Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Khorasani Turkic

[Steven White]

Hearing no further comments, I am going with Option #1.
Steven


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From: Langcom  on behalf of Vito Genovese 

Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2019 9:47 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Khorasani Turkic

It makes sense to be as encouraging as possible, so I'd go with Option #1. 
After all, automatic conversion should be fairly easy.

Steven White mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>>, 20 Kas 
2019 Çar, 15:40 tarihinde şunu yazdı:
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Steven


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From: Steven White
Sent: Friday, November 8, 2019 10:53 AM
To: WMF LangCom (public) 
mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Khorasani Turkic

See 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Khorasani_Turkic<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmeta.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRequests_for_new_languages%2FWikipedia_Khorasani_Turkic=02%7C01%7C%7C27fb436b3ff24da2284f08d76dc96bcd%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637098584173378168=DIypeJmnLbXcR8oMkGXScqWbKc4r9nIOpv3zAQGnGWw%3D=0>.

In theory, this request should be eligible. And while the test project has been 
mostly dormant over the last seven years, it objectively has been active enough 
not to reject as "stale". However, the project is entirely written in Latin 
script, which Ethnologue does not indicate is a valid script for the language. 
Over a year ago, I put the request on hold, pending conversion of the contents 
to Perso-Arabic, but no action has been taken. So which of the three actions 
below does the committee think I should take here?

  1.  Mark "eligible", but note on the request page that the project will under 
no conditions merit final approval unless written in Perso-Arabic.
  2.  Mark "rejected", inviting the community to reapply when the test is 
converted to Perso-Arabic.
  3.  Leave as "on hold" indefinitely, awaiting conversion to Perso-Arabic.

Personally, I favor #1, but mainly because I don't like keeping projects on 
indefinite hold, as I think that makes us look indecisive and pokey. But I 
could live with #3 in this particular case.

Thoughts?
Steven


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[Langcom] Routine business, for a change

[Steven White]

Today, I marked eight Wikipedia requests that have been on hold since November 
a year ago as rejected/stale, as there were no test projects created for any of 
them.

With only one exception, I addressed all the remaining Wikiquote and Wikivoyage 
requests begun before 2019 that had not been addressed. All were eligible, 
except for two Wikivoyages rejected as stale. The one request not addressed was 
for a Wikivoyage in Southern Balochi, which is tied up in the same language 
question as the pending old Wikipedia requests in Balochi languages. Except for 
that one case, there are now no unaddressed requests for Wikibooks, Wikinews, 
Wikiquote, Wikivoyage or Wikiversity projects that were originally created 
before 2019.

There are still old requests for Wikipedias and Wiktionaries, and I will start 
working on those again shortly.

Steven


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[Langcom] By far, the oldest unaddressed Requests for new languages remaining: Baluchi Wikipedias

[Steven White]

By far, the oldest remaining unaddressed Requests for new languages on the Meta 
RFL page are those of Wikipedia Balochi [macrolanguage] and Wikipedia Eastern 
Balochi, both of which date to the summer of 2010.  In addition to those two 
requests, there is an RFL for Southern Balochi, marked "eligible" by Gerard in 
2008, and an RFL for Western Balochi, open and unaddressed since 2014.

At some point, Satdeep was looking into these. But I think the first question 
is this:

  *   Are these languages mutually intelligible? In particular, are they 
mutually intelligible in writing?

Can someone at least help me get an answer to that question? I have the sense 
from the English Wikipedia article Balochi 
language—the one article covers 
all—that they are. But that's just a sense; it's not proof.  The answer to that 
question will dictate the next steps to take.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Khorasani Turkic

[Steven White]

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Steven


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From: Steven White
Sent: Friday, November 8, 2019 10:53 AM
To: WMF LangCom (public) 
Subject: Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Khorasani Turkic

See 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Khorasani_Turkic.

In theory, this request should be eligible. And while the test project has been 
mostly dormant over the last seven years, it objectively has been active enough 
not to reject as "stale". However, the project is entirely written in Latin 
script, which Ethnologue does not indicate is a valid script for the language. 
Over a year ago, I put the request on hold, pending conversion of the contents 
to Perso-Arabic, but no action has been taken. So which of the three actions 
below does the committee think I should take here?

  1.  Mark "eligible", but note on the request page that the project will under 
no conditions merit final approval unless written in Perso-Arabic.
  2.  Mark "rejected", inviting the community to reapply when the test is 
converted to Perso-Arabic.
  3.  Leave as "on hold" indefinitely, awaiting conversion to Perso-Arabic.

Personally, I favor #1, but mainly because I don't like keeping projects on 
indefinite hold, as I think that makes us look indecisive and pokey. But I 
could live with #3 in this particular case.

Thoughts?
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Eligibility of Prussian Wikipedia

[Steven White]

I've heard no objections at all, so I am marking as "eligible". Reminder: this 
is far from approvable.
Steven


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From: Langcom  on behalf of Michael 
Everson 
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2019 10:06 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Eligibility of Prussian Wikipedia

It’s as valid as Cornish!

> On 12 Nov 2019, at 14:37, Steven White  wrote:
>
> Please see 
> https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmeta.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRequests_for_new_languages%2FWikipedia_Prussian_2data=02%7C01%7C%7C091dc0471a0b493c58cd08d76781ec47%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637091680025362344sdata=ky9%2Fc3K9hvuYo0T9MvtUOcV3VBr0iAtTRrNkOFqOdSI%3Dreserved=0.
>
> Prussian was considered to have gone extinct in the 18th century, and for a 
> while was listed in ISO 639-3 as "extinct". Indeed, that was the situation 
> when the project was first proposed in 2007.  However, in 2009, its listing 
> in ISO was changed from "extinct" to "living", due to a robust effort to 
> revive the language. Indeed, the Wikipedia article suggests that there are 
> now a few children who are natively bilingual.
>
> The revival effort is not based on this Wikipedia. The test project has been 
> moderately active over the years, but certainly not at a level that would 
> start us contemplating approval. But to me this is further evidence that the 
> revival is real and legitimate on its own, and not the very reason for a 
> Prussian Wikipedia project.
>
> One person commenting on the request page suggests that prg should not be the 
> language code for the revival. Still, the fact that the ISO listing was 
> changed to "living" suggests that at least for now, the standards authority 
> is willing to accept that, so we should be, too.
>
> Accordingly, I recommend that this project be marked "eligible".
>
> Steven
>
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Re: [Langcom] Kotava Wikipedia

[Steven White]

I highly doubt this would become a laughing stock. This project is actually one 
of the best, highest-quality, most serious projects I have seen in my three 
years (short two weeks) as a sysop on Incubator. That doesn't make your 
questions any less valid; I only share my perspective that this is a serious 
effort worthy of consideration.

  *   Just now looking at Catanalysis, I see six contributors with at least 500 
edits, four more with at least 100, and four more with at least 50. So this is 
not a project of only 3–5 people.
  *   There are close to 5,000 mainspace pages.  Very few are redirects. Many 
are short, but even those have good bibliographies, which is better than a lot 
of our projects do.

I would mention two points about Jan's 27 September email to the list:

  *   "Kotava indeed has an impressive text corpus." Is there a convenient list 
somewhere?
  *   I would suggest you consider looking at 
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotava. It also has sourcing problems, to be 
sure. But this conlang, unlike many, comes out of the francophone world. So I'm 
not sure the lack of awareness in the anglophone world is the most appropriate 
measure of the language.

Steven


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From: Langcom  on behalf of MF-Warburg 

Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2019 11:21 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Kotava Wikipedia

I somewhat share the concerns mentioned by Amir and Jan van Steenbergen.
What I would hate to see is that we approve a project and then become a 
laughing stock because it turns out to be an unserious thing in one way or 
another.

Is there some proof here of any of: "independently proved number of speakers, 
use as an auxiliary language outside of online communities created solely for 
the purpose, usage outside of Wikimedia, publication of works in the language 
for general sale", as suggested by the admirable Language Proposal Policy?




Jon Harald Søby mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>> schrieb am Di., 5. 
Nov. 2019, 13:12:
Any other comments other than Michael's repeated approvals? ;-)

If not, we can move forward on this, but I'd like to hear the thoughts of at 
least a couple more committee members.

tir. 1. okt. 2019 kl. 15:28 skrev Michael Everson 
mailto:ever...@evertype.com>>:
There seems to be something wrong with my mail server.

> On 30 Sep 2019, at 20:33, MF-Warburg 
> mailto:mfwarb...@googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
> Michael, are you ok?
>
> Michael Everson mailto:ever...@evertype.com>> schrieb 
> am Mo., 30. Sep. 2019, 21:24:
> I support approval.
>
> > On 26 Sep 2019, at 22:47, Jon Harald Søby 
> > mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Kotava Wikipedia. Kotava is a conlang 
> > created in 1978, mainly known in French-speaking countries (according to 
> > the English Wikipedia). They have a very active test wiki in Incubator, 
> > with more than 3,000 articles, which makes it bigger than the Novial 
> > Wikipedia (which we approved in 2008) and about the same size as the Lingua 
> > Franca Nova (LFN) Wikipedia (which we approved in 2017). There are several 
> > active users, and sustained activity for many months.
> >
> > Does anyone have reasons for why we should not approve this project?
> >
> > --
> > mvh
> > Jon Harald Søby
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>
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Re: [Langcom] Eligibility of Prussian Wikipedia

[Steven White]

It has 38 pages, of which 12 were created in 2019.
MediaWiki most important is 50% translated, and MediaWiki core 35% translated.

