. Then, the test wiki will be verified as eligible and it will still have to meet the activity standards (I agree to having stricter ones for ancient languages) before they can get a subdomain. Anyways, this is my suggestion. I prefer we discuss it in the section for discussions as this section is getting a bit long. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:28, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

You can't measure the value of an article by its length, particularly when you ignore subarticles and different ways to split articles. If we have stricter activity standards for ancient languages, no such Wikipedias will ever leave it, which means there's still constant complaints about such Wikipedias not being started, combined with standards being rigged to keep those Wikipedias from being started, the worst of both worlds in my opinion.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:56, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

•  Oppose As was said at a similar discussion, I don't think we benefit from having materials about w:en:macOS in defunct languages, when macOS itself isn't even translated into said language. --Rschen7754 01:32, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: check out the discussion just above you. There are multiple benefits to having a wiki in defunct languages. For example they can help people who are interested in those languages. It can also help machine learning. As @Zoozaz1: mentioned in the said discussion, "point of Wikipedia and the other WM projects is to present all of humanity's knowledge in a way that is accessible to all of humanity;" Having wikis in ancient languages will help advance this goal. Also I don’t think that it matters that macOS doesn’t translate to these languages. Check out w:he:macOS - not only they didn’t translate it to Hebrew but they also kept it written using the Latin alphabet despite the fact that Hebrew has its own alphabet that is used in this wiki. Also check out w:he: אינטרנט - it’s literally just the word internet spelled in Hebrew alphabet. That being said Hebrew is a living language and Hebrew Wikipedia is quite active. In case you didn’t get it, my goal wasn’t to mock Hebrew Wikipedia but to show that things related to modern technology don’t necessarily have to translate to every single language in order to be able to write about them in these said languages. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:04, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

*for me, it's nearly impossible to make a clear division between modern English and Middle English. the division should make sure that every single English work falls into one but only one wiki, not both, not neither. --DS-fax00:47, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

• I think this is someone trying to impersonate Hat600, and not the actual user. @Liuxinyu970226: what do you think about this? Since the edit (Special:MobileDiff/21607933) was done by an anonymous IP address I highly doubt Hat600 is actually behind it. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 07:38, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Striked, thx for reporting. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 07:41, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: thank you very much! -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 09:28, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

•  Oppose Who will maintain wikis in ancient languages? Existing language proposal policy#Specific issues for ancient or historical languages is good enough, so I also oppose separate classical Chinese Wikisource.--Jusjih (talk) 01:01, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Jusjih: even if this proposal is approved, wikis in ancient languages will have to pass incubation before they can get a subdomain so I don’t think that’s an issue. Thanks to the incubator, test wikis will have to be active in order to get a subdomain. Also, why do you oppose creating a separate Wikisource for Classical Chinese? Keeping them in the same wiki when they obviously are different languages is as absurd as keeping Latin texts in Italian Wikisource because it’s a descendent of Latin and is spoken in the area Latin originated from. Same goes about putting Old English and Middle English texts in English Wikisource. But in Requests for new languages/Wikisource Coptic someone actually suggested to include Ancient Egyptian texts in Coptic Wikisource so I guess compared to this the previous things mentioned aren’t that absurd. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 19:07, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Gifnk dlm 2020: You may want to read Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Old English Wikisource for why the Old English Wikisource was closed, and merged to English Wikisource. @555, -jkb-, Slade, Yann, Dovi, BeatrixBelibaste, Cbrown1023, Jack Phoenix, and Lar: (only those that are still active are pinged) ^^ --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:42, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

  As an English Wikisource admin: all speakers of Old English speak Modern English. Unlike a Wikipedia, where language variation causes annoyances, we merely copy the original text as is, so as long as the users can all communicate and understand the interface, there's no need to split a Wikisource by language.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:29, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Prosfilaes: I’m unconvinced by this rational and by the arguments presented in the discussion @Liuxinyu970226: has linked above. If we follow this logic then wikisource doesn’t need subdomains at all - we only need wikisource.org and only localize the interface. However this discussion is mostly about other wikis (not wikisource) since Wikisource in ancient languages are already allowed (despite the weird rules saying Old English texts should be in English Wikipedia though I can accept it). -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:01, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Gifnk dlm 2020: So why not? We have only one Wikispecies, one Commons, one Wikidata and one MediaWiki software for all language. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:05, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Liuxinyu970226: I believe this could be done but the only question is is it worth it. The two main problems I can think of are is to store existing archived discussions and the fact that people who don’t know English will also join and we can localize the discussions but it will be harder for them to find an admin that knows their language. It’s possible to make a page where users can find admins that speak at least one language that they also speak and the first problem can also be solved in one way or another. The main question in my opinion about this is not weather it can be done but weather it should be done. I think this is better to be discussed with Wikisource admins. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:13, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

•  Oppose It may be useful for some like Wikipedia or Wiktionary, it isn't worth for others like Wikibooks, Wikivoyage, Wikiquote, Wikinews etc. SHB2000 (talk | contibs | en.wikivoyage | en.wikipedia) 00:17, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@SHB2000, why isn’t it worth it for those projects? As of 09:14, 30 July 2021 (UTC) Ancient Greek Wikipedia has 1,762 articles (verify). You may think that it’s not worth your time to contribute to those wikis and that’s fine but as long as there are people who are interested in spending their one time to contribute to those wikis. Also Requests for new languages/Wikiquote Ancient Greek was verified as eligible and I agree with this decision. Some people doubt the usefulness of wikis in ancient languages but remember that wikis in international auxiliary languages do exist and one was created in July 2020 so why not to allow ancient languages with immense cultural significance? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 09:14, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

My question is, apart from Wikisource, Wiktionary or Wikipedia, who's the audience? Have a look at ang.wiki, the only edits there are by an IP vandal.

It's a different case for languages that have few speakers, but ancient languages? SHB2000 (talk | contibs | en.wikivoyage | en.wikipedia) 09:38, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

@SHB2000, you don’t understand the problem. I wasn’t talking about language that have only a small number of speakers - I was talking about constructed languages - every argument that can be said against the usefulness of wikis in ancient languages can also be said about wikis in constructed languages. Conlangs are not only allowed, but one was created as recently as July of last year (verify). Old English Wikipedia isn’t the only wiki in an ancient language that exists outside of the incubator. Latin Wikipedia for example has a reasonable amount of contributions (verify). Also, idk if that was a typo or not but if you mean that you think that Wikipedias, Wikisources, and wikitionaries in ancient languages should be allowed then I think it’s a support as currently only Wikisources are allowed. Also the incubator exists in order to filter out projects so only the active ones with an interested community can get a subdomain so wikis in ancient languages will still have to pass through this process. I believe that if there’s a substantial amount of users who decided to actively contribute then at least they consider it to useful and surly there are other people who don’t have time to contribute to them but are interested in these languages and read articles. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:53, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

•  Oppose but my opinion can be changed (actually changed). Creating ancient language wikis is completely unnecessary, you don't need to have a Wiki in either Middle English or any other (unimportant) ancient language, there are no native speakers of it to learn from the information from the articles or even to correct articles. The objective of an encyclopedia is to gather most of the knowledge of humanity in text so people can read and learn general information, but if there are no native speakers, there is no reason to create a Wikipedia of it. If people want to learn an ancient language, then they should search for actual resources of it, not for a Wikipedia written by learners themselves. There are of course ancient wikis but they're made for languages that have an actual use (and/or are still learned reasonably in real life), Latin is still used by the Catholic Church and philosophers, Ancient Greek would be acceptable because it is still used by philosophers, ecclesiastically to read (one of) the original Bible(s) and is teached in some schools/universities of the world (mostly because of philosophy or things related to it), Classical Chinese is acceptable because it's still used and learned by people to study resources that are important to this language and Chinese philosophy. I'd say I support important ancient languages being created as wikis because there are real uses for them, but not languages that have no use in real life. If you want to create a wiki to people learn a language, then you should just give lessons of it (or create your own wiki with MediaWiki). Note: I'm not saying that Middle English is unimportant in general, but that it is for encyclopedias. Sorry if there are errors in my grammar, I'm not native. - Iohanen (talk) 05:02, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@User:Iohanen, I see that you have divided all ancient languages to 2 categories - “important” ancient languages and “not important” ancient languages. I disagree with your categorization. The main problem is who gets to decide which is important and which isn’t? Latin is still used but it can be argued that all people who speak Latin speak at least one other language and don’t need Latin Wikipedia to get their information. It can be argued that Ancient Greek Wikipedia (which is still stuck in incubator) is also “not useful” as you mentioned that it’s only used for reading ancient documents. Classical Chinese is still being used and is important (based on comments above) however if someone suggests right now go create a Wikibooks in Classical Chinese it will definitely be rejected. Also, why is Middle English not important? It also has it’s own body of literature and is the ancestor of the number one most spoken language in the world. It doesn’t look for me like really oppose ancient languages as you mentioned that you support Ancient Greek and Classical Chinese which under the current policy are not allowed. I would love to discuss this topic with you further. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 09:07, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@User:Gifnk dlm 2020, now I see, you're really correct. My opinion changed. Answering what you've asked, I considered Middle English not important because it didn't contribute in a high level to humanity xD. - Iohanen (talk) 12:37, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@Iohanen, ok I see. Thank you very much! The only problem is that if people count votes without looking on the names, they might count this as an oppose vote. I don’t think the entire message should be striked (and definitely not deleted). Maybe only the word oppose? Also I think there should be some notice saying that you have changed your mind and that now you support. @Liuxinyu970226, what is your opinion on this topic? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:19, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Please do not always ping me just because "what's my opinion on this RFC/what's my opinion on someone's comment", unless a comment is just a spam (then you can ping me to strike it (or why don't you do so?) as like the fake "Hat600" one above). You need to explain more on what thing needs my helps, thank you for regarding. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:23, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226, I didn’t ask your opinion on this comment. Iohanen first wrote an oppose comment but later changes his/her mind and decided to support. I’m asking what should be done with the oppose comment? Should the entire comment be striked or only the word oppose? Also, should there be a notice telling the user changes his/her mind and now supports this RfC? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:30, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

If you're really asking me "am I supporting or opposing your RFC", well I'd love to follow this comment: https://w.wiki/3mL2 , other than this question, I don't have enough knowledge on helping you. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:36, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I’m asking what should be done if a user first writes oppose then changes his/her mind and decides to support. Should the message he striked out? This is what happened above -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:51, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Does anybody know what should be done in such situation? If a user first wrote an oppose comment, then changed his/her mind, and wrote a support comment, should the oppose comment be striked out? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 19:28, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I have striked out the word “oppose” as the user has changed his/her mind and wrote a support message. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:54, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose allowing ancient languages regardless of the status of the ancient languages. Whether an ancient language need a Wikisource is doubtable unless the ancient language is a dead language. I have received comments from Chinese Wikipedia which opposes the possible establishment of ancient Chinese (Wenyan) Wikisource: currently more than half of the contents in Chinese Wikisource are already in ancient Chinese (Wenyan), so the possible establishment of ancient Chinese (Wenyan) Wikisource may result in destructive effects for Chinese Wikisource, as those contents would be all transferred, which increases the difficulty for maintainence of Chinese Wikisource. I also hold the same view as 扎姆 above, and the same thing that I mentioned above probably holds for ancient Greek and old/middle English (corresponding to modern Greek and modern English respectively). Σανμοσα^{The Trve Lawe of free Monarchies} 01:36, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sanmosa, do you mind explaining why you oppose new wikis in ancient languages? This RFC isn’t about Wikisource which is already allowed in ancient languages though Old English texts are kept in English Wikisource, etc. This RfC is about other wikis. Several Wikipedias in ancient languages exist in the incubator. Ancient Greek Wikipedia for example has nearly 2,000 articles and gets a reasonable amount of activity and I don’t see any reason to not let it get a subdomain. Anyways, I would love to discuss with you about what this RfC actually is about. Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 07:01, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

So it does not affect the possibility of the establishment of ancient Chinese (Wenyan) Wikisource? Then it is worrying as your words have made a number of users being misleaded and panic. However I still find difficulty for maintainence of both existing and new wikis if the "ancient languages" are actually similar to modern languages. Middle English should have this problem, I think. Σανμοσα^{The Trve Lawe of free Monarchies} 08:00, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sanmosa, right. This RfC doesn’t effect the chances of Classical Chinese Wikisource at all. When submitting this RfC, I wasn’t thinking about Wikisource - I was thinking mostly about Wikipedia. Also, the incubator exists specifically for this purpose so only well maintained wikis will get a subdomain. This isn’t about Classical Chinese Wikisource, it’s about Classical Chinese Wikipedia. If the community in this wiki decides to create a Wikibooks or Wikivoyage in this language, then under the current rules it won’t be allowed. Also, they will still have to pass incubation so only active wikis will get a subdomain. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:26, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Please allow me to apologise here. However I still worry that if the "ancient languages" are actually similar to modern languages, it would become a mess for readers. Σανμοσα^{The Trve Lawe of free Monarchies} 13:39, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

See also zhwiki discussion, "如果是上面的意思，引用孔子、李白不都要跨语言了？希望是下面说的"This RfC isn’t about Wikisource, it’s about other wikis like Wikipedia."，不影响中文使用还好。 lit. by such meaning, citing materials of Confucius, Libai, etc. have to interwiki cited (possible?), right? I hope that "This RfC isn’t about Wikisource, it’s about other wikis like Wikipedia." don't really affect Chinese users and usages. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:42, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226, sorry I don’t understand what you mean. Classical Chinese Wikipedia exists and if this RfC is approved and the community is interested there might be also a Classical Chinese Wikibooks for example. Wikisource rules will probably still apply as I’m not requesting the rule “Where possible, such languages should be bundled with the modern equivalent Wikisource project (such as Old English with English)” changes. Also it’s possible to cite sources in different languages than the language of the wiki like English articles in Hebrew Wikipedia - those are entirely different languages. I don’t see the how this will effect the ability to cite Confucius. Also, you pinged me in Chinese Wikipedia, and I’m sorry but I don’t speak Chinese. I understand with the help of Google Translate that some user told that this RfC is about Wikisource, then another user corrected them, you told that I have caused an irreparable psychological trauma to Chinese users. If that’s the case then I’m really sorry. I believe we can still have a rule for example that Classical Chinese quotes fit in Chinese Wikiquoute. This should be decided by people who know at least one of those languages and tell how different they are. Biblical Hebrew texts are kept in Hebrew Wikisource so I believe it’s possible. My question to you is different, do you believe that articles in Classical Chinese Wikipedia can fit in Chinese Wikipedia? Do you believe that if there is an interested community that wants to create a Classical Chinese Wikibooks, that they should instead write books in a Classical Chinese in Chinese Wikibooks? Sorry again if I have caused anybody panic. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:35, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Please consult @唐吉訶德的侍從 about their responds, that comment is just cited from them. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:41, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

@唐吉訶德的侍從, I will be glad to discuss with you and with other interested users how this policy can be implemented without negatively effecting Chinese Wikisource, Wikiqoute, Wikipedia, or any other wiki in Chinese. This RfC was about Ancient Greek Wikipedia and Middle English Wikipedia that both exist in the incubator, and I didn’t intend to harm any existing wiki or to cause distress to its community. Just ping me in the discussion section on the bottom of the page when you are ready. Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:27, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

