Talk:Language committee/2007

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in 2007, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion.

Predating reform

Latest comment: 17 years ago9 comments7 people in discussion

Action required

There is a war going on at Proposals for closing projects/Close Siberian wikipedia. There are lots of unwanted way of discussions and voting hapening. Since it is a language issue, I think it is a good idea, that one of you guys start moderation there. --Dbl2010 18:09, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

A moderator needs to have an official status, which we do not have at this stage. Besides, I can hardly see what a moderator can achieve in a flame war. What we need is policies that will make flame-wars useless from the very start, by stating which is which. Until we miss that, we will have flame wars, and nothing will help apart from ignoring them altoghether. Experience shows that whatever the result of the ongoing discussion, nothing will happen, so it's pointless to care about it. Let them waste their time, since they have time to waste ;) --Bèrto 'd Sèra 14:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Lack of diversity?

It seems that all committee members are European (maybe one is from the Americas, but I don't believe so). Considering that Europe has less linguistic diversity than any other continent besides Antarctica (although if you weight it by number of speakers, it comes in ahead of the Americas and Australia), and the smallest population of any continent excepting Australia and Antarctica (or at least I think so -- I may be incorrect), I think there should be members from other contents, preferrably Asia and Africa (although the latter is relatively unlikely unless you can get Mark Dingemanse to join). --Node ue 13:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Node ue-san. Yes, I would like to see more diversity in the sub-committee. It does not seem that there are representatives who are from non-Western culture or whose first language is written in non-Latin scripts. I think we should reach out more widely to attract diversified participants. We have embassies and translators and why don’t we ask for their help?--Californiacondor 18:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I would like to point the subcommittee you two are discussing on their talk is one of more diversified one among Wikimedia committee; there is no overwrapping of their mother tongue (and none of them are native English speaker as far as I know), some not so major language speakers like Turkish or Norwegen involved, yadda yadda. As for translators, I have no idea what kind of help you expected. All Foundation official documents are in English and only, so people who need always translation have limitation to be involved into this layer in my opinion. --Aphaia 03:17, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Diversity is always more than welcome. The only request is for candidates not to be "political", that is, we'd want people to join in based on competence on the issue, and not based on their being "just not europeans". Of course we'll need candidates to have a minimal fluency in english, since this is the official language at WMF. Apart from that candidates are welcome to step in at any time. Since we haven't reached an official status yet, you are welcome to introduce yourself to members of the Committee, while we wait to achieve a more organized work-style. BTW, funnily it's true, no native english speakers among us. But I'd certainly welcome the presence of Africa and Asia in our set. Most new languages are going to come from there and some insight would really help. Only pls do send in candidates who are not biased towards one side or another. We need the job to remain on strictly tech basis. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 14:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The idea for the specification

I just made a document Wikimedia projects are not for nation-building. --Millosh 14:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

The assertion that "languages and ethnical and political problems are two different things" may well be a subject for general discussion. Yet, no matter how partial and restrictive this interpretation may be, this is the only way in which we will address the subject in the Committee. Within WMF, a language is nothing but an information carrier, so its goal is to deliver information, not to influence anyone towards a political choice or another. One can say that the very existence of a wiki in a given language IS an influence, and that is undeniably true. Nonetheless, this influence can only be built in conformity to what general WMF policies are. Care is currently taken to avoid such conflicts from the very start. Hopefully we will come out with a decent solution. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 15:03, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia normative Belarusian

Dear New Languages Committee members,

I am concerned, as a member of the working group of said wikipedia, and one of the supporters of the said request [1], about its status. The bunch of wikipedias got approved and created recently, but not ours. We didn't receive any official information from your Committee, too.

Could we possibly be informed, please, what is the situation, what are the problems with our request, if any, what can we do to remedy them?

Of course, we are all aware, that there exists the be.wikipedia.org, which formally works in Belarusian language. However, it is exactly the actually enforced way of work, let's politely call it "certain bias towards promoting the use of alternative orthography", which is enforced by the actual "ruling group" and their friends, since the very creation of the be:wiki in 2004, which finally prompted making the request for the creation of the wikipedia in pre-determined normative Belarusian language.

The differences between the versions of the language are not "only in the orthography". The orthographical differences are just the most visible part of them.

The members of the working group moving the request believe thay have the right to work on Wikipedia in their (native) Belarusian language, without being hampered by the artificially created and politically motivated" "need to co-exist" with the alternative versions of the language.

However, the working group proposing the request has no wish to "oust" those people from be:wiki, or to "close the offending version", in a word, we do not need any "fight" with those people, as far as our right to use the normative Belarusian language, etc. etc. is not contended.

As far as we know, the "ruling group" of the be:wiki is planning to switch the be:wiki to the completely alternative version of the language after the hypothetical approval of this here request, still retaining the name "Belarusian" for it.

The incubator wikipedia proving the concept and feasibility of the request: [2] -- started its work ca. August 6, 2006, and has ~2000 articles now.

Could the making of resolution of our request be possibly speeded up a bit, please?

Thank you. Yury Tarasievich 09:06, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

About the reform

Latest comment: 17 years ago29 comments13 people in discussion

The eeform is the implementation of the first Language proposal policy on 11 November 2006 and the retroactive closure of all requests that were not implemented by this date.

Language proposal policy

Special project committee, Do you support the new Meta:Language proposal policy?--Hillgentleman 03:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

We are a bit more focused on real work capability. That is we will require a project to show real partecipation based on what can be achieved in the incubator. As you certainly understand, languages will NEVER be freed from politics. Any nation uses a language as an identity carrier, which means that flame wars among nationalists are simply unavoidable unless we reach a formal definition of what is to be admitted and what is not, and what is to be called what. Not that this will be a Paradise, but at least we'll move the discussion from a flame war generating on a case-by-case basis. Once we have a policy it will be a more general (and hopefully neutral) discussion about rules. We have a number of problems, among the others:

identifying reliable external sources (ISO, ethnologue, etc) and solving incongruencies among them
identifying the minimal requirements in actual work done (how many users\pages, how complex, how well-done, etc)
stating how to translate the interface
identifying an automated creation procedure.

All this is undergoing work and will be subject to discussion, as we do not feel we are Gods and we will certainly make mistakes. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 14:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Transparency

The Language committee wiki has a section on its home page called "Transparency" which claims "The whole set of activities of the Language Subcommittee is public". Considering the wiki is private and account creation is disabled there, you might want to revise the statement. Also, please don't blank useful pages on meta just because there's a private copy of them elsewhere. Angela 09:14, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

(Note that I'm speaking for myself, not for the subcommittee.) Transparency doesn't necessarily mean that anyone can edit. The Wikimedia Foundation strives for transparency, but that doesn't mean anyone can edit the budget reports on the closed Foundation wiki. Similarly, why would we invite edits to archived emails? I'm fine with mirroring pages that we welcome edits to (such as the draft documentation), but there's no reason to put every page on Meta when they can be easily accessed on the subcommittee wiki. —{admin} Pathoschild 20:47, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree on that transparency doesn't necessarily mean that anyone can edit. However that not everyone can give a look is in my humble opinion not fully transparent. Committees are excepted to pursue transparency, but not all items we deal with may not be public? And if a committee keep something in a closed wiki, "all in public" sounds a bit boastfull.

As for foundation wiki, nothing is hidden. On langcom wiki, as well other committee wikis, if you are not a member, then you get "You must log in to view other pages." Pathoschild, you may have forgetten all is hidden for us non-members? Perhaps that is why for me your argument sounds rather week and pointless. --Aphaia 21:35, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out; I did not try to view other pages while logged out, so I assumed it could be viewed publicly. I suppose the simplest solution would be to mirror page on Meta, then. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Or make the wiki openly viewable. Is there any reason it is has to be made private in this way? Angela 08:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if there is a reason or it is just opened so, but because this privacy was creating a conflict with subcoms approved 'scope action', it has been requested to be turned on to public, and now it is open. Currently it is editable too... --Dbl2010 05:50, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Saying "requsted", hence Brion was requested by someone ... but you needn't either make it public so completely? --Aphaia 06:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I really dont know. --Dbl2010 01:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Previously approved requests

I am a proposer of the Crimean Tatar wikipedia and the main editor of the Crimean Tatar edition on the incubator. According to the previous policy our request was approved (14 support, 0 oppose). Have I to create a new request and wait several weeks/months more until our wiki will be created? Or Crimean Tatar wiki will be created without this procedure?

BTW in the Approved requests for new languages there are some other requests (becides Crimean Tatar), that were adopted without any controvercy (e.g. Kabyle, Karakalpak, Lower Sorbian, Latgalian). Most of this projects have flowrishing test-wikis on the incubator.

IMHO there is no need to re-open these requests and make the contributors of the named wikis to wait several weeks or even months more. And what the memebers of the commitee think about this?

Don Alessandro 18:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you Don Alessandro, we have waited so long to get our request approved but in the end we still have to re-open our request again, when I see wikipedias that don't even have a main page, nor any single article (like this one lbe) I say it is not fair! Toira 21:20, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Empty wikis such as the Lak Wikipedia are one reason older requests were closed, since most are difficult or impossible to judge fairly under the new criteria. New requests will be processed much more quickly with the new policy. If there is a community and a flourishing test project, projects could (ideally) be approved and created a month after proposal.

You can help us by finding previously approved new language projects that were not created and opening a new discussion for them. If you can retrieve the original discussion, that will help even more. Many of these wikis will be obviously acceptable and created even sooner. There is a lot of work for us to do in transitioning to the streamlined system, so your help would be much appreciated. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 21:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I am aware of that, and I sort of agree with you, it's just that we feel a bit frustrated.. i guess it's because we thought we'd have our wiki setup directly after the approval. Also, i'd like to thank you for your assistance, Pathoschild, you've answered every queston, comment or requerst we have posted, Toira 23:38, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. Requests approved (or re-approved) under the new policy should ideally be created within days. For example, the French Wikiquote was opened the same day it was approved. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:06, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Dear admins! December ends in several hours... ;) Don Alessandro

Wikipedia Kabyle

Just a comment, I think that the header for the kabyle wikipedia is not appropriate, I think it should be replaced by this one : "header|review2" instead of "header|open" since it already has a test wiki, and no objections (no arguments against), am I wrong? I'am asking you that because you're a member of the the language subcommittee therefore you can decide of the apporpriate choice. Creating pages and articles in the incubator is not that easy, even for those who already participate in other wikis, the prefix thing is a mess, I think it discourages many potentiel contributers, if the kabyle wiki is created, we'd have much more participation. Toira 02:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello Toira. The Kabyle Wikipedia is one of the requests we'll probably be looking at by the end of December. If the test project is already doing well enough, we'll just skip a few steps (which will already be done anyway) to final review. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok great! thanks for the quick and detailed answer Pathoschild, you're one of the nicest admin i've encountered on wiki ;-) Toira 03:33, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

IMHO you can definetly skip the first step (duscussion) for all projects, that were approved according to previous policy with 0 votes "against". It was quite enough time to say something against these projects, and nothing was said. That means, that there is no arguments against. And for some wikis, that have active incubator versions (Kabyle, Lower Sorbian, Crimean Tatar) the second step can be skiped too.

BTW, when we will know your decision? Christmas? New Year day? :)

Don Alessandro 15:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Policy for closing projects

At present, WM:PCP does not contain any information, how proposals to close existing projects are handled. Personally I would favour the closure of a number of Wikis at the lower end of List of Wikipedias - those which do not have any legitimate articles and show no sign of activity except for being spammed from time to time. The more time I have spent trying to help cleaning up some of those Wikis, the less I feel that it is worth the effort. Wikis like kr:, ve: or hz: that do not have a single article in the language that they were supposed to host, have, in my view, no chance of ever attracting committed editors. The situation is aggravated by the fact, that many of those wikis do not have admins. They are completely left to the spammers who regularly vandalise them. I find this situation irresponsible. (In fact, ve:, hz:, ts: and kr: have an admin for now, as I have requested temp adminship to do the cleanups, but this is not a sustainable solution).

Therefore I am convinced that the committee also needs to develop a policy for dealing with closure proposals, or, more generally to deal with those wikis that were created under the old regime, where no-one cared about involvement from the respective language community.

Personally I am convinced, that, in order to succeed, a wiki project needs to be demanded and supported by a group of committed individuals from the respective language community. If we seriously scrutinise the situation, we would come to the depressing result, that probably tens of wikis do not have a single contributor with reasonable command of the target language. This is does in no way advance the cause of saving endangered languages, neither does it advance the cause of Wikipedia as a multilingual and universal resource of Free knowledge.

Even attempts by committed individuals to attract native speakers in order to revitalise dead wikis seem to have little effect, see e.g. ik:. It is not that small languages should be excluded from wikipedia, but rather that the process should follow the pattern of successful projects such as Upper and Lower Sorbian. Both have rather small speaker communities, but still, their wikis seem to be extremely vibrant. (can btw. be seen on the talk pages, which are overwhelmingly in Sorbian, not in English or German)

Sorry, I wrote more than I intended to. To repeat my message:

A transparent policy for handling project closure proposals is needed
A policy to handle the legacy of inactive, unmaintained Wikis in general is urgently needed...

--Johannes Rohr 23:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I fully agree with you. There are many wikis where not a single user even HAS sysop rights, not to speak of all those where the sysops aren't active any more... But we should help those people creating a working wikipedia instead of shutting down the project. I think, having a WP in a language is a big advantage and a chance to get the language more used in written form and to increase writing knowledge of those languages. Btw., on ik.wp there is w:ik:User:Zanimum who is an active sysop. --Thogo (talk) 23:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, erm, where are the people that you want to help? On those wikis I mentioned, they are simply absent. So they don't help anyone. Concerning Zaninum - yes I know he is there. When he was granted adminship, he sounded quite hopeful that he would soon unleash a wave of activity (through contacting various Inupiaq organisations or individuals, can't remember the details). But, as you can convince yourself, it hasn't happened. Further, he went quite optimistic, when he saw that one anonymous contributor had written some sentences in Inupiaq into a formerly empty article. But again, this remained a single incident. I don't believe that you really help anyone by offering an empty hull, such as those current unmaintained wikis are. Empty Wikis in African languages do not solve the problem of missing or prohibitively expensive internet connectivity in South African or Namibian village. They do not bridge the digital divide. They may be a useful tool. But by themselves they are neither accessible nor usable. Personally I have been working a lot with indigenous peoples over the last 15 years or so. I also had a meeting in Geneva in the run-up to the World Summit on Information Technology. I tried to talk about Wikis, Free software and all the other stuff, but I had to accept that their primary issues were about land-lines. Telephones. For most communities, the Internet is still something happening in a different universe. How are we surprised, they don't spend their time writing and expanding a plethora of free encyclopaedias?--Johannes Rohr 00:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, that might be true of the African languages or whatever, but certainly not for languages like Inupiaq where internet access should not be that problem. But there are lots of people speaking those "smaller" languages who live in US or Europe and have the possibilities. Maybe it could be our task to find and invite those people. But anyway, I don't want to fantasize too much... Realistically it is surely not avoidable to close several smaller projects. There is still the possibility to reopen them when native speakers come across and want to contribute (via the incubator, maybe). So the projects could be moved to incubator wiki and moved back when a significant amount of articles written in the respective language is there. That would be my favorite solution. --Thogo (talk) 00:16, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The language subcommittee's charter does not extend to closing projects, so it has no authority on the matter. Although that might be something to look into eventually, we're having enough trouble right now getting started with the current limited charter. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 02:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

So, then, who the heck takes the decisions about all the proposals at WM:PCP? Who is in charge? What are the criteria? --Johannes Rohr 10:28, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The relevant policy is New project policy#Closing_of_a_project. Proposals to close projects are processed in much the same way as proposals for new languages were before the reform. The community discusses the proposal and holds a vote. Administrators eventually close the discussion and, if there is consensus to do so, forward the proposal to the board of trustees. —{admin} Pathoschild 23:10, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Interest

I'm very much interested in language policy on meta and related matters; is there anything I can do to help, or are the current member sof the subcommittee already numerous enough to handle everything there is to do? —Nightstallion (?) 19:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello Nightstallion. Suggestions are always welcome; the policy draft we're currently discussing can be found at langcom:Language proposal policy/GerardM-Pathoschild. There are few other tasks until the subcommittee approves a policy. —{admin} Pathoschild 02:16, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Language subcommittee

Most members of the Language subcommittee seem to be active, can you please decide the case of the different requests (for new languages)?Toira 16:51, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello Toira. We're working to reach consensus on the expanded policy to adopt, and will begin judging requests the moment we do. I apologize for the unusual delay; hopefully the subcommittee should be ready soon. —{admin} Pathoschild 02:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Pathoschild, when will the approved wikis be created? I hope it's not going to take too much time, we have submitted our request more than one year ago (it's been submitted first by Agurzil, and a second time by me) and still nothing on horizon, anyway the new policy seems to be fine, what are your disagreements? Toira 06:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The requests will be judged as soon as we finalize the policy. That should be very soon, but this is taking far longer than I'd anticipated. We're drafting the new policy to take into account the different approach that will be taken by the subcommittee. All drafts are archived publicly on the subcommittee wiki; the latest proposal is the GerardM-Pathoschild synthesis proposal, which I think should be acceptable to everyone with only minor changes. —{admin} Pathoschild 01:56, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Comments on the new policy

Terms

As far as I can see, these new rules say nothing about the terms. The Crimean Tatar wikipedia request was re-opened more than 3 months ago. Anyone can see that there is no serious arguments against, but it is still on the "duscussion" stage. And rules say nothing of how long it should last. IMHO three months is quite enough for those, who want to say something against. Tell me please, who will decide was there enough time for the discussion or not? HOW LONG WILL WE WAIT? Don Alessandro 15:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello. There is no defined term; ideally, requests should be processed as soon as a decision can be made. I'm pushing to start processing requests, which we're finally beginning to do. I apologize (yet again) for the lengthy delay. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:47, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Aha, I see... So, YOU (subcommitee members) can let our project be in the "discussion" stage for month, for year, for 10 years, and WE have no right to say anything against this, because YOUR rules give you a legal right to wait as long, as YOU want (i.e. de facto give you a legal right not to approve our project at all). Policy MUST determine concrete terms, in which a project sholud be either approved, or rejected. Don Alessandro 15:18, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

PS

Colud you, please, explain why Crimen Tatar project is still on the "discussion" stage?

You do indeed have a say in the matter. There is an open discussion on the Foundation-l mailing list, and I am reading and responding to your concerns on this page. I'm sorry that your experience has been frustrating so far, but I assure you that we have no intention of deliberately slowing the growth of the Wikimedia Foundation.

I'm afraid that matters are not as simple as you suggest. Some requests can be approved with very little discussion, such as requests for a new project in a language that already has another project. On the other hand, difficult or controversial requests require extensive discussion and consultation with communities, standards organizations, and the board of trustees.

Further, we are unfortunately at the slowest point in the new process: getting started. Before we can begin efficiently processing requests, we must first process a single project under the policy. This helps us find any mistakes or bad ideas in the policy, make improvements based on feedback from the users who went through it and our own experiences, and streamline it for future requests.