This project is by no means ready for a final approval process.  But it has 
continued to have meaningful activity, and a reasonable start has been made on 
localisation.

Steven


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From: Langcom  on behalf of Gerard 
Meijssen 
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2019 10:06 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Eligibility of Prussian Wikipedia

Hoi,
What is the current status as to localisation, the number of articles ?
Thanks,
  GerardM

On Tue, 12 Nov 2019 at 15:37, Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
Please see 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Prussian_2<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmeta.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FRequests_for_new_languages%2FWikipedia_Prussian_2=02%7C01%7C%7C5d1badf5da704247c3c708d767821b79%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637091680816752289=EEJ7G9wpD7jedaVaqxjLfVTB6v3dqxYPcX%2FisbeTFtY%3D=0>.

Prussian was considered to have gone extinct in the 18th century, and for a 
while was listed in ISO 639-3 as "extinct". Indeed, that was the situation when 
the project was first proposed in 2007.  However, in 2009, its listing in ISO 
was changed from "extinct" to "living", due to a robust effort to revive the 
language. Indeed, the Wikipedia 
article<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FOld_Prussian_language%23Revived_Old_Prussian=02%7C01%7C%7C5d1badf5da704247c3c708d767821b79%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637091680816762294=W%2BLCkxybxc7CNQEKlDW56qaZ2xEP3E66Uygk3i2fEmU%3D=0>
 suggests that there are now a few children who are natively bilingual.

The revival effort is not based on this Wikipedia. The test project has been 
moderately active over the years, but certainly not at a level that would start 
us contemplating approval. But to me this is further evidence that the revival 
is real and legitimate on its own, and not the very reason for a Prussian 
Wikipedia project.

One person commenting on the request page suggests that prg should not be the 
language code for the revival. Still, the fact that the ISO listing was changed 
to "living" suggests that at least for now, the standards authority is willing 
to accept that, so we should be, too.

Accordingly, I recommend that this project be marked "eligible".

Steven


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[Langcom] Eligibility of Prussian Wikipedia

[Steven White]

Please see 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Prussian_2.

Prussian was considered to have gone extinct in the 18th century, and for a 
while was listed in ISO 639-3 as "extinct". Indeed, that was the situation when 
the project was first proposed in 2007.  However, in 2009, its listing in ISO 
was changed from "extinct" to "living", due to a robust effort to revive the 
language. Indeed, the Wikipedia 
article
 suggests that there are now a few children who are natively bilingual.

The revival effort is not based on this Wikipedia. The test project has been 
moderately active over the years, but certainly not at a level that would start 
us contemplating approval. But to me this is further evidence that the revival 
is real and legitimate on its own, and not the very reason for a Prussian 
Wikipedia project.

One person commenting on the request page suggests that prg should not be the 
language code for the revival. Still, the fact that the ISO listing was changed 
to "living" suggests that at least for now, the standards authority is willing 
to accept that, so we should be, too.

Accordingly, I recommend that this project be marked "eligible".

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Approval of Tacawit (Shawiya) Wiktionary

[Steven White]

Verification was the only missing step in both cases.


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From: Langcom  on behalf of Jon Harald 
Søby 
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2019 9:10 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Approval of Tacawit (Shawiya) Wiktionary

Great, verification was the only missing step then? Then I can create the real 
for it later today.

tir. 12. nov. 2019, 15:09 skrev Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>>:
This was announced on Meta in November 2018, and attracted no objections.


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From: Langcom 
mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of Jon Harald Søby mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2019 6:42 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: [Langcom] Approval of Tacawit (Shawiya) Wiktionary

Hello again,

With the help of Wikimédia France and Reda Kerbouche [1], I reached some 
external experts to confirm the validity of the Tacawit (also called Shawiya in 
English and chaoui in French) Wiktionary [2], and they confirmed that the 
language is the correct one. They also confirmed that the Latin alphabet, which 
the Wiktionary is written in, is the most used for spelling this language, so 
it is the main one that should be used for Wikimedia projects.

The localisation requirements are met [3] and there is steady activity in the 
Incubator [4], so I would like to formally suggest approval of this Wiktionary. 
One interesting fact is that this would be the first language in Wikimedia 
projects where a Wikipedia would not be the first project created for the 
language, so it is a milestone of sorts.

[1] Reda is one of the main contributors to the Tacawit Wiktionary, but also a 
well-known and well-respected Wikimedian in other projects – I'm sure some of 
you already know him.
[2] 
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wt/shy<https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fincubator.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FWt%2Fshy=02%7C01%7C%7Cfb4b7bfa462e43ee61a708d7677a40de%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637091647079626904=hKmLKDSD8BPA5yKK7LuNPbCSXd12tXbaShgptv9B3H0%3D=0>
[3] 
https://tools.wmflabs.org/robin/?tool=codelookup=shy-latn<https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftools.wmflabs.org%2Frobin%2F%3Ftool%3Dcodelookup%26code%3Dshy-latn=02%7C01%7C%7Cfb4b7bfa462e43ee61a708d7677a40de%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637091647079636913=4terD9D5QEg0wpW43FZJEm0I1hWwcu%2BeIywDBKwh9xE%3D=0>
[4] 
https://tools.wmflabs.org/pathoschild-contrib/catanalysis/index.php?cat=0=Wt/shy=incubatorwiki<https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftools.wmflabs.org%2Fpathoschild-contrib%2Fcatanalysis%2Findex.php%3Fcat%3D0%26title%3DWt%2Fshy%26wiki%3Dincubatorwiki=02%7C01%7C%7Cfb4b7bfa462e43ee61a708d7677a40de%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637091647079636913=pNpfiXa8l6Fxy%2Bku1l6gzaoX9OS5BBVVwVCl8COpcKM%3D=0>

--
mvh
Jon Harald Søby
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Re: [Langcom] Approval of Guianan Creole Wikipedia

[Steven White]

This was announced on Meta in December 2018 and attracted no objections.


Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom  on behalf of Amir E. 
Aharoni 
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2019 6:39 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Approval of Guianan Creole Wikipedia

Can you provide any info about the academic?

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


‫בתאריך יום ג׳, 12 בנוב׳ 2019 ב-6:24 מאת ‪Jon Harald Søby‬‏ 
<‪jhs...@gmail.com‬‏>:‬
Hello all,

I reached out to an academic who has published works about the French Guianan 
Creole language [1] to confirm the validity of the Guianan Creole Wikipedia 
[2], and they confirmed that it is indeed the correct language.

They have met [3] the localisation criteria, and there are 3 regular 
contributors over a long period of time [4]. The number of regular contributors 
is a bit on the lower side, but I think it is a reasonable number for a 
relatively small language (around 250–300 thousand speakers according to 
Wikipedia. But all in all I am impressed with the activity, and would like to 
formally suggest the approval of the Guianese Creole Wikipedia.

[1] As usual, I won't divulge their name here on the public list because I 
didn't discuss that with them, but would be happy to share the name on the 
private list.
[2] 
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/gcr
[3] 
https://tools.wmflabs.org/robin/?tool=codelookup=gcr
[4] 
https://tools.wmflabs.org/meta/catanalysis/index.php?cat=0=Wp/gcr=incubatorwiki

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Re: [Langcom] Approval of Tacawit (Shawiya) Wiktionary

[Steven White]

This was announced on Meta in November 2018, and attracted no objections.


Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom  on behalf of Jon Harald 
Søby 
Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2019 6:42 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: [Langcom] Approval of Tacawit (Shawiya) Wiktionary

Hello again,

With the help of Wikimédia France and Reda Kerbouche [1], I reached some 
external experts to confirm the validity of the Tacawit (also called Shawiya in 
English and chaoui in French) Wiktionary [2], and they confirmed that the 
language is the correct one. They also confirmed that the Latin alphabet, which 
the Wiktionary is written in, is the most used for spelling this language, so 
it is the main one that should be used for Wikimedia projects.

The localisation requirements are met [3] and there is steady activity in the 
Incubator [4], so I would like to formally suggest approval of this Wiktionary. 
One interesting fact is that this would be the first language in Wikimedia 
projects where a Wikipedia would not be the first project created for the 
language, so it is a milestone of sorts.

[1] Reda is one of the main contributors to the Tacawit Wiktionary, but also a 
well-known and well-respected Wikimedian in other projects – I'm sure some of 
you already know him.
[2] 
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wt/shy
[3] 
https://tools.wmflabs.org/robin/?tool=codelookup=shy-latn
[4] 
https://tools.wmflabs.org/pathoschild-contrib/catanalysis/index.php?cat=0=Wt/shy=incubatorwiki

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[Langcom] Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Khorasani Turkic

[Steven White]

See 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Khorasani_Turkic.

In theory, this request should be eligible. And while the test project has been 
mostly dormant over the last seven years, it objectively has been active enough 
not to reject as "stale". However, the project is entirely written in Latin 
script, which Ethnologue does not indicate is a valid script for the language. 
Over a year ago, I put the request on hold, pending conversion of the contents 
to Perso-Arabic, but no action has been taken. So which of the three actions 
below does the committee think I should take here?

  1.  Mark "eligible", but note on the request page that the project will under 
no conditions merit final approval unless written in Perso-Arabic.
  2.  Mark "rejected", inviting the community to reapply when the test is 
converted to Perso-Arabic.
  3.  Leave as "on hold" indefinitely, awaiting conversion to Perso-Arabic.

Personally, I favor #1, but mainly because I don't like keeping projects on 
indefinite hold, as I think that makes us look indecisive and pokey. But I 
could live with #3 in this particular case.