So another comment from zhwiki @Yining Chen: "所以新文化运动时期文人的文章岂不是要分成两半存放了囧rz……" So articles of literary men of the New Culture Movement has to split in half in order to save? Orz... Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:21, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226, @Yining Chen, are you talking about Wikisource? If so then this RfC is not about Wikisource. Wikisource in ancient languages are allowed though they encourage to keep texts in old versions of ancient languages in modern one. Classical Chinese texts can be kept in Chinese Wikisource, but can articles from Classical Chinese Wikipedia be moved to Chinese Wikipedia? I doubt it. And I’m certain that articled from Old English Wikipedia and Middle English Wikipedia can’t be kept in English Wikipedia. This is what this RfC is all about. If you have any more concerns I would love to hear them. Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:16, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Fyi, if you really know what they are concerning, you won't ignore all rules of zh:Wikipedia:互助客栈/其他#文言文維基文庫可能會被分割出來創立了。--Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 05:20, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226, I’m trying to suggest ways to make it work for everyone. If we keep the rule “Wikisource wikis are allowed in languages with no native speakers, although these should be on a wiki for the modern form of the language, when possible” won’t that answer the concerns? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 18:58, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose per Sanmosa (Σανμοσα) above. In terms of characters, both classical Chinese and modern Chinese uses the same Chinese characters. Therefore, classical Chinese texts constitute most part of Chinese Wikisource. Dividing classical Chinese and modern Chinese will lead to serious chaos. --DreamerBlue 01:58, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

@DreamerBlue, see reply to Sanmosa above. This RfC isn’t about Wikisource, it’s about other wikis like Wikipedia. Thanks in advance. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 07:02, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

• Sorry for the misunderstanding above, I decide to reorganize my comments. However, I still oppose allowing ancient languages regardless of the status of the ancient languages. Whether an ancient language need a Wikimedia site is doubtable unless the ancient language is a dead language. If the "ancient languages" are actually similar to modern languages, the difficulty for maintainence of both existing and new Wikimedia sites would be high, and it would become a mess for readers. Let me ask a question: How can I distinguish Middle English Wikivoyage from (modern) English Wikivoyage? (The reason for me to say "unless the ancient language is a dead language" is that we should have the ability to distinguish a dead language from other languages, like we can easily distinguish Latin Wikivoyage from Italian Wikivoyage.) Σανμοσα^{The Trve Lawe of free Monarchies} 07:04, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sanmosa, I disagree with your statements. I believe that ancient languages that don’t have modern decedents are actually at a disadvantage compared to those that do. That’s because they are usually poorly researched or at the very least less is known about them. Test wikis for Middle English Wikipedia, Ancient Greek Wikipedia, Ancient Meitei Wikipedia and much more already exist in the incubator. Middle English Wikivoyage doesn’t exist so I won’t talk about hypothetical wikis when I can talk about ones that actually exist. Old English is very different from (Modern) English and this is evident in Old English Wikipedia which was lucky enough to get a subdomain before the current policies were implemented. Middle English, though more similar to Modern English, has different spelling convenions, no universal spelling (though I don’t think it’s a mess - also Modern English Wikipedia has sometimes British Spelling mixed with American Spelling and it’s still readable. There are more differences in Middle English variants though you can still understand what is written.), and a different grammar. You can also check out Art, Frogge, Armure as well as other articles as well. Also I won’t judge the quality of Ancient Greek Wikipedia as I don’t speak the language. I will however point out that it has 1,763 articles. In addition, it’s important to remember that wikis in ancient languages will still have to pass incubation just like any other wiki would so if they do end up being a mess they just won’t get a subdomain. However, active wikis with high quality content will. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 19:15, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, the other part of the language creation policy which require a language to have ISO 639 1~3 code, already prevented the creation of ancient languages that would be deemed "too similar" to modern languages, as in those cases such ancient languages shouldn't be able to get their own ISO 639 1~3 language code. C933103 (talk) 10:41, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Yep, it's also possible that a modern, enough speakers-based language has lost their own Wikipedia, just pick up Northern Luri as an example Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:07, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

@C933103, yeah exactly. If an ancient language is too similar to its modern version then it won’t get its own ISO code. Just because speakers of the modern version can to some extent understand the language doesn’t mean it isn’t a separate language. BTW, it’s not always possible for speakers of the modern language to read the ancient form of their language. See Old English Wikipedia as an example. Also @Liuxinyu970226, I don’t think you understood his/her message properly (or maybe I didn’t - that’s also possible). If I understand correctly the message means that if an older form of a language has an ISO code then it’s different enough from its modern form to justify having a wiki for it - nothing about the level of activity which btw is why there’s an incubator. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:59, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

I just think that ISO is not so reliable as we have thought. We should have a procedure to confirm whether an ancient language is similar to its modern version or not, in order to determine the site should be built or not. Safer is better. What I mentioned as "difficulty for maintainence" above includes sneaky vandalism: if an ancient language is somehow similar to its modern version, it would be hard to find out the vandalism as we may even cannot determine it is the language for the site or not (i.e. it is important that we, instead of ISO, should have the ability to distinguigh the ancient language and its modern version). However, if the ancient language is a dead language, it has no modern version, that sneaky vandalism is impossible (it is just too obvious). Sanmosa _Outdia 14:03, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sanmosa, about the first part of the comment I believe it can be done as long as the definition of “too similar” isn’t broad enough to ban ancient languages that speakers of the modern version can understand. About the second part of the comment, however, I don’t agree. I think that it would be easier to detect vandalism if the language is somewhat similar to a modern language as it will be easier for interested users to learn this language. If a user writes what is essentially just English with errors in an attempt to fool others into thinking that it’s Middle English, this would get detected much easier than if a random user got a Cuneiform, and just typed random characters claiming it to be Sumerian Wikipedia. That being said, it’s entirely possible that honest users create a test wiki for Sumerian Wikipedia and then dishonest users who claim to be “experts” attempt to discredit them by calling them vandals. The same is true also for Ancient Egyptian. Even though it has a descendent (Coptic), it uses an entirely different script based on the Greek Alphabet. Any user can insert random hieroglyphics via WikiHiero and we wouldn’t be any the wiser unless one of us actually knows Ancient Egyptian. Also as mentioned above about Sumerian, anyone can claim to have a background in Ancient Egyptian at an attempt to discredit other honest users. This can be theoretically solved by having a wiki in Ancient Egyptian be written by Greek or Coptic alphabet though this will come at the cost of reducing its appeal which is something that I believe needs to be considered very carefully before a wiki in Ancient Egyptian (other then Wikisource of course) can start incubating. This however is less of a concern with Middle English. Anyone can search in the internet and learn Middle English Grammar, spelling, and common vocabulary. However with regard to truly extinct languages this would require them to most likely learn a new alphabet, and certainly an entire new Grammar and vocabulary - in other words they will be stuck learning an entire language from scratch rather then learning the differences which will take more time and thus less people will be feel compelled to do so. If a user tries to insert bad grammar to Middle English Wikipedia then his/her edits can be reverted by another user. In this case I don’t support blocking right at the start - I think we should assume good faith, contant the user via his talk page and link to some websites that teach actual Middle English Grammar. If the bad edits continue anyways and the user doesn’t seem to be learning from other users corrections then it’s possible to proceed to ban that user. BTW, a test wiki Wikipedia in Sumerian did exist though was deleted because of claims that it’s full of garbage. I don’t speak the language (and I didn’t edit in this wiki) but I did manage to save it in the wayback machine before it got deleted. You can see it for yourselves here. You can see that it took nearly a month before it got deleted (though I only saved it in the late stage since I didn’t know about it before that - I did save page histories as well as the pages themselves so you can look there). Vandalism in Middle English Wikipedia gets detected much faster then that and I’m talking about single page vandalism - that’s an entire test wiki that allegedly was vandalism and it survived for that long. That’s one of the reasons I believe that truly extinct ancient languages are actually at a disadvantage and I think that it’s unfortunate - I would truly love to see a Sumerian Wikipedia. Also BTW, those languages are also not allowed based on the current policy. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:26, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sanmosa sorry for bombarding you with a wall or text. Hopefully I won’t get carried away an write 4,343 bytes messages like this one in te future😅. Anyways, in my opinion, ancient languages that are similar to modern languages are at an advantage because even though I assume many people will be interested in a Sumerian Wikipedia, the chances they will learn an ancient language that is similar to a language they already know are much higher than the chances they will learn Sumerian. Also, if it’s written in a familiar script then nonsense and gibberish are somewhat easier to detect. Thanks in advance and hope I won’t get carried away in the future, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 18:52, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I hope that you may know that my opposition is a conditional one. Sanmosa _Outdia 23:45, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sanmosa, please excuse me for the late reply. I was thinking what you meant by this message and I have read your comments above and this might seem like a dumb question but do you mean by conditional if the ancient language is similar to a modern one? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 18:04, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

It means depends on its similarity to its modern one. Sanmosa _Outdia 00:19, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sanmosa, thanks for clarifying! There are multiple test wikis in ancient languages in the incubator. See Middle English Wikipedia, Ancient Greek Wikipedia, Ancient Meitei Wikipedia, Old Russian Wikipedia, Ottoman Turkish Wiktionary, and there are more in existence. I haven’t included languages that don’t have a modern form like Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Wikipedia. Feel free to judge by yourself if they are different enough from their modern form. Also BTW, according to the current policies ancient languages are not allowed regardless of how different they are from their modern forms and of weather or not they even have a modern form. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 19:47, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

@Sanmosa, it looks for me based on this discussion that you support including ancient languages unless they are very similar to the modern form, however, people just passing through without reading this might think that it’s an unconditional oppose (aka that you oppose regardless of how similar the language is). Also, what are your thoughts on the compromise approach suggested by JimKillock in the discussion section below? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:49, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose unnecessary. 乌拉跨氪 (talk) 18:49, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Neutral

• Neutral per GerardM. I don't mind providing exceptions to deserving cases that are sufficiently popular, and have no issues with ancient languages being tested on Incubator. My oppose is solely on the grounds of automatic advancement to a full wiki. Though I do not have a background in linguistics, and don't mind being corrected. Leaderboard (talk) 15:42, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Leaderboard, I would love to know what you meant when you said “automatic advancement to a full wiki”? Wikis in ancient languages will still have to pass the incubation process if this RfC is approved. Also, I have created a new section called Neutral since it’s a bit weird to have a neutral comment in the oppose section though it might be appropriate in the discussion section idk. I have checked the editing history I know you originally write oppose. Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 15:57, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Gifnk dlm 2020: I do have to agree with the opposers in that it kinds of feels artificial - citing Future Perfect at Sunrise who uses the concept of a natural readership (and I don't see it with ancient languages). However, I do not agree to a blanket ban on ancient languages either - if contributors do well to a test wiki on Incubator, I don't mind promoting it to a full-fledged wiki, but I would expect that to be rare. Leaderboard (talk) 16:11, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Leaderboard, to be honest (and to all users reading this, no this is not canvassing), I think this looks like a weak support. As is written in the Rational section, test wikis in ancient will still have to pass certain activity and content standards before they can get a subdomain. I don’t request them to be approved immediately, only that they won’t get rejected after two weeks despite the fact that 4 people supported it and 1 opposed (I’m talking about Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Middle English 4). Also, based on further discussion in incubator:Talk:Wp/enm, it is evident that the guy who opposed it hasn’t even read the discussion. It might really be rare as you told but still possible. Also, I think that the “natural readership” argument can be debunked easily because Kotava Wikipedia was approved as created as July 2020. The fact is that wikis in constructed languages are allowed despite the fact that they won’t get any “natural readership” either. Unless of course, natural readership doesn’t mean native speakers but people knowledgeable in the language. But in any case, it can be easily debunked as many people study languages like Old English, Middle English, Latin, Ancient Greek, etc. In addition, I think that it’s best to keep the neutral sections and keep the discussion section to be what it’s called a discussion section. I would also like to thank you for pinging me as it’s not obvious - most of the people I discussed this topic with in the oppose section didn’t do this and I had to check this RfC every now and again. Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:24, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment also I would like to add that the article about computer in Old English Wikipedia is Spearctelle. Some might argue that it feels “artificial” though I think that’s the preferred solution. Alternatively it’s possible to use the word computer but I think it should be at least rendered to authentic spelling. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:31, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment @Leaderboard, to be clear I didn’t say that your arguments are weak. There are several users who wrote weak support - like that they lean towards supporting this RfC. Check out VIGNERON’s comment for example. I think your comment has some similarities to his one that’s why I think it’s a weak support - I was not suggesting your comment is weak. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 19:46, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

General discussion

• I just found that these open requests are about the topic (no Wikisources mentioned, as they are allowed under the de facto policy):

1. Ancient Greek: Wikipedia (4th request), Wiktionary, and Wikiquote (I'm interesting that why this is eligible?);
2. Wikipedia Classical Mongolian;
3. Wikipedia Coptic (3rd request, and why this is eligible?);
4. Wikivoyage Latin (on hold);
5. Wikipedia Old Russian (2nd request);
6. Wiktionary Ottoman Turkish;
7. Wikipedia Taivoan;
8. Thao: Wikipedia (2nd request), Wiktionary;
9. Wikipedia Yurok.

--Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 09:25, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Some clarifications is needed here I think. "Ancient" languages are not really excluded, being old is not *in itself* a criterion for rejection, the policy is more focused on having a strong community of native/living speakers and readers (ancient/historical languages often don't have speaker/reader or only a few but not always). But at the very least, the policy should be change to make that clearer. Cdlt, VIGNERON * ^discut. 11:19, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@VIGNERON: Note that the Wikisource requests for those ancient languages may also be doubtful, an example of this panorama is Wikisource Literary Chinese request, which has got an inflammation of the zhwikisource users' uppers. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:23, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: true, good example that actually support my point : being "ancient" is not the sole and unique criterion. You can be "ancient" and still be acceptable (Hebrew, Basque or Icelandic are "old" languages and still modern at the same time) and you can be "new" and still not be acceptable (if there is too few speaker for instance) ; in the same way, you can be "ancient" and still don't fill the exception for having a Wikisource (in the Literary Chinese case, the part "[...] such languages should be bundled with the modern equivalent Wikisource project [...]" of the policy applied, but this sentence is a bit wobbly...). It's natural that proposer focus on the "ancient" aspect but this focus is biased, being "ancient" is not everything when it comes to opening a new wikimedia projects. Cheers, VIGNERON * ^discut. 14:02, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

Another problem is that how to make sure that the author of this RFC is not intend to let WMF allow language revives, since that's unlikely agreed by most of Board members. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:39, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: I’m the author of the RFC so I can answer any questions you might have about it. I didn’t quite understand what you mean but letting languages revive. Do you mean to use to use WMF to revive extinct languages similar to how Hebrew was revived? If yes, then I don’t plan to. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 07:40, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Aren't you doing exactly that by reviving Middle English? --MF-W 18:34, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

@MF-Warburg: well in a way I guess writing in Middle English can be considered reviving it that’s why it was kinda a weird question to ask (@Liuxinyu970226: can you please clarify what you meant). I don’t plan to revive Middle English to day to day use but if a group of people want to revive an extinct language in a similar way Hebrew was revived and want to get a wiki I don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to get one. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 20:04, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

@Gifnk dlm 2020: You may be interested in Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Kamassian, that said, language revive wasn't, isn't, and won't be one urgent work of WMF in any historic points. Also, can you please clarify what's your opinion on Hebrew? You repeated for more than 2 times "Hebrew was revived", what means that thing? Isn't Hebrew a living language? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:13, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: Hebrew is a living language but not to long ago it wasn’t and was only used to read the Bible. Then, it was revived and became the official language of Israel. This of course I’d oversimplified but you get the point. I have checked this request and understood that it was rejected because the user who proposed it didn’t speak the language and that speakers of this language will be welcome at any time to submit a new request. I never expected reviving languages to be an urgent work of WMF - I only requested to allow wikis in ancient languages to get a subdomain once there’s a substantial amount of content. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 11:35, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Back to the Wikisource Literary Chinese, an oppose comment let me have some interests on the connection with this RFC: "And, if someday this proposal is approved, the Middle English wikisource (enm) is also able to create its own site, because they can simply copy many Middle English texts from English wikisource and paste them to the new site!" If this is true, then a possible strong against reason can be happened, just one word: copyvio. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:24, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: what do you mean? If Middle English Wikisource is approved it’s possible to move existing Middle English text from English Wikisource to Middle English Wikisource. However I agree that text shouldn’t be just copied and pasted from Wikisource to Wikipedia. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 11:37, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