We're currently preparing to begin this test phase with the Kabyle Wikipedia request. The Crimean Tatar Wikipedia request is one of those requests that will be processed more quickly following this test phase. —{admin} Pathoschild 16:03:59, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Changing rules during the game

The first request for the Crimean Tatar was opened in September and it was approved. Then the rules were changed during the game. Pathoschild gave me an advice to re-open a request, he told previously approved requests would be probably speeded up, and we would see a decision by the end of December. Now there is the end of March and things are right where they started. Now we are told that we are to do a complete translation of the interface. So, the rules are changed during the game for the second time! It is not fair. EACH REQUEST SHOULD BE TREATED ACCORDING TO THE POLICY, WHICH WAS IN FORCE BY THE TIME OF ITS OPENING. Don Alessandro 15:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello. Your complaint, though valid, addresses very different situations throughout the tortuous development of the new process.

The first request was created before the existence of the language subcommittee and the implementation of the language proposal policy. At the time, all requests were processed by the same community who made the requests, which led to understandable conflict, bias, and mistakes. The language subcommittee was created to address this, but not before a massive backlog had developed; as of my last count, there were 198 requests either open or approved by this community but never created. Further, the vast majority did not provide significant arguments in favour, relying on the voting process that dominated at the time. Furthermore, a majority of the users had long since left, rendering the lists of interested users useless. The most efficient solution was to retroactively close all requests which were not created and start over. The original Crimean Tatar wikipedia request was one of those closed.

When I created the language proposal policy in November 2006, I honestly believed that the subcommittee would be ready no later than the new year. That was unfortunately naïve; despite the productivity of the individual members elsewhere, the subcommittee itself was sluggish and ineffectual. Over three months later, the subcommittee is finally getting to its feet and ready to begin processing requests. Despite any well-earned skepticism on your part, the best I can do is say that it shouldn't take much longer, and this time (I hope) I'm right.

Immediate localization is not a requirement, there having been no consensus as to its introduction. If the request is adequate, I will do my best to get it approved with or without localization of the interface. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:47, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Regarding these issues and the above one, I also posted a message to the foundation-l mailing list today (cf. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-March/028499.html) - hoping it will help get things under way pretty soon. --ARBE0 16:42, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Localization files are now a requirement for new languages per the otherwise consensus of the subcommittee. However, we'll be working with the communities to develop a relatively simple and efficient process to localize the interface, coordinate efforts, and get help and guidance from the subcommittee. The first project should begin localization within a week or so. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I can only repeat once again that it is not fair to change the rules during the game. You can apply this new rules to the requests, which will be opend after this desicion, but not to those, which were opened several months ago.

If we knew about this awfull bureuacracy, we'd probably try to start our own wiki-project, instead of waisting our time here... Don Alessandro 15:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry that your experience has been frustrating. However, the creation of a new wiki under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation is not a game; being "fair" is not one of our goals, although of course we try not to be unfair. Our objective is to encourage the growth of the multilingual Wikimedia Foundation and to avoid previous difficulties and problems. If doing so means adjusting the policy while requests are open, this unfortunately means that the request will need to conform to the new requirements. —{admin} Pathoschild 17:03:27, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Rejecting Sater-Frisian wikipedia proposal

Last year we proposed a new wiki-project for the Sater-Frisian language, initially this request was approved by the moderators. What is the reason for the sudden change? This is the Sater-Frisian incubator:
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/stq
This was our request:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Sater-Frisian

Kind regards,
Kening Aldgilles

Might be my fault. I moved the request to the "approved" section, because it was approved according to the old criteria. The disapproval by the language committee will most likely be due to a lack of native contributors and of contributors in general. At the moment, efforts are underway to gather more of them; when we have succeeded we will do another proposal. Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 21:11, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

As far as I had understood, the Saterfrisian Wikipedia was recognized already in the period that such things were decided by voting. It is very disappointing, that now in the period of waiting for electronic effectuation, we must experience that this recognition is undone. --Pyt 08:55, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello. Unfortunately, the Sater-Frisian Wikipedia was never approved by the Foundation board of trustees or the developers. The "approval" was entirely on the part of users acting with no official authority; although this was the practice at the time, the actual creation rate for 'approved' wikis was very low. These unofficially approved (but never fulfilled) requests were rejected once the language subcommittee was created to officially process them. —{admin} Pathoschild 09:04:18, 01 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello again. How is it possible that other dialects, spoken by a small number of people, have their own wiki? Many of those wikipedys have less then 100 articles! The Seelterfrisian language is an official recognized language in the European Union. The language itself is gaining more popularity and according to the German law, the language is teached in schools (because of the recognition). Please tell us what to do to get this request approved. Kind regards, Kening Aldgilles 23:22, 3 april 2007 (CET)

There are a number of problems with many small wikis that led to the creation of the language subcommittee to monitor and policy new requests. Some requests were formerly approved by the community, as explained above, and some of those approved requests were eventually created by the developers. That does not necessarily mean that creating them was a good idea, that these wikis are successful, or that they would be approved by the subcommittee if they were proposed now.

Note that the request was closed because it was incompatible with the language proposal policy; as the closing comment mentions, you are free to open a new request under the new policy, which may well be approved. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:04:40, 07 April 2007 (UTC)

Transitional period

Latest comment: 17 years ago26 comments13 people in discussion

The transitional period is the time during which a large number of requests were re-opened before the subcommittee was ready to process them, and extending to the point where the subcommittee begins processing requests at full efficiency.

Question

I was just wondering why the Kabyle Wikipedia has not yet been given the final OK. AFAICT, it seems to fulfill all requirements, doesn't it?
Regards, --ARBE0 17:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, GerardM introduced full localization of the MediaWiki interface as a new requirement (see archived discussion). We haven't worked out how users can easily do this without actually creating the wiki, so we're on hold again while we figure it out. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I appreciate your commitment but unfortunately I'm getting more and more the impression now that the committee has managed to make the whole procedure so bureaucratic and user-unfriendly that it daunts most newcomers and more or less prevents any further development of multilingualism. --ARBE0 13:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree having a wholly localized system messages sa would benefit the project, but from my experience, I am afraid it would be a burden for a small project too heavy to bear. As Pathoschild pointed out, for localization they need a wiki at least. I wonder if it is based on Langcom consensus; for me it sounds a bit strange the policy in question was said to be introduced by an individual, not by the committee (even if he is its member). --Aphaia 17:31, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The Kabyle test project has so far generated an impressive amount of content. I would be confident that, as soon has they have their own wiki, they will successfully translate the interface in no time. Even though I have some understanding for the cautious approach taken by langcom, given the large number of inactive and unmaintained language edition, I would say that the ability of the Kabyle speaking community to build up and maintain a viable encyclopaedia has been clearly proven in the incubator. Any further indefinite delay would only serve to discourage people who have already invested a substantial amount of energy. Therefore, I would appeal to langcom members to take a more proactive approach in this matter. That is, either to approve the proposal and to trust into the community's ability to get the interface translated, or to give clear-cut advise to the authors, what else they have have to to do before final approval (which is probably to translate the language.php file to Kabyle)--Johannes Rohr 22:08, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with all the comments above. I've started a discussion with the subcommittee regarding the Kabyle Wikipedia, which you can follow from the subcommittee archives. I apologize for the absurdly lengthy process. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts. I'm sure the Kabyle editors will appreciate it. --ARBE0 16:38, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Appeal deletion of be.wikipedia.org

Dear Wikimedia,

We would like to express protest against the voluntarist deletion of the Belarusian Wikipedia that was located at http://be.wikipedia.org . The Belarusian wikipedia was a product of hard work of dozens of contributors spending hours of their time for the project, and that action of yours is a bad strike to the idea of Wikipedia as such. This was done suddenly without any single preliminary notification or discussion with the Belarusian Wikipedian community, neither with the adherents of the classical orthography the Wiki was mostly written in, nor with the few apologists of the current official orthography.

Although the currently official orthography is taught in schools and is recognised by the Belarusian government (but hardly used because of Russian being the priority language), the classical orthography is also widely used among peoples who speak Belarusian in their every-day life. The classical Belarusian orthography is the orthography widely used by lots of active Belarusian speakers, in the Belarusian blogosphere and by some influential independent media such as the oldest Belarusian newspaper Nasa Niva (http://www.nn.by) and the Belarusian edition of Radio Liberty (http://www.svaboda.org). It is codified and has its strict rules. We want to draw your attention to the fact that the Belarusian Wikipedia was originally created in classical orthography and was almost entirely written in it (while, by the way, the official orthography being accepted as well). A group of people demanding a switch to the official orthography appeared just recently. They asked to register a new domain for their project, not to delete the existing community efforts.

In respect of the facts above we kindly ask you to one of the following:

Restore the old Belarusian Wikipedia on the domain where it used to be (http://be.wikipedia.org) and register a new domain (http://bel.wikipedia.org) for the official orthography as it was originally requested by its supporters
Restore the classical Belarusian Wikipedia on a new domain (e.g. http://be-classic.wikipedia.org) leaving the official Be-wiki where it is now.

Besides that, would you please restore the media files that where uploaded on the Belarusian Wikipedia, but that can not be found at be-x-old.wikipedia.org now.

We are looking forward to seeing your reaction, in word, or, better, in deed.

Media coverage and public reaction

TOLBlogs Belarus: Belarusian Wikipedia Deleted
Pozirk.org: Scandal around the Belarusian Wikipedia
News.by: Belarusian Wikipedia Scandal
Vikipedyja - the Belarusian Wikipedians' community on Livejournal.com
Naša Niva: No More Wikipedia in Taraškievica
Narkamaŭka versus Taraškievica on Wikipedia
Belarusian Wikipedia in the center of scandal and article discussion
Habrahabr.ru: Scandal in Belarusian Wikipedia
Studenty.by: Scandal in Belarusian Wikipedia
Charter'97 on the issue
Reprint of Charter'97 article on Belaruspartisan.org
Commentary at telegraf.by

Kind regards,

--Czalex 20:56, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Comments

If only you didn't abuse official orthography supporters in this request I would support it. Mienski, admin of recent Bel-Wiki.

I try to be tolerant enough not to speak about much harder abuse of the classical-using majority here. I wish to expect the same from you, so let us stick to the point--Czalex 21:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you think that we can't improve this request to make it more tolerant on both sides? I think the solidarity is what we need now. Mienski

I do not know if votes are allowed in this page, and are there any need to vote in this case, but if it would be a vote here, I would vote for restoring of the old be-wiki under different name from the new be-wiki.--Yaroslav Zolotaryov 00:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I, Mienski, also support such possible decision.

I have corrected the appeal according to your proposal. Let's give it some promotion!--Czalex 07:47, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello. The closure of the alternative Belarusian Wikipedia was not recommended by the language subcommittee. I'm not sure whether it was closed by decision of the board of trustees or by mistake. If you draft a brief, reasonable recommendation, I'll be sure members of the board see it. —{admin} Pathoschild 20:03:51, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

My proposal

Dear Wikimedia,

We would like to express protest against the voluntarist deletion of the Belarusian Wikipedia that was located at http://be.wikipedia.org . The Belarusian wikipedia was a product of hard work of dozens of contributors spending hours of their time for the project, and that action of yours is a bad strike to the idea of Wikipedia as such. This was done suddenly without any single preliminary notification or discussion with the Belarusian Wikipedian community, neither with the adherents of the classical orthography the Wiki was mostly written in, nor with the few apologists of the current official orthography.

Although the currently official orthography is taught in schools and is recognised by the Belarusian government (but hardly used because of Russian being the priority language), the classical orthography is also widely used among peoples who speak Belarusian in their every-day life. The classical Belarusian orthography is the orthography widely used by lots of active Belarusian speakers, in the Belarusian blogosphere and by some influential independent media such as the oldest Belarusian newspaper Nasa Niva (http://www.nn.by) and the Belarusian edition of Radio Liberty (http://www.svaboda.org). It is codified and has its strict rules. I want to draw your attention to the fact that the Belarusian Wikipedia was originally created in classical orthography and was almost entirely written in it (while, by the way, the official orthography being accepted as well). A group of people demanding a switch to the official orthography appeared just recently. They asked to register new domain for their project, not to delete the existing community efforts.

І далей па тэксце.

Lack of transparency

Personally, I don't have an opinion on whether the decision to freeze and replace the old bewiki is right or wrong. However, what I do strongly feel is, that the langcom or the board of trustees or whoever takes such a radical decision as to move a wiki with several thousand articles out of the way, should be required to provide a comprehensive justification. It should be made absolutely clear, according to which criteria and principles the current decision has been taken. --Johannes Rohr 07:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

You are right: no one knew of planed moves. From both sides. It's terrible that LangCom didn't provide any info. I think they should provide us with the official position on this subject. Mienski

And for me personally this is very hard - they worked so much and actually we have taken their account, and their work and time are invested in this domain, which we now posses.--Yaroslav Zolotaryov 08:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

it is rather false to suppose that classic Belarusan is a remnant of the past or something strange for enthusiasts. in fact classic Belarusan expands and is used in many spheres not only in media. for instance even the United Nations use now (since 2 years) only CLASSIC Belarusan (of Tarashkevic). see here http://un.by/by/ the question is ideological one. not that one orthography is older and another newer. and the last point. the majority of the people who actually, really use BELARUSAN in their life, use CLASSIC, Tharashkevic variant of orthography and grammar, not Soviet-reformed one. yes, the Soviet variant is taught at the schools, but usually just to be forgotten afterwards. it is used in official documents (very few) written in CORRUPT russified Belarusan.

I think we are not here to discuss the (mistical?) problems of russification in spelling. We are here to support the right of classic-writers to have their own Wikipedia. Mienski

"наркотыкох" гэта па-нашаму, па-пралетарскаму -- 194.158.205.102 17:59, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Siarhei Bohdan

The main point is that outright MAJORITY really writes only in so-called "classic" variant, used in be.wiki before it's move to be-x-old.wiki. That was the only cause, by which it was used mostly in be.wiki; but both systems were allowed to be used, and so-called "current" variant was also used there by minority which preferred it, and they didn't have any obstacles to contribute; administration welcomed contributors in all grammar versions. --Monk 09:22, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Possible mistake

Hello. The subcommittee recommendation was to rename the alternative or 'classical' Belarusian wiki, and use the standard code for the standard or 'normative' Belarusian wiki. This recommendation did not include the locking of the alternative Belarusian Wikipedia. After I mentioned this on the mailing lists, a member of the board of trustees noted that the board implemented the recommendation but made no decision to close the wiki. This is being looked into; it's quite possible that the wiki was mistakenly locked by the developer who renamed it. —{admin} Pathoschild 02:03:46, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

It has been unlocked now; I don't know by whom, but it is editable. Jon Harald Søby 22:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible to rename the be-x-wiki into something more presentable, like "be-classic.wikipedia.org" so that it could function properly? I personnaly would be satisfied even with that decision--Czalex 20:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

That may be feasible, if you can present a consensus in favour of a particular (neutral) subdomain. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:04:37, 07 April 2007 (UTC)

Very bad idea

Moving the be wiki to an other address was a bad idea. I understand the reason and I don't mean that have two different wikis is not possible. However, the time and energy that was invested in the first version should justify that be: be restored. Think of all the interwiki links that can no longer be used. The prefix be-x-old: does not work, and changing all interwikis, event with a bot, is a lost of well spent energy. Why not have the new one renamed, since it go still very few articles. — Robin Hood 21:00, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I hope 3200 articles are not very few--Yaroslav Zolotaryov 22:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not very few, but these articles are so short and vapid. — Slaver 09:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, maybe, we should work with them. Actually I am not against returning of T-Wikipeida to their previous domain. --Yaroslav Zolotaryov 09:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

"Conditional approval"?

Hello! The Language proposal policy you developed has a stage called "conditional approval", which follows the "discussion" stage and - at best - precedes "final approval". The policy says that the "the language subcommittee will conditionally approve the language if discussion and past experience indicates that the project is a good idea and would prosper". So far, so good. Now, there's something I don't understand: currently, there is not a single conditionally approved wiki despite dozens of requests, some of which have been in discussion mode for many, many months - despite the fact that a number of them are pretty obvious cases. (I'm not talking about this likes of Montenegrin here)

Is there any specific, comprehensible reason why the language subcommittee does not even say "yes, if" to e. g. the Crimean Tatar, Hakka, Ingush, Karelian, Kinaray-a, Latgalian, Lower Sorbian, Sakha and so forth speakers after all these months - and thus show them that Wikimedia cares about them? Please explain, thank you. --ARBE0 16:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I will go through the proposals later tonight and propose a bunch of them for conditional approval. Jon Harald Søby 17:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Hello. the Kabyle Wikipedia is conditionally approved (awaiting board approval). The Sindhi Wikibooks was conditionally approved last month, but rejected recently because the interested community apparently vanished.

The main reason we're waiting before conditionally approving more requests is that we're waiting to see how the Kabyle Wikipedia request goes. The Kabyle Wikipedia request will determine how we process all the other requests. Since we're waiting for board approval any day now, we should begin approving requests any day now. (We've been rejecting requests on a near-daily basis since early April.) —{admin} Pathoschild 18:56:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

OK. Is there anything that could happen to Kabyle at this stage that speaks against giving other reqs a conditional "Go" now? If I'm not mistaken, conditional approval basically means only that the language itself is eligible. Giving the proposers a "yellow light" does not anticipate your final decision and will possibly have a positive psychological effect and make them step up their efforts to meet the other requirements. I, for one, can see no downsides here. Best, --ARBE0 10:27, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Conditional approval does suggest eventual approval once the requirements are met. That said, we're currently discussing several projects for conditional approval. Thanks. —{admin} Pathoschild 17:36:03, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Kabyle Wikipedia

BTW, why Kabyle wikipedia has not been created yet? Don Alessandro 18:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

We're waiting for the Board of Trustees to approve it; the language subcommittee is currently chartered as an advisory body. I expect a favorable decision any day now, but how soon depends on the Executive Secretary's workload. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:42:24, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Transparency

Excuse me, I'm afraid I've got another question. In your discussion archive there is a discussion concerning "Lack of progress and how to begin processing requests" which is currently being concealed from the Community and marked "private", despite the subcommittee's pledge for transparency. Like the headline indicates, that thread seems to be about an issue that concerns and affects significant parts of the Community - so how can a language subcommittee discussion about this issue be considered private? Please make it readable to us ordinary folks. Regards, --ARBE0 12:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC) Btw: Is there an important reason why all messages by Karen Broome and GerardM are kept covert??

Hello. Currently, all discussions are archived manually so that privacy considerations can be taken into account. Particularly for users in areas where language is political, publicly speaking against a particular language or project from a position of advisory authority in a top-ten website (or recommending to a subcommittee in such a position) can be personally dangerous. Further, the possible hostility of those around them may cause some users (both subcommittee members and guest speakers) to avoid speaking their mind or to state their opinions in a manner that is more politically acceptable and less meaningful.

For these and more trivial reasons (as with archival of IRC discussions), archival is optional and any person can request that a particular text, comment, or even entire discussion not be archived. The user who started the discussion you mentioned requested that it be private; GerardM and Karen have declined to allow archival, so their every comment is hidden. —{admin} Pathoschild 18:15:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok, let's clear up some stuff. I agreed that my stuff may be published - and I may only talk about my stuff. If something does not have to be published I will mark it, just like agreed. Normally anyway I blog about these things. But: you cannot assume that my answer is valid for all. When it comes to the chat: the chat room is public and people come there - we hardly ever use it. If we want a private chat ... well: there's no problem to do that when needed. Sometimes we talk about ISO standards and stuff that may not be publicly known by now since it is related stuff, but not Wikimedia information. So please respect single people's requests. You cannot take what I say for all. --Sabine 08:05, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

When we discuss how things can be done, it helps when we talk freely. When I always have to weigh my words on a gold platter, I either do not say anything any more or I get continually harassed by people who take offence or think differently. When we talk in order to get to an understanding among ourselves in the committee it can and should be private and this is a good case why it should. When we are to be open all the time, we can justify inadequate documentation by saying read the deliberations it is all there. GerardM 11:00, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

From Talk:Requests for new languages

Latest comment: 16 years ago49 comments32 people in discussion

Housecleaning report

The following discussion is closed.