Thoughts?
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Proposal to add Kimberli Mäkäräinen as LangCom member

[Steven White]

On the whole I'm fine with this.  (Not that I have a vote ...)  Just a couple 
of things:

  1.  We are in more need of experts in Asian, African and American languages 
than European ones at this point.
  2.  We usually discuss personnel issues on the private list.

Steven


Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom  on behalf of Jon Harald 
Søby 
Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2019 8:14 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee ; 
kimberli.makarai...@tuni.fi 
Subject: [Langcom] Proposal to add Kimberli Mäkäräinen as LangCom member

Amir asked Kimberli Mäkäräinen (User:Yupik) if she would be interested in 
serving on the language committee. Since I have worked a lot with Kimberli over 
the years, especially on the Sámi project that Wikimedia Norge is working on, 
we thought it would be a good idea if I introduce her to the list.

Kimberli is originally from the US, but has lived in Finland for decades, where 
she studies for her PhD and works as a professional translator. She has been a 
Wikipedia contributor for many many years already, especially working in the 
Northern Sámi Wikipedia, but also in several other languages. In order to get 
details right I asked her to send me some, and she had this nice academic 
introduction ready at hand:

Kimberli Mäkäräinen graduated from the University of Illinois at 
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), USA (BA in Linguistics with high distinction, 1994), 
the University of Helsinki (UH), Finland (BA in English Translation, 2015; MA 
in English Translation, 2016), and is a thesis short of a second MA in Saami 
Studies from UH (2016–). Ms. Mäkäräinen has combined her love of translating 
legislation, terminology, and the Saami languages in her PhD, which debates the 
ease of understanding the terminology used in Finnish legislation translated 
into Skolt Saami. Awarded High Distinction from UIUC for her thesis, A Papyrus 
in Fayumic Coptic, she is an authorized translator from Finnish into English, 
and received an NIAS SUPRA Nordic Scholarship for her work on translating 
legislation in multilingual legal systems involving lesser-resourced languages. 
Both professionally and personally, Ms. Mäkäräinen believes everyone should be 
able to read the laws affecting their everyday lives in their own language and 
more resources should be allocated to allow this to happen. Accordingly, she 
advocates through her work for the use of languages ranging from Tundra Nenets 
to Zulu in open-knowledge projects like Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, 
the Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and Sciences, and other dictionary and 
knowledge projects.

I believe Kimberli would make a great addition to the language committee, and 
hope you all agree. :-)

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Re: [Langcom] Kotava Wikipedia

[Steven White]

Ethnologue does not cover artificial, historical or ancient languages—only 
living and extinct languages.  "Extinct" in this setting is the ISO 639–3 
sense: gone extinct in the last few centuries.

Speaking of Ethnologue, I can't get three page views a month any more, even 
wiping cookies. What's up with that? Can anyone help us get some limited access?

Steven


Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom  on behalf of Amir E. 
Aharoni 
Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2019 7:24 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Kotava Wikipedia

Well... As it was with Lingua Franca Nova: I'm somewhat skeptical about the 
usefulness of this project and about the future activity once the founders lose 
interest, but I'm not really opposed to it.

I was also a bit skeptical about the validity of the code, because it doesn't 
appear on Ethnologue. But it does appear at 
https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/avk
 , so I guess it's OK.

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


‫בתאריך יום ג׳, 5 בנוב׳ 2019 ב-14:12 מאת ‪Jon Harald Søby‬‏ 
<‪jhs...@gmail.com‬‏>:‬
Any other comments other than Michael's repeated approvals? ;-)

If not, we can move forward on this, but I'd like to hear the thoughts of at 
least a couple more committee members.

tir. 1. okt. 2019 kl. 15:28 skrev Michael Everson 
mailto:ever...@evertype.com>>:
There seems to be something wrong with my mail server.

> On 30 Sep 2019, at 20:33, MF-Warburg 
> mailto:mfwarb...@googlemail.com>> wrote:
>
> Michael, are you ok?
>
> Michael Everson mailto:ever...@evertype.com>> schrieb 
> am Mo., 30. Sep. 2019, 21:24:
> I support approval.
>
> > On 26 Sep 2019, at 22:47, Jon Harald Søby 
> > mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Kotava Wikipedia. Kotava is a conlang 
> > created in 1978, mainly known in French-speaking countries (according to 
> > the English Wikipedia). They have a very active test wiki in Incubator, 
> > with more than 3,000 articles, which makes it bigger than the Novial 
> > Wikipedia (which we approved in 2008) and about the same size as the Lingua 
> > Franca Nova (LFN) Wikipedia (which we approved in 2017). There are several 
> > active users, and sustained activity for many months.
> >
> > Does anyone have reasons for why we should not approve this project?
> >
> > --
> > mvh
> > Jon Harald Søby
> > ___
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> > Langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcom
>
>
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Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

That's the classic concern, of course, and the reason the rule is written the 
way it is. When we were just starting out, that was an appropriate concern, and 
is still an appropriate concern if a given language area is still starting out 
in virgin terrain.

But I think the following is reality in most situations now.  "Various povs" 
already don't collaborate, because whoever was there first already dominates, 
and has already established what constitutes the neutral pov.  What the 
argument that James articulates assumes is that by not allowing the second 
wiki, people will have to collaborate.  The reality, instead, is that by not 
allowing the second wiki, the original owners of the first wiki get to keep 
their pov, and the people with a different pov are frozen out entirely. That's 
the reality.

 (This, MF-W, is why I was discussing POV the other day. If there were a 
central mechanism to allow that second group to break in, we could do this. But 
there isn't, so we can't.)

Steven


Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>


From: Langcom  on behalf of James Heilman 

Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2019 10:00 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

My concern is having multiple wikis for nearly identical languages allows 
various povs not to have to collaborate and we are more likely to end up with 
difficulties like in Croatian.

On Wed, Oct 30, 2019, 07:56 Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
My point is that these "politically-motivated claims" are already facts on the 
ground, whether you like it or not.

Steven White


From: Langcom 
mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of MF-Warburg 
mailto:mfwarb...@googlemail.com>>
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 8:43 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki



Am Mo., 28. Okt. 2019 um 16:08 Uhr schrieb Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>>:
Well, as I have said many times, the current rule as written is problematic, 
and we have no business rejecting Montenegrin at this point.

No, Langcom has "every business" to do so.

The policy, as written, says "The committee 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." You have 
to read the whole sentence there, not just the first phrase.  By "not 
consider[ing]" political differences, the committee in fact perpetuates the 
fact that existing projects may already have "the viewpoint of individual 
political communities". In these cases, people in minority communities are 
tremendously disadvantaged in that they have to overcome (possibly) hostile 
political/cultural viewpoints—and may well not be able to do so.

Your interpretation is exactly the opposite of what is written. The intention 
of the policy certainly was not to give every politically differing group their 
own wiki.

Thank you for your explanation in your other mail of why it is difficult to 
achieve a true NPOV. However, who has claimed that Langcom should NPOVs on any 
wiki?

One of the purposes of Langcom is to prevent the multiplication of wikis due to 
politically motivated claims that one language is actually two.


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Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

My point is that these "politically-motivated claims" are already facts on the 
ground, whether you like it or not.

Steven White


From: Langcom  on behalf of MF-Warburg 

Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 8:43 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki



Am Mo., 28. Okt. 2019 um 16:08 Uhr schrieb Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>>:
Well, as I have said many times, the current rule as written is problematic, 
and we have no business rejecting Montenegrin at this point.

No, Langcom has "every business" to do so.

The policy, as written, says "The committee 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." You have 
to read the whole sentence there, not just the first phrase.  By "not 
consider[ing]" political differences, the committee in fact perpetuates the 
fact that existing projects may already have "the viewpoint of individual 
political communities". In these cases, people in minority communities are 
tremendously disadvantaged in that they have to overcome (possibly) hostile 
political/cultural viewpoints—and may well not be able to do so.

Your interpretation is exactly the opposite of what is written. The intention 
of the policy certainly was not to give every politically differing group their 
own wiki.

Thank you for your explanation in your other mail of why it is difficult to 
achieve a true NPOV. However, who has claimed that Langcom should NPOVs on any 
wiki?

One of the purposes of Langcom is to prevent the multiplication of wikis due to 
politically motivated claims that one language is actually two.


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Re: [Langcom] Minangkabau Wiktionary approval

[Steven White]

This one has passed a week with no objections, so I think is good to go.
Steven


Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom  on behalf of Jon Harald 
Søby 
Sent: Saturday, October 19, 2019 7:53 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Minangkabau Wiktionary approval

Yes please, I'm all for it. 

lør. 19. okt. 2019 kl. 08:01 skrev Amir E. Aharoni 
mailto:amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il>>:
Hi,

Shall we approve the Minangkabau Wiktionary?

