Tiõrv!

# If you read the Language proposal policy, and you think that the language is 
eligible according to it, you should start writing content in the Incubator as 
early as possible. You don't have to wait for Language committee's approval for 
it. Existence of content in the Incubator may help the approval process.
I don't think this is a good idea. We have had enough editors in the past try 
to use the existence of material in a language on the incubator to try and 
force their project to be recognized when they full well know that their 
project would never be approved otherwise. In some cases, they have also used 
the existence of a project on the incubator off-wiki to make others believe 
they are approved by the language committee.

The existence of content in languages that will never be approved just creates 
more work for everyone. When they inevitably get deleted or their project 
turned down, the work doesn't stop with the deletion, particularly with the 
users who are combative.

t. K
________________________________
From: Amir E. Aharoni <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2025 4:04 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <[email protected]>
Subject: [Langcom] suggested additions to Language committee Handbooks

Hi,

There's the official Language proposal policy: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy

There are also the less official, but pretty useful "Handbooks" for the 
committee and for the requesters:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(requesters)
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(committee)

I suggest adding a few things there based on the experience of the last few 
years.

To the "requesters" handbook, I suggest adding the following notes in the 
beginning of the "Making a new request" section:

# Please create a request only if you speak the language in question and plan 
to write content in it, or if you are doing on behalf of specific people who 
do. Requests that don't indicate involvement by people who speak the language 
will likely be rejected or deleted.
# If you read the Language proposal policy, and you think that the language is 
eligible according to it, you should start writing content in the Incubator as 
early as possible. You don't have to wait for Language committee's approval for 
it. Existence of content in the Incubator may help the approval process.

To the "committee" handbook, I suggest the following changes:
1. Add a suggestion to subscribe to [[Talk:Language committee]]. The Subscribe 
feature has existed for a couple of years already, but I somehow realized that 
I should subscribe to that page only today.

2. Add the following point to the "Verify as eligible / reject ineligible 
requests" section:
If the request is for a language that may be eligible, verify that it is made 
by people who know the language and plan to write content in it or are in 
direct contact with people who are. If not, the request may be rejected or even 
deleted.

Rationale: People sometimes make requests for languages that they don't know, 
but about which they are curious for various reasons. This is sometimes done 
with good intentions, but experience shows that it is not actually effective. 
Seeing a previously rejected request can be discouraging for people who 
seriously want to start a new one, so in some cases, it may make more sense to 
simply delete it, especially if there is no meaningful discussion. We already 
discussed it on this mailing list a few months ago, and I'd like to make it a 
bit more formalized.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com<http://aharoni.wordpress.com/>
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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