Okay, I've done the following:

Removed the Upper Silesian proposal. It clearly had no consensus, virtually no discussion recently and a pointer to a convo on the Polish wiki that doesn't look all that active either. I'd have no problem with someone renominating with a clear proposal that addresses the opposers points. It's at Template:Requests for new languages/pl-sl
I'm not sure what to do about Pfälzisch. I was inclined to pass it, but didn't.
Removed the Punjabi Shahmukhi proposal as no consensus.
Removed the Macedonian proposal as no consensus, and not much discussion recently.
I approved the Hiligaynon request.
I declined the Berber requests (two of them) as too broad and overlapping the Kabyle request.
I removed the Romanized Persian request as no consensus for a separate Wikipedia.
I removed the Children's English, Simple French and Simple Spanish requests as there is clearly no consensus for any additional Wikipedias of this sort.
I removed the Belarusan request as no consensus, and the vote was so clearly marred on both sides that conclusion will ever be possible based on that discussion.
I removed Sheng as no consensus.
I removed Surzhyk as no consensus at this time.
I removed Padonki as no consensus.
I've approved Laz.

Tuf-Kat 02:29, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

No, that's not okay. As far as I understand the new rules, it's up for the Languages Subcommittee to decide, what's approved and what's denied. The issue is being scrutinised even now. So, I'm putting the Belarusian request back. Yury Tarasievich 09:00, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

That Subcommittee is news to me, and appears to have no authority or activity. See Special projects subcommittees/Languages (correct me if I'm wrong). In any case, it is simply impossible for the Belarusian request to pass at this point. There is too much vote-stuffing, personal attacks and other non-productive issues that cloud the real question. The only way to make a change at this point is to create a new proposal that is more likely to create a consensus. The request is merely taking up space, because no one will ever approve it. Tuf-Kat 16:25, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

There has been a resolution where a subcommittee was created. It is charged with coming up (among other things) a policy that describes what is needed to start a Wikipedia in a new language but also what is needed to start other projects in a new language. GerardM 20:14, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Is there actually a policy yet? Tuf-Kat 17:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello, Tuf-Kat. Am I allowed to perform housecleaning on Requests for new languages/Ancient? No, I won't remove anything. It will be just cosmetic.--Californiacondor 03:02, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Reform

The following discussion is closed.

I've been intending to propose a reform of this system (or lack thereof) for a while now. A frustrated user in #wikimedia earlier today on the subject of a particularly messy discussion convinced me to finally get around to it. When asked if a small politically-motivated group could defeat a viable proposal, I was rather startled that the only answer possible was "essentially, yes."

The new system I propose revolves around a single, informative policy page that provides information useful for the proposals and governs their processing. It completely eliminates the value of vote counting, emphasizing debate and a viable community. Requests are closed in favour or against by impartial Meta administrators, subject to review by the rest of the Meta administrative community. Proposals closed in favour are submitted by Meta administrators in concise, informative summaries that allow busy developers to judge the merit quickly without slogging through the discussion themselves.

This system will ideally mitigate abuse caused by sockpuppetry or politically motivated crusades, force users to carefully explain and defend their opinion in debate, and fix backlogs by creating a standard process for closing and submitting proposals in an efficient and useful manner.

All suggestions and comments are welcome in developing the proposed policy, particularly from other users who have recently attempted to improve the system. —[admin] Pathoschild 08:50, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this approach however I also have a similar concern. Some of the new language requests are done by politically motivated crusades/sockpuppets as well. I think the problem can go both ways.

Furthermore, some existing language-wikis content seem to be not inline with WP:NPOV which is a non-negotiable policy to my knowlege.

-- Cat ^chi? 09:05, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that an unbiased point of view should be sought on all project, but that is far outside the scope of this process. I don't think political motivation will make much difference under the new system; politically motivated users are still required to provide arguments and reasons. —[admin] Pathoschild 01:34, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Who can vote?

The following discussion is closed:

I've noticed over 30 votes in support of Montenegrin Wikipedia, and all of these users have not made a single edit anywhere else before voting. Basically, they created an account, voted, and disappeared. Odd enough, about 10 users voted within an hour, 10 more in the next day, alltogether 30 in 2 days. Now, I was wondering if this is allowed, because all of these users don't even have a userpage, nor a link to their home wiki, and they were all created in a very short period of time, with NO previous edits. Could anyone take a look at the Montenegro Wikipedia voting and check out the last 30 support votes. Thank you, --Paunović 19:53, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Voting is not so important here. If there are 5 active Wikipedians who want to work on the separate project, they will get the project. AFAIK, three Wikipedians are valid, maybe one or two more didn't list them yet (as I can see according to English Wikipedia). --Millosh 07:51, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

How can be active wikipedians if there is no active wikipedia on their language Milose? We have wiki online and its going quite well. And on it works more then 5 people as our organization counts over 80 members. When we get wikipedia on our own language lot more people will join and as well we have idea to include education and other state institutions. --Ego and his own 09:40, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Knowing Millosh, I think his point was that if there are five people who are well versed in how any Wikipedia should work, and they are willing to work on a new language Wikipedia, then that is enough of the, should I say, "Wikipedian startup team of elders", who can act as bureaucrats, admins and checkusers and teach new editors basic principles of any Wikipedia (namely, Five pillars of Wikipedia and what Wikipedia isn't). Just my .02 EUR ;-). --Бране Јовановић 10:38, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ego and his own, you have in total 24 users on your test wiki not 80 like you said, and one user from German wiktionary who help you with technical issues... :) It will be of big help if you work on some other Wikipedia projects for a time, acquire all necessary knowledge and also find 5 users who are proficient in big amount of Wikipedia running issues, before requesting another Wikipedia. There are not “just technical issues.” It's more complex, like BraneJ said... --Slaven Kosanovic 11:38, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I am just trying to find five people who are willing to work on the new project, not five well expirienced users nor five POV pushers which will leave new project in the next 15 days. Just that. --Millosh 17:03, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Request for French Wikiquote

The following discussion is closed.

The request seemed very valid and very well argumented with a charter proposed and is under consideration by the board. But I see this request has been removed from the page and classified as old and invalid. May I have an explanation here ?

Thanks

Anthere

I'd tend to agree; reopening the French Wikiquote seems to be equivalent to creating it to me. —Nightstallion (?) 14:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

The request was closed because the discussion was not compatible with the newly implemented Language proposal policy. That doesn't mean the proposal itself is invalid or rejected. I've opened a new proposal based on the closed one; this may seem frustrating, but the new proposal under the policy will be processed much more quickly than the previous one would have been. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 20:20, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand the procedure

The following discussion is closed.

Point n^5 [3] says "If more than 50% of voters are in favour, and a minimum of 10 votes is reached, developers will be notified. For a majority less than 75% the Foundation will also have to approve the project."

The kabyle wikipedia has been approved on the 19th of october, but no developper had been notified [4]

To whom should I speak?Toira 03:39, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The process you've linked to is a proposal for requests made on the Incubator. A policy has recently been implemented on this wiki to resolve such problems. I'd suggest you open a new discussion under the Language proposal policy; this will greatly increase the chances that the wiki will be created. Alternately, you can try to convince the developers to create the wiki yourself by filing a bug request. —{admin} Pathoschild 04:03, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, since the discussion seems to be unanimously in favour, I've re-opened the discussion under the new policy (see Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Kabyle); it will go through the new streamlined process and be submitted to the developers. —{admin} Pathoschild 04:45, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Hello, I hope that this time it'll work but I don't understand why it has to be submitted once again in met.wikimedia, it has already been approved by Tuf-Kat on this wikipedia (not incubator):

I've approved this request, but I have to change the language code to kab as that's the ISO code for this language. Tuf-Kat 02:29, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Can't you submit it to the developers now? Toira 00:02, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

You or anyone else may submit it to the developers. However, such requests are likely to be ignored (which may be why you're still waiting). The new policy streamlines the creation policy and ensures that approved projects are created promptly; that is the reason I've re-opened it. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:47, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok; thanks for the clarification. Toira 18:11, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

How about the requests, that have already been approved?

The following discussion is closed.

When the wikis, that have already been approved will be created? Don Alessandro 14:44, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Those wikis were approved under the previous system (or lack thereof), in which the proposing users submitted the proposals to the developers and were generally ignored. Those will not be submitted again; feel free to re-open them under the new policy and they will be submitted properly after the standard process. Alternately, feel free to resubmit them yourself, although you are likely to be ignored as well.

The requests listed on Approved requests for new languages will soon be split to their own pages and re-archived to Category:Approved requests for new languages (if created) or Category:Old requests for new languages (if not). —{admin} Pathoschild 20:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I am a proposer of the Crimean Tatar wikipedia and the main editor of the Crimean Tatar edition on the incubator. According to the previous policy our request was approved (14 support, 0 oppose). Have I to create a new request and wait several weeks/months more until our wiki will be created? Or Crimean Tatar wiki will be created without this procedure? Don Alessandro 20:47, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

If the wiki has not been created, it is likely that the request was never submitted or that it was ignored. Ideally, you should re-open discussion under the new policy. However, the Special projects language subcommittee is considering what to do with previous requests at the moment; please ask them. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:05, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been enlisted into the language subcommittee, so I have easier access to ~~their~~ our doings. We'll probably hold a meeting around 20 December to address this and many other points. Ideally, we should smooth out similar questions by the new year. If you have any other questions, please ask us now so we can raise them in the meeting. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 04:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Bealrusian normative req.

The following discussion is closed.

I'd like to emphasis in advance, that I'm not teaching admins how to do their job, but if admins, by any chance, do not really know what do with this request, it'd better be forwarded to Board right away, without unnecessary delaying. In fact, the predecessor of this request, done to the previous rules, was supposed to be submitted to the Board about 1 month ago (by those Subcommitte on Languages), but obviously something didn't work out. Thanks for understanding! Yury Tarasievich 21:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Pinyin Wikipedia, anyone?

The following discussion is closed.

I don't speak any Mandarin, heck, I'm not even Chinese, but I just want to make a suggestion. How about a Pinyin Wikipedia?

There's no Pinyin Wikipedia, but if you want, login it and create a request. --Slade ♠ 14:49, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've made an account, but I don't think I should be the one making the request, because I don't speak any Mandarin, so if the request is accepted, I won't be able to fluently contribute to the project. Runningfridgesrule 15:28, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Good choice. My 2¢:

Better wait until those who would do it come up with it. If there were any interest by potential contributors, they'd probably have taken the initiative themselves long ago. There are languages (like Northern Sotho) that have several millions of speakers but lack their own Wikipedia, and there's no use in suggesting to make one for them unless people show some interest in actually contributing to it. There are many projects suffering from a shortage of contributing native speakers, effectively reducing those projects to picture galleries, often with untranslated snippets from the English Wikipedia. Such projects tend to attract vandalism and spam.
Pinyin auto-converters exist that may be employed to convert existing Chinese WP articles.

Wikipediatrician 17:11, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Oh my goodness! That's genius! Thank you! So should I submit a request, then? Runningfridgesrule 01:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Instead of a new Wiki site, I suggest retrofitting existing Chinese Wikipedia with automatic Pinyin converter.--Jusjih 15:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Removing votes?

The following discussion is closed.

Would there be any opposition of I removed pure votes from the requests? Like the ones that only state "Strong support ~~~~"? As it is now, these serve no purpose whatsoever, and are only in the way for the people dealing with the requests. Jon Harald Søby 16:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest adding a template response, like "Note that simple votes are ignored per the Language proposal policy. ~~~~". This reduces conflict (since some users may be displeased by the removal) and encourages voters to expand their comments with reasons and arguments. Simple votes aren't really in the way when judging the request, since they're easy to ignore; for example, the Wikipedia Karakalpak 2 was rejected despite unanimous support. —{admin} Pathoschild 18:10:35, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I edited Template:Support and Template:Oppose so that they show a big, red, ugly message when the templates are used on this page. Anyone is bound to notice that when they try to vote. Jon Harald Søby 16:24, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

That will break the display on the hundreds of requests predating the reform, and the templates are often used in addition to argumentation, ie "{{support}} because argument". I see another user has reverted the changes. I've edited the templates so that they simply display "Support" or "Oppose" without the icon or bold. Note that every request page has a message at the top explaining that votes are ignored; if users are unable to follow those simple instructions, they'll simply be ignored.

For example:

{{subst:support}} = Support
{{subst:oppose}} = Oppose

—{admin} Pathoschild 22:19:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, you're great at finding more delicate ways to do things. Very nice! Jon Harald Søby 22:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 06:14:20, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

cleaning up this page

The following discussion is closed.

Is there any objection against cleaning up this page, i.e. remove rejected and successful requests? This page is already way to long and its getting longer day by day. --Johannes Rohr 11:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

This is no longer necessary with the overhaul in November. —{admin} Pathoschild 07:01:46, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Transparency in approval process

The following discussion is closed.

Is there any guide lines, rules or procedures that is used for approval process? does any one knows in what order these applications are processed?

There seems to be some randomness in the order, or lack of it, in the approval process. Some older requests such as Ottoman languge (Reg. Dec 2006) with more than 800 articles and many active contributers has been not yet approved where as some newer requests such as Ao language (Reg. Feb 2007) has been conditionally approved !

Can any one shed a light on this process and rational behind it please.

--Mehrdad 23:44, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello,

In the case of Ottoman Turkish, there are many simple votes, which are not in accordance with the language proposal policy. Many of us are busy in real life, so we do tend to look at requests that are easier to deal with. In that sense, there is some ransomness to the process.--Shanel 04:56, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Shanel,
Thank you for the reply to my question regarding the approval process. I understand you and other members of the approval committee being busy in real life, and appreciate the time you have set aside for helping to advance Wikipedia's further development.

I had a look at the Requisites for conditional approval section of the Approval Policy and can see that Ottoman Wikipedia has already met all the conditions.

1. The proposal is to open a new language edition of Wikipedia, and it does not already exist.
2. The language has a valid ISO-639 code as ota.
  If there is no valid ISO-639 or RFC 4646 code, it should be a natural language or a well-established constructed language with extensive body of works in this language.
3. The language is unique and could not coexist on a more general wiki.
  The difference with other languages is real.
4. The proposal has a sufficient number of interested editors to form a viable community and audience.

Consider above I request you and other committee members to kindly review the application for the creation of the Ottoman Wikipedia. Thanks --Mehrdad 19:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Language

The following discussion is closed.

If we created our own language can we request it? --Yegoyan 05:14, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

You can request every language, but I don't think it will be approved... -Markvondeegel 07:05, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

You can find the information at Meta:Language proposal policy. SPQRobin 22:56, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

What if the conditionally approvement is already solved?

The following discussion is closed.

The hsb.wiktionary has been approved, the only step left before the creation of a Upper Sorbian Wiktionary is the translation of the basic wiki interface. That's strange, because the "basic wiki interface" exists already in Upper Sorbian – it was done for the well working hsb.wikipedia about a year ago. The approving user was informed of that fact on his user talk page, but nothing has happened. What has to be done to start that wiktionary? I'm asking here because I'd like to start using it and as long as it is in the incubator, it isn't more than a test wiki. (When I saw this Incubator work-around I already lost interest in editing the Lower Sorbian Wikipedia as long as it remains in the incubator.) The whole situation is especially sad if you look at the List of Wiktionaries and notice there are are 35 Wiktionaries with 10 or less good articles. --32X 19:28, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I was away on vacation, and am preparing to return to school. There are several things I have to do before requesting the wiktionary be created, but I will try to do them as soon as possible. --Shanel 18:36, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

This request has since been approved. —{admin} Pathoschild 07:03:39, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Low Saxon Wikisource

The following discussion is closed.

Please comment: Is the request for Low Saxon Wikisource (with 350+ pages in the test project) missing requirements to get approved or is it, that the language subcommitee just has not had a look at it? If the former: which? If the latter: please have a look at it. --::Slomox:: >< 18:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

See the status page for the Low Saxon Wikisource for information on the request's progress. —{admin} Pathoschild 07:16:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Greek Wikiversity

The following discussion is closed.

Please tell me what to do to translate the interface.--Diaza

Please create an account at Betawiki and then leave a message at Betawiki:Translator in order to get translatorstatus. Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið _(:> )=| 12:44, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Who removed the request for Rinconada Wikipedia?

The following discussion is closed.

Rinconada Test Project --Filipinayzd 12:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually you added your Request to another already Approved Wikipedia Project so I had to remove it from there and create its own article and just a while ago, I added it to Requests for new languages... Cheers..--Comet styles 09:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks. --Filipinayzd 12:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Fa.wikinews

The following discussion is closed.

dear friends i wish to begin Fa.wikinews and the main page has been created here .so the what is the next step. thanksMardetanha 23:44, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

This is the wrong place. Please go to the incubator:, if you would like to create a test project. The purpose of this page is to file proposals, not to set up test project. --Johannes Rohr 02:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

How long is the process to take?

The following discussion is closed.

There is a request that has sat for almost a year with no change in status. How long until it is approved/disapproved? UncleMontezuma 20:46, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

If a request meets all the requirements, please post a message on the language subcommittee's discussion page requesting an update. —{admin} Pathoschild 23:05:08, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Mass filing of requests for new languages

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi there, today I noted that User:Blake C has filed some 11 requests for new languages, see Special:Contributions/Blake C, always signed with NP. I have some difficulties with the idea that someone has eleven first languages and I think that mass filing of proposals should be deprecated. --Johannes Rohr 13:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've contacted the user; perhaps they simply did not understand the significance of the initials 'NP', or they weren't aware that the proposer is expected to participate in every step of the process. —{admin} Pathoschild 17:15:10, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Requests for new languages/Wikiqoute Macedonian vs. Requests for new languages/Wikiquote Macedonian

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Both requests for the same are marked open. The one with the wrong title ("wikiqoute") is the newer one. Should they be merged or the old one formally rejected? --Johannes Rohr 22:01, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks; since there was no useful content in the misnamed page, I simply deleted it and corrected incoming links. —{admin} Pathoschild 01:08:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

However, now the main requests page includes the old rejected proposal (Obviously it had already been rejected, which was later reversed by an IP), this is probably not intentional? --Johannes Rohr 21:37, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep; I want to see if there are any comments on the rejected request within a few days. If there are none, I'll delist it again. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:38:59, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Karen

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

It looks like this request, dated Dec 6, was never completed, as it lacks essential information. --Johannes Rohr 20:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I've deleted it, since there is no useful information or discussion for later requests. Thanks. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:50:26, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Requests for new languages/Project Northern Sotho

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

is apparently a duplicate of Requests for new languages/Wiktionary Northern Sotho and should be deleted. --Johannes Rohr 06:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Smaller language projects at all

Latest comment: 17 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

Hi all. I want to discuss, whether it might be better for new languages that they should first create a wiktionary and only if that works, a wikipedia. A dictionary entry is much easier written than an encyclopedia article. And, as many smaller wikis show, the existing articles in most smaller WPs are mainly dictionary entries. I cleaned up the Zulu Wikipedia a little bit during the last days and most of the 79 articles there are of this kind: w:zu:Inymazane, w:zu:IsiJalimani, w:zu:Senzangakona, w:zu:IKhanada. Would it be wise to transfer these articles to the Zulu Wiktionary (which is still completely empty...)? On both projects there are no active users, so there is no community we could ask. On zu.wikipedia there is one guy who wrote most of the articles containing some Zulu text and translated some of the MediaWiki stuff, but his last edit was in December 2006. :o( What can we do? --Thogo (talk) 02:32, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Concerning the Zulu Wikipedia, I don't believe that there is much you can do, unless someone proficient in Zulu comes along. When we don't have the language skills, we simply cannot make any meaningful contribution to a project which is all about language. The articles you linked aren't proper Wiktionary entries either. Therefore, transferring them to the Wiktionary is not going to improve the quality of the Zulu Wiktionary. I don't think that Wiktionaries should be regarded as a kind of mini-Wikipedias. They have their own raison d'être, which is clearly distinct from Wikipedia's.