About the Ancient Greek Wikipedia proposal, the last langcom message that mentioned this was post by StevenJ81: "After March 1 (to put everything on the same archive page) I am going to make a one-off proposal to mark Ancient Greek Wikipedia as "eligible". After that, I'll make a proposal on historical languages more broadly." Now 2 years past and @GerardM: I wonder why don't you consider it? I also really doubt if you have reason to not mark it as eligible and however mark rejected. PS: I also tried to account this RFC to the langcom mailing list, but I'm afraid that my message was again discarded. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:21, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

• Think that some mw:Wikimedia Language engineering members e.g. @APatro (WMF), JPita (WMF), KartikMistry, Nikerabbit, and Pginer: should also be informed? Because if you want these language to have new wikis, another big rock is the localization of MediaWiki software. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:34, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: yeah that’s the problem. I never really understood how localization works. I tried more than once to log in and to localize the names of moths and days of the week. Apparently it uses something called translatewiki and it’s accounts are apparently independent from WMF so I didn’t manage to log in. I will be glad to get some explanations. Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:48, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

• Comment BTW, does anybody know if when will be possible to link pages from the incubator to pages in existing wikis in other languages in the same topic? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 18:53, 13 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Gifnk dlm 2020: If you are asking interlanguage links on the left, under the toolbar, it's nowadays a Wikidata work, for interwiki links, feel free to use ":en/fr/de...:(article)" format. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:21, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Liuxinyu970226: yes I mean interlanguage links below the toolbar. The article about Concepción, Chile has interwiki links like you suggested but I don’t really like this way of doing it. I heard there’s a suggestion to support interlanguage links to articles in wikis that are still in the incubator through wikidata so I was wondering if there’s any chance that this feature will be added any time soon. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 07:19, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Gifnk dlm 2020: I doubt if this can be happened, because I suddenly found Language committee/Voting policy, where it states "2/3 majority ... Any change of the rules, including the committee's role in possible changes of the Language proposal policy and Closing projects policy." This means that unless if there are 2/3 of langcom members also support you, it's unlikely that LPP can be changed just because your collection of "support votes" as they are all not langcom members. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:02, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Liuxinyu970226: I have read this page and to be honest it makes absolutely zero sense. For one, almost 2/3 of the people who voted here have supported this request and have brought a much wider variety of arguments than those that opposed it. I don’t see any reason why this makes sense unless an argument coming from a langcom member is worth a hundred arguments. In addition, what’s the point of having established rules if langcom decides which projects are eligible and which ones aren’t? I used to think that they follow some rules but based on your last comment it looks like they don’t. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:33, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

  @GerardM and Sotiale: How do you consider this question? This question is regarding how the langcom works, and beyond my knowledge scopes. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:01, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

• Please appreciate the scope and the original objective of the Language committee. It is to say no. We had a situation where many Wikipedias were created often on the say so of a single editor. This was thought to be unacceptable and a set of rules were created and they are very much still in place. It was these rules or the deletion of many of the Wikipedias that had been created. One of the consequences of the policy is that "one hundred arguments" make no substantial difference. It is also why I have always been of the opinion that at the very start it is determined if a specific language is eligible in the first place. At the end of the incubation it is determined if what is written is indeed the specified language. If it is not, it will not be accepted. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 18:31, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
  • @GerardM: OK at least now I understand the reasoning behind this. I know there has been a mess like for example Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Aramaic of Jesus. I’m not opposed to creating wikis in Aramaic but I agree that they should be clearly defined. However, this policy doesn’t entirely solve this problem. If the problem was that many wikis were created with only one editor, then I think that the incubator solves this problem. Anybody can create a test wiki but it will only get a subdomain once it has a substantial amount of activity. I agree that the deletion of many wikis isn’t the solution and is also unacceptable however I don’t think that having such rules is the solution either (though maybe back then it was necessary in order to avoid having to delete many wikis). Instead, I suggest to judge a wiki based on its content and it’s activity. Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Middle English was rejected “as part of a reform of the request process”. This suggests that the test wiki was created before the reform. Same about Ancient Greek. Hope you understand. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:43, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

• Comment @Marcos, Jade Knight, Mig de Jong, Belgian man, Uncle Davey, Agari, Boudewijn Idema, Sajasaze, Keeno, Ted-m, Jim62sch, Erik, Gray Porpoise, and Wōdenhelm: pinging users who expressed their support in Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Middle English. What do you think about this request? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:52, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment @Kanzler31: pinging the user who submitted Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Middle English 2. Unfortunately it didn’t generate a discussion like the other proposals did. What do you think about this request? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:56, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
    • Comment @GTAVmaster and ScriptorHistoriae: pinging users who expressed their support in Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Middle English 3. What do you think about this request? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:59, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
      • Comment @LittleWhole, CanadianToast, and DTL1234: pinging users who expressed their support in Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Middle English 4. Unfortunately, the discussion was only open for a short period of time before it was ultimately rejected. What do you think about this request? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:02, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
        • Comment @Boudewijn Idema, Kneiphof, Haitike, Chadlupkes, Sajasaze, Keeno, Taichi, Sir Real Hamster, Absar, Gray Porpoise, Mustafa Akalp, Dbmag9, Californiacondor, Fox Mccloud, and LeighvsOptimvsMaximvs: pinging all users who expressed their support or their conditional support in Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Old Egyptian. What do you think about this request? Do you support allowing ancient languages? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:51, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
          • Comment @Caesarion and IMSoP: what do you think about this request? In addition, you were discussing WikiHiero in the request that I linked above so I’m just curious to know - is or possible to use WikiHiero also in page titles? Because if not I don’t think a Wikipedia in Ancient Egyptian would be practical. But if it is indeed possible I’m really excited to see what can be done in such a wiki. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:57, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
            • Comment @Steinbach: just noticed the text “Steinbach (formerly Caesarion)”. If this is you, could you please answer this question (and also turn User:Caesarion to a redirect as it is currently just an empty page so it’s better that will be a redirect or just a plain text page saying that it’s your old user please contact User:Steinbach for convenience). However, if it’s not you and these are two separate uses, then apologies to both of you. Sorry. 😅. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 20:03, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
              • @Gifnk dlm 2020: I oppose your idea to redirect User:Caesarion to User:Steinbach, because the former one is a Russian Wikiquote active editor. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:29, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
                • @Liuxinyu970226: I didn’t request to create a redirect, I was just curious to know if it’s the same user. I just thought that if the users are controlled by the same person that it makes sense to mention this in the user pages. However if he doesn’t want this I won’t keep asking I just suggested and I think that he is the one that should make decisions on his user page. I think that ultimately he has control over his user page and that he should decide weather or not he wants a redirect. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 15:21, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Gifnk dlm 2020: GTAVmaster was ScriptorHistoriae's old username, so I see no reason why your ping works. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:46, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Liuxinyu970226: I know. But I wasn’t sure what to do in this case as if I pinged only the current user name, it would look like I’m pinging a user that didn’t express his support. It’s a bit of a complex situation. I hope you understand. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:34, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

• The only extinct languages that should be allowed to have wikis should be Latin and Sanskrit, and the only conlang that should be allowed to have wikis is Esperanto. I’m kinda into Lojban and Tokipona, but they would do better on Wikia or Miraheze than on small WMF wikis nobody cares about. Old English, Middle English, Elefen, Volapuk, Kotava, etc. would do just fine on their own Wikia or Miraheze sites. If we allowed all hobbyists to have their own subdomain, not just conlangers with a language code, then there would be official WMF-sanctioned Wikipedias in Klingon, Quenya, Lolcat, etc. 2001:569:BEB6:C400:E40B:99C:B31A:2A2 23:48, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

  @2001:569:BEB6:C400:E40B:99C:B31A:2A2: I disagree with you. I think that wikis should get subdomains based on the amount of activity they get. For one, if “nobody cares” about them on WMF then there’s no any reason to think they will once they move to wikia or to Miraheze. Esperanto isn’t the only conlang with a language code. Afrihili, Kotava, Brithenig, Dutton World Speedwords, Esperanto, Ido, Interglossa, Interlingue, Interlingua (similar names but not the same language), Lojban, Láadan, Lingua Franca Nova, Neo, Novial, Quenya, Romanova, Sindarin, Klingon, Talossan, Volapük, Balaibalan, and Blissymbolics (you can see full list here in case I missed any). So the statement “conlangers with a language code“ isn’t very meaningful. Besides, Middle English, Old English, Ancient Greek, etc. also have their own language codes. I think that the only objective way to do this is by using the current incubation system so that only active wikis that “people care about them” will get a subdomain. This is better than the current rules and also than the rules that you suggested which are only slightly better than the existing ones. That being said, I’m highly skeptical about, though not entirely opposed to, wikis in fictional languages as nine times out of ten they only have a sufficient vocabulary to describe the universe in the tv show/film/video game/etc. lolcat is more of a meme than a language and despite the fact that I think a Wikipedia in Lolcat is possible (after all the Bible was translated to Lolcat), I’m skeptical also about this one and I highly doubt it will be approved even if we manage to make a very good argument in favor of this due to lacking a language code. That being said, I think Middle English, Old English, Ancient Greek, Old Norse, etc. should be considered seriously and should at the very least be verified as eligible which has several benefits most importantly in my opinion will protect the test wikis from deletion. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 19:36, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

• Comment @1234qwer1234qwer4, CanadianToast, JustinCB, Qmwne235, Gray Porpoise, Laʒamon Æft-iboren, Cbrown1023, and Katxis:, @Varlaam, LittleWhole, S. Roelants, PolarWafflez, Sgman1991, The Hypnotizer, DTL1234, Warofdreams, Crochet.david.bot, and Xbspiro:, @MF-Warburg, Artoria2e5, Kimberley-nia Bot, X Parasite~incubatorwiki, Whaales, AurelianusAmbrose, NASAPeepo, Liuxinyu970226, and Zarzagoa:, @Nevergonnagiveyou, GoodClover, DiuPater, Ursulageorges, Malhonen, ChimNung, CommonsDelinker, OTOD tag, Ooswesthoesbes, and Firsfron:, @Xaosflux, Krencko, Heremaecg, MerlIwBo, Chris.Taub.M.D., Underfell Flowey, Guillermo2149, Biglittlehugesmall65, Romaine, and Steinbach:, @Sub to pewdipi, Doogdoggo1234, Schwei2, ABAlphaBeta, Timichal, Potvisgg, Anton Kazmyarchuk, Aranya, Mike Dillon, and Jkrosado:, @TungstenPoet1, Bouymanbob, Catfish Enthusiast, Murchison-Eye, CaptainGastronomicon, Wiki13, Hasley, Venca24, Child of Garrett, and Footyspeed:, @Wikitiki89, SolsticeComesAndGoes, InternetArchiveBot, JonsterMonster, James Johnson, JamesR1701E, Эарендил, Jared, Frogge Editor, and Ryulong:, @Atavoidturk, Minorax, WZibell, AzaToth, Nailuj29, StevenJ81, Ferien, Stardsen, Onyxastra, and Counselbytheelves:, @Markus included, Sfenj, A FROGGE, Newbiepedian, Mssetiadi, Mr. Stradivarius, Xnet1234, ProletariatetsBefrielseOrkester, AquaticCitrus2035, and Zacwill:, @Redux, Savh, Snood1205, Szczecinolog, Therealpirateblue, This, that and the other, TinaSharp, UU, WikiBayer, and XXBlackburnXx:, @Yejianfei, Sksksjsm, Nieuwsgierige Gebruiker, FROGGEBOOPE, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Heavy Metal PST5, Jan Myšák, Dm5228272, Dpv, and DutchTina:, @Bywok, Kaganer, Hellokitty~incubatorwiki, Edmundwoods, KingCrungis, Ebe123, Blackkdark, Chabi, Crochet.david, and Eitanish:, @Leefeni de Karik, CrazyPencilDawg, Amdiux, WP Ludicer, Suzukaze-c, WOSlinker, WIKImaniac, Tamara Ustinova, Dryke, and Anatol Rath:, @Tegel, Andrew Dalby, Townie, Dyhgs, The Mighty Bleu, EdShnee, Dispenser, Markvondeegel, Alshfik, and Danny B.:, @Cranberry1337, Корінь, Þe beeſte, Zippee100, A11ce, Yggdrasil Hugger, Yaroslav Zolotaryov, Yaroslav Zolotaryov, Daarznieks, and DannyS712:, @AlmightyTim, XXdeema epicgamerXx, David Kernow, X4v13r3, Akanemoto, Worm consumption, Davidgothberg, WikiLeon, Erik Baas, and DigitalCross:, @Wheatbreadsauce, Dickman1, Sosag332, Espreon, Breizhcatalonia1993, Primefac, Jawshewah, PolarWafflez5327, Jelican9, and Phil Boswell:, @Joseph Stocke, OlegMarchuk, NotOnDuty, Node ue, Kesac, Rarted Brian, NeilN, Mxn, Lemuel Gulliver, and Biólogo conservacionista:, @Luna Santin, Monedula, BSMIsEditing, MLisDreaming, BAKFLASH, Matiia, Huhu, Raymond, Steinsplitter, and ScienceFan66:, @Filemon, Spangineer, Martin Rizzo, Sophia maria, Frogge facts, Frogge is beaste, Andrijko Z., GallantArc302, Seonookim, and Segwaylegway:, @GeorgeMoney, RealGatba, CanadianToasts, Salix alba, SUL, SPQRobot, SPQRobin, CKarlsen, Greydman24, and Rich Farmbrough:, @Rfc1394, Redrose64, and タチコマ robot: pinging all users who have contributed to Middle English except [[User:imported>*Max*|imported>*Max*]] because if I try to enter this username in a ping template it will only give an error. Also, for obvious reasons I didn’t ping myself... why would anyone ping himself?😅 In addition, it’s entirely possible that I pinged someone by accident - that is if you contributed to a page that was later imported to Middle English Wikipedia I think it also includes you in this list. Anyways, what do y’all think about this RFC? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 21:16, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

That may work as @*Max*~metawiki:, but as they're inactive for 15 years, I can't believe that their "responds" may happened. And why have you pinged some bots? They can't provide humanic comments here, if you really wanna helps from bots, ping their owners: @Crochet.david, Cyberpower678, SPQRobin, とある白い猫, Wcam, Liangent, Jimmy Xu, Zhuyifei1999, GZWDer, and Mdennis (WMF): --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:09, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: ok thanks. About the bots, to be honest I just copied all the usernames that appear in this list. There are 223 of them and I was more worried I would miss someone then pinging a bot so I decided it would be best to just ping all. I was worried that if I missed a bot I might also miss the user that is next to the bot or something weird like that. Hope you understand. Thanks. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 11:56, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Comment just discovered Sumerian Wikipedia, so I decided to ping the users who have contributed to it. Here goes: @Novarussia and Lammõz:. I haven’t pinged Liuxinyu970226 since I have already pinged him/her in the comment above. Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:00, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Comment. It's pointless to ping Lammõz. He's a sockpuppet of a serial requester, is blocked on meta and incubator, and knows no Sumerian. More than likely you have some of his other sockpuppets and his meatpuppet friends in your pings above (I haven't gone through the wall-of-text ping lists though). Also your pings above are canvassing. -Yupik (talk) 01:15, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

@Yupik: Interesting, it seems like the RFC creator is a fun of canvassing because of

 