The Incubator activity and the translatewiki activity seem OK to me, and the 
content is pretty nice too as far as I can tell.

https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wt/min

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Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

Sigh. Of course. But at best, that's not as easy as you think, and I would 
argue that in practice no "central authority" at WMF is in any position to deal 
with NPOV on a project-by-project basis. And that's even assuming that we'd be 
allowed to intervene, which we almost never are. Consider:

  *   This assumes first that there is an objective NPOV (or NPOV range) that 
one could enforce. Now, I'm no moral relativist; I do not think that all 
cultures' positions on all topics are always objectively morally or ethically 
equivalent. But there are plenty of topics where reasonable people handle 
neutrality in very different ways. Here are a couple of examples that I can 
name that I don't necessarily think are the hottest topics around right now.
 *   Lashing/caning for vandalism in Singapore. Americans think that was an 
outrageous punishment for an offense that at most would result in a fine in the 
US. People in East Asia are at least somewhat more prepared to say that this 
was an appropriate punishment for someone who is putting his interests ahead of 
society's.
 *   Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Ukrainians consider him a hero of first rank, and 
Russians also see him positively. Poles see him negatively. And Jews see him as 
having been largely responsible for the worst pogrom against Jews in history 
before the Holocaust.
  *   The largest Wikipedias (like English Wikipedia) handle both sides of such 
disagreements. They can do so because they have a large number of contributors 
representing a wide range of backgrounds who keep each other in check to some 
extent. Even at that, these projects have plenty of topics that engender 
ongoing edit wars.
  *   Smaller projects may not handle things in a manner that we would consider 
so even-handed. A quick Google translate of the plwiki and ukwiki articles on 
Khmelnytsky at least superficially shows far less even-handedness than the 
enwiki article, though I did not then click through hyperlinks to see how all 
related topics were handled.
  *   The above are situations well-known enough that people like us know about 
them. Who knows about all the smaller cases where there are differences like 
this that we don't know about, and that we are no position to judge in terms of 
neutrality? And unless we have someone trustworthy (and fluent in appropriate 
languages) monitoring every wiki for such things, I don't see how we could 
possibly enforce NPOV like that.
  *   We cannot really even enforce some sort of neutrality on the Armenian 
massacre situation in Turkish, Armenian and Azeri languages. Enough said on 
that.

We supposedly use ISO 639–3 exactly to avoid politicizing the process. It's 
sometimes fair to decide we will take either the macrolanguage or the 
constituent languages, but not both. But using the macrolanguage only works if 
the constituent languages are mutually intelligible and if the communities get 
along well enough to cooperate. The very fact that our default position for new 
projects is to favor projects in constituent languages says to me that we 
recognize that most of the time there is a reason that different constituent 
languages are considered different.

I'm sorry, everyone. It is not possible "not [to] consider political 
differences", because there are facts on the ground. Not considering political 
differences is also a political choice. We are far better off sticking with ISO 
639–3 unless there is a very, very good reason not to do so in a particular 
case.

Steven


Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>


From: Langcom  on behalf of Gerard 
Meijssen 
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2019 12:21 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

Hoi,
The problem is how to deal with the NPOV..
Thanks,
 GerardM

On Mon, 28 Oct 2019 at 16:08, Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
Well, as I have said many times, the current rule as written is problematic, 
and we have no business rejecting Montenegrin at this point.

Please understand, again, that I don't object to the rule in principle. If we 
were starting today with a situation where there were no Serbo-Croatian 
projects existing (or no Punjabi projects existing), we might well try to say, 
"You know what? There's only going to be one, and you're all going to have to 
get along, and this needs to be irrespective of political perspective."

But at this point, it doesn't work in either situation, for several reasons:

  1.  There are long-existing communities already. They each already have a 
culture, rules, and perspectives.
  2.  Based on a different, very firm WMF policy, "central authority" is almost 
never allowed to intervene on individual projects to "force" them to be more 
accommodating to the political and/or cultural minorities that could choose to 
participate.
  3.  The policy, as written, says 

Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

our criteria.

[1] I'll be happy to disclose his name and details on the private list if 
anyone on the committee wants me to, but I don't want to do so here on the 
public list since I never brought that up with him.

ons. 16. okt. 2019 kl. 18:04 skrev Jon Harald Søby 
mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>>:
I have not gotten a reply yet. Yesterday I emailed to more people from 
Pakistani universities with Saraiki departments, but no reply from any if them 
yet either.

ons. 16. okt. 2019, 16:29 skrev Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>>:
Have we heard from the expert yet?

On a related subject:  Do we have any Wiktionary experts here?  Saraiki 
Wiktionary is also now approvable in theory (assuming that the language issue 
on the Wikipedia clears). My concern about the Saraiki Wiktionary is only that 
compared to a lot of Wiktionary projects, this one appears pretty basic to me: 
just a straight Saraiki dictionary, with little in the way of bells and 
whistles (pronunciation, translations to other languages, etc.). But that's 
just based on the gross appearance of pages, as I do not read Saraiki (or any 
other language written in Perso-Arabic script). So Satdeep and anyone else: 
Does the content look ok? Are there greater expectations of what a Wiktionary 
should contain—expectations we have not communicated, I will add—or is this 
project appropriate and acceptable?

Steven


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From: Langcom 
mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of Jon Harald Søby mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>>
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2019 3:38 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

I am still waiting to hear back from the expert. If he says the rest of the 
pages look fine, then I think we can move forward – Steven makes some good 
points as usual.

tor. 10. okt. 2019 kl. 21:03 skrev Gerard Meijssen 
mailto:gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>>:
Hoi,
The final stage is that we verify if the language it is said to be. When we 
find it is not or are not certain we have all the room to seek another 
authority to move forward. At this stage it becomes confusing and I am not 
convinced at all that we should.
Thanks,
GerardM

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 at 19:21, Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
This is effectively the same problem as we saw in the discussion of Montenegrin 
Wikipedia—although since all but two of us are from Europe, North America or 
Israel, we feel more confident making calls in a case like Montenegrin than we 
do here. (And, candidly, there is less chance in the Montenegrin case of being 
accused of racism/Euro-centrism, even if that accusation would be totally 
without merit in this case.)

But as I said back then, the rule as currently written is fine when the 
language area starts with a clean slate. If there were no Western Punjabi 
Wikipedia now, we could reasonably try to get a single project to try to 
accommodate both Western Punjabi and Saraiki. (Whether that effort would be 
successful is a different question, but we could try.) However, I take 
Satdeep's comment below to indicate that there would be serious problems trying 
to integrate a new Saraiki-language community into a ten-year old Western 
Punjabi-language community, and that he recommends against it, based on the 
current "facts on the ground". Besides, to some extent the time to say "no" has 
passed, since Satdeep marked the project as "eligible" in 2017. So I think we 
need to move forward with this.

Steven


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From: Langcom 
mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of Jon Harald Søby mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>>
Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2019 4:44 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

...

As for the Western Punjabi/Saraiki issue, I don't know enough about that to 
have any opinion either way.

tir. 8. okt. 2019 kl. 19:00 skrev Satdeep Gill 
mailto:satdeepg...@gmail.com>>:
...

P.S. Western Punjabi and Saraiki are pretty similar and my personal view is 
that this should be accommodated on one Wikipedia but the sociology-political 
situation in Pakistan calls for a separate Wikipedia for Saraiki.

Regards
Satdeep Gill


__

Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

Have we heard from the expert yet?

On a related subject:  Do we have any Wiktionary experts here?  Saraiki 
Wiktionary is also now approvable in theory (assuming that the language issue 
on the Wikipedia clears). My concern about the Saraiki Wiktionary is only that 
compared to a lot of Wiktionary projects, this one appears pretty basic to me: 
just a straight Saraiki dictionary, with little in the way of bells and 
whistles (pronunciation, translations to other languages, etc.). But that's 
just based on the gross appearance of pages, as I do not read Saraiki (or any 
other language written in Perso-Arabic script). So Satdeep and anyone else: 
Does the content look ok? Are there greater expectations of what a Wiktionary 
should contain—expectations we have not communicated, I will add—or is this 
project appropriate and acceptable?

Steven


Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>


From: Langcom  on behalf of Jon Harald 
Søby 
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2019 3:38 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

I am still waiting to hear back from the expert. If he says the rest of the 
pages look fine, then I think we can move forward – Steven makes some good 
points as usual.

tor. 10. okt. 2019 kl. 21:03 skrev Gerard Meijssen 
mailto:gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>>:
Hoi,
The final stage is that we verify if the language it is said to be. When we 
find it is not or are not certain we have all the room to seek another 
authority to move forward. At this stage it becomes confusing and I am not 
convinced at all that we should.
Thanks,
GerardM

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 at 19:21, Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
This is effectively the same problem as we saw in the discussion of Montenegrin 
Wikipedia—although since all but two of us are from Europe, North America or 
Israel, we feel more confident making calls in a case like Montenegrin than we 
do here. (And, candidly, there is less chance in the Montenegrin case of being 
accused of racism/Euro-centrism, even if that accusation would be totally 
without merit in this case.)

But as I said back then, the rule as currently written is fine when the 
language area starts with a clean slate. If there were no Western Punjabi 
Wikipedia now, we could reasonably try to get a single project to try to 
accommodate both Western Punjabi and Saraiki. (Whether that effort would be 
successful is a different question, but we could try.) However, I take 
Satdeep's comment below to indicate that there would be serious problems trying 
to integrate a new Saraiki-language community into a ten-year old Western 
Punjabi-language community, and that he recommends against it, based on the 
current "facts on the ground". Besides, to some extent the time to say "no" has 
passed, since Satdeep marked the project as "eligible" in 2017. So I think we 
need to move forward with this.

Steven


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From: Langcom 
mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of Jon Harald Søby mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>>
Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2019 4:44 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

...

As for the Western Punjabi/Saraiki issue, I don't know enough about that to 
have any opinion either way.

tir. 8. okt. 2019 kl. 19:00 skrev Satdeep Gill 
mailto:satdeepg...@gmail.com>>:
...

P.S. Western Punjabi and Saraiki are pretty similar and my personal view is 
that this should be accommodated on one Wikipedia but the sociology-political 
situation in Pakistan calls for a separate Wikipedia for Saraiki.