Making the creation of a Wiktionary mandatory would, in my opinion, mean setting up yet another hurdle and likely slow down the frequency of new projects going online even more. ATM I really wonder, what is going to happen with, say, the Sakha and the Crimean Tatar Wikipedias. It looks like the requirement for full interface localisation before going online is a heavy burden on them, and I fear that the all the energy that has already been put into these projects may be wasted, if the authors feel that localising the interface is just too much for them to handle. Therefore, I would be extremely cautious when considering the introduction of new requirements. --Johannes Rohr 10:19, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

+1, see Talk:Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Lower_Sorbian_2 --Dundak 23:43, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think a Wiktionary would help much, honestly. People know Wikipedia, that's the one and only widely marketable keyword you can use to start a project. In most small language communities it's often very difficult to assemble a starting group of users, you need something you can sell to people if you want to make it. IMHO a real community (i.e., not foreign students willing to make exercises in a foreign language, but real natives) may make a better use of Wikinews, as it is closer to aural traditions (a language was used to tell news to each other long before science books came around). Yet who knows "wikinews" in the general public of a small native community? We have to be realistic in marketing ideas. As per localization as a problem... sorry, I personally localized PMS when we started. It took me 2 days in all, for ALL messages. It takes but 1 determined user to do it, and if you don't even have that, what sort of project can you make? A wiki that is going to be a candidate for deletion after a year or so of total inactivity. At that point is much better for you to remain in the incubator until you grown up enough to have at least ONE determined user. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 18:18, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I clarify: there is a widely diffused mythology based on the number of registered users and articles that is quite misleading in judging a wiki. What we want to use is the real capability to stand on one's legs, that is things like real activity. Otherwise we only end up in catching up lots of spam and asking people to patrol hundreds of dead and semi-dead wikies. Results are not measurable in the tons of new wikies we deliver, as if we were swallowing hot dogs to appear on the Guinness Book of Records. It's much better if we state a rate of succesfull projects vs actual failures. If inactive wikies were simply dormants it wouldn't be a problem, we could use a bot to create all ISO 639-3 codes and just wait for users to appear. Too bad spammers never sleep. Being in the incubator is not some sort of minus habens stage, stating that a linguistic entity is less than another. It simply means that a project currently misses the strenght to live on its own. Nobody has problems with short articles growing up to the point in which they are not stubs anymore. Why wikies should be different? --Bèrto 'd Sèra 18:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe yes, maybe no. I think it's much easier to create a wiktionary... For beginners with the language (and in many cases there are no first language speakers at all but some people who learn(ed) the language) it is less difficult to put words and write a short note about the meaning and hopefully a list of translations, than to write a complete article about something. At least for me, as I'm learning Nepali at the moment. I wouldn't dare to write an article in the ne.wikipedia, but I think I can contribute a little bit to the ne.wikt. So it might not be a hurdle but a help to get more contributors. And once they are more experienced with the language, they want to start with articles. I would support a WP as the first project, only if there is a larger community of speakers with internet access, and an incubator project which already has articles. I think the hurdle that the interface should be fully translated is much higher and detains many people from requesting a new project language. I don't think that this requirement was a very good idea... --Thogo (talk) 14:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Technical changes

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello. I've transitioned all requests to the newer {{ls-header}} from {{:requests for new languages/header}}. Usage has been simplified somewhat (see documentation), but the most noticeable difference is that the "test" phase has been replaced by the "conditional" phase (to reflect current practice and new requirements).

Since the Wikipedia Ancient Greek 2 request didn't have a comment in the header, it no longer mentioned the test project as a missing requirement; I substituted an unsigned comment for now, until a subcommittee member either replaces it with their own comment or signs it. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:35, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Shanel did it. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:06:48, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Simple French Wikipedia

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I was thinking of a Wikipedia in Simple French, since I know for a fact that there is a community and more specifically, an audience, in Canada, for example. Now, this is the problem; this doesn't meet the requisites, but I don't think the Simple English does either. I'm looking for some advice or a response on whether it is feasible.--Evilclown93 20:08, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

The simple English project was created long before the subcommittee was created to tighten the procedure. No simple English wiki would be accepted if it were proposed today. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 19:12:20, 09 June 2007 (UTC)

Why not? If Simple English is the same as Basic English, it is a defined linguistic entity, in fact, a conlang. At the same time, there is no recognized linguistic entity "Simple French". --Johannes Rohr 21:41, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The simple English Wikipedia is not the constructed language Basic English; it is normal, modern English using simpler words than the English Wikipedia. The Meta:Language proposal policy states that the "The language must be sufficiently unique that it could not coexist on a more general wiki. In most cases, this excludes regional dialects and different written forms of the same language." —{admin} Pathoschild 23:19:51, 09 June 2007 (UTC)

Why can't we loosen the rules to allow "Simple" major languages (UN languages, for example. --Evilclown93 19:53, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Because we refuse to make political decisions. As long as we use ISO as a source it's them making the decisions about what is a language and what is not. If we make but ONE single step out of these boundaries we have no moral grounds to refuse other future requests for favors. Well, none apart from saying it is NO because we don't like you. This would give to LangCom a political power that we refuse to have, as pretty often linguistic issues have lots of geopolitical attached strings. Besides, we don't want to act as judges who decide how much dignity a linguistic entity has, because as you certainly understand this would open the same Pandora's Box we had when things were decided by public acclamation. All we check is whether externally fixed technical conditions are properly applied or not. I tell you, even like that it's far from being simple, as we deal with human sciences and just any criterion is invariably leading you to points where the blanket is extremely short. In some cases, (for example Latgalian) while I do support their request with all my heart (I'm myself from a small community of comparable size) I have to vote for a No, unless a proper ISO classification is found. It's unpleasant, yet it's much better that voting yes based on the fact that I personally like someone, which would imply that I'm spitting on people's faces any time I say no. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 19:06, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Traditional Chinese Wikipedia

Latest comment: 17 years ago20 comments12 people in discussion

Due to serious political and cultural conflict between PRC Wikipedian and Taiwan/Hong Kong Wikipedian, I propose Chinese Wikipedia split into Simplified Chinese Wikipedia (for PRC) and Traditional Chinese Wikipedia.

As a wikipedian, many wikipedians from Hong Kong and Taiwan waste too much time to debate the deletion proposal by system administrator from PRC. Martinoei 12:59, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I hope language subcommittee considers the special situation of Chinese speaking countries, consider my proposal.

Chinese Uncyclopedia split into Traditional and Simplified to avoid the conflict. Martinoei 12:59, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Absolute and firm no. Creating a new Wikipedia should never be to solve a dispute between two groups on one Wikipedia. Discussing is actually beneficial to the community and the content, in that the content becomes more neutral as an outcome of the discussions, even if the discussion are time-consuming. Jon Harald Søby 16:19, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind time-consuming discussion. The real problem is the system administrator decline to discuss. Some system administrator can request deleteion for an article created 15 minutes. Some system administrators usually delete the Hong Kong and Taiwan related article. Do you think we can solve the problem by discussion. I don't think so.Martinoei 18:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Then you should talk to other sysops and try to make them help you, or ask an outside party; creating a new Wikipedia is the worst possible "solution" to this issue. Jon Harald Søby 18:57, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, all sysop thinks the lazy deletion is acceptable. They said the sysop from mainland China is so busy, that is why he delete the "unqualified article", do you think this is resonable? Before "Fok Guy always with you incident, I had the same opinion as you. Before the subcommittee consider my request, I suggest wikimedia foundation assign an independent expert which can understand Chinese language to review the management of Chinese Wikipedia. Martinoei 19:19, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Jon on this matter. If there is a problem with an admin or management, we can look into the matter. But creating a separate wikipedia only to resolve disputes is not a solution. - Aksi great 11:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

In western world, discussion is enough for solving the problem. In chinese world, the cultural conflict between mainland people and Taiwanese/HongKonger is very serious. the admin from mainland China tried to help Chinese government to suppress Hong Kong and Taiwan own culture. If Wikimedia foundation can find someone to review the management of Wikipedia Chinese, I think the board should do it as soon as possible.Martinoei 15:46, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

We are not western or eastern, we are wmf. I'm positive that China and Chicago are two different places, and I respect this diversity. Yet I don't think that a western Board should (and could) impose its will (whatever that will may be) on subjects that are of exclusive native competence. Right in the same way government and natives cannot impose their will on wmf, respect must go both ways. So if there is a problem it must be expressed in wmf terms only. Say which policy is being violated, where and when and you'll be pointed to a possible solution. Talk about local politics and you'll get no for an answer. I hope this makes clear borders. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 12:39, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

In Chinese Wikipedia, there are many administrators with Taiwan and Hong Kong background. If things went like what User:Martinoei said, we wouldn't just sit there and look it happen. Chinese Wikipedia is a community with diversity, and Wikipedians from every region respects those who are from different ones. However, User:Martinoei kept doing personal attack to Mainland based administrator, ie. calling afd nominators as "Human Great Firewall". He proposed above just for a Hong Kong related article which he loved being nominated for deletion, due to its lower notability. Not mentioned, he violated 3RR policy intentionally for many times. Finally we banned him indefinitely as the solution corresponding to his behavior, according to the current policy.--theodoranian 17:49, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed one thing. We banned User:Martinoei due to his long time disappearance, and coming back with behaviors above. We considered the possibility that other guy stole his account password, thus we banned the account indefinitely for investigation. Another sysop has unblocked him now. However, if he keeps harm Chinese Wikipedia, we will take appropriate actions. --theodoranian 18:22, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I have the same opinion with theodoranian, however I need to clarify one point, although User:Martinoei violated many rules in Chinese Wikpedia, the blocked period was not indefinitely, instead, some days only, he was unblocked a few days ago.--Itsmine 18:21, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I know THD will come here as my expect. THD, why you did not tell all meta wikipedian about Shizhao. Shizhao usually delete the article without reason and made many wikipedian angry, why you did not tell the truth? You selectively tell the "truth" to meta wikimedia, only make the Chinese Wikipedia administator becomes a joke. More wikipedians will come here for a big debate. This is the time to decide the future of Chinese Wikipedia. Martinoei 07:45, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Martinoei, You have not a case for seperation. If you have exhaused all other channels, and believe that you cannot resolve the conflict locally, you can go to request for comments, or ask for Cross-wiki arbitration (but the cross-wiki arbitration committee does not seem to be active; but ask user:pathoschild).129.49.88.64 08:41, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I personally dislike the idea of Trad/Simp Chinese split but I agree with User:Martinoei the board of Wikimedia should independently investigate the lazy deletion practice in zh-wikipedia. The policy of notability is not enforced consistently in zh wikipedia due to the "dispute" in the policy. Surprisingly, the discussion to resolve the dispute in the aforementioned policy have been completely stopped.Chainsawriot 06:52, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the description as presented by Martinoei but have big question on whether the split can solve/remedy the problem. The deletion and reason of Chinese Wiki admin is completely arbitrary and nonsense. Even under the rule of "assume good faith" it is still correct and without bias to say Human Great Firewall does exist on Chinese Wiki. If an admin think it is reasonable to ban a user just because he consistently and willfully revealed this fact, he should retire from his admin post. Csmth 12:33, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I also want to raise an different issue here, completely technical, no related to the case raised by Martinoei. In Chinese wiki the word "信息" (information) is everywhere. While "信息" is correct on Simp. Chinese, it is completely incorrect to use it in Trad. Chinese. There is no such phrase in Trad. Chinese. The correct phrase is "訊息". This is somehow a disrespect to Trad. Chinese users. The problem is this is not a matter of glyph. "信" is not simplified form of the word "訊", and in fact the simplified form should be "讯" instead. This is the same thing that no one should think "努力"(Trad Chinese) and "勉強"(japanese) are same word with different glyph, although they have the same meaning.

Because the culture of Trad. Chinese and culture Simp. Chinese are in the process of separation, there will be more and more of these incompatible words.Csmth 12:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

For different words in Trad./Simp. Chinese for the same meaning, we have an auto-translation mechanism on zh.wp already. That could almost solve the issue (yes, I admit some rare cases could not be solved, but most of them could). --H.T. Chien ( Talk / Contributions ) 16:40, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree with the seperational idea at all.I am an active editor both in CWiki and EWiki.As far as I know,the general atmospehre in CWiki is amazing good in comparaison with the political tension in reality.Most of editors could hold their urges,and for those problems which may spark off a row,we try hard to keep sane.--193.54.193.1 02:17, 17 June 2007 (UTC)Sorry,I forgot to login in --Ksyrie 02:18, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I second with JHS that creating a new Wikipedia is the worst possible "solution" and I don't see the benefit of such separation. Assuming the correctness of Mr. Oei's comment, having a separate Simplified Chinese version will not completely remedy the situation. Given that Cantonese Wikipedia is not properly administered, how can we ensure that the new Traditional Chinese Wikipedia shall be properly administered? FYI, the Cantonese Wikipedia employs Traditional Chinese characters. Mr. Oei shall take my questions above into account when lauching a new Wikipedia, if that's his wish. IMO, a better system of the deletion process can be a remedy. Ktsquare 06:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

May Latgalian Wikipedia be approved?

Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Copied from my talk page:

The person who discused about Latgalian Wikipedia decided that Latgalian now have to show that it is living language - to make test wikipedia big (now there are ~325 articles):

The first bits of the ISO-DIS-639-6 have been published and you find Latgale as part of the Eastern Baltic Cluster where it is on the same level as Latvian and Lithuanian. Given that it has this recognition, an IANA language subtag is feasible.
The next question is, to what extend is it a living language.. For that we need to see a really lively Incubator. GerardM 07:47, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

So, how I looked to policy it is end of first step (till conditional approval). May be we can step to next stage. It is need for the community rebuilt of faith. Zordsdavini 13:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I've forwarded your message to talk:language subcommittee, since I am no longer a member of the subcommittee. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 00:01:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

—{admin} Pathoschild 00:04:55, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

An explicite question has been asked .. Have a look at the Eastern Baltic Cluster and tell us that this is the same as Latgalian. GerardM 21:31, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Latgale can be understand as region (lt:image:Regionai.JPG - in east side) and as etno groupe. As in this cluster Žemaichiai means "Samogitian" but not only Samogitian language. The same is with Latgale. In Samogitian Latgalē means Latgalian. The same is shown in here. About Latgale and Latgalian could be found here. Zordsdavini 06:50, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Speedy rejection of Belarusian Wikisource proposal

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi there, today Bèrto 'd Sèra rejected the Belarusian Wikisource request with the justification: The Language Committee members refuse to invest their time and work on any of the two Belarusian Communities until they don’t start to peacefully co-operate with each other as all wmf entities are expected to do. I'm a bit surprised, as there has been no sign of controversy on the page. As I suggested in the discussion, a Belarusian Wikisource should not be affected by the orthography wars, as it is meant to gather original texts, which implies that they should be reproduced in whatever orthography they were originally written. Actually, I feel that this would have provided an opportunity for the two communities to come together peacefully on neutral ground. Finally, I don't see how leaving this request open would have caused any workload on the language subcommittee. While I do understand the anger and frustration about the Belarusian row, I don't think such decisions should be taken on the ground of personal feelings. --Johannes Rohr 21:18, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi! :) No personal feelings :) We simply want the communities to make more official steps towards each other before adding wood to the fire. I had a personal email exchange with some people from the communities and they understand that it's early to venture into new projects until we aren't sure that people aren't going to use it as yet another battlefield. The Belarusian environment has undergone a traumatic moment, things are getting better and we all wish to encourage them. But the philosophy behind Project Approval is the same that leads to approve a project: it's yes only once FACTUAL work has been made in the incubator. We have no incubator for human relationships, so... When the first positive signs between the two communities will have become stable I have personally promised a box of beer to all of them, not just a favorauble vote (should all conditions as per policy be there). This reject will serve as a template for all such situations. People must understand that discussions are always welcome, but open emotional wars in feuer frei style only damage both sides in their relation with wmf at large. It takes time to repair your public image, once you compromised it by taking part into an interwiki flame war. It is possible and desirable to do it, but it takes time. Just that. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 20:15, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Regular oversights

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Hello. Please keep the following in mind when processing requests:

When updating the status of a request, please check the edit history to make sure the current status is legitimate. This is a problem with the second request for an Ancient Greek Wikipedia, where a user mistakenly changed the status.
When conditionally approving a request, please remember to notify the interested users.
When approving or rejecting a request, please remember to remove it from Requests for new languages and update the log of recent changes.
During the localization phase, it is very important that at least one subcommittee member be available to answer questions. This was a particular problem at Talk:Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Rotuman#Editing, where the community could not even begin localization because they couldn't edit; their question was completely ignored for nearly a month, when I stepped in and answered for you. If you don't know how to answer their question, please ask Nikerabbit or myself.

Thank you. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:35:51, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Jesse, being one of those who DID make oversights I find this guide very useful :) --Bèrto 'd Sèra 20:25, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

You're welcome. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 21:40:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

BTW, is there a place where I can use the assistance I'm giving to Extremadurans to develop a more general guide to Betawiki Interface Translation? I mean, I can be bold and just make a page, but maybe one is already there and I don't know it. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 20:36, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

May Korean Hanja Wikipedia be approved?

Latest comment: 17 years ago28 comments6 people in discussion

We want Korean Hanja Wikipedia to be approved as a official Wikipedia, since;

We tried to introduce automatic conversion system to Korean Wikipedia, but finally we made conclusion that it is impassable.
There are more than 280 articles and Main Page in Incubator project.
The Interface System Messages have been translated here.
We resolved all issues about code and language naming.
There are 11 supports and no oppose in Requests for new languages.

You can see the detail in Requests for new languages (Wikipedia Hanja). --Masoris 07:51, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi! I answered on you talk page :) --Bèrto 'd Sèra 19:31, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea what I should explain more about automatic translator system. All reasons, why that is impassable, is written in Background and General discussion/Automatic Conversion.

To translate hangul to hanja is impassable. So we must all write text in hanja system. (the reason is written in General discussion/Automatic Conversion)
Because most of Korean Wikipedians can't read hanja. The translator must be perfect. But we can't make perfect translator. (the detail is written in General discussion/Automatic Conversion)
Because some vocabulary and orthography of two system is quite different, we need to analyse more then a million patten for make perfect translator.
There are no open source translator. And we don't have programmer, and we don't have database to make it.
Most of Korean Wikipedian don't need the system and they don't want to be involved about automatic translator.