• Special:Diff/21511784
• Special:Diff/21507258
• Special:Diff/21511782
• Special:Diff/21008709
• Special:Diff/21648442
• Special:Diff/21561760
• Special:Diff/21511806
• Special:Diff/21511836
• incubator:Special:Diff/5144583
• incubator:Special:Diff/5144578
• incubator:Special:Diff/5144580
• incubator:Special:Diff/5144694
• incubator:Special:Diff/5163965
• incubator:Special:Diff/5144692
• incubator:Special:Diff/5144581
• incubator:Special:Diff/5155869
• incubator:Special:Diff/5146289
• incubator:Special:Diff/5154081
• incubator:Special:Diff/5154083
• incubator:Special:Diff/5144691
• incubator:Special:Diff/5144697
• incubator:Special:Diff/5144699

Based on these edits, I still believe that some supporters that first edit (or even the only edits) happened here e.g. @Robbinorion, Anaxicrates, Sigur, and Heracletus: should be Checkusered, though I'm not sure who is their master. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 05:00, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment @Liuxinyu970226: sure do all the checks you what to. However, I suggest you consult Special:CentralAuth. Robbinorion (CentralAuth) opened his/her account in 2017. Same about Anaxicrates (Anaxicrates). Sigur (Special:CentralAuth/Sigur) has 5,239 edits in la.wikipedia.org, 3,098 edits in wikidata.org, 912 edits in de.wikipedia.org, 489 edits in en.wikipedia.org, 226 edits in fr.wikipedia.org, 118 edits in commons.wikimedia.org, and also other wikis as well though I won’t list all of them here for obvious reasons. Also, the account was created in 2012. Heracletus is 3,199 edits in en.wikipedia.org. And the account was created in 2013. Are they sock puppets? I highly doubt it. Just because they haven’t done very many edits in meta doesn’t mean they aren’t active users. But sure do your checks if that will make you happier. Also, @Yupik, I just pinged users whom I think might benefit from this RfC. I don’t see how that’s bad in any way. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:10, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment: Because you have only pinged people you think will agree with you, which skews the results, as can be seen from the linked text. Of the four columns, you managed to be in the inappropriate row for three of them. I will give you the benefit of the doubt that the only pings are the ones we can see, so the fourth column is in the appropriate row as long as you didn't canvass people offsite too. -Yupik (talk) 21:47, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment @Yupik, in my defense, I would like to say that the people who opposed this RfC also tend to be people who registered to WMF mailing list so that means they already knew about this RfC through there. But if it’s against the rules, I will stop pinging. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 09:58, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@Gifnk dlm 2020: Please give evidences about people who opposed this RfC also tend to be people who registered to WMF mailing list, as far as I've tried several times, all mentions about this RFC within that mailing list are, if I remember correctly, discarded by list admins. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:28, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Comment @Liuxinyu970226, I just mentioned that users who opposed not only this RfC but also requests for wikis in ancient languages tend to be users that are registered to the mailing list (as is evident by the mailing list discussions you linked). Also, you pinged users so I didn’t know that it’s not allowed. Since most users don’t tend to look on the RfC, I thought that I’m just making sure they know it exists so that there will be a fair voting. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 08:37, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment BTW, @Liuxinyu970226: this might sound like a random question but do you by any chance know how much time is a request for comment open? I know that this RfC was open for quite some time - a year or so I think. But that was in 2013-2014 things might have changed since then so that’s why I would like to know how long do you expect this RfC to stay open? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:48, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

  @Gifnk dlm 2020: Just note that the Sumerian request is rejected yesterday, and the creator has been permanently blocked on both Incubator and Meta as a LTA, to which you supported that user. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:21, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

  Comment @Liuxinyu970226, for one I didn’t express support for him as I suspected this might be the case. The test wikis he created were deleted but are still available in the wayback machine for people I’m the future to judge weather or not they were really spam. Here are the links: Sumerian Wikipedia, Emoji Wikipedia (most likely spam though I’m still curious to know if it was just random emojis or if it had some sort of meaning behind it. The fact the main page translates to 👑📃 (crown page) kinda makes sense.). Also, last but not least, there’s Wp/pik. Not sure what language that is though. This is most likely spam which means there’s reason to assume also Sumerian Wikipedia is spam. Again, I do not endorse spam and I didn’t support NovRussia though I wish there was a way to contact him to know if Emoji Wikipedia was just many random emojis or if it has a meaning behind it (make no mistake I don’t endorse this sort of behavior - just curious). However, I do believe that if some time in the future, a group of people who are knowledgeable in Sumerian decide to open a Wikipedia in Sumerian that won’t be spam and will be serious that they should be allowed to do this. So again, I do not support spam but I do think that a Wikipedia in Sumerian should be considered in the future if there is a community of interested contributors who speak the language. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:15, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment BTW, @Liuxinyu970226: O ye of little faith! Well, make all checks you believe necessary! I am at your disposal for anything! My real name is Riccardo Radici and I am from Italy. Anaxicrates (talk) 07:34, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
• Comment There seems to be a clear consensus in Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Ancient Greek 4 in favor of creating a Wikipedia in Ancient Greek. There are 51 comments in favor and like 8 comments against. That’s a ratio of 6.375:1 or 86.4406779661% of people who voted support this request. Also there’s a wider variety of arguments in favor than against. If this isn’t a clear consensus, then idk what is. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:24, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
• Comment @Liuxinyu970226:, if it will help end your accusing me of trolling and of being a sockpuppet, why don't you request indeed a Check User to check whatever you want? As far as I see the process is open to any user... Heracletus (talk) 22:01, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
• Comment @Liuxinyu970226, and @Yupik, just curious to know, did I formulate Special:MobileDiff/21697960 properly? Is that not considered canvassing? I didn’t assume that everybody who views the request for let’s say Ancient Greek Wikipedia supports the creation of this wiki. Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:33, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
• Comment One clear point that is consistently missed here needs emphasising is that any major language will have topics largely of interest to its speakers and users, and less to outsiders. It is likely for instance that la.wp over time develops better content about Latin literature that its English counterpart. Thus there is always a potential loss when a language is denied a platform, so it should be done for clear criteria, that can be clearly assessed, rather than for reasons that come across as lines in the sand. For instance, it seems reasonable that the baseline for acceptance for a Wiki project, would include at least some of:
  • An active community of language content creators and publishers
  • An active potential readership that is significantly larger than the number of content creators
  • A sufficient resource of acknowledged experts in the use of those languages that the language community can access to ensure accuracy and standardised usage
  • Evidence of an external social, religious or educational community that sustain the use and knowledge of the language
  • Evidence that the project itself can be sustainable, including a sufficient number of current editors, content etc

Such criteria would weed out applications that are unlikely to succeed, while being clear why they exist. Current criteria to my mind look quite arbitrary to the external reader (Latin and Sanskrit, but not Greek, for reasons that are unclear; Old English but not Middle English, etc).

Additionally I would rule out criteria based on 'native speakers' and the like, while simultaneously trying to permit Conlangs; this produces inconsistent and unfair application. Rather, it is better to ignore how a language is acquired, and look at how it is used, which is how I have framed the criteria above. How many 'native speakers' does Cornish or Manx have, for instance? Not so many, and the users of these can be accused of replicating all the issues of Middle English or Ancient Greek, (indeed, Cornish is largely based on medieval texts, and learners must attempt to replicate this idiom) yet it is clear these ought to be given a platform if they ask. --JimKillock (talk) 17:57, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Addendum: I think the problematic part of the current criteria mostly boils down to the bar Only Wikisource wikis in ancient or historical languages are accepted. On most criteria, Ancient Greek would or could be accepted, as could LA or Sanskrit if they applied now, on the basis that there are fluent speakers and texts are written and published (The language of the proposal has a sufficient number of fluent users to form a viable contributor community and an audience for the content). But despite passing on those objective tests, they fail due to the arbitrary criterion above. So I would develop the existing criteria to be a bit clearer, and remove this arbitrary standard. (Again, revived languages in particular can be seen as historical languages and it is unclear when or why they would not be. And a Latin speaker could easily argue that Latin is in current use, so not historical, while someone else would oppose this notion.)

To take another example (somewhat discussed above) of why the ancient or historical languages bar is problematic, imagine the situation with Hebrew during the 1800s. At some point, Hebrew ceased being an ancient or historical language; but how could this be assessed? At what point and how does Wikimedia's policy allow an ancient or historical language to be defined as a revived language? It seems much better to place the burden on something which can be measured, that is, whether a community use the language, or not, rather than the abscract notion of whether it is old or mainly learnt. --JimKillock (talk) 18:30, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

@Steinbach: I thought your letter was very articulate and made the points well. The core problem here is that people are making judgements about a language without really thinking through whether it is possible to draw lines around terms like “ancient”, “dead” and so on. The situation with the Ancient Greek incubator that you relate is particularly sad from that perspective, and it is a real shame that this problem persists. @Prosfilaes: I completely agree with your concerns about poor content, although I do also think it has to be entirely up to users how they wish to contribute and why. I think that the existing criteria are plenty enough to prevent the use of Wikipedia as a kind of “revivalist” vehicle, simply by insisting that there is an external readership and community. I cannot see ME any time soon being able to pass these criteria, and even OE would struggle greatly to show that it could. On the other hand Latin, (Ancient) Greek, Sanskrit and some other languages are squarely in the category of still used. That is there are people who write and converse or otherwise create in these languages. There are groups of academics and religious people who have a context in which they will use them as a vehicle for communication. The fact that the language is ancient ought to be irrelevant to Wikipedia; the key question is whether people in current times actually employ it. The Latin Wikipedia is successful because it has an audience that use and read it as well as write it, the fact that it could not currently qualify for a Wikipedia ought to help us understand why the length of time a language has existed, or whether people have to learn it, is not a relevant criterion. --JimKillock (talk) 18:30, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, that’s interesting. I once tried to contact experts and one of them reach out and and told this: “Thanks for reaching out. I think I’m probably not that much use to you as I’m much more of an OE specialist. But I just wanted to thank you (all); my students *adore* the ME Wikipedia (and its offshoots, like the YouTube videos of animal entries), and it’s really fired their enthusiasm for engaging with and playing with medieval language and literature.” I can send a screenshot if you want. The main question should be what is a considered “used”. There are many people (I’m not one of them) that would claim that the languages that you listed can not be considered as “used” since they are not used in people’s day to day lives. This seems like a subjective goal that might give the option to still reject Ancient Greek Wikipedia because all of them speak at least one more language even though this is also true about Conlangs and small languages. I suggest to use the incubator which already exists as quality control. Good wikis will get a subdomain while bad/small wikis will stay in the incubator. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 18:53, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

It's great that you have been getting positive feedback, that shows your work has a role and a purpose. I do still think ME will have a hard time showing that it pass the existing criteria, because you would have to show “a sufficient number of fluent users to form a viable contributor community and an audience for the content.” I would personally also ask that whether a language is ancient or otherwise, that the criteria include that there is evidence such as an “independently proved number of speakers, use as an auxiliary language outside of online communities created solely for the purpose, usage outside of Wikimedia, publication of works in the language for general sale.” This is because a line is needed somewhere, and the same criteria should IMO apply to everyone, and the idependent usage of the language seems a good place to place it. I dislike the fact that Ancient Greek and Latin could pass all of the criteria applied to ConLangs, but still would not qualify for a Wiki; that seems inconsistent and unfair. Simultaneously, another ancient or historic language, Cornish, last spoken in the late 1700s, revived in the 1900s in a form analogous to ME, and very largely non-native by current speakers is allowed, for reasons that are unclear to me. It seems unlikely that Wikmedia assess the number of “native speakers” raised by their parents or in preschools in Cornish. Possibly therefore it is a purely political definition: as a group of people say that they have “revived” a language, or perhaps as official institutions declare some support for it, such a historic language loses the “historic” label. However, it is not good for Wikipedias to rely on political definitions of what constitutes a valid language; what if a language like Cornish is refused political recognition? Thus “used” is a better criteria to employ, on this Cornish clearly passes, no matter what the political position is, or whether some might regarded it as primarily ancient or historical. The existing criteria as deployed for conlangs are sufficient for esablishing what “used” means in my view. I cannot say whether ME is at that place or not, but it could be, whether or not that is true today. As matters stand, no matter how much material is produced, and no matter how many people learn and use ME or Ancient Greek, they are barred; thus the criterion is arbitrary and unfair. --JimKillock (talk) 19:22, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, I also dislike the fact that Ancient Greek Wikipedia which is active, growing, and with a lot of content still wasn’t created. As of 04:54, 2 September 2021 (UTC), it’s main category has 1,801 though it’s highly likely that the number is actually higher since not all people add pages they create to the main category of a test wiki. I agree that Ancient Greek Wikipedia should be created. About Middle English Wikipedia, it’s obvious for me that it has multiple milestones before it can get created as well and all I request is to just verify it as eligible. If you check out Requests for new languages, you will see that many languages were verified as eligible and not all of them even have test wikis. Wikipedia Caribbean Hindustani for example was verified as eligible in January of 2017 (more than two and a half years ago) but still doesn’t have a test wiki. I understand that Middle English Wikipedia doesn’t have enough content and I only request it will be verified as eligible in order to protect the test wiki from being deleted. As for Ancient Greek Wikipedia, yeah, there’s no excuse to not let it get a test wiki especially if Kotava Wikipedia was created. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 04:54, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Gifnk dlm 2020: In principle, I think yes, it should be eligible for consideration; but that isn’t the same as saying it would qualify. The only sensible way forward IMO is to treat all languages equally and not to discriminate against particular types. Thus the same criteria should be applied to all applications; these can contain criteria about external usage, but cannot fairly bar particular kinds of language.

