Gerard, you are indeed a master at moving the conversation in the wrong direction, this I am learning.
The Committee formed in 2006 and received a Charter in 2007. The language policy was introduced later, but none of this matters. What I need is the opinion of the Committee about my points from yesterday, copied below. In short: The orginal consultation was faulty, in breach of the Committee Charter and has produced a problematic AL policy; The Committee’s current is in likely breach of the Committee’ Charter language policy as it is not based on “quantative indicators” but instead changes these indicators according to preference; This tension between the Committee’s Charter and the AL policy is being consulted on now, there is an alternative approach available, but so far the Committee do not seem to wish to respond or to discuss these mitigations Gerard, I do not need a reply from you. Dear Gerard, I am sorry you feel your time is being wasted. I am also very surprised how much effort this is taking, especially given that the request for policy change in the RFC is very limited, and would help the Committee deal with issues around the ancient language wikis which are not performing well. Furthermore I have no wish to be a nuisance, rather I would like to work with the Committee to help improve the ability of Ancient Language Wikis (ALWs) to meet WM’s mission. As you say, the policy is clear; the process is now clearer, having found the email archive. This is important, because some members of the Committee want to leave the current policy in place, should the current RFC be rejected. However, that is only reasonable if the policy you have can be seen to be developed fairly and responsibly, and to have dealt with all of the issues properly, at the time. Looking at the email discussion that led to the change I would observe that: The change to the status of Ancient Languages was presented as a minor change to the Language proposal policy The discussion was very short, with just 16 emails sent Only three issues were raised; being the need to meet the mission; a "need for native speakers"; and the need for a “natural audience” There were no mitigations or alternatives discussed There was no mention of a public discussion or consultation, which appears to be a breach of the Committee’s Charter commitment to transparency There was no discussion of whether qualitative factors (ancient versus constructed languages) could be appropriately combined with different treatment of objective factors (numbers of native speakers) which appears to be in breach of the Committee’s Charter, which commits to using objective factors alone. Point six in particular is in need of public consultation and a consensus, and should not be the property of the Committee to determine by itself, or via a Board rubber stamp. All this said, it is easy to say these things in hindsight. I just want to be plain that the current RFC process is already a much more thorough and developed policy process than that in 2007 - quite naturally, given we have 14 years of further experience to apply. A review would be quite natural after this length of time in any case. So this is not meant as criticism, still less a personal one. I would however like the Committee to approach the current RFC positively, and use it to take a fresh look. Thank you again for your time,
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