--Masoris 20:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Point 3) looks decisive. I'll report to LangCom and let you know asap. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 20:27, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

UPDATE: We are working on a technical solution that will solve your problem. It involves using new software that is being developed. I cannot give you an exact time frame at the moment, but we need this solution for a number of other borderline cases, too. So it's in everybody's interest that we can can have it as soon as possible. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 20:04, 19 June 2007 (UTC) Being developed means we are going to a Candidate Release asap, so it's not theory we are talking about. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 20:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I expect new technical solution can help all Wikipedias in Multi-writing System, it must contains edit page on automatic translator system. But in Korean hanja, I worry that the size of database to translate hanja to hangul is not small likes Chinese one. The current Chinese Wikipedia database contains only few thousands word pattens. But, I assume that Korean translator needs at least 100 thousands word pattens. I don't know that is it passable to translate real-time in current CPU. Nobody want slow Wikipedia. --Masoris 23:04, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Your points are correct and no translation is going to be involved. I'm sorry I'm not authorized to disclose more at this point in time, but we should be able to tell the full story asap. In the meantime my personal opinion is that working on the incubator in Hanja is something worth doing. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 09:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I stopped to work on the incubator, since;

All articles in incubator are written without considering translator, it means some of them are written to use unique vocabulary or orthography, which can not be translated.
Most of article are duplicate with Korean Wikipedia.
So, I think, if Korean Wikipedia accept translator, many articles in incubator will be useless.

Without decision about if translator will be introduce or not. I can't do nothing in incubator. So I wait the new story from now. --Masoris 08:19, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Masoris, as Bèrto said above, no translation will be involved with the new technical solution. Therefore, there is no need to write articles with automatic translation in mind. Cheers, Tangotango 08:23, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Because of my poor English skill, I misunderstood about that. I'm sorry about it :( --Masoris 08:34, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

No problem at all :) Thanks for your understanding. - Tangotango 08:58, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Is Korean Wikipedia not for only South Koreans?

Since, 99% of Wikipedian are South Korean, all policy and all guideline are written for only South Korean. That means major Wikipedian use only hangul system, they not allow to write information in hanja system. And some guidelines are forced South Korean national orthography to all articles.

Some Wikipedians tried to remove South Korean national orthography from Korean Wikipedia's guideline, but the result is fail. Because most of Wikipedian want to fixed orthography; Some people said "If you remove want to South Korean national orthography, you make other good orthography. I want just one united orthography.". And some of them are very oppose to allow other orthography, then South Korean national orthography., and said "Most of Korean Wikipedians are South Koeran, there are no reason that we have to allow others."

I have no idea, how to solve this. It is true that "Korea Wikipedia is not for only South Korean." But it is also true that "Korean Wikipedia is for only major South Koeran, who use hangul system." To allow hanja conversion system to Korea Wikipedia, we need reason, "Why Korean Wikipedia not forced only South Korean national orthography?" --Masoris 16:02, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

My very general opinion is (note: I cannot read Korean in any orthography), "there are no reason that we have to allow others" shouldn't be the reason on Wikimedia project for the NPOV sake. Theoretically it should allow all the orthography, at least used in the modern world (so at least North Korean one supposedly, and perhaps used in RPC, and if possible, in other countries, like Korean population in Uzbekistan). --Aphaia 08:46, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there WikiMedia policy or guideline about this? --Masoris 09:58, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

As far as I understand, it is rather an unwritten convention. However for some languages, such orthography wars happened (like British vs American English), and there are some guidelines, if I recall correctly. They are not for the general situations, but for their particular ones, though. --Aphaia 10:05, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia projets aren't NATIONAL in charachter. We call our domains according to a linguistic ISO classification, that is, a project contains a linguistic medium. Nations, borders, ethnical groups are NOT a part of our definition at any level. We don't mess up with politics, politics are kindly requested not to mess up with us. There is no explicitely written rule about this, AFAIK, yet there is an history of decisions made on similar subjects. When you don't have a clear policy, you still have precedents and an established pratice you can refer to. Let alone the normative aspects, usually 99% of such problems tend to reflect the relational atmosphere they originate in. This problem typology is quite diffused and it will have to be addressed in some way. Simply forcing a top-down decision on top of another can be dangerous, when you deal with a widely diffused trend. We need some practical tool to make sure that such conflicts originate less frequently, because when they arise they can really pollute the human dimension inside a project. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 10:33, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I think policies which force a national orthography to all article, are very wrong. But, I don't know what can I do now? --Masoris 17:04, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Masoris, as Bèrto 'd Sèra stated above, I think it would be a very good idea to work on the Incubator with the Hanja project until the technical side of things is sorted out. Cheers, Tangotango 17:11, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

At above section, I wrote about why I can't work on the Incubator more. --Masoris 08:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I repeat: NO TRANSLATOR, nothing of what you do in the incubator will be lost, as soon as the technical solution is ready we will use it. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 11:56, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Question about write article in incubator

I have two question about writing article in incubator.

When I make a article in incubator, all article should be in same directory Test-wp/ko-hanja/, For example Ubuntu will be Test-wp/ko-hanja/Ubuntu. But I don't certain that how I make internal links. If I want to make link to Ubuntu. which syntax is better? [[Ubuntu]] or [[Test-wp/ko-hanja/Ubuntu|Ubuntu]]. In current test wikipedia, two type of syntax are exist mixed.

I do not know the policy or customs on the incubator, but you could use [[{{wpl|ko-hanja}}Ubuntu|Ubuntu]] using incubator:Template:Wpl containing "Test-wp/{{{1}}}/". Then the links still work after transfer with an empty Template:Wpl.--Patrick 14:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Since when I made article I put on only one interwiki to Korean Wikipedia in each article, e.g. [[ko:Ubuntu]]. I wonder that is it valid in new technical solution?

--Masoris 10:16, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, from a test Wikipedia it links to the same as from a normal Wikipedia. This does not apply for e.g. a test Wikibooks, where such links would have different targets on the incubator and on a Wikibooks.--Patrick 14:18, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

New solution

When can I see the detail of new technical solution? If it needs more than one month, I think it is better that to make Hanja Wikipedia as a new Wikipedia first, and move it on to Korean Wikipedia, when the solution be completed. --Masoris 23:29, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I cannot answer straight away, because the answer does not depend from LangCom, but from the developers. I'll be back with news asap --Bèrto 'd Sèra 10:59, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

We have wait Korean Hanja Wikipedia since December of 2006. And a month ago, we proposed to LangCom to make Hanja Wikipedia as new Wikipedia. You said that a technical solution is being developed, and working on the incubator in Hanja is something worth doing. But we stopped to make new article on the incubator, because nobody want to contribute on incubator without certainty that when Hanja Wikipedia will be established or when articles on incubator will be useful. I expect that if LangCom made Hanja Wikipedia instead of started to make new solution. At this time Hanja Wikipedia has more than 1000 articles. But the decision that to make new solution which nobody know when it will be finish, makes stop all contribution to Hanja Wikipedia. We hope that LangCom make Hanja Wikipedia now, and in future when the new solution be finished, we will support immigrating to the solution. --Masoris 06:56, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think such a converter feasible from the same reason kana -> kanji converter cannot be available. Or it requires a ton of times to generate conversion dictionary in two different orthography. Please note there are 40,000 Hanja letters and the correct selection of Hanja is strongly depend on context. If you promise a converter, you promise a machine which can speak the language as same as human being with a full knowledge of such context. I don't think it feasible under the current circumstance. They could be invented in ... the day of our grandchildren? As Japanese speaker, another language who corporates Kanji in its writing system and have a separate writing system aside that, I recommend Langcom not to wait Korean-Hanja users. --Aphaia 10:55, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Bèrto said "no translation will be involved with the new technical solution". Bèrto's solution is not converter. --Yes0song 16:21, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Small linguistic areas and marketing

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

There is another issue I wish to point out. IMHO we shall address this, sooner or later, and this place is as good a starting point as any other. The best result I can find for small projects is probably done by fur.wiki. According to data from the Italian Govt they have an estimated base of native speakers of ~237 000, some 2% of which can be expected to be alphabetized in the language (this percent comes from an estimate of ours, though, not from an official survey). Anyway, they make a market share (if you will excuse such jargoon) of 11 people with over 5 edits and 5 people with over 100 edits in April, 2007. This much makes a great small wiki. No other project in regional languages in Italy gets even close to such results. We are, in fact, all as much as 4-5 times less in percent of the available audience (although we all make at least 2-3 times better in percent than it.wiki, to give you some sense of relative size). We all survive pretty well only because our potential audience is much larger than what fur.wiki can use (so we can end up with bigger absolute numbers while having smaller percents). Now, when I apply this criteria to a population of ~600 native speakers (see Requests_for_new_languages#Aeres_Wikipedia)... I get a one man wiki, if I'm lucky. I don't mean that very small language communities should be denied server space in principle, I point out what the current marketing tools can give us all in such a situation. If we want to address such niche cultural spaces we clearly need to modify our approach. This need becomes especially critical if we are to address our enlargement on linguistic spaces that have poor internet connection. Claiming a multimillion amount of native speakers in Asia or Africa won't automatically mean they all can use a dialup, so this is a generally critical issue. Any ideas? --Bèrto 'd Sèra 12:33, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I have properly understood what you are saying. After all, the proof of the pudding is and remains in the eating. That is: A linguistic community has to create a proper test project, before it can go life. With regards to Aeres - I remain doubtful whether this language exists at all. I have thus far failed to find any external reference on it. The point is, that the purpose of Wikipedia is not to facilitate random linguistic online communities but to create encyclopedias. Unless a community is capable of meeting this ambitious target (which, according to my impression, most existing Wikipedia editions have yet to achieve), I don't think that the creation of a new Wikipedia edition is useful. --Johannes Rohr 22:42, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, Aeres is quite in a limbo on its own, I was describing a more general situation. For example, we cannot mix Karelian and Veps in a single wikipedia (two well separated ISO codes exist for those languages, they use different scripts according to the Law of the Karelian Republic, and are both "normative languages"), yet Veps native speakers are to be counted in a few thousands. So when we get a request for a Veps wiki we are in the boudaries of a legal request, but we face a very low chance for success, because of the actual numbers involved. I'm positive that magic wands don't exist, yet maybe someone has a good idea that can be passed to such editions in order to help them grow. The only idea I can provide myself is get all the press you can, even if they say you are stupid, it will help. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 11:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree that forcing different languages into a single Wiki is not a feasible solution. Veps and Karelian (which is divided into several dialects) are by all accounts separate languages. The additional problem is that the real number of speakers might be substantially lower than

the number of members of the ethnic group (13,000) and
even than the nominal number of speakers (9,000), that was established in the 2001 Russian census.

The true figure might be in the area of 3,000 or less. (it would take some research, to which I don't have the time atm)

The claim of mother tongue may often be an expression of identity (which has seen a strong revival after the breakdown of the Soviet Union) rather than an accurate factual statement.

Two years ago in St. Petersburg, I met a teacher and cultural worker from the Veps national (autonomous) volost (district), who saw her task in reviving the national language in schools. The picture which she painted of the local situation was one, where the would-be mother-tongue is taught to the younger generation effectively as a second language in primary schools. The bearers of the language who use it in a natural way are mostly of the old generation. The middle generation is typically the very point in the chain, where intergenerational transmission of language and traditional knowledge has failed, so that grandparents have a different mother tongue that their grandchildren. Consequently, the natural bearers of the language, those who where still educated in it in a natural way, are those least likely to use the internet and participate in such a project, while the generation, which has the most natural relationship to modern means of communication knows the language of their grandparents as a second language at best. There are very few incentives to learn the language, unless you have a very distinct interest in your indigenous culture, something which typically affects only a small minority.

The best suggestion that I can come up with is to encourage proposers to try out other types of WM projects, which might be more realistic to achieve than an encyclopaedia and more useful as well. Such would be Wikisource as an excellent means of preserving and documenting indigenous oral traditions, or maybe a Wiktionary as an educational resource for those who learn the language at school. (As I wrote above, I believe that only a small fraction of contemporary Veps youths have the chance to pick up the Veps language from their parents). This would also solve the dilemma, that a Veps Wikipedia would never be able to compete with the Russian or Finnish editions. The only plus it would have to offer is that it is written in a particular language. But this alone doesn't really cut it, given that virtually all young Vepses can be expected to be have native proficiency in Russian, while I estimate that only a small percentage of the younger generation has good command of their nominal native language. --Johannes Rohr 12:23, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Trademark competition between sister projects...

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi there, I'd just like to ask your opinion on this this discussion. Someone from the Polish Wikipedia has objected to the use of the name "Wikisłownik" for the Upper Sorbian Wiktionary. In both Upper Sorbian and Polish, "dictionary" is "słownik" (from "słowo" = word). Therefore "Wikisłownik" is the natural localisation of the name in both languages. The Ukrainian, Slovak, Belarusian and Czech Wiktionaries use the same translation, just in their national orthography: Wikislovnik, Wikislovník, Wikisloŭnik, Вікі-словник and so on. Therefore I find the attempt to discourage a sister project from using its natural name something, I cannot agree with. I'd be happy to find out whether I'm the only one... --Johannes Rohr 20:51, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

ROTFL A quick tip about marketing: what they fear is actually an advantage. Having a name that many people can use will only generate cross traffic among the projects, so it should actually be welcome, for marketing sake of all the involved parties. You may try and explain this, then if they insist they are entitled to protect a trademark you may simply smile and keep your route. It's better than wasting time on such meaningless discussions. Should we rename computer in all languages just because the English came first? :))))))))) --Bèrto 'd Sèra 14:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

On the requirement for interface translation

Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

After following events at Requests for new languages for some time, I feel that the requirement for almost full interface translation has proven to be a serious showstopper for many new projects, including the successful Wikipedia tests in the Sakha, Lower Sorbian and Crimean Tatar languages. I would like to ask langcom members on their views about this situation. It feels strange to see that some editing communities have invested substantial energy and time into their test project, but when it comes to localisation, they seem unable or not motivated to handle it.

Personally, I would be in favour of relaxing the requirement and take a pragmatic route. In the cases of Sakha, Lower Sorbian and Crimean Tatar, virtually all potential readers and editors can be expected to be fluent in the dominant language of their respective countries, i.e. in German, Russian and (possibly) Ukrainian. (I suspect that Crimean Tatars will often have better command of Russian than of Ukrainian, due to the linguistic dominance of Russian on Crimea peninsula). In such cases I would opt for allowing a wiki to go live before localisation is completed and use the dominant language as fallback. In the meantime, translation could continue via Special:Allmessages, until complete and then be fed into the mediawiki repository.

I simply fear that the current situation is so discouraging to many editors, that they eventually loose interest and withdraw from participating in this project.

Alternatively, better guidance might be provided to the communities. In case of the Sakha Wikipedia, I have observed, that the main contributor had difficulties with the technical side of the translation process and he therefore abstained from using the betawiki translation interface. I feel that it might be helpful, if langcom members would proactively approach these communities and ask them, what guidance or support they might need. --Johannes Rohr 20:49, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Johannes, I said it before. Our business here is "verifying" that all conditions for a good project are there. The "horse power" factor is one of the best indicators of vitality for a project. I am a UI maintainer myself, it takes 2 days to a single person to localize mediawiki. If a project doesn't even have that much... then what do they have? Another bot wiki with thousands of empty year stubs? If they have tech problems they can write to me direct, in Russian, Italian, Ukrainian, French or Spanish, as needed. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 11:01, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I recall, Dundak said that translating the interface to Upper Sorbian took him months. No idea why, but it is my observation, that this is where many projects get stalled that are else ready for prime time --Johannes Rohr 14:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

If you are fluent in Russian, would you mind contacting User:Николай Н.Павлов who is the main contributor to the Sakha Wikipedia, see also Talk:Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Sakha. I already offered help, but to no avail. I see that they are stuck and the way they have begun to translate looks messy to me. I just would not like to see their effort wasted. Maybe a word from a langcom member would encourage them to complete what they have started. --Johannes Rohr 13:38, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Two days??? Never! Two months, ok. But translating thousands of MW-messages is not possible in two days, especially not if it's done by someone who has very little experience with the software and with writing the language in question. --Thogo (talk) 17:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Prerequisites for conditional approval

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi, I wonder what exactly is required for a proposal to be conditionally approved apart from the language itself being fit for purpose. I was surprised that the Ingush Wikipedia got the conditional go-ahead today. Only two users had come forward. One of them does not exist on meta, neither on the incubator. (User:Zhansurat_Gorbakova). The main page of the incubator:Wp/inh is mostly in English and the contents of the test project is less than a handful of stubs.

At the same time, other projects like e.g. the Tagalog Wikinews have generated substantially more real content but are still without conditional approval. I'd just like to have an explanation, if possible. Probably the language proposal policy should be more specific on this.--Johannes Rohr 17:28, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

The requisites for conditional approval are very specifically defined by the language proposal policy:

The following requirements must be met by requests before they can be approved; although they can be met at any time before or after a request, we recommend fulfilling the basic requirements before making a request. If you need any help or have questions, please ask a subcommittee member.

Requisites for conditional approval
1. The proposal is to open a new language edition of an existing Wikimedia project that does not already exist (see the complete list of Wikimedia projects).
2. The language should have a valid ISO-639 (search) or BCP 47 (list) code.
  If there is no valid ISO-639 or RFC 4646 code, it should be a natural language or a well-established constructed language. The Wikimedia Foundation does not seek to develop new linguistic entities; there must be an extensive body of works in that language. The information that distinguishes this language from another should be sufficient to convince standards organizations to create an ISO-639 or BCP 47 code.
3. The language must be sufficiently unique that it could not coexist on a more general wiki. In most cases, this excludes regional dialects and different written forms of the same language.
  The degree of difference required is considered on a case-by-case basis. The subcommittee does not consider political differences, since the Wikimedia Foundation's goal is to give every single person free, unbiased access to the sum of all human knowledge, rather than information from the viewpoint of individual political communities.
4. The proposal has a sufficient number of interested editors to form a viable community and audience. If the proposal is for an artificial language such as Esperanto, it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion.
  Many users consider fictional languages (such as Klingon) to be unacceptable, and such proposals may get strong opposition. A precedent of note is the Klingon Wikipedia, which was eventually shut down (see archived discussion).

The problematic requirement with regards to the Ingush Wikipedia request is the last one– having enough editors to form a viable editing community. Maybe that could be shifted into the (unquoted) requisites for final approval instead. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:08:43, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Fix wrong LangCodes

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

I think zh-min-nan: and zh-yue: are not correct ISO LangCodes, therefore the Wikimedia Foundation should change them into nan: and yue: (and should make zh-min-nan: and zh-yue: redirection codes).

According to ISO 639-3, Chinese (ISO 639-1: zh; ISO 639-2: chi/zho; ISO 639-3: zho) has 13 sub-languages/dialects which have own three-letter LangCodes.[5] Min Nan (nan) and Cantonese (yue) are two of them.

zh (Chinese language) of zh-min-nan and zh-yue is not necessary because nan and yue themselves are already categorized in zh. min (Min dialect group) of zh-min-nan is also unnecessary because nan itslef is already defined as "Min Nan".