On your particular situation with ME, I think some flexibility might be applied, given you were allowed a test facility and that is now being considered for withdrawal. But that is a different discussion as to whether evidence of external usage is a fair criterion for barring a large number of potentially not useful Wiki projects, which I think it is, and could give comfort to many of the people objecting to lifting the arbitrary bar on ancient and “historic” languages mainly because they (suspect they) are not really used, so Wiki projects would be essentially fan projects and could not sustain themselves. --JimKillock (talk) 07:15, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I believe that it’s notable to mention that this RfC has 2,935 views in the last 60 days. You can view the statistics here. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:43, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

A Compromise Proposal

Proposal

'This has been moved below, with edits removed, for simplicity and to keep the page not too overwhelling. My Apologies is this is not usual practice. --JimKillock (talk) 10:25, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Compromise proposal discussion

I hope that is helpful and can be the basis for moving this debate on. --JimKillock (talk) 11:09, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, I think the rules make sense but I think there can be a problem with the definition “a reasonable degree of contemporary usage as determined by discussion“ mostly since it can be used to de facto ban ancient languages. I mean they can just deny the fact that Latin and Ancient Greek have contemporary uses, say that scientific papers are published in English and German, and that the fact that species are named in Latin is not enough (btw that’s obviously not the reason Latin Wikipedia is justified). They can say that news website in Ancient Greek someone mentioned in the request page is not enough, and then again they can say that a language that has less contemporary use than Ancient Greek has enough. It doesn’t depend on objective goals only on the feelings of the participants in the discussion. By that I mean that they can scrap small bits of evidence about contemporary use of ancient languages they like and reject Ancient Greek. Also, they can just reject all of them or claim that modern texts in ancient languages are not in that ancient language at all - only a language made to look similar to that ancient language. Also they can outright deny the fact that people are interested in Ancient Greek Wikipedia despite the statistics of the test wiki showing otherwise. I suggest therefore to use those statistics of test wikis in the incubator as an objective way to determine weather or not there’s an interested community though I’m open for other ideas as well. I would agree to checking if the wiki has “exclusive content” - for example stub articles in English Wikipedia that have much longer articles in Middle English Wikipedia but that would be subjective. I’m opening to hearing other ideas though -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:27, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I would argue to fix the policy first, and then see how the Committee handles it. Hopefully the proposal above would unblock the problem for Ancient Greek, and we could see who else applies and what result they get. --JimKillock (talk) 16:05, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock:

First of all I don't think it can be valid to describe any languages, historical or not, as fixed in form. Take Latin as example, people from different era and different places obviously spoke different Latin. If all native English speakers suddenly died today turning English into an historical language, there will also be no fixed form of English available for the criteria to be met.C933103 (talk) 15:42, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Latin is indeed spoken of as being "fixed in form", at roughly the grammatical standard of 0AD; to a lesser degree so is ancient Greek, although it evolved, so the boundaries are less clear. Similarly, Sanskrit is "fixed in form" with a grammar that no longer evolves. This I think is the problem with understanding what ancient languages often are. They frequently ceased evolving grammatically at a particular point of standardisation, which was tremendously important for the literate to continue to read older material. With modern English, this does not apply, but if everyone stopped speaking English / died, then indeed, it would cease to evolve grammatically and would most likely be taught as a fixed form. I do say "typically" :) --JimKillock (talk) 16:05, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

But they do evolve and vary until being fixed in form, just like if English suddenly become a historical language in 2022, that wouldn't erase all the variation over time until 2021. I think it would be better if you can express this something along the line of having a recognized "standard/academic form" of the language.C933103 (talk) 02:42, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I've amended this and hope it is clearer. --JimKillock (talk) 07:20, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Second, I think rule #3 does not make sense, as there are quite a number of smaller Wikipedian projects are created for languages with very little to no literary tradition, aka those languages are traditionally transmitted only in spoken form but only recently people start learning to write and type them due to improvement in literacy rate and the introduction of information technology.C933103 (talk) 15:42, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Literary works are a "for instance", so an oral-only historic language could rely on a substantial corpus of recordings, perhaps. I've amended that, although I feel a bit conflicted about this; a 'revived' oral language is a tough project and would be unlikely to be an ancient language, even if historical. I also struggle to understand how an oral language could be passed on as a 'learnt' language if purely oral. And it might still fail to qualify because of a lack of competent speakers and writers. --JimKillock (talk) 16:05, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@C933103, I actually agree with rule number 3 proposed by JimKillock that says: “There should be a significant historical corpus and usage for modern authors to draw upon, for instance, at least tens of thousands of extant texts or a large volume of recordings; whether generated as an auxiliary language, domain specific language or a native language;” BTW, I quoted the rule in case it changes that it will be clear what I supported. Hope you understand. Anyways, but that’s the thing with ancient languages, you can’t jump though a time machine and ask Aristotle to teach you his language. The knowledge we have about ancient languages is based on texts written in this language (if a language became extinct recently we might have audio in this language which is useful for revival but doesn’t give us the spelling). If there’s a lack of text in the given language like with Etruscan, then we just don’t know enough about the language’s grammar to write a wiki in it. An oral only language would have evolved over time and we won’t be able to tell how it sounded 1,000 years ago unless it gets reconstructed the same way Proto Indo European was but much less reliable since there’s only one descendant. However, I suggest instead of setting an arbitrary limitation, to state that there must be a large enough body of text in this language for researchers to be able to figure out the nature of the language. Tens of thousands might be misleading as a translation of the Bible and multiple books would be much more valuable than tens of thousands of stones with names carved into them or short sentences. Also I suggest to leave some indicator that those are parts of the same message witted by C933103. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:38, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I've amended that a bit further to say “There should be a significant historical corpus and usage for modern authors to draw upon, for instance, a large volume of extant texts or a large volume of recordings, sufficient to understand the idiom as well as the grammar of the language”. --JimKillock (talk) 16:44, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, thanks! I think it’s better that way. Just curious but would Biblical Hebrew pass under the rules you have suggested? It grammar is much more complex than regular modern Hebrew (by regular I mean that regular people speak - some people like speaking in high level Hebrew which Hebrew Wikipedia is not written in and has some similarities to Biblical Hebrew), the word order is slightly different, and also the meanings of some words has changed as well as words becoming obsolete and new words coming. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:53, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm not really qualified to say, but I know it is somewhat different. Whether there are people that utilise it I am less sure. --JimKillock (talk) 17:13, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

The problem with the wording of "There should be a significant historical corpus and usage for modern authors to draw upon, for instance, a large volume of extant texts or a large volume of recordings, sufficient to understand the idiom as well as the grammar of the language" is that, as it is currently written, it seems to simply mean there need to be enough historical resource for modern learner learn to use it, and thus seems redundant to the condition of #2? As those people mentioned in rule #2 must have learned the language somewhere no matter where that is. C933103 (talk) 02:42, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there is harm in this redundancy. It helps spell out why certain ancient or historical languages can be regarded as still in active use. It is at leats possible that a lot of people would learn a language which was still incomplete and not fully viable. --JimKillock (talk)

Third, rule #4 is ill-defined in what count as "a reasonable degree".C933103 (talk) 15:42, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

This I am open to suggestions on. It seems the most contentious part; where this line is drawn makes it easier or harder to establish a Wiki. Nevertheless I have just taken the existing wording that applies to artificial languages and expanded it a little to indicate the kinds of uses that these languages are likely to be employed in. --JimKillock (talk) 16:05, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, yeah that’s the trickiest part. Nevertheless, I think the rule “reasonable degree” would be as things stand a de facto ban for ancient languages except maybe those in the East used for religious purposes, possibly for them as well. They would say that people don’t use Latin or Ancient Greek in their day to day life and that scientists that name species in Latin don’t use sentences in Latin. We should think of a better way to formulate this. Maybe write that there are resources online for people who don’t study ancient languages professionally but are interested. This can include dictionaries and websites about grammar. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:45, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

The criteria I've supplied surely do work for Latin and Greek. for instance: independently proved number of speakers or writers possible in both, use as an auxiliary or domain-specific language outside of online communities created solely for the purpose, yes for both, for instance certain academic communities and certain religious debates or social groups usage outside of Wikimedia, Latin and Greek social circles exist worldwide, annual conferences take place conducted in both publication of works in the language for general sale, certainly these are in abundance, and some new ones and translations exist in both publication of academic papers in the language, yes for both availability of courses or training which aim at fluent compositional or oral usage yes for both. --JimKillock (talk) 16:57, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, listen I personally agree with you. I’m just saying that it’s a possibility that the opposers will just ignore that and say that it’s not “a reasonable degree”. See the oppose comments in Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Ancient Greek 4. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:08, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Wait, I think the fact that it includes the words “availability of courses or training which aim at fluent compositional or oral usage” solves the problem as this can be easily proven. Sorry, I haven’t noticed that part. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 17:19, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I think the objections raised on that page do show the need to clarify what ancient languages are and how they are typically used, and that ancient ≠ out of use. AIUI that discussion has not yet closed, but can only succeed by ignoring the existing ban. --JimKillock (talk) 17:29, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't have a strong opinion on that, but I hope the exact degree can be defined at community level instead of at language committee since some members of the language committee do not really like such idea. C933103 (talk) 02:42, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I don't think rules can fix that kind of problem. Rather, I think we need these guidelines to help the committee as a whole shift its perspective. From what I have seen elsewhere, people can have somewhat misleading ideas of what it is for a language to exist and be used, perhaps for a very long time, without having native speakers. Perhaps it is quite difficult to understand in the modern day. --JimKillock (talk) 07:39, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Fourth, given Wikiquote's role of collecting historical text/words are similar to Wikisource, I would suggest rule #1's exception should also include Wikiquote. C933103 (talk) 15:42, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

That is my mistake, this should read all wikis, I have corrected that. --JimKillock (talk) 16:05, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock: That would be a problem. For example, nowadays anyone can request a Wikisource for Linear A, despite absolutely no one in the world know what the language is saying. As long as people are capable of digitalizing the text and verifying the authenticity of the content being inputted, there should be a place for them on Wikisource and for people in the future to access such resources digitally. That is why Wikisource is exempted from the current rule of living languages, according to my understanding. Thus requiring new wikisource projects to comply with the same standard doesn't seems like a good idea. I think the situation for wikiquote would be similar although quotes need to be understood to be useful so the expectation could be different.C933103 (talk) 02:42, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@C933103, how would the translate the interface to Linear A? But yes, I agree that Wikisource should be exempt from these rules. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 06:55, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I've edited this to make it clearer. --JimKillock (talk) 07:41, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@Gifnk dlm 2020: Interface translation is not currently required for creating wikisource of ancient languages. C933103 (talk) 03:27, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

@C933103, ok I didn’t know that. Thanks! -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 06:23, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment @PastelKos, @Andrew Dalby, @Giorno2, @Steinbach, @Pere prlpz, @Amahoney, @Cuzkatzimhut, @Heracletus, @VIGNERON, @Sigur, @Zoozaz1, @扎姆, @Anaxicrates, Haoreima, @Awangba Mangang, @Robbinorion, @Jackattack1597, @Sailor Ceres, @Whycantusernamesbe21, @Sabon Harshe, @Iohanen, @Sahaib3005, @C933103, @Oofas, @Vikipad, @User:EvilPita, @AnotherEditor144, @Kitabc12345, @Pavlov2, @JimKillock, @Mmh, @Wolverène, pinging users who support this RfC. If I have missed anybody, please ping them as well. Do you think this above policy is reasonable? If we have an agreement, I will ping the opposers as well. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 10:54, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I didn't go deep into the details, but it sounds reasonable. Maybe I would stress the existence of a potential community as can be checked in a test wiki or supposed from the language being taught so a reasonably large amount of competent users exists.

About the comment that setting a bar could be discriminatory, I think that:

• Setting some bar will be likely necessary to reach a consensus. I wouldn't expect the people that opposed an Ancient Greek Wikipedia to accept a Wikipedia in any ancient language.
• I'm not sure about how high the bar should be, but clearly there are old languages on which a Wikipedia wouldn't work, because they aren't attested enough or there aren't enough people that know the language to form a viable community. I think checking whether a test wiki is working would be enough, but some rules could help to bring peace of mind to users afraid of a miriad of inviable wikis in old languages proliferating.--Pere prlpz (talk) 11:28, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I find this proposal perfectly acceptable. --PastelKos (talk) 11:40, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

 Support I rather like the proposal. Under the proposed rules, Latin would certainly be included, as there are thousands of competent writers (and at least hundreds of speakers), an immense corpus of texts from 200 BCE to 1800 CE (and a bit more before and after), and books published in Latin regularly (not all of which are translations). That's a good test case as Latin Wikipedia is alive and well -- 61st on the "list of wikipedias" by number of articles with 164 active users. The case for Ancient Greek is also strong, and since that's the one I'm most interested in, I favor a proposal that makes Ancient Greek look good. A. Mahoney (talk) 13:04, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

I responded to a ping: hadn't seen JimKillock's proposal and the resulting discussion till now.

The suggested appeal to "a reasonable degree" puts the decision in the hands of the Language Committee, based on submissions and evidence: well, that's exactly where the decision lies in all other cases too. The difficulty was that at a certain point "ancient languages", hastily defined, had been excluded from their remit. It's true that Latin, Sanskrit, classical Chinese and ancient Greek are more difficult to learn tnan artificial languages (because the latter are, by design, easy to learn) but they have comparable uses. All four of these have a firm standard of grammar and usage and very large corpora of texts, Web-accessible, which serve as a source for terminology.

JimKillock has successfully moved the discussion on. This suggestion would work. Andrew Dalby (talk) 13:23, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@PastelKos, I agree. I also think that an active test wiki is enough indication of an interested community but yes some rules will be necessary. @Andrew Dalby, I also think that’s the most problematic part. However, I’m my opinion, the inclusion of “availability of courses or training which aim at fluent compositional or oral usage” would solve this problem as an ancient language that doesn’t have online information about grammar or grammar books won’t get an active community. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:36, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

@User:Gifnk dlm 2020. Yes, I saw your suggestion and agreed with it, and when it came to writing my comment, I forgot! Sorry. "Availability of courses or training" is definitely a sensible adition to the guidelines. "Oral usage" is not the most relevant issue in creating a Wikipedia, in my opinion, but, on the other hand, it would not be a stumbling-block for any ancient language that's likely to meet the other criteria. Andrew Dalby (talk) 18:50, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment @JimKillock, I suggest to include also the existence of substantial online communities dedicated to learning/teaching the language as an evidence for contemporary use as it also a sign of an interested community plus it can be easily and objectively proven by providing links to those communities. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:49, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
  • @Gifnk dlm 2020: Surely this is already covered by availability of courses or training which aim at and produce fluent compositional or oral usage? This does not preclude them being online. However I think it is important that these courses do actually produce fluent writers or speakers, so I have adjusted that a little. The point is that for a sustainable Wiki project, with a sustainable language community, if you can show there is a viable entry point that is good evidence; but I don’t think the mere existence of courses or communities trying to achieve that is necessarily sufficient, it needs to be clear that these actually produce competent users. --JimKillock (talk) 13:11, 4 September 2021 (UTC)
    • @JimKillock, ok I see makes sense. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:13, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

On a wider point, this thread seems to be going quiet; and it is pretty clear that it is the Language Committee who hold the decision on whether to alter their rules or not. So really we need to ask that committee to take a look at what we have said. That may be possible, for instance by tagging them to this page, or else by emailing the committee directly, or both. --JimKillock (talk) 13:14, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

@Gifnk dlm 2020: You might also want to give the people who did not support an opportunity to comment now. --JimKillock (talk) 14:09, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, of course! I just thought it would be wise to first make sure that the people who support this RfC actually agree with your proposed policy. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:12, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

 Support I fully support this proposal, because it's for the good cause of the society, not only for one ethnic group but for every ethnicities which have archaic forms of their languages. This will give them, you and us a chance to preserve and regulate the cultural heritage (but still it should follow the rules and regulations like other modern languages, no special emphasis), just like Latin, Sanskrit and many others were and are given the chance. Haoreima (talk) 14:15, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to this attempt at delineating the boundary between those ancient language projects that may be at least marginally viable and those that will never be, but I think the criteria should be sharpened somewhat. In particular, one criterion I'd like to see firmly established is what I'd call the linguistic counterpart to Wikipedia's "No original research" content policy: No original language design. In simple words: people shouldn't have to make up the language they're going to write in. The language needs to offer a readily available, clearly recognizable model for linguistic expression, making it a viable means of communication in a modern context, without the need for Wikipedia contributors to engage in substantial programs of language standardization, language planning or language design of their own.

This entails, among other things:

• The language should have a well-established "classical" or "standard" variety, to allow participants to quickly agree on what is and what isn't an acceptable expression in it.
• The language must have a substantial body of modern use outside the Wikimedia projects, beyond merely being the object of academic study, i.e. actual productive creation of original texts for a variety of communicative purposes in real life.
• The language must have well-established methods of extension to modern topic areas, e.g. widely accepted patterns of word formation, borrowing or adaptation of modern proper names, to allow participants to quickly agree on what are appropriate expressions to use in writing about concepts and entities of the modern world.

There are probably a handful of ancient/classical languages that meet these criteria, Latin and perhaps classical Chinese being among the most obvious candidates. Middle English, in contrast, squarely fails all of them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:17, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: Those three criteria are absolutely the kind of thng I had in mind. I have added the first and last more or less in full (all modifications are in italics). Thank you.

I am a little less sure what to do about your second point tho, as I had thought this was reasonably well-covered. In particular it is hard to phrase this in a way that discounts educational use entirely, which I don't think is reasonable. If a language is significantly productive as a medium of education, I think that could be perfectly valid – I think of the use of Latin in nineteenth century universities for instance. I think ancient languages should face similar demands to ConLangs regarding linguistic productivity, ie the output side, while tighter on the input side (linguistic standardisation, education of audience and training of writers).