Regards
Satdeep Gill


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Re: [Langcom] Approval of Mon Wikipedia

[Steven White]

Actually, I don't need to do this, as we announced it on Meta last December, 
and received no objections. And, in fact, I don't really even think we need a 
week here, as I think LangCom cleared this project (pending language 
verification) no later than last February 
(https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/langcom/2019-February/002292.html). So 
now that we have language verification, we should be good to go.

Steven


Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>


From: Langcom  on behalf of Steven White 

Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2019 7:39 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Approval of Mon Wikipedia

I will post an announcement on Meta on Wednesday morning EDT.

On Oct 14, 2019 4:14 AM, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
Hoi,
Wonderful.
Thanks,
 GerardM

On Mon, 14 Oct 2019 at 09:58, Jon Harald Søby 
mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hello all,

I reached out to the two scholars suggested by Mon Wikipedia [1] contributor 
Htawmonzel on Talk:Language committee [2], and one additional Mon language 
expert I found online, and the all confirmed that the content is in Mon. The 
localization criteria are met [3], and the activity level [4] for the test wiki 
in Incubator looks very good.

I would therefore like to suggest the approval of the Mon Wikipedia, unless 
there are any well-founded objections within one week.

[1] 
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/mnw<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fincubator.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FWp%2Fmnw=02%7C01%7C%7Cad8ac99f0c33429a8ca508d751c8ed14%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637067795722784054=Wfj9Ghb2aTj4DFiVBdVF6Hl55D7UCw93dGHONOiLW0k%3D=0>
[2] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Language_committee#Mon_WP<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmeta.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTalk%3ALanguage_committee%23Mon_WP=02%7C01%7C%7Cad8ac99f0c33429a8ca508d751c8ed14%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637067795722794053=YZvp6noE8%2BNAaT6E%2FYe7jGLFG5ESQGAyNpCj%2FWTi7OM%3D=0>
[3] 
https://tools.wmflabs.org/robin/?tool=codelookup=mnw<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftools.wmflabs.org%2Frobin%2F%3Ftool%3Dcodelookup%26code%3Dmnw=02%7C01%7C%7Cad8ac99f0c33429a8ca508d751c8ed14%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637067795722804052=amctXZHgtdrVFi7NdT%2Bs%2BvWHX98PMcdFOSTgLvhH3KA%3D=0>
[4] 
https://tools.wmflabs.org/meta/catanalysis/index.php?cat=0=Wp/mnw=incubatorwiki<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftools.wmflabs.org%2Fmeta%2Fcatanalysis%2Findex.php%3Fcat%3D0%26title%3DWp%2Fmnw%26wiki%3Dincubatorwiki=02%7C01%7C%7Cad8ac99f0c33429a8ca508d751c8ed14%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637067795722814069=7vyhCXdOqJxPBT%2F5JVnezRZiyKaB7CCPk4e0%2BxW5Boc%3D=0>

--
mvh
Jon Harald Søby
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[Langcom] Rejection of requests

[Steven White]

Updating on Wikinews requests for Old English and Literary Chinese:

  *   I marked the "Old English" request rejected.
  *   I also marked the "Literary Chinese" request rejected. In our 
discussions, at best, there were two voices against and one possibly for, which 
is far short of the 2/3 that a formal vote would need to allow the project 
against policy. For what it's worth, MF-W, if you look on the request 
page,
 you'll notice that proponents describe a small test project being conducted 
within Literary Chinese Wikipedia. So I told the proponents that they should 
work on that news project and see where it takes them.

While I am mentioning rejections, I'll just add that I rejected Wikivoyage 
Galaki as stale.


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Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

Naturally, if the language is not what it is said to be, we don't approve. My 
point was that the time for saying "Saraiki is effectively the same thing as 
Western Punjabi" has passed. So assuming the expert ends up verifying the 
language as Saraiki, I don't really think we can or should go back and revisit 
the question of whether or not this should be integrated into the Western 
Punjabi project.
Steven


Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>


From: Langcom  on behalf of Jon Harald 
Søby 
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2019 3:38 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

I am still waiting to hear back from the expert. If he says the rest of the 
pages look fine, then I think we can move forward – Steven makes some good 
points as usual.

tor. 10. okt. 2019 kl. 21:03 skrev Gerard Meijssen 
mailto:gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>>:
Hoi,
The final stage is that we verify if the language it is said to be. When we 
find it is not or are not certain we have all the room to seek another 
authority to move forward. At this stage it becomes confusing and I am not 
convinced at all that we should.
Thanks,
GerardM

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 at 19:21, Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
This is effectively the same problem as we saw in the discussion of Montenegrin 
Wikipedia—although since all but two of us are from Europe, North America or 
Israel, we feel more confident making calls in a case like Montenegrin than we 
do here. (And, candidly, there is less chance in the Montenegrin case of being 
accused of racism/Euro-centrism, even if that accusation would be totally 
without merit in this case.)

But as I said back then, the rule as currently written is fine when the 
language area starts with a clean slate. If there were no Western Punjabi 
Wikipedia now, we could reasonably try to get a single project to try to 
accommodate both Western Punjabi and Saraiki. (Whether that effort would be 
successful is a different question, but we could try.) However, I take 
Satdeep's comment below to indicate that there would be serious problems trying 
to integrate a new Saraiki-language community into a ten-year old Western 
Punjabi-language community, and that he recommends against it, based on the 
current "facts on the ground". Besides, to some extent the time to say "no" has 
passed, since Satdeep marked the project as "eligible" in 2017. So I think we 
need to move forward with this.

Steven


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From: Langcom 
mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of Jon Harald Søby mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>>
Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2019 4:44 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

...

As for the Western Punjabi/Saraiki issue, I don't know enough about that to 
have any opinion either way.

tir. 8. okt. 2019 kl. 19:00 skrev Satdeep Gill 
mailto:satdeepg...@gmail.com>>:
...

P.S. Western Punjabi and Saraiki are pretty similar and my personal view is 
that this should be accommodated on one Wikipedia but the sociology-political 
situation in Pakistan calls for a separate Wikipedia for Saraiki.

Regards
Satdeep Gill


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--
mvh
Jon Harald Søby
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Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

This is effectively the same problem as we saw in the discussion of Montenegrin 
Wikipedia—although since all but two of us are from Europe, North America or 
Israel, we feel more confident making calls in a case like Montenegrin than we 
do here. (And, candidly, there is less chance in the Montenegrin case of being 
accused of racism/Euro-centrism, even if that accusation would be totally 
without merit in this case.)

But as I said back then, the rule as currently written is fine when the 
language area starts with a clean slate. If there were no Western Punjabi 
Wikipedia now, we could reasonably try to get a single project to try to 
accommodate both Western Punjabi and Saraiki. (Whether that effort would be 
successful is a different question, but we could try.) However, I take 
Satdeep's comment below to indicate that there would be serious problems trying 
to integrate a new Saraiki-language community into a ten-year old Western 
Punjabi-language community, and that he recommends against it, based on the 
current "facts on the ground". Besides, to some extent the time to say "no" has 
passed, since Satdeep marked the project as "eligible" in 2017. So I think we 
need to move forward with this.

Steven


Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom  on behalf of Jon Harald 
Søby 
Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2019 4:44 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

...

As for the Western Punjabi/Saraiki issue, I don't know enough about that to 
have any opinion either way.

tir. 8. okt. 2019 kl. 19:00 skrev Satdeep Gill 
mailto:satdeepg...@gmail.com>>:
...

P.S. Western Punjabi and Saraiki are pretty similar and my personal view is 
that this should be accommodated on one Wikipedia but the sociology-political 
situation in Pakistan calls for a separate Wikipedia for Saraiki.

Regards
Satdeep Gill


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Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

I have put a query to the community at 
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wp/skr/%D9%BE%DB%81%D9%84%D8%A7_%D9%BE%D8%B1%D8%AA#Approval_issue_for_the_community.
  I will post links at Incubator's Community Portal and at the Meta request 
page.

Steven


Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>


From: Langcom  on behalf of Steven White 

Sent: Tuesday, October 8, 2019 9:55 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

Gerard, I'm sympathetic to that position. But I don't see any provision for a 
ban in the policy, and LangCom doesn't own Incubator. So I don't quite know how 
or where to initiate a discussion to propose a ban. I can, however, 
indefinitely block as an Incubator administrator, as deliberately creating 
content to pass it off as the wrong language is, if nothing else, a form of 
vandalism or disruptive editing.

In the meantime, I intend to go over to that test project and ask them what is 
going on. Our general rules require that.

Steven


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From: Langcom  on behalf of Gerard 
Meijssen 
Sent: Tuesday, October 8, 2019 2:03 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

Hoi,
No we have an indefinite ban on incubator for the people posing as if they 
speak a language they do not speak.
Thanks,
 GerardM

On Mon, 7 Oct 2019 at 22:25, Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
This really upsets me. But if the content is in Urdu, then (a) we ask what's 
going on, (b) we don't approve, and (c) in all likelihood, we propose an indef 
block on Incubator, given that many of the same characters were involved in a 
problem around the Khowar project a couple of years back.

Steven


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From: Langcom 
mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of Jon Harald Søby mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>>
Sent: Monday, October 7, 2019 5:33 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

Hi all!

I wanted to let you know that I'm in touch with an expert with regards to 
verifying Wikipedia in 
Saraiki<https://eur04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fincubator.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FWp%2Fskr=02%7C01%7C%7Cc202ec9d3d3443df77f608d74bf78912%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637061398835955907=6VoBoJ7yjRSReIo%2BTJUzDjdthhaz6XBZSr9tbeS7pC4%3D=0>
 (skr). It was previously mentioned by Seven in an email titled "Final approval 
for four projects" from August 16.