Min Dong and Wu Wikis do not use the codes like zh-min-dong (or zh-min-cdo) and zh-wu (or zh-wuu). Their codes are just cdo: and wuu:. --Yes0song 17:03, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

There's the redirection code nan, but from my experience it's very unreliable and only works in a few cases. -- Prince Kassad 17:57, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

A bug has been filed (quite a long time ago, too) about the matter; see bugzilla:8217. However, developers have neglected it so far, as it does require quite a few things to be done nearly at the same time, so it is a bit tricky. Another code that should be changed is als:, which should be moved to gsw: (als = Tosk Albanian). Jon Harald Søby 21:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

We have asked for a yue redirect and so far have heard nothing. User:Shinjiman has been preparing grounds for the change.Hillgentleman 08:51, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Requests for new languages/Latinized Russian

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

I believe, this proposal by User:Yaroslav Zolotaryov, creator of the "Siberian language" should be speedily rejected. Since what he proposes is just transliterated Russian, the proposal isn't eligible anyway, under the current language proposal policy. Additionally, the discussion is more and more developing into a flamefest, since the rage from the discussion over the Siberian Wikipedia inevitably spills over. I don't want to see more ugly scenes like that, and I'd like to ask langcom to put a speedy end to this. --Johannes Rohr 23:09, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

There are already 5 users and about 80 pages in the test, and they are not bot-made. So the test will be popular, as shows the first day. Only about 10 pages from the 80 was made by proposer (by me). As to the flameset, this is simply flashmob, will be LangCom convinced by flashmobs or by other things? --Yaroslav Zolotaryov 03:33, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

As to transliteration, there are no official tranliteration in ruwiki, similiar to serbian, and I think nothing will be made + modern language used in the test has lexical differences from the 20 century standard, so I do not think that non-correspondence with the policy is so evident, at least this should be tested. Mass violations of Wikipedia rules by opposition to this idea such as personal attacks, political and other accusations, offtopics, are not guilt of the proposers. --Yaroslav Zolotaryov 03:46, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, in the absense of a universal transliteration standard, any attempt to develop or select one for Wikipedia would be original research. At present, the articles in the test project are an ugly mix of just about every common transliteration, without rhyme or reason. Apart from that, the entire proposal is just ridiculous. A language called "latinised Russian" does not exist, and a fork of an existing language edition is something we need as much as a hole in the head. The whole requests makes just about as much sense as this one. --Johannes Rohr 20:50, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Siberian Wikipedia

Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

The proposals are from 2006-11-02 (9 months ago). All that has to be said is that there will be no new arguments. The community of ru-wiki is very dissatified by the temps of taking a decision. Are you waiting for something? If you need help, please tell me, what is to do. --Obersachse 20:36, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Project closures are not managed by the languages subcommittee. --Johannes Rohr 09:03, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

But who is in charge? Jimbo Wales himself? --Obersachse 10:49, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Until a new body like the proposed Meta Arbitration Committee is created, the answer to this question is largely undefined. As you know, almost everyone in Wikimedia is a volunteer. You cannot force anyone to accept a particular job. Lately, some users including myself have come forward and tried to turn WM:PCP into a functioning process - at least for non-controversial cases, i.e. Wikis where the only activity is the index.php spambot. But neither of us has any authority to address proposals to close projects which have actual content and a community. I understand that the autonomy of individual projects is very much a fundamental principle of Wikimedia. I.e. projects are not micromanaged by any central authority. They are expected to solve their own affairs without interference. Therefore Wikimedia is simply not prepared to deal with the current situation. --Johannes Rohr 19:09, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Nobody is specifically in charge. You must hold a wide discussion and vote, then propose a decision. Notify the board of trustees of this proposed decision and ask if they veto it, then file a bug request. Maybe it will get done. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:13:43, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

A wide discussion and vote is what has been taking place at Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Siberian Wikipedia since November 2006. I believe that this should be more than sufficient and that the supporters of a closure have both overwhelming community support and the better arguments on their side. Additionally, the issue has been brought up numerous times on foundation-l and I recall that each time those participating in the discussion had a highly critical attitude towards ru-sib. So I believe that the requisites for approaching the BoT are already there. --Johannes Rohr 09:38, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikiquote Limburgish

Latest comment: 17 years ago8 comments3 people in discussion

There are many people interested in this project. The incubator:Wq/li allready has 56 pages, which brings us to place 47 on the List of Wikiquotes. Limburgish has got two codes (li, lim) and has over 1,5 million speakers. May it be approved? --Ooswesthoesbes 05:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed approval to other langcom members via e-mail --Sabine 07:09, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Place 37 already: 128 articles. Benopat 17:37, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Will it be opened this century??? --OosWesThoesBes 14:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Will it be created soon? I'm recieving bad mail because it takes too long. --OosWesThoesBes 09:06, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey, everything is translated execpt those viewed at the talk page of requests for new languages/Wikiquote Limburgish and those who are equal to the fallback language Dutch. We await final aprove and creation. --OosWesThoesBes 15:10, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Will it be created soon? I'm recieving bad mail because it takes too long. --OosWesThoesBes 09:06, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

We notified the Board of Trustees earlier today that the request will be approved if they don't object within four days from today, as required by our charter. —{admin} Pathoschild 17:35:29, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Perfect, now I can reply to my mail that it will be approved in 4 days. (I'll make it five :)) --OosWesThoesBes 17:40, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

This was approved yesterday. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:27:44, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Latgalian

Latest comment: 17 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion

What's going with Latgalian?--Nxx 10:27, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

There is no ISO 639-3 code for it - this means there needs to be a request for it - in the meantime of course you may localize the UI and go ahead working on incubator. The problem is: we cannot make exceptions - once we did we would get into fights and hassles. Therefore I kindly ask for your understanding. It seems you are serious about your project, so why don't you apply for an ISO 639-3 code? Thanks! --Sabine 07:14, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

First it is not my project and second it already has ISO-639-6 code [6]. By the way exceptions already exist, take Simple English for example.--Nxx 05:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, most of these exception were created before LangCom came into existence. The main issue that we (Langcom) disagree on still is what is Lataglian exactly? Since it's been a few months since I asked for conditonal approval of the project, I shall bring it up again with the other LangCom members.--Shanel 04:03, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I think there is no much controversy over what is Latgalian. There is a controvercy with Karelian (where in fact three different dialects), but Latgalian is a distinct language.--Nxx 01:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad. I got them confused.--Shanel 23:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

At issue is that Latgalian does not have an ISO-639 code. I would not be surprised at all that such a recognition can be achieved. At this moment the issue is real. GerardM 13:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems that ISO did pronounce on Latgalian. This made it a dialect of Latvian. Getting a reversal of this decision will be hard. GerardM 23:23, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, it seems to be a political decision because of position of Latvian government. Anyway is seems dialects allowed in Wikipedia. Note fore example, Pennsylvania German or Bavarian.--Nxx 22:23, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Korean Hanja

Latest comment: 16 years ago24 comments9 people in discussion

11 supporters are waiting to open Korean Hanja Wikipedia since 2006. and we tried everything to open this Wikipedia, now we have more than 300 articles in Incubator and we had all discussion for related problems. Finally we called Language subcommittee to open Hanja Wikipedia, on 3 month ago. But Bèrto 'd Sèra said they are making new technical solution that will solve this problem. So we have wait 3 month for new technical solution. But we have no answering about the technical solution, nobody knows the solution is going on or not. We are wait enough, we cannot wait anymore the solution. So we demand to open Korean Hanja Wikipedia now since nobody know when new technical solution be finished. We don't oppose about new technical solution, but what we want is to open this Wikipedia than hopelessly to wait new solution. --Masoris 10:40, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello Masoris. This issue is currently being discussed by some language subcommittee members. I hope to have an answer for you soon. Feel free to contact me if you need anything else.--Shanel 01:35, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia already allowed to open "1 lang - multi-writing system/dialect - multi-wiki" such as nds: and nds-nl:. I think there are no reasons to hesitate to allow to open Korean Hanja Wikipedia. Yes0song 05:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What happened before the start of the language committee is not an argument in the consideration of new projects. GerardM 13:41, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Is that a official policy? --Masoris 18:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

As we said in May Korean Hanja Wikipedia be approved? and We demand to open Korean Hanja Wikipedia. What we most want is to contribute Wikipedia in this Korean writing system. You can see detail in here. And we understand that this Wikipedia doesn't fit with current policy. So we support new technical solution what a language subcommittee member proposed before. But development of the technical solution is not going on, and we don't want to be wait any more for this the technical solution.

So I discussed about this issue with some of this Wikipedia supporters. And now I have 2 ideas about this. The first one is "to open this Wikipedia temporary until new technical solution finished". I think it is most easiest way to solve this problem. In this idea, we'll just use the temporary wikipedia, and grow it up waiting technical solution. And we'll move all articles to Korean Wikipedia after the solution finished. If this idea is impassable, I'll use the second idea, it is "to make new namespace in current Korean Wikipedia, and to move all incubator articles to the namespace." Because Korean Hanja Wikipedia Test project has more than 300 articles, and it has hardness to maintain those articles because of its quantity, this idea help to make maintain easier. To make second idea, we need to get agreement with Korean Wikipedians, but I don't think it is easy because some of Korean Wikipedians are very aggressive to this writing system.

Please give me your opinion. --Masoris 18:12, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

No exceptions are made to the policy, so I doubt a temporary project will be set up. Setting up a new namespace on the Korean Wikipedia is up to the local community, and doesn't require approval from the language subcommittee. If there is consensus among Korean editors, feel free to ask here if you need technical guidance on getting new namespaces set up. —{admin} Pathoschild 23:28:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

What should we do, when we fail consensus, should we give up everything? We already discussed about this issue with Korean Wikipedians, the result is very negative, and I'm not have any confidence to get agreement. What I felt to your language subcommittee is that Language subcommittee ignore, irrespective, and discriminate us because we are minor people who use minor Writing system. I wrote about this issue more than 10 times to subcommittee members, and all of them just ignore my opinion. Some of them respond to me that "I'm discuss with other members" or "We are making new solution", and just forgot us. And now I expect that you and other language subcommittee members ignore us again, because we don't have any power, we are few and we are minor people, so we are very ignorable. --Masoris 12:49, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

First, note that the following message is a personal statement, not a formal decision by the language subcommittee. I can bring it up for another formal decision, but that will almost certainly be disfavourable to creating a Korean Hanja wiki.

I'm sorry this has been frustrating for you. The language subcommittee is tasked with (among other things) drafting and enforcing a policy applying objective criteria to approval of requests. Because the two Korean systems are similar and there is no language code for the Hanja system, they must coexist on the same wiki. The Wikimedia Foundation seeks to create multilingual content so that "every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge", not promote language development (which is a noble goal, but not part of this Foundation's mission). It seems that everyone who can use the Hanja system can also use the Hangul system.

It is specifically because we don't discriminate against particular requests that we cannot make an exception for Korean Hanja; if we did, we would then reasonably be expected to make exceptions for every other request. That leads to division of labour and increases the probability of empty wikis, which reduces the wikis' effectiveness in reaching the Wikimedia Foundation's objectives; for example, would the English Wikipedia be so successful if it was divided into British, American, and Scottish English?

Given that the subcommittee will certainly not approve a new wiki without a standard code (I can bring it up for a formal decision if you'd like), you have a few other options available:

Somehow contribute to the existing Korean Wikipedia. How this is done will depend on the community; maybe the two systems can coexist perfectly or there can be two versions of each article, with Hanja titles disambiguated like "Ubuntu (Hanja)" or maybe in new Hanja namespaces.
Continue to work on the Incubator project until a technical solution like Multilingual MediaWiki is available. If done carefully, the Incubator is almost as good as a new wiki; editors can set the interface to Korean Hanja in their preferences, a full template and category system can be created with a language title prefix, and a template can simplify links like "{{wpkore|Ubuntu}}".
Create a wiki outside the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikia in particular may be interested in hosting a Hanjul Wikipedia, particularly with the extensive body of articles already existing in the Incubator. This has all the advantages of a Wikimedia wiki, if Wikia accepts to host the project, but you will not be allowed to use the trademark "Wikipedia" (so you'd need to call it "Hanja Encyclopedia" or "Hanjapedia" or something else).

Note again that these are my personal suggestions, not formal suggestions from the subcommittee. —{admin} Pathoschild 17:12:14, 01 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that current language policy was written without understanding of East Asian languages. You can find easily similar request with Korean Hanja Wikipedia. Look Wikipedia Classical Chinese, Classical Japanese, Wikipedia Bungo and Wikipedia Chu nom. Classical Chinese is part of Chinese, Classical Japanese and Bungo are part of Japanese, Chu nom is part of Vietnamese, and all of those requests don't have own ISO language code. But all of those requests have many supporters and very few objector. You should understand that why they are support those requests. As I know most of East Asian think that difference of writing system is important as much as difference of spoken language. I think if most of language subcommittee member were East Asian, we could accept this Wikipedia without problem. You should not compare British, American, and Scottish English. Korean Wikipedia and Korean Hanja Wikipedia are different as much as Modern English and Old English. And how will you deal with Classical Chinese supporters, Classical Japanese supporters, Bungo supporters, Chu nom supporters? ~~They will request same demand with me in sometime.~~Do you means those projects are not suitable with WikiMedia? --Masoris 21:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC) edited 15:32, 4 October

British English users are allowed to write his knowledge in 'English Wikipeida' in British English orthography. American English users are allowed to write his knowledge in 'English Wikipedia' in its orthography. Scottish English users are allowed to write his knowledge in 'English Wikipeida' in its orthography. Chinese Simplified Character users are allowed to write his knowledge to 'Chinese Wikipeida' in its orthography, Chinese Traditional Characters users are allowed to write his knowledge to 'Chinese Wikipedia' in its its orthography. Norwegian Bokmal users are allowed to write his knowledge in 'Norwegian Bokmal Wikipeida' in its orthograpy, and Norwegian Nynorsk users are allowed to write his knowledge to 'Norwegian Nynorsk Wikipedia' in its orthography. Korean Hangul only users are allowed to write his knowledge to Korean Wikipedia in its orthography. Only Korean Hanja users are forbidden to write his knowledge in Wikipedia in its orthography. WHY??? --Masoris 07:14, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I doubt Scots (which reads like "ye can read airticles in mony different leids") would be allowed in the English Wikipedia. The systems used in a project depend on the community; some like those you listed above cooperate freely, others like the Korean Wikipedia are more conflicting. That's a matter for the community to settle.

Demands and support count are not criteria used by the language subcommittee. Those requesting these languages should work to obtain a language code from the standards group, if they meet their criteria. This is required for both the subdomain and XHTML language identification, and to prove that the language is separate. —{admin} Pathoschild 15:27:45, 03 October 2007 (UTC)

Korean community is not oppose to write our knowledge in Wikipedia, but they are oppose to write in Korean Wikipedia because of technical issue -- current MediaWiki doesn't have function for this situation. If technical issue be solved they'll allow our writing system. And there are two ISO 15924 script code for only Korean language, one is hang for hangul only and current Korean Wikipedia, and other one is kore for 'Korean mixed Hanja and Hangul system' and this Wikipedia. If this writing system was rarely used or not notable, team of ISO 15924 would not added 'kore' in script code. But they added 'kore' for Korean language in 'ISO 15924' nevertheless 'hang' was already exist. And as I know there were 2 Wikipedias for Chinese Wikipeida which distinguished by ISO 15924 script code, one used traditional character (zh-hant) and other used simplified character (zh-hans), and those were unified by technical solution. We also want to open and use Korean Hanja Wikipedia (ko-kore) waiting technical solution, like Chinese Wikipedia did. --Masoris 06:21, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Requests predating the language subcommittee (like the Chinese Wikipedias) were determined by community vote. This caused several problems, such as political repression by out-voting, attempts to falsify votes by creating many accounts per person, empty wikis that attract vandalism, spam, and bias, takeover of a small wiki by another language group or a group of friends, et cetera. The language subcommittee was formed to prevent these problem in future requests; dealing with existing wikis is beyond our current authority (that is up to the community and Board of Trustees). Thus far, no approved wiki has had such issues.

The language code requirement is ISO 639-3, not ISO 15924. ISO 639 describes codes for the representation of languages, while ISO 15924 describes codes for the representation of writing systems. In terms of wikis, we're interested in languages. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:41:09, 04 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with determine by voting has problem. What you said is right. So I don't want to open Korean Hanja Wikipeida if passable. I think it is better to write texts in our writing system in current Korean Wikipedia than make new Wikipeida. But I said, current MediaWiki is not suitable for this. There are no good point because if we write both writing system 'hang' and 'kore' in same Wikipedia, It'll make confusion. Every article will be twice. Ubnutu, Ubuntu (Hanja), Category:Ubuntu, Category:Ubuntu (Hanja), Template:Ubuntu, Template:Ubuntu (Hanja), and how about interwiki? For this reason current Korean Wikipedians oppose this idea, it's just catastrophe. I said what we want is to write our knowledge in our writing system to Wikipeida, not in Wikia, not in incubator. To make Korean Hanja Wikipeida is one way to do this. If you have better idea more than to make new Wikipeida, please say it. --Masoris 10:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If a separate Korean Hanja Wikipedia is not opened, how about allowing contributors to add Korean Hanja to existing articles and pages in Korean Wikipedia? Perhaps special codes can be made to hide these hanja for those who want pure hangul.--Jusjih 02:31, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I strongly oppose the idea to divide Korean Wikipedia into Korean and Korean Hanja Wiki on the account of only difference in their writing system. Pathoschild understands well that those who are profficient in writing Hangul-Hanja mixed are also profficient in writing Hangul only. "every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge", not promote language development " - I absolutely agree. --Goodgood 12:56, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, you can hardly find websites which adopt Hangul-Hanja mixed writing because after 1990s there's been a significant decrease in population who uses mixed writing system. You can check hangul-only writing system in all(I assure you. ) the notable Korean news websites like Chosun Ilbo, Hangyere, Joonang Ilbo, DongA Ilbo, Maeil Kyungje, GyeongHyang etc...--Goodgood 13:04, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

According your logic, Wikipedia Old English, Latin, Classical Chinese, Gothic etc. MUST BE CLOSED IMMEDIATELY because those are merely not used these days. Neglection to minority is not proper for multilingualism of the Wikimedia Foundation. Moreover, in Korea, Hangul+Hanja script is still used in many academic fields and there are several pressure groups which support the mixed script. Many popular people such as Goh Kun (politician), Kim Chi-ha (poet), Cho Soon (ex-mayor of Seoul, economist and Classical Chinese scholar) etc. are participating in that movement. Lee Kun-hee, the Owner and Chairperson of Samsung Group, are frequently writing official documents in Hangul+Hanja script. Please face up to that undeniable fact.

Besides, we've been explaining the technical inability of merging Hangul-only script and Hangul+Hanja-mixed script into one wiki. Therefore I believe the Foundation should recognize this unavoidable exception. --Yes0song 13:52, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

If the Foundation wants to defend desperately the "one language - one wiki" policy, please promise the development of "Bèrto 'd Sèra's solution" as soon as possible. --Yes0song ~~14:01, 6 October 2007 (UTC)~~ Slight modified at 14:03, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Your instances metioned above(old English, Latin, Chlassical Chinses, Gothic) which have their own words, grammars and literal systems are different form Hangul-Hanja. Hangul andn Hangul-Hanja are almost same except for writing system.--Goodgood 14:14, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Look an example from en:Korean with mixed script of Hangul and Hanja below.

Mixed script: 누구나 編輯할 수 있는 自由로운 百科事典.

Hangul only: 누구나 편집할 수 있는 자유로운 백과사전.

Translation: The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

no difference but writing system.--Goodgood 14:23, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there are different tendency in writing between both system including word-spacing, word of Sino-Korean vs. Native Korean, etc. Your example above is just sectional part.