Nevertheless I have added which must extend beyond academic study of the language to the contemporary usage section, and moved the criterion about courses out to the bullet about the audience. Let me know if you have other ideas. --JimKillock (talk) 22:01, 4 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you. Just to clarify, use as a medium of education would certainly count for me – indeed it would represent a near-ideal situation, because in this role the language would be likely to maintain and develop its ability to handle modern topics. What I wanted to exclude was the situation where it's not more than the object of study. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:13, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise, could you please explain why the first rule you suggested is necessary? I agree that standardization is important however if a language has some spelling variations then I don’t think it should be barred from having its own wiki. However, as whole those are standards that can be be achieved. As I have told above, I think that Ancient Greek Wikipedia deserves a subdomain but if Middle English Wikipedia stays in the incubator until there’s a larger body of contemporary works in this language (there are people interested in writing stories and poems in Middle English), them I will be content with this decision. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 07:54, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@Gifnk dlm 2020: I think @Future Perfect at Sunrise: is saying that it shouldn't be down to Wikipedians to innovate a language, it should have its rules established elsewhere.

With ME, of course this could be done, but the question is whether it would be done. The fact that ME contains a great deal of variation is not the point, I think, this is an obstacle that could be dealt with, eg "this set of variations belong together, don't mix them with these other ones". Rather, the problem is that the effort required to provide grammars designed to help people create accurate output, and the tools to coin neologisms, is probably greater than is justified by than the demand for new works to be created. But it isn't sane for Wikimedia to essentially own that project of standardisation and coinage, it needs to be external and credible.

Again I feel very bad for your project in case this ends up creating very hard or seemingly impossible barriers for you, but these problems are widespread in this area, and cannot be dismissed. If it is your ambition to make ME a modern and credible linguistic vehicle then you probably need to think through how these goals can be achieved in any case. Meanwhile, if we want to persuade Wikimedia as a whole to accept more ancient languages, then it has to be clear that the projects that may be accepted would be both sustainable and credible, that is, reflect externally accepted and validated liguistic approaches. --JimKillock (talk) 08:12, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Gifnk dlm: the "standardization" criterion is necessary, among other things, to prevent precisely the kind of foolishness we've been seeing you and others on your ME project engage in. Because people see ME words can have all sorts of variants, they are led to the illusion that "anything goes" and that they can simply make up words and spellings of their own, usually by taking a modern form and then jumbling it around in whatever random way they fancy. Sometimes they do this in an ignorant attempt at creating something they believe "looks like" ME, but which typically ends up ridiculously wrong (like your own infamous "amptfs"(!) for "ants", "empechent" for "impeachment", or "luste" for "lost"). Sometimes they don't even try that and simply invent a misspelling of a modern word that somehow looks quaint, non-standard and funny, like "dyssasterre" for "disaster". Sometimes they pick an attested but rare historical form and over-use it out of ignorance, because it looks more archaic to them than other variants that are actually much more common, elevating it to a kind of fetish of imagined authenticity, like the foolish habit of using "biþ" rather than "is" in every article's intro sentence (but then mixing it with elements from completely different dialects than the one where "biþ" was used). – Gifnk dlm, don't bother responding to this; I am not interested in explaining stuff to you further, and this whole RfC is not an exercise in "everybody debating with Gifnk dlm" anyway. You've been inserting yourself into far too many discussion threads already. You are the initiator of this RfC; it's called "request for comments" for a reason: your task is to listen to what others have to say, not to debate them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:44, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

FWIW these problems crop up on Latin Wikipedia too, exacerbated by the "existence" of Google Latin "Translate", but there is an established group of competent editors that can label and combat the nonsense. Which speaks to the criteria about having a community of trained people to draw on. Still, we should I think avoid further discussion of the particular merits of particular Wikis at this point, and concentrate on the proposal as it stands.

As I mentioned before I think this is ready to either ask for final comment from people who were initially opposed to this, to see if we can find more consensus. --JimKillock (talk) 10:19, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Please move discussion that does not relate directly to the shape of the proposal to the talk page

@Prosfilaes, Pppery, GerardM, Steinbach, VIGNERON, Cuzkatzimhut, Minorax, Janwo, Rschen7754, Jusjih, SHB2000, Iohanen, Sanmosa, DreamerBlue, and Leaderboard: Could you take a look at the compromise proposal, which has been written with the express purpose of removing any prospect of allowing unsustainable projects in effectively defunct languages, and aligning the criteria to be tougher than for ConLangs in terms of liguistic training, but similar in nature regarding usage, ie, they must have modern publication and fora, readers and writers etc? --JimKillock (talk) 10:39, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

This conforms broadly to the conditions I previously demanded for wikis in ancient langauges. It must have great cultural significance and a lot of people study it for reasons other than mere academic interest. Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 10:58, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, have you pinged members of the language committee or just users who expressed their opposition to this request for comment? If the latter one, then I believe you missed some. BTW, I realize that this suggestion is still better than the existing one but I don’t really like the idea of including standards that can’t be achieved like a standard spelling - especially for a language that has had regional variants (plus there’s the fact that Modern English Wikipedia also sometimes mixes British and American spelling in the same article). Anyways, some ancient languages (only a minority of them I believe) will still be eligible and as I have said, it’s still better and I’m glad Ancient Greek Wikipedia will be created. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:42, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

As I said, a standard can allow variations, but it needs to explain what they are. for instance it could say: these words can be spelt with an 's' or a 'z' but choose and be consistent; or this dialect used this form for the genitive, and also grammatical gender; both must be used in this dialect form. That's fine; standardisation is just documentation and rules for acceptability. These can be complicated and include variants but the point is for them to be set down and accepted. I explain above why I think ME is unlikely to get such standardisation, but it is usage and purpose not variation that are your problem here. --JimKillock (talk) 13:20, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Some users from Chinese Wikipedia, and Chinese a Wikisource were concerned that this might cause Classical Chinese Wikisource to be created which in their words would “split the Chinese community” and some users even wanted people who support the idea of a Classical Chinese Wikisource to apologize to them for “causing irreversible psychological trauma for the Chinese Wikipedia Community” weather or not Classical Chinese Wikisource should be created is not up to me to judge but I believe this is a matter that needs to be addressed. Maybe ping some users who support this idea and some who oppose to see both sides. According to this suggested policy, it looks for me like Classical Chinese Wikisource would be approved. @Liuxinyu970226, what is your opinions? I know you oppose Classical Chinese Wikisource. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:02, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
  • The real @Hat600: pointed at s:zh:Wikisource:写字间#文言文維基文庫可能會被分割出來創立了，中文維基文庫中的文言文文章將何去何從？, that the "#This_is_not_about_Wikisource_(for_concerned_Chinese_Wikisource_users)" section above would really be fake, as this RFC really will hurt them:

“ 实际上我不担心真的文言文文章，大不了把zh移到lzh然后新建一个zh，我们搞公文和法律的圈地自萌嘛。我担心的是他们一定会要面对“红军不怕远征难，万水千山只等闲”是文言文还是现代汉语，“滚滚长江东逝水”是不是要和《三国演义》正文分属两个wiki，甲骨文金文到底是不是文言文，这种问题。一开始觉得是，过了几年换了一拨人又觉得不是了，又要把文章扔回zh来。古代英语过了那个年代就没人写了，用正字法分还是用年代分都分得开；而文言文不是。 ”

--Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:11, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

This sounds like something that needs reassurance. I don't think the Committee is going to allow something that a majority of Chinese users rejects. A policy needs flexibility and trust in the committee, but we can always add something to make this clear. --JimKillock (talk) 13:20, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I have therefore added a line: Where lines between language eras and types, through character sets or other issues, is difficult to determine, the needs of the modern language community must be paramount;

• • And JimKillock, don't you think that inputs from @Amire80, Antony D. Green, Maor X, Jon Harald Søby, Evertype, Sotiale, Vito Genovese, and Doc James: will also be needed, as a potential approval of this require 2/3 pro from langcom internally? Also, I wonder why someone would rather love to let me join an "(Edit conflict.)" game. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:24, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Of course, this is a decision for the Language Committee, so their feedback would be most welcome. (I was merely trying to get this into shape first, but I think now is a good time for them to take a look) --JimKillock (talk) 13:30, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I have copied the message Liuxinyu970226 sent to google translate which we all know is crappy so if someone would like to give a professional translation, you are welcome. Here is the comment:

In fact, I don’t worry about real classical Chinese articles, so if you move zh to lzh and then create a new zh, we are making an enclosure of official documents and laws. What I worry about is that they will have to face "The Red Army is not afraid of the difficulties of the expedition, thousands of waters and thousands of mountains just wait for leisure" is it classical Chinese or modern Chinese, and whether "Rolling Yangtze River East Passes Water" should belong to two wikis with the text of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Oracle Gold Whether the text is in classical Chinese or not, this kind of question. At first I thought it was, but after a few years, I changed a group of people and thought it was not. I had to throw the article back to zh again. No one wrote in ancient English after that era. It can be distinguished by orthography or age. Classical Chinese is not.

BTW, users who don’t speak Chinese would either copy it to google translate or not know what is written there at all so if the translation is bad keep in to account that they would have gotten the same bad translation. Again, I won’t make the decision but this is an important topic that must be discussed.

At the risk of repeating myself, I have added a line: Where lines between language eras and types, through character sets or other issues, is difficult to determine, the needs of the modern language community must be paramount; I would hope that resolves this problem. --JimKillock (talk) 14:25, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Also should texts in Old English and Middle English be kept in English Wikisource or each in a separate one? And I suggested to ping users and cause what you called an “edit war” because I believe it’s best to make a decision after seeing both sides of the argument. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 13:39, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

For those on enwikisource (ang, enm and eme), you have to ask their admins for their opinions: @BD2412, Beeswaxcandle, Beleg Tâl, BethNaught, Charles Matthews, Clockery, EncycloPetey, Hesperian, Hrishikes, and Inductiveload:@Ineuw, Jan.Kamenicek, Kathleen.wright5, Mahagaja, Mpaa, Samwilson, Spangineer, Tarmstro99, Xover, and Zyephyrus: (but as two their admins said against, and one said to avoid participating here, I don't see any possible how they would even "agree to withdraw those works on enwikisource, and allow them to have their own wikisource, plus re-open s:ang:.") Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:51, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

As far as I can see, the policy makes no change to the way that Wikisource is treated. I have simply copied the existing policy. How that is implemented is for the Language Committee. This policy would change the way other wikis are treated. --JimKillock (talk) 14:21, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, yeah I know but it’s still an important topic that needs to be debated. Some users might think that texts in Old English shouldn’t be stored together with texts in Modern English and though I don’t have a strong opinion in any side of this debate, I believe this is an opportunity to decide on this matter once and for all (at least until the next such RfC is posted😅). -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:28, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

This was not raised in your original proposal and has not been discussed until now. The language makes no attempt to make any change. It is therefore out of scope, and very dangerous to suddenly veer into those topics, when we have something that can be agreed and we can make progress with. Better to note that there is still an unresolved question, and come back to it later. --JimKillock (talk) 14:42, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, ok I understand. Thanks, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:44, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, wait do you think this Request for Comment will be closed with this question unresolved or do you expect it to be discussed after the policy is agreed upon? Thanks in advance, -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 14:59, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I think this process should stick to the question you asked: which was to Start allowing ancient languages. As to exactly where content should go within Wikisources, that is not about whether ancient languages are allowed or not. That is something that is probably best left to the Language Committee and the WS volunteers themselves, rather than trying to determine it through policy change. And if there is something that could be changed there, then that ought to be discussed in a separate process. --JimKillock (talk) 15:13, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock, OK, I see. Thank you very much! -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 15:14, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: Thanks for the ping. That's always very much appreciated. But…

…after spending about an hour and a half skimming through this monster page I still have no real idea what enWS is being asked to address. But to the degree it helps the discussion I can generally clarify that which content in what languages and language variants is acceptable on English Wikisource is an issue for the English Wikisource community to decide, and any proposal to modify the scope of English Wikisource should be raised at its Scriptorium. To the extent the meta community or langcom, or anybody else that is not the English Wikisource community, is actually proposing to decide the scope for English Wikisource in a RfC here on meta they are kindly invited to go jump off a cliff.

If someone wants to go start a dedicated Wikisource for one of the obscure ancient or regional language variants that are currently within scope for English Wikisource I wish them all kinds of success, but it will not affect the scope of English Wikisource except insofar that if they succeed in creating a sustainable project we might eventually decide to migrate all our relevant content there to avoid splitting effort. Or we might not. If someone has a specific proposal for a major language or variant that is currently within scope for English Wikisource then I will be happy to comment, but then mostly as a member of the Wikimedia movement and may either support or oppose based on whether it seems a good idea, whether the need is better accommodated in the existing project, and so forth.

If the need is something else then you will need to make the question more explicit, and most likely we will need to solicit input from the various relevant Wikisource communities. There is quite a bit of experience with the hosting of content in multiple languages on the Wikisourcen—including multiple types of ancient, regional, or variant languages—but it will have limited general applicability to e.g. a Wikipedia. Xover (talk) 16:10, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

@Xover: I've moved all the of prediscussion to an archive, so the proposal is at the top of the page. There are no proposed changes to Wikisource, and I am sorry this got brought up at the last moment. --JimKillock (talk) 18:36, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

• I believe that [Middle English] is a very notable [language] because it is the ancestor of [modern English] which is the [most widely spoken language in the world] if you include both [Native speakers] and [Second language speakers]. I reject this attempt to appease the haters of [Middle English Wikipedia], especially since [Old English Wikipedia] already exists and even has it's own subdomain (it's not in the incubator). Some people may say "but who cares that Middle English is the ancestor of a language widely spoken all around the world?" Now, I'm asking you this: who cares that [Latin] was traditionally the [lingua franca]? Now English is. And who cares what role [Ancient Greek] played in history? Who cares what languages were spoken by [Julius Caesar], [Aristotle], and [Plato]. Don't understand me wrong, I support both Latin and Ancient Greek WIkipeida, but I believe that we must judge only the quality and activity of the wikis and nothing else as those are the only things that can be messured objectively. Why is Gifnk the only one debating? Where are the other Middle English editors? @1234qwer1234qwer4, CanadianToast, JustinCB, Qmwne235, Gray Porpoise, Laʒamon Æft-iboren, Cbrown1023, Katxis, Varlaam, LittleWhole, S. Roelants, PolarWafflez, Vikipad, Sgman1991, The Hypnotizer, DTL1234, Warofdreams, Crochet.david.bot, MF-Warburg, Xbspiro, Kimberley-nia Bot, Artoria2e5, Whaales, AurelianusAmbrose, NASAPeepo, Nevergonnagiveyou, Alfred our king, Liuxinyu970226, Zarzagoa, DiuPater, GoodClover, Malhonen, Ursulageorges, and ChimNung:. Why are you letting this happen!? Why are not you defending Middle English Wikipedia!? Do you want all the hard work done by you & by others to be deleted like it was nothing!? Now is the time to act! EvilPita (talk) 14:39, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
  • I am very much in support of the proposal (with reassurance w.r.t. lzh/zh), but I do find this ping... a bit noisy. I do wonder what made me miss the first round of pings. --Artoria2e5 (talk) 14:55, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
    • @Artoria2e5, the proposal by JimKillock or the one by EvilPita? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 15:01, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
      • As Artoria2e5 mentions reassurance w.r.t. lzh/zh and there is no mention of that issue by "EvilPita" I think it is fairly clear the actual proposal as drafted is what is being referred to. --JimKillock (talk) 15:36, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
        • @JimKillock, yeah I agree with you but it was as a reply to EvilPita’s comment so who knows. That’s why I asked. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:11, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
• Just to make my position clear, I still oppose any weakening of the general ban of ancient languages in principle, though I would support criteria along these lines as the lesser evil, should the language committee cave in to the popular pressure. What these criteria can do is to distinguish projects that are at least minimally viable, though still practically useless (e.g. Latin, Ancient Greek), from those that are completely out of the question (e.g. Middle English). Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:11, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
  • I appreciate the candour :) It has to be said though, when it comes to what knowledge people wish to impart and receive and why, “practically useless” is a very telling phrase, as there will be people who think it applies to most minority content on Wikipedia of any kind you would like to mention. In short, I would appeal that people don’t be judgemental about the kind of knowledge production and consumption others wish to engage in and find value in. --JimKillock (talk) 15:22, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