The expert checked one page and said it is in Urdu and not Saraiki (although it 
is about Saraiki topics). He said he will get back to me to check more pages in 
a week or two.

However, after he said that, I've checked several pages with Google Translate 
from Urdu to English, and they all produce very legible content (for Google 
Translate). That makes me suspicious that maybe all the content is in fact in 
Urdu – if it was in fact in a smaller language, I would expect a certain amount 
of words that Google Translate just doesn't understand.

So the question is, what do we do if it turns out that most/all content is in 
Urdu?

--
mvh
Jon Harald Søby
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Re: [Langcom] Content in Lese

[Steven White]

Well, one question, I suppose, is "Who is a Wikisourceror?"  Look, there's no 
question that the most likely way anyone is going to find this in the first 
place is either (a) by a link from the English version, or (b) by using a 
search engine that finds it wherever it is. But from the point of view of 
internal Wikimedia practices and management, it is going to be a lot easier to 
have this sitting in Multilingual Wikisource than it will be to have it sitting 
as the lone page in a language somewhere in Incubator. So it would be my 
preference to find a way to make that happen.

Steven


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From: Langcom  on behalf of Antony Green 

Sent: Monday, October 7, 2019 4:33 PM
To: langcom@lists.wikimedia.org 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Content in Lese


Yes, if the translation itself is PD or freely licensed. That includes 
translations by Wikisourcerors themselves, which as far as I know is the only 
exception to the "previously published" requirement.


Am 2019-10-03 um 01:07 schrieb Steven White:
Wikisource is allowed to publish translations, I think.
Steven

Steven White


From: Langcom 
<mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>
 on behalf of James Heilman <mailto:jmh...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 2, 2019 6:54:08 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
<mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Content in Lese

So it is published in English here by the NIH  
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/independent-monitoring-board-recommends-early-termination-ebola-therapeutics-trial-drc-because-favorable-results-two-four-candidates<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nih.gov%2Fnews-events%2Fnews-releases%2Findependent-monitoring-board-recommends-early-termination-ebola-therapeutics-trial-drc-because-favorable-results-two-four-candidates=02%7C01%7C%7C2224ee19198645c24bae08d74b65b608%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637060772530013282=LT2PkV0kA%2Bfsxg8qZ4XmjoDhBhcsP0cNqMdC16ymbH4%3D=0>

Checking to see were the translation is being posted.

James



On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 4:32 PM Antony Green 
mailto:toniogr...@web.de>> wrote:

Oh, and has this Lese text been previously published? That's a requirement at 
Wikisource.

Am 2019-10-02 um 22:20 schrieb James Heilman:
I have never worked on Wikisource. Anyone here have experience?

J

On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 2:06 PM Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
As far as I can tell, there's nothing else in Lese (or Efé) in any of our 
projects. To me, the best place to put it would probably be Multilingual 
Wikisource, and if there is an appropriate place elsewhere for the English 
language version, then by all means link to it from there.
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

Gerard, I'm sympathetic to that position. But I don't see any provision for a 
ban in the policy, and LangCom doesn't own Incubator. So I don't quite know how 
or where to initiate a discussion to propose a ban. I can, however, 
indefinitely block as an Incubator administrator, as deliberately creating 
content to pass it off as the wrong language is, if nothing else, a form of 
vandalism or disruptive editing.

In the meantime, I intend to go over to that test project and ask them what is 
going on. Our general rules require that.

Steven


Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>


From: Langcom  on behalf of Gerard 
Meijssen 
Sent: Tuesday, October 8, 2019 2:03 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

Hoi,
No we have an indefinite ban on incubator for the people posing as if they 
speak a language they do not speak.
Thanks,
 GerardM

On Mon, 7 Oct 2019 at 22:25, Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
This really upsets me. But if the content is in Urdu, then (a) we ask what's 
going on, (b) we don't approve, and (c) in all likelihood, we propose an indef 
block on Incubator, given that many of the same characters were involved in a 
problem around the Khowar project a couple of years back.

Steven


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From: Langcom 
mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of Jon Harald Søby mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>>
Sent: Monday, October 7, 2019 5:33 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

Hi all!

I wanted to let you know that I'm in touch with an expert with regards to 
verifying Wikipedia in 
Saraiki<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fincubator.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FWp%2Fskr=02%7C01%7C%7C424fe7b3f9854c06fa7808d74bb54ad6%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637061114324434359=XcQC9pQICgR9Hp7aiUstHZntCpNZTtx03BItXvQkqMw%3D=0>
 (skr). It was previously mentioned by Seven in an email titled "Final approval 
for four projects" from August 16.

The expert checked one page and said it is in Urdu and not Saraiki (although it 
is about Saraiki topics). He said he will get back to me to check more pages in 
a week or two.

However, after he said that, I've checked several pages with Google Translate 
from Urdu to English, and they all produce very legible content (for Google 
Translate). That makes me suspicious that maybe all the content is in fact in 
Urdu – if it was in fact in a smaller language, I would expect a certain amount 
of words that Google Translate just doesn't understand.

So the question is, what do we do if it turns out that most/all content is in 
Urdu?

--
mvh
Jon Harald Søby
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Re: [Langcom] Approving Wikipedia in Balinese

[Steven White]

As far as I can tell, you missed exactly one thing: removing the category "Test 
wikis awaiting language verification" from the info page at Incubator. And 
since that's all you missed, you did a great job!


Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom  on behalf of Jon Harald 
Søby 
Sent: Sunday, October 6, 2019 6:37 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Approving Wikipedia in Balinese

I have now marked the request as approved on Meta, and created the relevant 
Phabricator 
tickets.
 Hope I didn't miss any steps, Steven. :-)

fre. 27. sep. 2019 kl. 15:51 skrev Jon Harald Søby 
mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>>:
fre. 27. sep. 2019 kl. 13:08 skrev Gerard Meijssen 
mailto:gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>>:
PS is the process for new wikis no longer an issue?

They are fixing it piece by piece. Amir Sabaradani (User:Ladsgroup), who has 
been the one creating wikis lately, wrote a summary of some of the problems 
he's come across 
here,
 which should give you an idea of why it is very difficult. But basically there 
is no "dry run" for creating new wikis in production, the only way to see 
what's wrong is to actually create a wiki and then solve the problems that 
arise when they do. I for one am very thankful that he takes the time to do so.


On Fri, 27 Sep 2019 at 10:55, Ramzy Muliawan 
mailto:ramzymuliawa...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi --- an Indonesian Wikimedian here.

I've followed the Balinese project since LangCamp 
2012
 and I can vouch for their approval. The community is focused in Denpasar and 
has been 
well-supported
 by Wikimedia Indonesia in past two years; they even have their own community 
co-ordinator and regularly-scheduled edit-a-thons.

Should the Committee need to be in touch of any person in academia, I can refer 
to the Balinese Studies 
department
 at Universitas Udayana; although I think that Tjahja and Revi themselves are 
sufficient, they both speak and write Balinese to a level.

Ramzy Muliawan
linkedin
 / 
keybase
 / 
meta.wiki



On Fri, Sep 27, 2019 at 2:48 PM Jon Harald Søby 
mailto:jhs...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I asked Biyanto Rebin from Wikimedia Indonesia, and he writes:

Dear Jon,

Yes. It is definitely Balinese language. I know the community very well and 
since last year, they have held a lot of meetups and editathon events, that is 
why they are very active.

Best wishes,

I also asked Revi Soekatno (User:Meursault2004) on Facebook, and he writes:

Yes it unmistakenly Balinese and some articles are very nice

That should be enough confirmation, no? If not we could reach out to BASABali 
like Eddie suggested.

tor. 26. sep. 2019 kl. 18:07 skrev Eddie Avila 
mailto:ed...@globalvoices.org>>:
Maybe Wikimedia Indonesia is already in touch with the BASABali organization, 
but if not, I 

Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

[Steven White]

This really upsets me. But if the content is in Urdu, then (a) we ask what's 
going on, (b) we don't approve, and (c) in all likelihood, we propose an indef 
block on Incubator, given that many of the same characters were involved in a 
problem around the Khowar project a couple of years back.

Steven


Sent from Outlook


From: Langcom  on behalf of Jon Harald 
Søby 
Sent: Monday, October 7, 2019 5:33 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

Hi all!

I wanted to let you know that I'm in touch with an expert with regards to 
verifying Wikipedia in 
Saraiki
 (skr). It was previously mentioned by Seven in an email titled "Final approval 
for four projects" from August 16.

The expert checked one page and said it is in Urdu and not Saraiki (although it 
is about Saraiki topics). He said he will get back to me to check more pages in 
a week or two.

However, after he said that, I've checked several pages with Google Translate 
from Urdu to English, and they all produce very legible content (for Google 
Translate). That makes me suspicious that maybe all the content is in fact in 
Urdu – if it was in fact in a smaller language, I would expect a certain amount 
of words that Google Translate just doesn't understand.

So the question is, what do we do if it turns out that most/all content is in 
Urdu?