Granted both are perfectly same, the Wikimedia Foundation should offer equal bases to write different writing system. English and Chinese Wikipedia has the bases. In English Wikipedia, Both American and British system are allowed without any technical conduction because both are not seriously different. In Chinese Wikipedia, both Traditional and Simplified characters are allowed with an automatic converter because both are much different but accompanied problems can be solved technically. However, the Hangul+Hanja mixed script is different. It and Hangul-only script can't be treated by the machine. Existance of both can't be also allowed because many readers of Hangul-only generation can't read Hanja and their co-existance in same documents is topsy-turvy.

Thereupon, I believe approval of independent Korean Hanja Wikipedia is the best way. Yes0song 05:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Chinese Wikipedia allows manual converting instructions, for example, -{zh-cn:朝鲜;zh-hk:北韓;zh-sg:朝鲜;zh-tw:北韓}- shows how Mainland Chinese, Hong Kong, Singaporean, and Taiwanese Chinese speakers name North Korea. If not otherwise specified, Hong Kong version follows Taiwanese display and Singaporean version follows Chinese display. Say that we cannot make conversion table for common compounds, I would like to ask if converting codes can be manually added case by case, for example, -{hg:남한;hj:南韓}- where I use hg for hangul and hj for hanja. If two separated Korean Wikipedias are not wanted, we should try allowing manually added converting codes.--Jusjih 23:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

I understand your suggestion, but your solution may confuse editors and make wiki texts complicated. Therefore, I think that to start a new wiki is the best way until developping of Bèrto 'd Sèra's solution. Yes0song 14:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Hanja Conversion Tool proposal is "Impossible"

All the world's Writing Systems can be classified into three different types:

Alphabetic writing systems (eg. Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic alphabets etc)
Syllabic writing systems (eg. Japanese hiragana, Korean hangul)
Logographic writing systems (Chinese characters, Ancient Babylonian Cuneiform)

It has always been possible to use online machine-conversion tools from:

Alphabetic writing systems --> Alphabetic writing systems

(eg. Arabic to Latin to Cyrillic)

Syllabic writing systems --> Alphabetic writing systems

(eg. Japanese hiragana to Romanized Japanese)

Alphabetic writing systems --> Syllabic writing systems

(eg. Romanized Korean to Korean hangul)

Logographic writing systems --> Alphabetic writing systems

(eg. Chinese characters to Romanized Chinese Pinyin)

Logographic writing systems --> Syllabic writing systems

(eg. Japanese Kanji characters to Japanese Hiragana)

However, it is Extremely Problematic (i.e. Impossible) to convert from:

Alphabet writing systems --> Logographic writing systems;

(eg. Romanized Chinese Pinyin to Chinese characters has never been developed)

Syllabic writing systems --> Logographic writing systems.

(eg. Japanese hiragana/katakana to Japanese Kanji has never been developed)

The present proposal of an online conversion tool from Korean Hangul to Hanja fits within the "Syllabic writing systems --> Logographic writing systems" category, would be both highly inaccurate and impractical. --Jose77 02:53, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Reducing complexity is not a difficult task. Therefore a Hanja to Hangul converter program is easy to make. But a program that converts Hangul to Hanja is much more complex as it has to know all the words in Korean and has to understand the context as well. That's a extremely difficult task and I wouldn't trust the results of such a converting process. The only technical solution I can think of is making all the editors of the korean wikipedia write in mixed Hanja and Hangul and then display the article in a Hangul only version as well. Unfortunately this solution is impossible as most Koreans don't know Hanja that well that they'd be able to use it accurately. In my view there is no other solution than making a separate encyclopedia. For this new Hanja Wikipedia edition I would suggest adding a technical solution to help readers who have knowledge gaps in Hanja. My idea would be that the meaning and the sound of the Hanja syllable should be displayed when touching the Hanja character with the mouse. 88.76.45.90 21:37, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

technical solution discussion stalled?

This discussion (Talk:Special projects subcommittees/Languages/Archive July 2007#New solution‎)seems to have stalled; the promised technical development is not to be seen. Berto d Sera, if you are not authorised to say anything, could you, or anybody else in the langcom, at least say who is authorised to say something? Which developer is on it? And I am sorry to have joined the party late. Hillgentleman 23:07, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Kinaray-a

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

To whom it may concern. I think that the interface message translations for the Kinaray-a (krj) Wikipedia would be sufficient at this point. Most of the terms are technical and keeping it in English would be more practical. I reviewed the translated interface messages and would there be any faulty entries, I think it would be easy to edit... I think the project is ready for the next step... We are hoping for the approval of the Kinaray-a Wikipedia, for surely, it will be very beneficial among the Kinaray-a Wiki users, especially in promoting the use of our endangered (fastly disappearing/merging with other languages) language. We believe that through a Wikipedia, Karay-as would take more pride to use Kinaray-a often, even in the technical field. Thanks a lot.

- 11 September 2007 RonaldPanaligan

As to our information only 7% of the UI has been translated and it does not cover even the visible parts of it - so please finish that part first. Thanks! --Sabine 09:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikiversity Greek

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I would like to ask you when will a greek wikiversity open. We have 10 interested users, and we have worked too hard at beta wikiversity. Please answer to me. Thank you very much.--Diaza 07:43, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I am particularly interested in new languages. For new projects like this one there is typically a process whereby a new language is accepted for that type of Wiki. Cormac has better ideas about new wikiversities then I do. GerardM 05:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't understand you could you please explain it to me?

Hello, my unofficial analysis of the test project shows that it is not yet active enough to meet our requirements for approval. All other requirements have been met. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:44:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Sakha

Latest comment: 17 years ago15 comments7 people in discussion

Proposal of the Wikipedia Sakha had been conditionally approved until translation of interface. Now translation of the wiki interface to Sakha language is completed. When Wikipedia Sakha is opened? MaxiMaxiMax 07:20, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Hello MaxMaxiMax. We have noticed the wonderful job that you've done with translating the interface. Good work. However, the incubator project does not seem to have many articles. We would like to see a bit more work on the incubator, maybe 50 articles or so, before giving the project final approval. :)--Shanel 04:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh please, you must be kidding. More than half a year ago, langcom indicated to the Sakha editing community that "test project has been deemed a success" and "The only step left before the creation of a Sakha Wikipedia is the translation of the basic wiki interface"

I think such a verdict should not be revoked without a very good reason. --Johannes Rohr 06:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Johannes - or Langcom raised the bar? It is up to you, but if so, I recommend Langcom to provide the community with an explanation why such a change of criteria should be introduced. --Aphaia 02:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I simply misremembered. We do know how many articles they have, but from what we saw most are very short translations. To quote one langcom member "The main problem is that most of the other articles are 3-10 words long, so 50% or more of the text is NOT in sakha." If this is wrong, please correct us. We do applaud the Sakhan Wikipedians for completing localization, but there is no big rush to give the project final approval, and it would be nice to see some original content.--Shanel 19:32, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I just went through incubator:Category:Sakha Wikipedia. I found no more than eight articles with content not in Sakha. Only two of them are fully in Russian, incubator:Wp/sah/Огрызко, Иосафат Петрович and a second one (forgotten, which one, closed the tab already). Of the other six, two have large portions of text in Russian: incubator:Wp/sah/Аттаахтар цивилизациялара and incubator:Wp/sah/Оконешников, Василий Тимофеевич. In both cases, the Russian paragraphs seem to be non-encyclopaedic (copy and paste from belletristic works). In the remaining five articles, the non-Sakha text makes up the lesser part of the articles, ranging from just one sentence (incubator:Wp/sah/Күннээҕи ойуу, incubator:Wp/sah/Бранли музейа to two or three sentences (incubator:Wp/sah/Аммосов, Максим Кирович, incubator:Wp/sah/Хрущев, Никита Сергеевич. The only full section of encyclopaedic content in Russian that I found was incubator:Wp/sah/Былыргы түүр бичигэ#Сурук историята. Maybe I've overlooked something, but it would seem to me that saying that "50% or more of the text is NOT in sakha" is greatly exaggerated. --Johannes Rohr 21:43, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

As I can see in Category:Sakha Wikipedia, there are more than 80 articles and lots of templates and other service pages. Okay, many articles are rather short, but it should be no problem, since it is just an incubator. I talked with activists of Sakha Wikipedia, and they told me that they had spent lots of time to translate interface (as it was declared as the only condition to open Sakha Wikipedia) and did not pay many attention to quantity of articles in incubator, since they mostly want to increase quantity and quality of articles when the Sakha Wikipedia becomes the part of Wikipedia. They are very interested in this project and did a lot for its existence, please don't disappoint them. MaxiMaxiMax 05:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Allow to quote the following: conditional decision This proposal has been conditionally approved. Although the proposal is viable, the community still needs to meet some requirements described in the language proposal policy. In the meantime, you can still discuss the creation of this language project on this page. The closing subcommittee member provided the following comment: The language is suitable and the test project has been deemed a success. The only step left before the creation of a Sakha Wikipedia is the translation of the basic wiki interface; if you'd like to contribute, please see "Localization" on the talk page. —{admin} Pathoschild 04:19:19, 21 April 2007 (UTC) m:Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Sakha--HalanTul 03:50, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

My statistics show 164 templates, 97 articles, and 7 redirects. Over the last month, there have been 33 edits (including 18 new pages), almost entirely made by HalanTul with a minor correction by Malhonen and 7 edits by anonymous users (including 3 new pages). Excluding outliers, there is a rough average of 3 edits per day.

The sole obstacle I see at this point is that HalanTul appears to be the sole active editor; should they leave, the wiki will be left without an active community. —{admin} Pathoschild 23:54:17, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Dear community Wiki! I shall speak briefly as badly I know English:

Many native speakers Sakha are interested in this Project. They wait for opening. I do not think, that we now need formal increase in quantity of users.
The project existing now - only test, in it it is difficult to beginner to work.
The high-grade project (not test) in itself will involve supporters and will expand opportunities of its promotion. --HalanTul 08:13, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

@Pathoschild: If these concerns are shared by the languages subcommittee, they should have been raised half a year ago, to give the Sakha editing community the chance to respond. Instead, the Sakha editing community was promised, that the new Wikipedia edition would go online, as soon as the interface translation is complete. Bringing up new concerns at this point, when the would-be final requirement has been fulfilled is somewhat discouraging. One cannot avoid the idea, that yet more fresh concerns might be identified as soon as this one has been solved. I feel that the whole process deserves more transparency. If langcom really agrees, that the Sakha editors have to meet yet more targets before going live, there should be a clear and specific (e.g. number of articles, what is considered a real article, number of editors) instructions provided on the request page. At the moment it still says, that the test project was deemed a success and that interface translation was the final thing they had to fulfil.

If I was a member of the language subcommittee, I would sure understand that I am bound by my earlier words, meaning that final approval should be given, even if some reservations remain.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but the ultimate task of the language subcommittee is to facilitate new languages, not to prevent them. --Johannes Rohr 22:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm no longer a member of the language subcommittee, so I cannot speak for them. However, the ultimate task of the language subcommittee is not to facilitate new languages; it is tasked with preventing the further creation of empty or problematic wikis, and ensuring that those wikis which it does approve become productive and flourishing.

The conditional approval was given under the assumption that the active community would continue to be active. Final approval may be withheld if that community vanishes, since the conditions for approval are no longer met. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:24:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Creating new wikipedias is wothless until they have at least 100 active users and at least 1000 articles of good quality. I only wish the members of the Sakha community to attract more speakers of their language and make their wikipedia worth enough to be opened as a separate project.--Certh 02:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

If a conditional approval is based on certain assumptions, I feel that for the sake of transparency, these assumptions should be explicitly stated, even if you hold them to be self-evident. To outsiders they are not, moreso to outsides with limited or no command of English.

I feel uncomfortable with your definition of sole purpose of langcom as to prevent something (i.e. to prevent more unmaintained wikis). Until now, I assumed, that the language subcommittee was also there to provide guidance to those wishing to create new language editions. --Johannes Rohr 08:47, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The requirements are explicitly laid out by the Language proposal policy, which is prominently linked to from every request. I did not say preventing problem wikis was their sole task, though it is an important one. If you're unsure about the subcommittee's tasks, these are outlined at Special projects subcommittees/Languages#charter. —{admin} Pathoschild 16:55:52, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I am aware of the requirements. In fact, earlier this year I hinted to the Sakha project members that they need more active editors. However, to my surprise, soon after that you declared on behalf of langcom that everything was O.K., which implied that the "at least five active contributors" rule should not be taken literally.

You see the problem? The language proposal policy says one thing, communication from langcom says the opposite. So which source is authoritative? The policy or the people?

Additionally I get the impression, that decisions are not always based on careful examination of a project, e.g. the wrong number of articles which was referred to as a justification for further delaying the creation of this wiki. --Johannes Rohr 18:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The policy is authoritative. Several subcommittee members have stated repeatedly that the subcommittee will follow this policy without exception. If there was never sufficient community, it's possible I simply made a mistake in my message. If so, I sincerely apologize for confusing anyone about the requirements, but that does not grant an exception to the requirement. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:22:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Shanel has responded to your comment above. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:52:56, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I understand that you execute the duty. But remember, that our project of Sakha Wikipedia not a product of ambitions of any limited circle of people. I think, that this project will help to not disappear to our Sakha (Yakut) language. Thanks.--HalanTul 21:24, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Dear friends, I call you to not dramatize a situation. Thanks for sincere support and essential critical remarks. I suggest to take a time-out. There can be one month. At this time we - initiative group - 1) shall lead the wide advertising company in our republic Sakha (we prepared for it for the moment of opening of new section), 2) we shall write new clauses to the test project, and we shall improve available clauses.

In any case, results of work it is available: 1) many Sakha know about existence Wikipedia, 2) the interface wiki is translated on Sakha-Yakut and and it can use on any sites on the basis of wiki.

Briefly about an advertising campaign: interview in the republican state newspaper "Sakha Sire" (one interview in the republican newspaper "Kyym" is already published in July), press releases in 30 republican mass media (not only printed), the publication of information page with a hyperlink on test page in the most visited resource of the Yakut network, an attachment of a banner (500000 displays) at forums, promulgation of materials about Wiki on the Congress of people of Sakha (24-30 september, in Yakutsk), clause in international magazine " Arctic idea " (november, Moskow). --HalanTul 02:42, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Great. I think just three regularly active editors would be good, though more would of course be better. —{admin} Pathoschild 02:56:00, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikisource Armenian

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Request for Armenian Wikisource has been open for over three months now. The language is real (as indicated by the ISO codes and the official status that the language enjoys in the internationally recognized Republic of Armenia). There is a successful, though yet small, Armenian Wikipedia, with a vibrant community that contains a nucleus of at least 5 members active on a daily basis, and an article base of over 3,500 (the interface is translated!). The development project now has over 400 original texts (that will put the Wikisource within the top 50 on its first day) and at least 3 contributors who have been rather active within the past 3 months (since the opening of the request). The project has reached the stage where it can greatly benefit from specific Wikisource tools (proofreading, Author namespace, quality tags, etc.) that are not available at the oldwikisource, which slows down further growth of the project.
Please let me know what is postponing the creation of the wiki, and please do consider speedy resolution of the request. ― Teak 13:34, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this up with me. We're currently clearing the backlog, and will address your questions as soon as possible. Shanel 21:56, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Still clearing the backlog? This request isn't about the eligibility of the language or localization level or anything else for that matter, I truly can't understand what's postponing a decision. All the participants of the project (who are daily active on the Armenian Wikipedia) are waiting for the creation of the separate project to continue the work. What is it that prevents the members of the langcom from exchanging couple of one-sentence emails on this? - Teak 13:14, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Conditions met

The only condition indicated at the time of the conditional approval is met: the localization has been completed. Please approve the request. Thanks. Teak 11:23, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Transparency in approval process of new Wikipedias

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Can anyone from committees/subcommittees please help to clear the situation of Ottoman test Wikipedia and what is needed to move forward for this successful test Wikipedia. Please note that we are approaching the aniversary of the original application for this Wikipedia with almost no move in status!

Looking at the Requisites for conditional approval section of the Approval Policy, can see that Ottoman Wikipedia has already met all the conditions. In fact it is more successful than some approved Wikipediyas.

1. The proposal is to open a new language edition of Wikipedia, and it does not already exist.
2. The language has a valid ISO-639 code as ota.
  If there is no valid ISO-639 or RFC 4646 code, it should be a natural language or a well-established constructed language with extensive body of works in this language.
3. The language is unique and could not coexist on a more general wiki.
  The difference with other languages is real.
4. The proposal has a sufficient number of interested editors to form a viable community and audience.

Considering above I request subcommittee members to kindly review the application for the creation of the Ottoman Wikipedia. Thanks --Mehrdad 11:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for letting me know the request is ready for a decision. We're currently clearing the backlog, and will process the request as soon as possible. Shanel 21:56, 27 September 2007 (UTC)"

Wikipedia Bikol

What is the status of Bikol Wikipedia proposal? -- Filipinayzd October 2007 (UTC)

Hello. The Bikol Wikipedia is nearly ready for approval; there is a checklist on the request page and coordination on the talk page. —{admin} Pathoschild 05:33:56, 07 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Simple English

Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

You said every Wikimedia projects should be suitable with language policy. So Wikipedia Korean Hanja, or Wikipedia Simple French is not allowed. And Wikipedia Toki pona was closed because of this reason. But there are still exist some projects such as Simple English, and Classical Chinese which don't have own language code. I cannot understand why aren't you try to close those projects. I think if you not close Simple English, you should allow Simple Franch, Simple Chinese, Simple Japanese and so on for equality. --Masoris 15:26, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

This is simply beyond the authority of the languages subcommittee. It does not manage project closures. --Johannes Rohr 01:19, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Hoi, when the language committee became functional it was decided that we do not revisit the projects that already exist. Otherwise the committee would not have happened in the first place. As a consequence there is no such thing as "equality" for a reason to do or deny certain things. The only thing we hope to achieve is some consistency within what the LC does. GerardM 05:45, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ottoman Turkish

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi to every one in the language subcommittee, I would like to open a dialogue here so there is some communications and feed backs regarding the proposal for the approval of the Ottoman test Wikipedia. Please let me know if there is a better place for this purpose. Thanks. --Mehrdad 15:25, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

ISO Code and Ottoman Language - (Osmanli)

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I am following the discussions on proposed approval of Ottoman Turkish Wikipedia, and noticed that Bèrto 'd Sèra argues against the approval on the bases of ISO code designation.

I would like to bring to your attention that according to Ethnologue, ISO code on ota also covered ISO code tur , as a living language. Ethnologue also explains that this case is an exception on this standard. I invite you to have a look at the explanation on the process and reaseaning behind this at this URL:

http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_iso639.asp?code=tur

My aim is to demonstrate that even so the Ottoman language "officially" ceased to exist, but in reality as you would agree no one can kill a language just by decree. in 1928 for political purpose initially only the writing system changed from perso-arabic to Latin. The following gradual but wide vocabulary change followed in later decades, and resulted in differences between Ottoman and modern Turkish.

