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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Votic

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submitted verification final decision

This language has been verified as eligible.
The language is eligible for a project, which means that the subdomain can be created once there is an active community and a localized interface, as described in the language proposal policy. You can discuss the creation of this language project on this page.

Once the criteria are met, the language committee can proceed with the approval and will verify the test project content with a reliable neutral source, such as a professor or expert.

If you think the criteria are met, but the project is still waiting for approval, feel free to notify the committee and ask them to consider its approval.

A committee member provided the following comment:

The language is eligible; for the approval it will be necessary to prove that the content on Incubator is written in true Votic, of course. --MF-W 21:51, 31 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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.
  • The community needs to complete required MediaWiki interface translations in that language (about localization, translatewiki, check completion).
  • The community needs to discuss and complete the settings table below:
What Value Example / Explanation
Proposal
Language code vot (SIL, Glottolog) A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ...
Language name Votic Language name in English
Language name Vaďďa Language name in your language. This will appear in the language list on Special:Preferences, in the interwiki sidebar on other wikis, ...
Language Wikidata item Q32858 - item has currently the following values:
 Item about the language at Wikidata. It would normally include the Wikimedia language code, name of the language, etc. Please complete at Wikidata if needed.
Directionality LTR Is the language written from left to right (LTR) or from right to left (RTL)?
Links Links to previous requests, or references to external websites or documents.
Site URL vot.wikipedia.org langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
Project name Vikipedia "Wikipedia" in your language
Project namespace Vikipedia usually the same as the project name
Project talk namespace Juttu Vikipediaz "Wikipedia talk" (the discussion namespace of the project namespace)
Enable uploads yes Default is "no". Preferably, files should be uploaded to Commons.
If you want, you can enable local file uploading, either by any user ("yes") or by administrators only ("admin").
Notes: (1) This setting can be changed afterwards. The setting can only be "yes" or "admin" at approval if the test creates an Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) first. (2) Files on Commons can be used on all Wikis. (3) Uploading fair-use images is not allowed on Commons (more info). (4) Localisation to your language may be insufficient on Commons.
Optional settings
Project logo [[:]] This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation).
Default project timezone Moscow Time Zone "Continent/City", e.g. "Europe/Brussels" or "America/Mexico City" (see list of valid timezones)
Additional namespaces For example, a Wikisource would need "Page", "Page talk", "Index", "Index talk", "Author", "Author talk".
Additional settings Anything else that should be set
Once settings are finalized, a committee member will submit a Phabricator task requesting creation of the wiki. (This will include everything automatically, except the additional namespaces/settings.) After the task is created, it should be linked to in a comment under "final decision" above.
I see, that it can be too hard to make a good Wikipedia on Votic, because the population, which know Votic, is too little (about 1000 people in common), but I request to give it a chanse, because this test-Wikipedia has some timely active contributers 2Q & Чернявский_Виталий, also some Wikipedians know Votic, the statistics sais, that there are now about 135 articles, and it's growing up in it's development (statistics is here), moreover, 500 most-used messages have been translated into Votic. Thank you very much for your help in the creation (and for your votes)!--Andrijko Z. 14:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments in favour

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Commentary

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Hello! My name is Victoria (nicknamed as Päivüd; it means "sun" in Votic), I'm from St. Petersburg (Russia). Several years ago I found out that most of my ancestors was ethnic Votians, and now I come here to help for this important initiative. I'm very glad that a lot of people support this opening. Also I understand people who oppose it: of course, we need sources of knowledge which read and supplement a big number of speakers.
Personally I'm ready to improve this project, although I only actively learn this language and I can't say for sure that I'm a native speaker. Moreover, some persons may say that Votic is spoken by only 30 (or even fewer) elderly people and this project shouldn't exist. Now Votic (and many more languages of Russia and all over the world) is under invisible pressure, when the TV, publishing and education in mother tongues is abandoned, is quite long period for people to start forgetting about who are they and what they should do in this world. But time is changing. And now it's time to change this terrible situation.
I propose to local adminship to give it just a little chance, despite all the existing mistrust. By the way, I want to remind that Veps Wikipedia was opened too, although this language has similar problems. All thanks for attention, excuse me if I don't understand something. Best regards, Päivüd (talk) 11:13, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Arguments against

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Other discussion

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I started working on this Votian wikipedia project, I also did the translations of the system messages. I undertook this project in the hope that it would unite the community of Votian speakers and those with an interest in the language.

But my experience with the project showed me that this is unworkable. If you look at the existing articles on the incubator, the vast majority of them were started by me. Yes, there have been other contributors, but they pointedly refused to start new articles or expand existing ones - instead, a "war" broke out, each contributor changing existing text only to reflect their preferred orthography or their preferred dialect; short form, instead of contributing towards the growth of the project, they were picking nits. A rough consensus eventually did form as far as orthography goes, but the dialect-warfare continued; I suggested that ALL dialects be used (since they are all very close to each other), instead of attempting to standardise on one, but this went ignored.

So, I gave up. I'd still love to see a blossoming, growing Wikipedia in Votian, but I don't think this is going to happen - there are far too few of us to keep it going, none of the contributors are native speakers (though perhaps unsurprising, since the VAST majority of native speakers are over 60 years old now).