--
mvh
Jon Harald Søby
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Re: [Langcom] Content in Lese

[Steven White]

Wikisource is allowed to publish translations, I think.
Steven

Steven White


From: Langcom  on behalf of James Heilman 

Sent: Wednesday, October 2, 2019 6:54:08 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Content in Lese

So it is published in English here by the NIH  
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/independent-monitoring-board-recommends-early-termination-ebola-therapeutics-trial-drc-because-favorable-results-two-four-candidates<https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nih.gov%2Fnews-events%2Fnews-releases%2Findependent-monitoring-board-recommends-early-termination-ebola-therapeutics-trial-drc-because-favorable-results-two-four-candidates=02%7C01%7C%7C37ed4eb0b2fa4d8a6abb08d7478b7f20%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637056536768133384=zR8LBpjSoo4Q6rLNwQcPzmk3JCz6y5OFk6ZWMN7JIR0%3D=0>

Checking to see were the translation is being posted.

James



On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 4:32 PM Antony Green 
mailto:toniogr...@web.de>> wrote:

Oh, and has this Lese text been previously published? That's a requirement at 
Wikisource.

Am 2019-10-02 um 22:20 schrieb James Heilman:
I have never worked on Wikisource. Anyone here have experience?

J

On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 2:06 PM Steven White 
mailto:koala19...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
As far as I can tell, there's nothing else in Lese (or Efé) in any of our 
projects. To me, the best place to put it would probably be Multilingual 
Wikisource, and if there is an appropriate place elsewhere for the English 
language version, then by all means link to it from there.
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Content in Lese

[Steven White]

As far as I can tell, there's nothing else in Lese (or Efé) in any of our 
projects. To me, the best place to put it would probably be Multilingual 
Wikisource, and if there is an appropriate place elsewhere for the English 
language version, then by all means link to it from there.
Steven


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[Langcom] Wikimedia Movement Strategy Recommendations

[Steven White]

Someone who is involved on the Meta Language Committee pages has suggested that 
the committee look at, and potentially comment on, this recommendation: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Sprint/Roles_%26_Responsibilities/2%263.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Approving Wikipedia in Balinese

[Steven White]

Technically, project approvals are supposed to be announced on Meta in case 
there are community objections. (There never are at this stage of the game, but 
we need to provide the opportunity.) I will go ahead and post Balinese at 
Talk:Language Committee. If 7 days pass with no objection, then we can go 
forward.
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Balinese

[Steven White]

If it's ready, it's ready. I'm fine with that.

Here's my only problem. There are several other projects that have seemed ready 
or near-ready, who have asked about this over time either on Incubator or at 
Meta's Talk:Language committee, and whom I have been putting off pending 
resolution of the Phabricator. People from some of those projects have been 
waiting a while, and were quite resentful that N'Ko got bumped ahead of them, 
for example. So while I am grateful that others are taking action on this, so 
that it doesn't all fall on me, I would strongly request that they/you check 
the following places to look for projects that might be ready:

Meta—Talk:Language committee
Incubator—Incubator:Community Portal
Both Meta and Incubator: My user talk page
Incubator—On the page Incubator:Featured wikis, any project in the middle 
section, unless it's one of the four already tentatively approved and awaiting 
language verification.
Incubator—On the page Template:Test user statistics, most projects in the boxes 
with a cream-colored background, except

  *   Any of the four already tentatively approved and awaiting language 
verification
  *   Montenegrin Wikipedia (not going there now, and recently it's been more 
dormant)
  *   Darja (Algerian Arabic) Wikipedia (because I know it's mostly a student 
project and quite stubby)

Now, I do not guarantee that any project you find in any of those locations 
will actually be ready. I just know that in many cases they've been close.  
Also:  If they're ready, except that their activity—which was fine until 
several months ago—has recently fallen off (mainly due to frustration with 
waiting), let me know, so I can try to get those revived.

Honestly, the whole Bulgarian Wikinews event exhausted me, and now I will be 
away quite a lot for the Jewish holidays. So I really appreciate others' 
stepping up here.

Steven

PS: The four tentatively approved and awaiting language verification are the 
Wikipedias in Guianan Creole, Mon and Saraiki and the Wiktionary in Tacawit. 
Amir?


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[Langcom] Wikinews Literary Chinese (also Wikinews Old English)

[Steven White]

MF-W, do you still want to support the request for a Wikinews in Literary 
Chinese?
 As mentioned previously, because Literary Chinese is considered a historical 
language, this project is technically against policy. (This also means we would 
need 2/3 in favor, if there is not consensus.)

Similar question to all: a request just came in for a Wikinews in Old 
English.
 Can I just reject?

Let me point out: Wikinews projects are difficult even under ideal 
circumstances. I doubt either of these would prove to be ideal circumstances.
Steven


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[Langcom] Bulgarian Wikinews

[Steven White]

Bulgarian Wikinews was locked for all contributors except sysops yesterday. 
Then some content was cleaned up, as previously discussed. That cleanup is now 
complete.

At this point, the Phabricator task has requested that the sysadmins fully lock 
the project. But in fact both sysops have been deflagged now, so de facto this 
project is now only changeable by stewards and sysadmins. In other words, the 
project is closed.

Before we finalize the pseudo-deletion, there are a couple of details we need 
to work out at the Phabricator task. Most particularly, the original proposer 
has suggested (and appropriately in my view) that even if we redirect all other 
url's on the project to a single landing page, thereby hiding the rest of the 
project from public view, we should leave access to the Village Pump page and 
the Voting page, as the project closure proposal links to discussions on them 
quite frequently. That way, there will never be a question as to why this 
decision was made. (The alternative is to move archive copies of those pages 
somewhere else, perhaps to Meta.) In any event, I don't think how we do this 
needs to be a Committee decision; it's something I can work through with the 
sysadmins myself.

Thanks to all for your participation in this frankly difficult and sad process.
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Comments on this?

[Steven White]

One other point: Better LangCom be accused of pushing the envelope slightly 
than to open a precedent where people can swoop in and take over dormant 
projects to promote an agenda. LangCom is mostly not aggressive about such 
things. But we need to have the backing to get involved when it's appropriate.

Steven White
koala19...@hotmail.com
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Today's Topics:

   1. Comments on this? (James Heilman)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2019 10:14:11 -0700
From: James Heilman 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee

Subject: [Langcom] Comments on this?
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

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Re: [Langcom] Comments on this?

[Steven White]

Look, at a certain level there's some truth to it. We certainly haven't made 
the case here on whether or not this is actually in Bulgarian, after all.

This is a very unusual case in that we might well have seen this project as 
closable in the first place. Instead, we gave a group of contributors time to 
revive the project. We asked only that (1) they put a reasonable community in 
place to support the project going forward, and (2) they remove questionable 
content. Really, we've only been evaluating this situation on whether those two 
requirements were meant.

1. Three regular contributors is typically enough for a brand new project. But 
both the project and the contributors here have some history problems, and we 
didn't really even have three regular contributors (only two) until about two 
months ago, when it started to become clear that we might really close the 
project. If we were deciding to approve this project from scratch, this would 
perhaps be just barely enough activity to say yes--but only barely.

2. As to the part about critiquing how that RfD went down, it ties to the 
request to remove questionable content.  I can only say that this project 
revival was on our watch, and we are entitled to make sure that the revival was 
done responsibly.  We thought it wasn't.  And to say that three users, one of 
whom has a conflict-of-interest, have a right to exclude other opinions from 
the discussion and decision, seems inappropriate.

My personal opinion is that LangCom bent over backwards over the course of a 
full year to allow the process to proceed fairly.  We think we've done so. If 
the Board doesn't agree, that's the Board's prerogative. And we think project 
closure on this basis is within our remit. But if it's not, we need to rewrite 
the closing project policy to narrow the scope for project closures. And that 
will be someone else's job; I will have had enough.

Steven

Steven White
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Today's Topics:

   1. Comments on this? (James Heilman)


--

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2019 10:14:11 -0700
From: James Heilman 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee

Subject: [Langcom] Comments on this?
Message-ID:

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Re: [Langcom] RFL: Wikinews Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

For starters, Literary Chinese (lzh) is listed as an historical language at 
SIL, so it's against current policy.
Steven


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[Langcom] RFL: Wikinews Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

I haven't heard anything either way from anyone over the last week. I'm 
assuming this is a "no", but will give one more day in case someone forgot to 
respond.
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Wikinews in Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikinews_Literary_Chinese



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[Langcom] Wikinews in Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

I assume that the Language Committee doesn't think this is a good idea. But I 
want to check before I reject the request.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Langcom Digest, Vol 71, Issue 5

[Steven White]

Steward Revi wrote:

  In my personal opinion, We the Stewards are only authorized to act on a 
community consensus and are not responsible to decide whether WMF principles, 
practices, and/or rules are violated.

  (Again, I am not speaking on behalf of Stewards, just my POV.)

On the whole, this is true. However, the stewards are authorized to decide on 
their own whether short-term emergency intervention is warranted in an 
individual project. And the stewards, more than the Board or T, are traveling 
around different projects looking at things and seeing what's going on. At 
minimum, if the stewards see something that seems to be substantially and 
clearly outside of norms, at minimum they are in a position to report it to T 
and the Board, and in practice, if necessary, they can make a short-term 
intervention. But I will quickly concede that the latter possibility only kicks 
in when there are truly dire circumstances in play.

Steven



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Today's Topics:

   1. Croatian Wikipedia (Steven White)
   2. Re: Croatian Wikipedia (Steven White)


--

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2019 14:55:03 +0000
From: Steven White 
To: "WMF LangCom (public)" 
Subject: [Langcom] Croatian Wikipedia
Message-ID:



Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

The former Yugoslavia is one of the most difficult spots in the entire WMF 
universe.