    My position on usefulness was explained in the first round of comments above (which you just archived). There's nothing "judgmental" about it, just the simple fact that wikis in ancient languages (in all those cases I'm familiar with) lack a natural readership. As I said there, there's not a single person on earth for whom Ancient Greek would be their natural and preferred means of acquiring information, and who couldn't acquire that information more easily via another wiki in a different language. These projects may have potential readerships of language enthusiasts, who read them in order to practice the language itself, but providing linguistic training material is not what Wikipedia is for. The purpose of Wikipedia is to provide information about the real world, not to serve as linguistic playgrounds. No need to further debate this point – I have no ambition to pursuade you about it; it just happens to be my well-considered and firm opinion. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:00, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

    I don't think using an ancient language need necessarily mean that it is purely using for language practice; it can be used for specialised or more in depth information. But from a policy perspective those criticisms can be levelled at ConLangs, so I just don't see how it can be justified to knock one and not the other, if we are recommending a policy position for Wikimedia as a whole. --JimKillock (talk) 20:28, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

    @Future Perfect at Sunrise: I agree with your position as articulated in this comment. But let me play devil's advocate for a moment: the movement includes many types of projects that are markedly different in nature from the Wikipedias. Wikibooks and Wikiversity being two apposite examples. What if the proposal was actually a new type of project whose goal was to provide language learning resources, and some relevant ancient language had a viable interested community? All modern (currently spoken) languages that have a Wikipedia could plausibly be argued to able to support a parallel project for language learning. If that infrastructure was already in place I don't really see why an ancient language subdomain for that project would have to be a hard "no". This is obviously entirely hypothetical, and I am disinclined to support the proposal in the RfC as written, but I am open to the possibility that I might find myself supporting a given concrete proposal for an ancient language subdomain at some point. It sure makes more sense to me than hare-brained schemes like Abstract Wikipedia (or, powers preserve us, the Wikijournals). Xover (talk) 19:50, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

    As it goes, we are doing a little work of this nature on Latin Wikibooks. Not huge amounts but there are a couple of additions like this being made at present. --JimKillock (talk) 20:25, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

    • @JimKillock, may I add that it can be argued that writing articles in Ancient Greek isn’t more useful than writing articles in Kotava for example though Kotava Wikipedia exists. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 15:28, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
      • We should not be trying to decide for other people what is useful to them is all I mean. I am not looking for a long discussion of this tho – I am very much hoping we could be at the end of this process and ready for LangComm's response! --JimKillock (talk) 15:33, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
        • @JimKillock, that’s exactly what I have been trying to say for quite some time. In addition, I find it a bit hypocritical that they don’t allow ancient languages because they are supposedly “not useful” but still allow constructed language. I’m amazed that langcom that rejected Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Middle English 4 not even two weeks after it was initially proposed despite the majority of people in the discussion supporting it has so enthusiastically accepted Kotava of all constructed languages. Anyways, yeah, I agree with you. We shouldn’t decide for other people what is or is not useful for them. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 16:08, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
  • I would also like to address some of the points re @Future Perfect at Sunrise. While usefulness can be an important criterion, I believe that over-stressing this point can lead to some unfortunate conclusions, such as the fact that there exist plenty of languages still being spoken by a handful of people, all of whom are used to getting their information primarily in another language (for instance, although the Manchu Wikipedia has not been created, it has been verified as eligible, and I doubt there is a single Manchu speaker in the world who wouldn't find it much easier to look up any information they care for in a different language, e.g. in Chinese or English). Consequently, only Wikipedias in a handful of globally important languages, such as English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic etc., are really "useful" from a strict point of view. I believe that most of us would reject this conclusion, however, because cultural context can be important, and though we learn English for the purpose of communicating with as many people as possible, and despite the best efforts of Wikipedia to maintain a neutral point of view in all languages, it is completely unavoidable that different language-speaking communities will be immersed in different cultural assumptions in the very language they use; thus there can be a lot of value in creating a project in a language that is supposedly "useless", like Manchu, assuming that enough people are passionate enough to volunteer to maintain it. The same applies to classical languages like Latin and classical Greek, which are like auxiliary conlangs but which many people learn for reasons other than sheer linguistic interest, which to my mind makes them actually far more useful than the latter. For example, I and many other people I know cannot really speak or read or write modern Greek, but we can communicate reasonably well with people with whom we may not share another common language in writing in classical Greek. These are people whose viewpoints I may not otherwise be able to engage unless I were to learn, for instance, modern Greek, and this fact alone makes having a project in classical Greek immensely useful to me and to people I know. The same, of course, applies to Latin and classical Chinese (which is actually learned by Japanese and Korean scholars who may not know any of the modern Chinese dialects). I would tend to agree, however, that a language like Middle English doesn't really qualify on these lines, given that there are probably vanishingly few people who understand ME but not modern English. AristippusSer (talk) 22:10, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
    • I and I think most of those on the committee support disadvantaged languages to help support such languages. I would also deny that only a handful of globally important languages are useful; the Encyclopedia Britannica had 500,000 topics averaging 80 words a topic, and there's 25 Wikipedias that have more than 500,000 articles, and few articles are that terse. (en:w:Wikipedia:Size_comparisons cites the EB store as the same number of words grouped into 40,000 articles. List_of_Wikipedias gives us over 100 encyclopedias with that many articles, though many don't average 1000 word articles. And that's a full-size major printed encyclopedia; children's encyclopedias and one-volume desk encyclopedia are much terser and still valuable. There are many more languages with millions of speakers just waiting for Internet to saturate their part of the world to grow comparable encyclopedias.
    • But by that standard, it's not going to be a child's encyclopedia or a one-volume desk encyclopedia; you have better sources. It's not a communication platform; Facebook, Twitter, email all support Ancient Greek just fine, as should virtually all systems in modern use. Some of the justifications for an Ancient Greek Wikipedia don't seem to me like the constraints of an encyclopedia are going to be useful to you. Make a Beletra Almanako in Ancient Greek; that will let you communicate and produce unique texts in the language much more freely.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:17, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
      • It's not a question of "how many Wikipedias can be considered useful" that I raised; it is that certain objections having been raised against certain ancient languages, such as usefulness, are just as valid against languages like Manchu, which has however been verified as eligible simply because of the existence of a dozen or so native speakers (all of whom I strongly doubt have actively participated in the project); and that's to say nothing of the vast majority of conlangs. And saying that the language committee wishes to support the latter is a bit circular, don't you think so? It would not be a very compelling argument if we simply say that it is the taste of those who happen to be on the language committee that has the final say.

Again, I don't think it is very persuasive to say "but you have X options aside from Wikipedia to use for your language!", because the same argument can be raised against any language whatsoever; it simply pre-supposes that Wikipedia ought not to support a certain language. I am not saying that we'd like to use Wikipedia as a communicative platform; I am saying that the fact that some classical languages are used as a communicative medium between people not sharing a language means that there is potential for creating a collaborative encyclopedic work where I can read about things from a point of view I may not be familiar with. This is by no means mutually incompatible with communicating via email, Twitter or whatever, and the existence of the latter does not preclude the former; they are simply two entirely different use cases. And, like I said, we are not really "opening the flood-gates", so to speak, to anything like an avalanche of languages assuming we adopt some sensible restrictions like the ones currently being proposed, since I can hardly think of any language that qualifies along these lines that doesn't have a Wikipedia project already, besides classical Greek. AristippusSer (talk) 02:08, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

• • • • • All native languages get a pass on that requirement. Yes, if your language and culture get crushed to near extinction, we'll let you have a Wikipedia so that it can cling to life.
        • You're not listening to the argument. You should start a Wikipedia in a language because you feel there should be an encyclopedia in that language. You should not start a Wikipedia in a language because you want to create text in a language, or because you want to communicate with people with a different viewpoint. (For which Ancient Greek is a lousy choice, not remotely comparable to English or Esperanto in diversity of speakers, nor to Farsi or many other languages in distinctness of viewpoint.) Estonian reaches people who speak best in Estonian and lets them write articles about Estonian things. The English and any major Western Wikipedia have articles about all the Ancient Greek things, and there's nobody who speaks Ancient Greek better than a well-supported language.
        • It's hardly opening the flood-gates, but let's complain about the nine conlangs that have Wiki projects, far fewer than the number of ancient languages that have projects; I'm sure that will endear you to everyone else.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: The point raised is not to create text in a language, or … to communicate with people with a different viewpoint. Rather @AristippusSer: says: I am not saying that we'd like to use Wikipedia as a communicative platform; I am saying that the fact that some classical languages are used as a communicative medium between people not sharing a language means that there is potential for creating a collaborative encyclopedic work where I can read about things from a point of view I may not be familiar with and that different language-speaking communities will be immersed in different cultural assumptions in the very language they use leading in both cases to different kind of knowledge production. It is true that the audience is more limited and they may generally prefer to find the knowldge elsewhere, but it is not true that Latin Wikipedia is automatically a knowledge subset of English Wikipedia.

I do think the "universalism" of Wikipedia rather shades this out, as do the policies aiming at consistency, such as notability, and NPV, NOR etc; all this tends to create the illusion that there we are aiming at a single, ideal version of condensed knowledge. However, this changes quickly, depending on the sources of information available to you. If you have read a lot of Latin (horror, the original sources) then your perspective shifts and your ability and interest to write Wikipedia content changes.

Where it might matter most therefore is those areas where the language has made the most impact. There is for Latin for instance an incentive to document the vast array of literature and people who wrote it through the middle ages and renaissance; to produce more Church history and theology; to write of course about the Classical period and Empires that were contemporary to the Romans. These areas, Latin writers have more knowledge and interest, would be more likely to document certain things. It may be that some of this filters back into other Wikipedias, but in some cases it may just produce different content, for instance where EN pages are well developed. This kind of 'core interest' and 'audience and producer knowledge' probably applies to all Wikipedias, and is one of the reasons in general to encourage diversity where it is sustainable. --JimKillock (talk) 07:17, 7 September 2021 (UTC

• Thanks to @JimKillock for explaining my position; I believe the above is a very accurate representation of what I am trying to say. Essentially I find it a bit ironic to say "but you can find everything there is about ancient Greek on the English Wikipedia", while at the same time claiming to be in favor of linguistic diversity. In fact French Hellenists, to use an example I am familiar with, tend to come from a very different philosophical background compared to Anglo-Americans, and this will always come through in the way they write about things in an encyclopedic manner. Some of them are not good English speakers and would probably not feel comfortable writing an encyclopedia in English. I am saying that there can be a lot of value in a collaborative encyclopedic work created by ancient Greek writers from all countries and backgrounds regardless of whether they are comfortable writing in English, French or German or what have you, for the reasons Jim has summed up well.

Also, just to set the record straight, I have never once, as claimed above, "complained" about any of the conlang Wikipedia projects. I am merely saying that the rationale used to support them are the same as those for ancient Greek, and the arguments raised against ancient Greek often can be adapted for them as well, and thus it is unfair to reject ancient Greek out of hand when current policy does not do so for conlangs. To claim that this amounts to complaining about conlangs is a clear distortion of my position. AristippusSer (talk) 12:40, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I will admit that this is entering 'bikeshedding' territory, but I( have summarised the ConLang versus Ancient Language requirements in a table here: Appendix: ConLangs vs Ancient Languages comparision --JimKillock (talk) 18:20, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Requiring an ISO 639-3 code is no hurdle for an ancient language, but actually requires some of the things you listed as not required for a conlang, as well missing the concern that bad ancient language use will bring shame and scandal to WMF (cf. the Scots affair) whereas few care about bad conlang use.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:18, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

This is absolutely right, but the right mitigation is to require a large set of potential authors, editors and readers, which is what we have done (5. There must be evidence of a significant potential readership and evidence of a significant body of competent potential contributors; for instance at least thousands of people trained in writing the language, and availability of courses or training which aim at fluent compositional or oral usage).

I would have thought that risk of fake pages might well apply to conlangs (why not add a lot of Spanish or Latin to Lingua Franca Nova or Esperanto?) just as much as any other. It's surely at heart an issue of neglect and spam-like abuse, and not particular to ancient languages.

Scots of course is a modern language. The reason that was a problem is that a lot of people do not regard Scots as a separate language to English, and like to think it must be some kind of formal codification of a Scottish accent. Equally, plenty of people like to have a go at Esperanto (why do they bother, who on earth learns it (characters on Red Dwarf) what are they thinking, are they Freemasons, Socialists, let's put them in Gulags and worse) so I don't think you can count this kind of risk out for ConLangs entirely. --JimKillock (talk) 22:02, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

The point is that nobody really cares about whether the Kotava Wikipedia is in good Kotava except for the speakers of Kotava. Short of a complete mockery like the Siberian Wikipedia, it won't matter outside the Wikipedia. An Ancient Greek Wikipedia written poorly will get noticed by Hellenists outside Wikimedia and possibly show up in news sources. And so far, what I hear is that the Ancient Greek Incubator is not in good Ancient Greek.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:40, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

The simple answer has to be that it is Wikimedia's job to seek to manage and mitigate risk. Only when a risk is likely to be unmanageable should a project be declined. It is a language or project specific problem, and not something inherently insoluble in the class (we have plenty of examples of succesful management to the contrary).

The proposed mitigations are that 5. There must be evidence of a significant potential readership and evidence of a significant body of competent potential contributors; for instance at least thousands of people trained in writing the language, and availability of courses or training which aim at fluent compositional or oral usage; and that 7 The language must have a reasonable degree of contemporary usage as determined by discussion, which must extend beyond academic study of the language and also under 3. that it exists in a widely accepted standardised form; additionally there must be well-established methods of extension of the language to modern topic areas. These are all designed to reduce the risk of poor quality content that you speak of, to a much greater degree than for a ConLang, as the latter are generally easier to learn.

You will see in the archived discussion there is some mention of the sad case of the Ancient Greek wiki. It seems that many people blame its state on languishing in the incubator. I cannot say, but again this is something which would ought to be looked at for the language; the point of a policy surely is to look at the criteria in the round. Please do let me know if you think these mitigations need tightening; they were in part suggested by FutPerf with these problems in mind and seemed very helpful to me. --JimKillock (talk) 19:49, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I've placed this issue of language attack into issues table below, to document any outstanding or further issues identified, and how they are dealt with, or if the policy needs modification. --JimKillock (talk) 07:06, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

What conlang requirement have I missed btw? I've tried to summarise WM policy not ISO requirements so perhaps that is where I have erred? --JimKillock (talk) 22:02, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I found a requirement for a 'literature', which I have amended, and for the language to have been passed on for at least one generation, but that doesn't seem to be a requirement for mother tongue transmission, but in both cases I am just reading the website and there may be fuller conditions. --JimKillock (talk) 22:46, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

This is not about Latin or French, though I am curious where the Latin Wikipedia covers something that is not covered by the English Wikipedia. Latin is sui generis, still on the radio and in regular use in obscure cases, and has a Wikipedia.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:18, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

I think by "French Hellenists", AristippusSer means French people who he speaks with through the medium of Ancient Greek.