Conclusion: I'm not going to vote in favour, for reasons listed above. But I'm also not going to vote AGAINST it, either, in the hopes that it may yet take off. But I will remain on the sidelines until then: when the number of articles has doubled (that is, other contributors have started new articles to grow the encyclopedia), then I will eagerly rejoin the effort. But I see no reason that I should write every article, and indeed, that wouldn't even be acceptable by Wikipedia standards as I understand it... 2Q 23:58, 12 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have the same three questions as I had for the Livonian request: --Millosh 08:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Who would write those projects? --Millosh 08:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  2. What is the purpose of those projects? --Millosh 08:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  3. What do you think about starting Wikisource editions instead of Wikipedia? That would be wiser action if the language conservation is the main goal. --Millosh 08:58, 15 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

1 - Going by existing history of article creation? Me. Except I'm not going to, for reasons I explained in my earlier paragraph. 2 - Well, the purpose of the project was the same as for any other language - to have information available online in Votian. 3 - Wikisources is completely wrong for Votian: nothing has been ever published in the language apart from a dictionary except for Vanka Zhukov by Chekhov - the language doesn't even have an accepted standardised orthography! (And this is the root of the problems I described in my long paragraph above. 2Q 11:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Dispute for letters better to write - "tš" or "c" is not a "root of the problems". Moreover, standardised orthography is accepted to fact - "c" instead of "tš". Do you know it?--Nazzi (talk) 16:28, 11 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Of course, people who are able to write in Votic. This wiki have users like Tamara Ustinova, Чернявский Виталий, Mehmet2, Antantis73 and me. I think it's enough for support the encyclopedia in a moribund language. I know that there are many Wikipedies in "thriving" languages, which have no contributors at all... so, we have more advantages in this regard.
  2. Interesting question. It has been long time policy of Wikipedia to accept and support projects like this. And purpose is to have information available online in Votic. You may think that it's meaningless, but some people (see above) don't think so.
  3. It's a project were people making an original contribution. Now we have many good and relatively large articles. Not micro-stubs like "Russia is a country", "bear is an animal" or "comamile is a flower" (although we have and this pages too... but 20-30, no more). Moreover, Votic Wikipedia has near 250 articles; we almost translated 500 most-used messages. So, is it really wiser? No, it isn't. But you may/can start the Votic Wikisource, if you want, but that has absolutely nothing to do with Votic Wikipedia.
I also would like to say that 7 years ago began to be published the "Maaväci"-newspaper, written in Votic and Russian. Some schoolchildren living in Krakolie Village are studying Votic at the local school. Some folklore-collectives perform traditional Votic music. It's some more reasons that don't allow to say that Votic Wikipedia should be turned into Wikisource.
Thank you.--Päivüd (talk) 09:47, 7 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Pal'l'u õli cirjotõttu vad'd'a ceelez 60-70 voosiz, Paul Ariste cirjotti. Vadja muistendeid, Vadja pajatusi, Vadja mõistatusi, Vadja vanasõnad, Vadja keele lugemik, Vadjalane kätkist kalmuni...Mehmet2 (talk) 16:31, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Living first language speakers

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There isn't much of if any up-to-date evidence of living people whose first language is Votic. Ethnologue considers Votic near extinct. 193.40.10.180 16:42, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No offence, it's just important to point this out as there's a requisite of a sufficient number of living native speakers. According to field research data from 1998 there were 30–40 more or less native speakers [1]. As they were old people, it's probably less by now. The user marked as native speaker hasn't really confirmed having Votic as his first language and contrarily states none of the contributors are native speakers. 193.40.10.181 14:23, 13 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So why do we have for example Old English Wikipedia? --RgC 22:14, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This census data includes second language speakers. 193.40.10.180 14:53, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Does it matter who is going to edit and read: native speakers or second language ones?--U.Steele (talk) 10:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To one who tried to remove this part of the discussion about living first language speakers as "meaningless/stupid": I repeat, this is brought up to discuss the project eligibility in accordance with Language proposal policy. --88.196.241.249 07:12, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well I have to say, I'm happily surprised. When I first started to work on this project, I literally was alone here, but I kept working in the hopes that others would turn up and contribute. For a long time, there was nobody, but I kept putting hours and hours into this, hoping, because for whatever reason, I care about this language. And then people started to show up... and instead of asking me anything, it was more confrontational than constructive. I tried to reach out, but to no avail. So that got frustrating, and I left. On a whim I came back today to see if anything's happened... and it has! I see that there are people contributing, and things are actually being done... and that genuinely makes me happy, regardless of what anyone might think of me here. I'm glad to see things are going positively. :)

Also, for the record - since I've seen discussion over certain words I used here and there: none of those words came out of my imagination; "Helsengi", "lentomaašin" etc. all came straight from Dmitri Tsvetkov.

I wish you all the best success with this project! 2Q (talk) 04:07, 17 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dear 2Q! While 'Helsengi' can be found in the dictionary by Tsevtkov, eg 'sluužebnoi' apparently cannot, which fact perchance cast some doubt on the validity of your other conjectures. As for me I never liked any confrontations. 83.245.245.137 18:03, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • And moreover I checked JTsv, while there is lento and mašin (with short! a), there was no lentomaašin at all. Perchance it was, Tsvetkov wrote it elsewhere. 14:25, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Where are most of the pages? --84.246.14.158 21:27, 28 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Localisation update

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