In the list of countries where Turkish is spoken please note the alternative name for the language as OSMANLI, which is the self-name for Ottoman.[7]

Please note that:

- In countries outside of Turkey, the Turkish is not a state language, and in some cases there is even animosity twords it.
- Most of the states where this language is spoken are doing their best to prevent its continuity, for various reasons.
- In Iran state likes to make the Farsi/Persian the only national language as a unifying effort for the nationalistic purpose.
- In some East European countries Ottoman languge it is considered the legacy of Ottoman Empire and brings bitter feeling of that eara to the mind of some rulers and popular minds. For instance note the status in Bulgaria[8]. In some others such as Macedonia there are Programmed Education of Ottoman Turkish.[9]

I personally appriciate the time and voluntary erfforts that you all display for new Wiki projects, hope we can open a dialogue on this subject in relation to application. --Mehrdad 07:49, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I would like to copy here the discussion on the subject of Ottoman Language Wikipedia from my User Talk page, for the benefit of the Language Committee members involved in the discussion.

Ottoman turkish

Latest comment: 17 years ago7 comments2 people in discussion

Hi! The only source we use for decisions is ISO 639-3 (and we do not make any exception, even in the case the codes are wrong). ISO says Ot.Tu. is not "living". Unless you correct this with ISO officers (we have no power to do it for you) the only way for Ot.Tu. to get a wiki is to demonstrate with actual data that Ot.Tu. is taught in schools as a "classical" language, just as Latin or Ancient Greek. Obviously, this would require more than a couple of countries, possibly turkish schools ih Europe may help. I hope you inderstand that it is NOT in LangCom's mission to judge and correct ISO. We simply guard its application, no matter what we think of particular cases. If you have any problems with the way they classify Ot.Tu. you should interface to them, directly. I personally understand your situation and I do sympathize with you guys, yet by NO MEANS the WMF is willing to issue political recognitions of any kind to anyone. When what you need is recognition, ISO is the address. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 10:21, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Bèrto 'd Sèra, Thanks for your effort to understand our position.
Ottoman language is thought in major universities around the world such as Oxford[10], Harvard[11], and UCLA[12] to name few. Ottoman language also thought in some Eastern European institutes [13], and some state run collages in Turkey such as Courses at 37 branches of Istanbul Technical Education Centres (ISMEK) and almost by all Turkish Universities. It is a core (non selective) subject for courses in Literature, History, Art, Librarians, and Archival education. [14][15] [16] [17]. (For more detailed list of educational opportunities in this language please refer to the list I am compiling to place in the English Wikipedia under relevant article Educational Opportunities in Ottoman Language).

Bèrto 'd Sèra, While understanding your task in providing a uniform rule and consistency in approving new applications, I would like to point out that, at the time of our application adn during the most of the last year, there was no such conditions you listed for the languages in similar situations, or much less known historical ones. While we have been busy writing more than 1200 articles, and tried to get someone to have a look at our case, no one has told us we need not to apply. Indeed if there is a new condition on acceptance of new projects, wouldn't it be unfair to apply it to old application like this one?

In the case of ISO code I may have failed to make it clear that in fact codes TUR and OTA are referring to the same language.[[:en:ISO 639:TUR|]] I'm not saying that ISO coding is wrong and need correction. ISO provides code OTA for the Ottoman Language which was once dominant language of Ottoman Empire and then changed in writing system from Arabic to Latin officially. While Code TUR refers to Ottoman Turkish outside of the modern Turkish borders but within the greater cultural zone of the Turkish influence in Eastern Europe and Asia. One would agree that this is not the usual case with most languages. Ethnologure clarifies this by this quote[18]:

We have mapped this code to Turkish [TRK]. ISO distinguishes this code from [ota] on the basis of time, [tur] applying to the Turkish language since 1928, and [ota] applying to the Turkish language prior to 1928. The year 1928 corresponds to the year in which writing reform occurred, changing from Arabic to Latin script. Thus, these two codes are distinguishing between the Arabic- and Latin-based writing systems rather than between languages. This goes against the normal practice for ISO 639-x, as described in clause 4.1.3. Thus, we deem that this language is also covered by the ISO code [ota].

I will look forward to know your views on the subject. Thanks --Mehrdad 19:00, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Copy of relevant discussions from Mehrdad's Discuassion page

If you start working BEFORE receiving conditional approval you do so at your own risk. Your project NEVER was conditionally approved, and it is not, thus far. You still work at your own risk. What you say basically endorses ISO classification. OTA is a "closed branch", the active branch for the language being TUR. As such OTA is not supposed to undergo any further semantic production, since the year 1928 is well over. The precedents at LangCom say your request will be rejected and rerouted to a "wikisource" project. Moreover, since the language is basically only another script with vocabulary variations from TUR, there will definetely be a trend for it to be rerouted to a TUR wikisource. Personally I would vote for an independent OTA wikisource, since the material in it has cultural relevance for a much wider linguistic area than TUR alone. Closing OTA sources in a strictly Turkish project would mean depriving most former Ottoman cultures of an important part of their historical libraries, so that's nonsense to me. Yet, at this point in time "having a wiki" is only possible in case you can show that OTA is currently used as a widespread "classical language". In this context the data you are giving are of interest and *may* make a difference, so let's work on them. Can you quote an estimate of the number of people receiving education in OTA vs the number of people receiving education in TUR and other related languages? It would also help to have sectorial data, that is, what OTA is meant to be used for in these education plans. This should be official data, not mine or your opinions. For this wiki request to be conditionally approved we need objective data showing that this is "latin for Turkish people", or something like that. The main problem is time. It's just 80 years of divergence, most people will consider it too little for OTA to be more than a "literary register" of TUR. If it wasn't for the change in script you'll never make it, so pls add data regarding the diffusion of arabic script and the impact on the usability of OTA vs TUR. These are the basic elements you can succesfully play with. I'm not trying to stop you, on the opposite, I'm trying to give you hints at what you can use. --Bèrto 'd Sèra 07:17, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Please note that, the criteria for conditional approval till Octobe 17, 2007 were[19]:

1. The proposal is to open a new language edition of an existing Wikimedia project that does not already exist.
2. The language should have a valid ISO-639 (search) or BCP 47 (list) code.
  If there is no valid ISO-639 or RFC 4646 code, it should be a natural language or a well-established constructed language.
3. The language must be sufficiently unique that it could not coexist on a more general wiki. In most cases, this excludes regional dialects and different written forms of the same language.
  The degree of difference required is considered on a case-by-case basis. The subcommittee does not consider political differences, since the Wikimedia Foundation's goal is to give every single person free, unbiased access to the sum of all human knowledge, rather than information from the viewpoint of individual political communities.
4. The proposal has a sufficient number of interested editors to form a viable community and audience. If the proposal is for an artificial language such as Esperanto, it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion.
  Many users consider fictional languages (such as Klingon) to be unacceptable, and such proposals may get strong opposition. A precedent of note is the Klingon Wikipedia, which was eventually shut down (see archived discussion).

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I fail to find any of the above criteria contradicting the conditional approval of Ottoman Wikipedia and that is the copy of the conditions up to October 17 , 2007, that is after 13 months of activity on Ottoman Wikipedia. It is interesting that this change of conditions has happened right after our discussions and inquiry on approval process.

Considering the above listed conditions, I would like to bring to your attention the noble goal mentioned within the above criteria:

Wikimedia Foundation's goal is to give every single person free, unbiased access to the sum of all human knowledge, rather than information from the viewpoint of individual political communities

We both seem to agree that there is significant systematic education in Ottoman Turkish language , both within Turkey and out through out respected universities, as well as in Eastern Europe and there is a body of human knowledge in this language, limited due to political reasons. Now we have been asked to provide a figure on number of people tought in this language. Can you direct us to any other example such as this numbers and sources which has been presented to Language Subcommittee from oterh requests, to help us drafting such statistics, or Ottoman Language is the first one subject to this condition?. Also I would like to know what figure would be sufficient to conditionally approve Ottoman Wikipedia? 10 or 100, or 100000 or more.
To me considering the goals of the Wiki foundation, the less the opportunities for a language, historical, endangered, classical, more the reason to allocate some resources and see if these seeds grow. Much like the stubs for an article.

Please refer to the date and nature of the changes in conditions for approval of Wiki projects here [20].
--Mehrdad 17:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

As precedently said, we are not granting server space for wikipedia projects to "historical" languages, at this stage. In instead, the script problem you quote, as an alternate script that would make TUR accessible to a wider use base, may be considered. According to current sources, though, the arabic script is basically unknown to the vast majority of the population in Azerbajzhan and Turkmenia (the bigger candidates) so this would apply only for turkish minorities in arabic scripting countries, like arabian countries and Iran. Is this assumption correct for you? Also, is there any way we could get to make an automated remapping from one script to another, as far as you know? --Bèrto 'd Sèra 17:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Bèrto 'd Sèra, The largest number of Azerbaijany community is living in Iran. Conservative estimate on Azeri population of Iran is about 15,000,000 compared with population of 8,000,000 in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Currently this community is under great pressur by the authoritarian central government to conform and assimilate to use national Farsi/Persian language, causing occasional ethnic unrest and protest in Iran. So apart from those learning Ottoman Turkish in Turkey and abroad, the larger population benefiting from this Wikipedia would be in countries that use Arabic script as a medium of education. Also in my earlier comments I provided the evidence on educational activities on teaching Ottoman Language, to make it clear that we are talking about Ottoman Turkish as a relevant classical language. As for the script it is possible to develop a transliteration facility to convert the Turco-Arabic script to Latin at the later stage, but considering that most of users and editors of this Wikipedia would be users with the knowledge of Arabic script, I suggest we base the Wikipedia as a right to left one, same as Uyghur Wikipedia.

BTW, I have placed a response to your earlier comment of October 26 at my Discussion page and will copy it to this page in order of time to make it easier to follow the discussion. Look forward to hear from you and other interested members. --Mehrdad 15:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Status of Ottoman Turkish in Education

Hi all, To assist with your assessment of the education activity for Ottoman Turkish, my Turkish Wikipedian friend Tarih, have helped me to compile a page as Statistics on Ottoman Turkish Education using available official statistics based on matrix provided byHigher Education Board of Turkey (Tablo 4) on its official website. Using this source we could extract the number of first year students who will be thought Ottoman Turkish Language during their courses. According to this tables, the total for the State Universities are 11870 students and private universities 1215 , which bring us to the Grand Total of 13085 students learning Ottoman Turkish (Osmanli). Considering these figures are just for the first year, it is safe to assume that at least twice this number being trained in this language. We hope this will help to clarify the status of this language as a prerequisite course for Turkish Literature, art and historical research. --Mehrdad 15:29, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

bugzilla:004409 · Move mo to mo-cyr, set up new Latin-based mo

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Dear user:Pathoschild, you proposed to continue the discussion at this talk page. I hope that you are interested in a real discussion and do not like to keep me bussy; I have other thinks to do. First of all I want to remember that I was involved in internationalization at Nike's wiki at betawiki:special:Prefixindex/template:Projects (The ISO-639-3 list) where many of the members of this committee where active.before it started to work here.
If you look at the various revisions in history of this page you will find some interesting ones from the oldest to 384046 and 384073. There are many reasons why I did not join this committee and withdraw from the committee at OmegaWiki. One was the aspect that Ethnologue is regarded by some of the members of the committee as « absolute truth » which realy is not the case; see « Bavarian » A language of Austria. Another was the my impression that Ethnologue is manipulated in a high degree else why could you explain yourself that there are some / many dialects and / or languages in countries as Germany, France, Italy, Spain etc. but there are no dialects in Romania where we arive at the point if a « mo » project set at the WikiMedia Foundation has its right to exist or not.
Until my wikibreak I was a soyop at WP:ro: and appreciated the help of my friend Node ue. The discussion about the « mo » projects was so discusting and I am still ashamed that I keeped silent when Mark was sytematically offended and chased. This is not the kind of projects I want to participate and I am not that ignorant to be a « judge » about somebody else, to decide if a mother toungue of other peoples is a language, a dialect or just a « Hirngespinst ».
Neither wikipedians nor encharded people at the projects (sysops, bureaucrats, stewards, trusties) are better people then others also if they need such ides to justify ther activities or their life. What realy counts is the work done together and the spirit people are working together. There are many examples where this is not always the best, it is not as it could be.
As a resume I want to let you know that I am realy worried that the « mo » issue is turning into a farce. It this we be the case the same would happen to the committee. Best regards
·‎Gangleri·Th·T·email me·‎ 05:54, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

The language subcommittee has nothing to do with the debate over the Moldovan Wikipedia, since it doesn't have any jurisdiction over existing wikis. We don't use the Ethnologue database as a basis for its decisions, though it is sometimes used in research.

But the "farce" you describe is one of the reasons the language subcommittee was set up— a small group of diverse trusted people with language knowledge or experience can make more balanced decisions (with help from community discussion) than a mob of anonymous, uninformed people, usually populated by those with a particular interest. This is shown by comparing the quiet, more-or-less effective subcommittee work to some of the community discussions and decisions (or the frequent lack thereof). While I do approve of the wiki way for many tasks, it's not ideal for all things. The Moldovan discussion is an example of mass-collaboration not being an effective solution.

This is precisely the reason I originally created the policy (before I was a member of the subcommittee); see my original proposal, where I stated:

A frustrated user in #wikimedia earlier today on the subject of a particularly messy discussion convinced me to finally get around to it. When asked if a small politically-motivated group could defeat a viable proposal, I was rather startled that the only answer possible was "essentially, yes."

—{admin} Pathoschild 07:33:38, 02 December 2007 (UTC)

One subcommittee member does all the work?

Latest comment: 16 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion

More than a week ago I've asked somebody to update a Crimean Tatar project status page. As far as I understand, only Pathoschild can do it. Currently he is busy, so we are waiting, waiting, waiting... Don't you find this situation to be abnormal? I mean that almost everything depends on the activity of just one subcommittee member who is to do a great amount of job, and when he is busy, or ill, or in business trip, or something else, everything stops. Don Alessandro 12:13, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

As I can see, of 12 subcommittee members noone except Pathoschild is really active in new language proposal issues on meta. You can find this, just checking their user contributions. Don Alessandro 08:11, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Maybe it's time for ór a new Lang. Subcom. ór the members need to become activer. Please take a look at Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Saterland Frisian! It was approved ½ year ago and had to make a second proposal!!! --OosWesThoesBes 08:46, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Pathoschild insists on using all kinds of templates that are non obvious to use.. So appearances deceive. Thanks, GerardM 18:33, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Some more transparency would certainly be helpful to correct the public appearance of the language subcommittee. Is there any compelling reason as to why the mailing list archives of langcom-l are inaccessible to non-members? All this gives me the impression of completely unnecessary secretiveness. --Johannes Rohr 19:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Almost all Wikimedia committees have completely private archives. This is one of the few that does not, so I do not believe your point stands. Cbrown1023 talk 21:11, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of this page, I only found the mailing list archives, which are inaccessible for mortals. So, thanks for the link However, in my view this is still not a full substitute for a an entirely public archive. I cannot imagine any reason why discussions shouldn't be fully disclosed. I mean, you're not discussing issues of national security, nor delicate details of your private lives, are you?

The point why I think this would be a good idea is because the language subcommittee is the successor of a process which notwithstanding its many flaws was fully public and thus transparent. By contrast, the language subcommittee is often perceived as a black box, acting in a god-like fashion, and often with ridiculously long response times. Nobody knows when it will strike and where... A fully public archive would certainly help to rectify this impression. --Johannes Rohr 22:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

By contrast, the language subcommittee is often perceived as a black box, acting in a god-like fashion, and often with ridiculously long response times. Nobody knows when it will strike and where...

That's it! I etirely agree. E.g. our Crimean Tatar project now meets all the requirements, as the localized interface was implemented by the end of November, and several new members joined the incubator. But who knows when it will be finally approved? Nobody wants to answer. Silence. :(

Maybe the open mailing list itself is not so very importatnt thing, but subcommittee members should somehow inform the proposers of the new projects and answer their questions "on-the-fly". Don Alessandro 12:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Requests are currently processed at a rate just under one per week, which isn't so bad. There are still serious problems with processing delays, but I am planning a few more reforms to address these. For example:

I am working on a new test project analysis script which will be open to the public (the current analysis script is restricted due to the heavy processing requirements). This will allow editors to track their own progress, and submit requests for processing to the subcommittee when ready (currently, the vast majority of requests are for projects that have not met the requirements).
Some of the newer members have expressed an interest in becoming more active in the subcommittee, and I hope to mentor them so that they take over a little bit of the workload (working in the subcommittee can be somewhat intimidating to one not used to it).
After discussion with the subcommittee, I hope to establish some objective criteria and a process for inviting potential productive subcommittee members.

I would very much like to streamline the process and make everything function smoothly with minimal delays or work, but that is easier said than done. If you have any other ideas, please do let me know here or on my talk page.

December is an extremely busy month for me, so I have fallen behind in many of the tasks I usually perform. However, I will hopefully be catching up starting next week. —{admin} Pathoschild 14:56:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Users may not start editing when the new site is created

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

If a new site is created and a langcom member says this on the request page, please say also the users may not start editing their new site, because the pages have to be imported first. Thank you, SPQRobin 14:44, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

They can edit even if the pages are not imported, they just can't copy-paste the pages from Incubator to the new wiki. Cbrown1023 talk 15:30, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but that's a bit the same: What should someone do on an new and empy wiki while there are pages in another wiki (Incubator)? Copy-paste those pages... SPQRobin 15:41, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Given that the old history is imported directly under it during special:import, what is bad in copying-and-pasting as a temporary measure, except that we may slightly deviate from GFDL for a few days? Hillgentleman 22:44, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

It gives you only more work. It is possible to remove all the prefixes both in the titles and links, just with one click. So why copy-paste? And it will have a history, but the copy-pasted revision will be the newest revision. SPQRobin 14:27, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Mailing list

Latest comment: 16 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

If a langcom member request a site creation, there is the component "site requests" which goes to wikibugs-l. I am going to request a new mailing list where those bugzilla request (and also requests for site lockings) automatically go to. This way we are faster notified when there needs to be imported/exported from/to Wikimedia Incubator. See bugzilla:12256. Thank you, SPQRobin 14:44, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Site lockings are absolutely not on the same level. They are absolutely arbitrary as they do not meet any standards except for the vagaries for people turning out to vote. Several of these are contrary to the established criteria for new languages. GerardM 18:45, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

And I didn't say site creations and site lockings are on the same level. Those are just two things related to the Incubator process. And because one of them (site creations) is related to the Langcom process, I noted it here. SPQRobin 19:13, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

@GerardM: You say, several site locking "are contrary to the established criteria for new languages." Which ones are you referring to? Further, I feel that the derogatory language you use to describe the work being done at WM:PCP is unjustified. The overwhelming majority of cases discussed there are Wikis, which are completely abandoned, have zero content and no community at all. Some people have started to manage these issues by themselves, without any formal authority, simply because both the body that you are a member of and the board of trustees have repeatedly declined to get involved. I am sure you agree that the "Siberian" Wikipedia has been a blatant abuse of Wikimedia's resources (including its reputation, which is probably one of its most important assets.) However, despite the fact that this has been brought to the attention of Wikimedia "officials" countless times, no member of the BoT has ever uttered a single word, except for Erik Möller's statement "I don't have an opinion". Therefore it took this community managed process to end this abuse.

As for the other cases - the overwhelming majority is entirely uncontroversial, as stated above (no content, no community). I firmly believe that not a single Wikimedia project which would be fit for purpose under the current policy has ever been closed. And I think that those whose invested considerable time into reducing the amount of vandalism and spam that Wikimedia is subjected to by getting these dead and forgotten wikis to be locked for the time being deserve credit for than. --Johannes Rohr 18:54, 10 December 2007 (UTC)