I've certainly made additions to la.wp that I have not added to en.wp. These range from nomenclature through to details about Latin authors. Using la.wp to centralise and create a repository of correct terminology on the vast range of topics Latin has been used for seems to be a significant motivation for some authors; that is important for a Latin using audience and I would say a core part of what any encyclopedia does. We are in the process of redubbing some German videos into Latin, and will probably alter the scripts somewhat as we do. Nobody intends doing these for English. We might extend these to do original video content if this works. I've also added Latin audio clips of Catullus poetry readings and one less formal video about a garden. But I'm just one person. Nevertheless I am digging into this question further elsewhere, because I think it is interesting. And even if it turns out the examples are not as big as I imagine, we can ask the question, what shoudl latin do better, and then develop that content.

Ancient Greek is not in such a hugely different situation to Latin. There is a smaller but very dedicated community around it, and a large group of competent readers. Both Latin and Greek are experiencing something of a growth of interest, in large part due to the easy availability of the original materials post Google Books, and the general ease of contact that the Internet has brought.

Also, don't forget that all of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek are banned from getting new Wiki projects. As others have commented, Wikibooks and Wikiversity might actually be more flexible for ancient languages, but the policy is currently a hard 'no'. --JimKillock (talk) 22:02, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Greek is in a hugely different situation to Latin. I can't check Classical Chinese and Sanskrit, but it's not that hard for me to compare Latin and Ancient Greek. https://klinai.hypotheses.org/1772 mentions seven journals that accept articles in Latin, with zero mentioned in Greek. A century ago, introductions to books in Ancient Greek (or Latin) were often written in Latin, and I've ran across 20th century mathematical dissertations written in Latin. More recently, w:en:Contemporary Latin offers a number of examples of current Latin use. Compare w:en:Ancient_Greek#Modern_real-world_usage. They're not remotely in the same league.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:40, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Of course Ancient Greek is less developed than Latin, and has been less utilised. But there are also parallels, in that there is sustained interest, many Latinists would graduate to Greek study; many Universities long required both for University entrance; Gymnasia or Grammar schools would expect to teach you both; informal production is frequent for both; poets would often write in both; Christian liturgical study at a high level requires both, across many denominations, as a matter of practicality; all this contributes to a continued level of interest in these two languages that is well beyond most others, at least in Europe. How we class the similarities or difference a bit of a sideshow tho, the point is merely that it in my view the similarities are enough to suggest that Ancient Greek could have a comparable if lower level of activity and knowledge production to Latin. --JimKillock (talk) 19:58, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

There's a continued level of interest in many languages. But the recent production of text in Ancient Greek seems more akin to the recent production of "E-sír kusv-za-gìn-g-á", that is Blue Suede Shoes in Sumerian, then the actual news reporting and original writing that is going on in Latin. I'm listening right now to a podcast in Latin, QUOMODO DICITUR; where is that for Ancient Greek? I think the distinction between the two is very relevant, that Latin is successful because it is used to produce new texts, and Ancient Greek won't be because it isn't. I might go so far as to say that any Western (ancient?) language that didn't grab a Wikipedia before this policy was enacted doesn't have what it takes to have a Wikipedia; it's not like the speakers didn't have the same Internet access that Latin and Gothic speakers did.--Prosfilaes (talk) 05:30, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Moving the question of productivity of Greek to the Talk page.

I think the pragmatic reasons for adjusting the policy are not precisely because Greek naturally passes and will automatically proceed to a Wiki. They are that

(1) Greek and potentially other ancient languages have never been given a chance for a fair assessment as to whether they can qualify, and currently never will;

(2) Other Ancient languages cannot expand their wikis even if they could gain from them, Wikibooks and Wikiversity could work well as they are flexible platforms, so continue to be disadvantaged;

(3) The current policy lacks consistency between different language types, feels unfair, and contains the implication that Wikimedia is supporting a number of successful projects by mistake, which it would rather go away.

Even if no other ancient language is ever added to the cohort, a policy which accepts the place of the current ones for objective reasons would be a good step forward.

(That said we will never get this precisely right; the criteria designed here would not permit Gothic or Anglo Saxon to expand their presence; only Latin and Sanskrit would have a clear path for consideration. I am not sure where Church Slavonic stands but I doubt it has significant productivity and I know nothing of its language modernisation techniques, but of course I could be wrong.) --JimKillock (talk) 07:29, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment If this proposal passed, it's worth considering to place a new project in another project: as lzh.wiktionary is actually at lzh:維基大典:維基爾雅. lzh.wikipedia uses "pending changes", not because of vandalism, but because people usually write poor Classical Chinese —— this definitely needs some volunteers, which small projects can't afford. Crowley666 (talk) 09:35, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
• Comment RFC is not vote, so vote-counting appears meaningless to me. C933103 (talk) 03:08, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
• Comment since there’s all the mess with the archived discussions, does anyone know if all the discussions will be merged into a single page after the discussions are over? Thanks in advance.-Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 12:39, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Plus with all the appendixes it’s truly a mess. No offense though. -Gifnk dlm 2020 (talk) 18:58, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

• Comment It is becoming clear to me in the discussion above and on the LangCom email list that the way that this gets resolved is to get back to brass tacks over whether and how Ancient Language wikis deliver Wikimedia and Wikipedia's mission. I have adjusted the 'rationale' to reflect this, but there is also a lack of information about whether the existing projects do this. I am developing a proposal to assess this as a next step - this would not be quick, but I think it is the right thing to do, if we are going to bring this to a logical and coherent outcome.

On another note, I still cannot find the rationale behind the original decision to exclude ancient languages. I have documented what I know below and on the relevant appendix. --JimKillock (talk) 06:50, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock: I looked for that information fairly soon after the event, when I was writing The World and Wikipedia. My conclusion (I'd be happy to be told I was wrong!) is that there was no rationale and originally no principle involved: the Language Subcommittee, as it was then, was swamped with requests and lacked guidelines; a set of guidelines was drafted and this provision was in them; there was no sign that this provision was discussed. Andrew Dalby (talk) 13:04, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Archived Discussion and details of support and opposition

The original proposal was to "Start allowing ancient languages", and to consider each application on its merits. Discussion on the qualifications for a successful project proceeded later.

Archived discussion

Support and opposition

Support	Oppose	Other
PastelKos, Andrew Dalby, Giorno2, Pere prlpz, A. Mahoney, Cuzkatzimhut, Heracletus , Sigur, Zoozaz1, 扎姆, Anaxicrates, Haoreima, A. Mangang, Robbinorion, Jackattack1597, Sailor Ceres, Whycantusernamesbe21, Sabon Harshe, Iohanen, Sahaib3005, C933103, Oofas , Vikipad, EvilPita, AnotherEditor144, Kitabc12345, Pavlov2, JimKillock, Mmh, Wolverène	Prosfilaes, ——SerialNumber, Fut.Perf., 223.104.228.36, * Pppery *, GerardM, Minorax, Janwo, RsChen7754, Jusjih, SHB2000, Σανμοσα, DreamerBlue, 乌拉跨氪	Neutral towards initial proposal: Leaderboard
Partial support: Steinbach (formerly Caesarion)	-	Abstained: Liuxinyu970226
Weak support: VIGNERON	-	-
Total in support: 32	Total opposed: 14	Total other: 2

Note that some sock-votting was alleged or possible, for both supporting and opposing parties, in that proposal. No SRCU actions were taken.

Summary of discussion of second proposal

A second version of this proposal was drafted, edited and tightened, (see discussion on the Archive Page) to either apply a test to ensure the problem could not arise, or to mitigate against each of the criticisms listed above. The process added criteria about external standardisation and established means of extending the language into areas of modern life, applying the principle that users should not have to engage in original research or be largely responsible for language development. The second version of the proposal as edited in the archived discussion is presented above.

Support for second proposal

This summarises the views now on the archive page and below

Support and opposition

Support	Oppose	Other
User:JimKillock, User:C933103, User:Gifnk dlm 2020, User:Pere prlpz, User:Amahoney, User:Andrew Dalby, User:Haoreima, User:Steinbach, User:Artoria2e5 (wanted reassurance about Classical Chinese), User:AristippusSer	User:Future Perfect at Sunrise (Sympathetic to draft, but opposed in principle, but willing to accept the compromise as least bad alternative), User:Xover (disinclined to support proposal as drafted); User:Prosfilaes (assumed); User:EvilPita (proposal would not allow Middle English); User:Pppery	Abstained: Liuxinyu970226
Total in favour: 10	Total against: 5	Total other: 1

Committee views expressed on list

Initial expressions of support and opposition

Support	Oppose	Other
	User:GerardM	Allow official but ancient
Total in favour: 0	Total against: 1	Total other: 1

Feedback requested on language study

I would like some help framing the questions that could be answered on the Current Ancient language assessment page, from both proponents and skeptics of this proposal. The idea is to get a better evidence base about the performance of the Ancient Language wikis, in delivering Wikimedia's mission and Wikipedia's purpose statement, which could bring this discussion to a more satisfactory and evidence-based conclusion.

I have suggested this to the Language Committee and noted what other external help would be needed to do this. --JimKillock (talk) 20:02, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Feedback requested on Developing Ancient Language support

A big theme in the conversations so far has been criticism of the existing language projects and skepticism of their ability to deliver the mission. Notwithstanding any language study, another policy response to this should be to develop appropriate support to ensure that the ALWs progress and meet the mission.

This kind of work is within the Language Committee's scope, as they are tasked with the "development and maintenance of … support and coordination for cross-language projects, helping smaller communities share resources and maximize their results."

Thus feedback from the Committee and others on this would be helpful at Developing Ancient Language support. --JimKillock (talk) 20:45, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

No idea that this respond by GerardM can help you or not? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:18, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for that link, @Liuxinyu970226:. I could add to one of @Ilario:'s examples that I can see in that post: it's a detail maybe important enough in its way. The identity of Benedict XVI's successor was announced in Latin (that being the primary official language of the Vatican) and therefore it was broadcast live, worldwide, in Latin. Then there was a significant pause in the broadcast commentary while the commentators checked their lists and worked out who had been chosen -- but people who knew Latin, worldwide, knew already. Andrew Dalby (talk) 13:14, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Targeted discussion: audience development and producing specialist content

Going back through the discussions, two concerns that were brought up a number of times related to audience development and producing specialist or deeper content to help meeting Wikipedia's mission of producing "a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge". In the negative, this was framed as an objection in principle on the grounds that these were not achievable goals for an ALW, especially regarding Wikipedias. I have added this to the outstanding issues table below.

I think there are good mitigations available to ensure both of these take place. The common feature is that both require the Wiki projects to identify and develop areas of specialist content that provide a reason to use that Wiki over and above other Wikis, because it is either more comprehensive or better written. Like all Wiki projects, this would be best done through support programmes and collaborative development, but a simple and easy step would be to ensure that the Wiki projects have a plan to meet these goals early, rather than for instance developing many but shallow articles, in the case of a Wikipedia project. Feedback appreciated. --JimKillock (talk) 13:09, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I have added this into the proposal above as

8. For a Wikipedia project, the proposal must show how it intends to develop specialised or deeper content and in which areas, in order to help meet Wikipedia's goal of being a "comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge". These should relate to those areas where the larget language can show a particularly high level of productivity, or has been the dominant or exclusive medium for the original area of activity to be documented. There should also be a policy to liase with other relevant wikis to ensure that some of this knowledge flows back into other Wikipedia projects as is appropriate. and

9 As Wikipedia's mission is to "benefit readers" by "providing an encyclopedia" and Wikimedia's mission is to "disseminate [educational material] effectively", the Wiki project should have a policy in place that shows what avenues it intends to use to promote itself and develop its readership, for instance through schools, universities or religious communities that have knowledge of the language.. --JimKillock (talk) 13:18, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Summary of discussion

There were more comments in favour than against, but points were raised about ensuring the WM mission is met, project sustainability and linguistic accuracy by people against the RfC that are important and need to be addressed if this is to be a credible change. There were specific concerns raised about Classical Chinese.

Those in favour pointed to the success of the Latin project and to a degree Sanskrit to show that these could be successful. There was much discussion of the suitability of Middle English, and on balance the discussion showed that it would be hard to justify, given the lack of standardisation, community knowledge and users. Ancient Greek was brought up as a particular example of an excluded language that has active language production, many competent speakers and writers, and a large number of potential readers. Attention was drawn to a deterioration of Ancient Greek content on the test wiki over time. Some felt that it would have been much more successful than it has been if it had been granted a subdomain and reached public attention. Some discussion advocated that only success in the incubator should be used as evidence of potential sustainability, largely as a way of allowing less used ancient languages a chance of success. Other discussion focused on the similarities between use of ConLangs and Ancient Languages, in particular that in certain cases they both have active users and active production and could therefore be capable of sustaining Wiki projects. Differences include that ancient languages can have many more readers than artificial languages, and many more competent writers, and drawn on a greater body of content, but entry into these languages is typically harder.

Opponents' arguments included that dead languages lack a natural audience, meaning that they would not contribute to WM's mission, in that ALW's do "not contribute to making human knowledge any more widely accessible" because of the lack of a natural audience. Building on this theme, others stated that "An online encyclopedia is not a language classroom" meaning that Wikipedia projects are not provided as a means of either learning to write, or to read. Others stated that editors would be liable to poor language reproduction in the absence of native speakers and an understanding of idiom. Arguments for allowing more languages for reasons of expansionism were roundly dismissed. Some objected on the basis that ancient languages do not have the expressive ability for new concepts. Others opposed on the basis that ancient languages were on the verge of extinction and lack the ability to sustain projects. There was objection to the idea that unique content might be found on Ancient Language Wikis (ALWs) especially Wikipedias. There were objections made to the idea that ALWs had met with any reasonable level of success.

Reponse from LangCom requested

The discussion on the substantive proposal seems to have ended, we are no longer discussing additions or subtractions to the text. AIUI the proposal needs to be considered by LangCom, as they “own” the language policy and need to change it, or not. I have emailed them to ask for a response. If anyone feels this is incorrect please let me know. --JimKillock (talk) 11:37, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

The Language Committee appears to be unmoved by the result produced by the RFC. Given they are implementer of existing rule, that they expect to follow rules that are already made, this might not be surprising. SO what's next? C933103 (talk) 09:19, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Let us see what they say and why. I feel the proposal here is pretty clear and reduces any dangers to a minimum. Although there has been plenty of debate relating to specific language proposals I see no evidence that LangCom have really had a chance to think whether there may be a meaningful compromise to be had regarding their ban on new Ancient Language wikis. And if we get turned down, and we can see their reasons set out, then we will be a lot further forward. --JimKillock (talk) 12:33, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Here the zhwikisource also announced why they don't accept this RFC: s:zh:Special:Diff/2073831. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:32, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@JimKillock: Response from Gerard: [2], seems that this RFC would unlikely to be approved, unless at least 2 other members against it. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 09:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Obviously a decline or refusal would be disappointing, but the more we as a community can understand the reasons LangCom has for this, the better. I am struggling to find the previous RFCs, in order to see any reasoning give regarding those also, any help with that would be appreciated. --JimKillock (talk) 11:07, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

If you are referring to what "Phake Nick" on the langcom list said, I think he or she was talking specifically about this RFC only as having been derailed. - @Liuxinyu: I find your "message" to be very odd. Gerard has given a reaction there, I have also already seen a reaction from Janwo on Talk:Langcom, but there hasn't been a real discussion in Langcom yet. I think throwing out phrases like "oh I read X on langcom's list, your idea is dead unless you find 2 people who vote against him!!" is not helpful. --MF-W 12:25, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Another response from Amir [3], so far also an against comment, and doubt on "the success of Latin". --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 08:56, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

These days, people mention "Latin" and "success" in the same sentence. Vicipaedia is getting somewhere :) Andrew Dalby (talk) 12:49, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Appendices