If we were starting from scratch right now, the tradeoff, as always, would be 
whether Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are different enough to 
warrant separate projects, or whether a single Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia could 
cover the whole ground. The current policy has potentially contradictory 
biases.  On one hand, there is a bias TOWARD projects in individual languages, 
and AWAY from projects in macrolanguages. (In this case, Serbo-Croatian is a 
macrolanguage, and the others are considered constituent languages of that 
macrolanguage.) On the other hand, there is a bias TOWARD consolidated projects 
where the languages are mutually comprehensible, both to help prevent POV bias 
and to reduce unnecessary duplication. I frankly don't know which way we'd go 
if we were starting from scratch now.

(Technical interlude: the Cyrillic-Latin converters work just fine. That does 
not need to be a consideration for any of this.)

But in any event, we most assuredly are not starting from scratch. Each of 
these projects already has a community, a political point of view, and a bias. 
Those conflict IRL, and they conflict here, too.  Again, if we were starting 
from scratch, there would be at least a fighting chance of setting up neutral 
ground rules in a Serbo-Croatian project. But we're not, and the ground rules 
and communities are already well established. Given the current conditions, I 
think the following questions, and the following questions only, are within the 
purview of LangCom:

  1.  Do we shut down all three individual projects, and require everything to 
be consolidated into Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia? (I recommend against this. There 
would be constant content wars, almost impossible to regulate, that would take 
energy away from the routine business of creating the encyclopedia. The 
communities would scream bloody murder. But if we want to go there, I want a 
Board vote on that, not just our vote.)
  2.  Do we shut down Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia as redundant (which it basically 
is), making sure that appropriate content goes to one or more of the other 
projects? (We could put up a trial proposal on Meta and see what people say.)
  3.  Do we let all of of these operate in parallel as they are now? (Action by 
inaction)
  4.  Do we allow a Montenegrin Wikipedia? (As people know, I favor this. If #2 
above were to happen, I think we'd really have to allow this. If #3 happens, in 
theory you could say that Montenegrin is part of Serbo-Croatian and can 
contribu

Re: [Langcom] Croatian Wikipedia

[Steven White]

Gerard wrote:

Hoi,
When the language committee takes the lead and decides one way or the
other, it makes a recommendation to the board of trustees. Ultimately the
decision is theirs. We do not need to consider that this is a situation
where nobody was willing to act.
Thanks,
  GerardM

Just for the record, this is disingenuous. This position is only formally true 
in the case of project creations, and only slightly more realistically true in 
the case of project closures and deletions. Basically, the Board has delegated 
these responsibilities to this Committee. (We don't even have to notify the 
Board officially of project creations any more, only of closures.) Unless the 
Board actively intervenes, it takes this Committee's action (or inaction) as 
the official WMF position on a question.

Steven


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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Croatian Wikipedia (Ilario Valdelli)
   2. Re: Croatian Wikipedia (Gerard Meijssen)


--

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2019 09:40:28 +
From: Ilario Valdelli 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee

Subject: Re: [Langcom] Croatian Wikipedia
Message-ID:



Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

My 2 cents

As I know Serbian uses cyrillic Chars while Croatian use neolatin.

Kind regards

Get Outlook for 
Android


From: Langcom  on behalf of James Heilman 

Sent: Monday, September 2, 2019 11:06:19 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Croatian Wikipedia

And would it be true that if Croatian was to apply now they would be denied as 
Serbian already exists?

James

On Mon, Sep 2, 2019 at 3:00 AM Ilario Valdelli 
mailto:ivalde...@wikimedia.ch>> wrote:
Speaking with a Serbian of another association, there not a significant 
difference between the two languages.

Kind regards

Get Outlook for 
Android


From: Langcom 
mailto:langcom-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org>>
 on behalf of James Heilman mailto:jmh...@gmail.com>>
Sent: Monday, September 2, 2019 9:43:24 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee 
mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Croatian Wikipedia

One question, we have Crotian and Serbo-Croatian... How significant is the 
difference?

J

On Mon, Sep 2, 2019 at 12:43 AM Amir E. Aharoni 
mailto:amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il>> wrote:
The Stewards, indeed, sound like the first people to talk to about this.

The Language committee should be about the languages themselves, and not so 
much about what is said in them.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
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‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬


‫בתאריך יום ב׳, 2 בספט׳ 2019 ב-9:34 מאת ‪Gerard Meijssen‬‏ 
<‪gerard.meijs...@gmail.com‬‏>:‬
Hoi,
We could. However, we are not the best positioned group to do so. The stewards 
come to mind. The trust and safety committee.. but to be honest the board of 
trustees is the organisation that indicates the importance of these issues, has 
a responsibility to us as a movement and it can direct the WMF to do whatever.
Thanks,
 GerardM

On Mon, 2 

[Langcom] Croatian Wikipedia

[Steven White]

The former Yugoslavia is one of the most difficult spots in the entire WMF 
universe.

If we were starting from scratch right now, the tradeoff, as always, would be 
whether Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are different enough to 
warrant separate projects, or whether a single Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia could 
cover the whole ground. The current policy has potentially contradictory 
biases.  On one hand, there is a bias TOWARD projects in individual languages, 
and AWAY from projects in macrolanguages. (In this case, Serbo-Croatian is a 
macrolanguage, and the others are considered constituent languages of that 
macrolanguage.) On the other hand, there is a bias TOWARD consolidated projects 
where the languages are mutually comprehensible, both to help prevent POV bias 
and to reduce unnecessary duplication. I frankly don't know which way we'd go 
if we were starting from scratch now.

(Technical interlude: the Cyrillic-Latin converters work just fine. That does 
not need to be a consideration for any of this.)

But in any event, we most assuredly are not starting from scratch. Each of 
these projects already has a community, a political point of view, and a bias. 
Those conflict IRL, and they conflict here, too.  Again, if we were starting 
from scratch, there would be at least a fighting chance of setting up neutral 
ground rules in a Serbo-Croatian project. But we're not, and the ground rules 
and communities are already well established. Given the current conditions, I 
think the following questions, and the following questions only, are within the 
purview of LangCom:

  1.  Do we shut down all three individual projects, and require everything to 
be consolidated into Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia? (I recommend against this. There 
would be constant content wars, almost impossible to regulate, that would take 
energy away from the routine business of creating the encyclopedia. The 
communities would scream bloody murder. But if we want to go there, I want a 
Board vote on that, not just our vote.)
  2.  Do we shut down Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia as redundant (which it basically 
is), making sure that appropriate content goes to one or more of the other 
projects? (We could put up a trial proposal on Meta and see what people say.)
  3.  Do we let all of of these operate in parallel as they are now? (Action by 
inaction)
  4.  Do we allow a Montenegrin Wikipedia? (As people know, I favor this. If #2 
above were to happen, I think we'd really have to allow this. If #3 happens, in 
theory you could say that Montenegrin is part of Serbo-Croatian and can 
contribute there. But Serbians still control that project, and the Montenegrin 
POV is routinely ignored or overturned. So in any world where the three 
grandfathered parallel projects [Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian] exist, one has to 
concede that the rule on parallel projects is already not in force in the world 
of Serbo-Croatian, and therefore allowing a Montenegrin project simply allows a 
Montenegrin POV the same footing the others already have.)

Any other question, such as whether Croatian Wikipedia currently so violates 
WMF's overarching practices, principles and rules for intervention, is 
something for the stewards, T and the Board.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Proposed amendment to LPP (was: Final approval for four projects)

[Steven White]

MF-Warburg wrote:  "Let's not forget that the creation of new wikis is stalled 
at the moment for technical reasons. My motivation to advance approvals is not 
very high due to it, since I dislike approving projects which are active at a 
time, but might not still be active later when the technical issues are 
resolved but are then created nevertheless."

Is that still not resolved? I thought creation of Neapolitan Wikisource showed 
we were moving past that. (Of course, I thought that about Western Armenian 
Wikipedia, too.)

Also:  It's a very bad problem when the projects become inactive expressly 
because their communities see us as incapable of creating their wikis, so the 
communities throw up their hands and go home.  It's not because they don't care 
about this, but because they feel that if they will never get anywhere, they 
might as well not waste more time.  And it's our fault, not theirs.  As Marcos 
Williamson says, we need to find a middle ground between protecting against 
hoax and empowering these communities. My original proposal here was intended 
to give us time to do due diligence, but not unlimited time.  Time is fair; 
unlimited time is not. And to those who complained that I was setting arbitrary 
time limits, I would respond that I was setting time limits.  Any time limit is 
arbitrary at one level, but there needs to be something compelling LangCom to 
act instead of to sit on its hands, which has happened a lot recently.

MF-W, once the technical issues are resolved, I plan to allow the communities 
closest to "ready", if they have gone inactive, to be considered active again 
as soon as they have a single month with three active users at 10+ edits. 
Making them wait another three months is just rubbing salt in the wound.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Proposed amendment to LPP (was: Final approval for four projects)

[Steven White]

I'm happy to wait for your proposal, Amir.  Still, if there is something that 
is going to require LangCom approval, there needs to be something in the 
proposal that compels LangCom to act within a reasonable time frame. Yes, we're 
volunteers, but so are the people who are creating the projects in Incubator 
(etc.), and they deserve not to have to wait a year.

I will also add that as long as I'm not so frustrated with the system that I 
can stay active, I do watch the active tests on Incubator. Yes, it's possible 
for me to be fooled by a hoax, as I don't usually read the languages involved. 
Still, as long as Incubator/Beta/Old Wikisource are being monitored, it needs 
to be a pretty robust hoax on the concerted part of a reasonable number of 
contributors in order to make it all the way to the point of approvability.

Finally, then, is the tradeoff between avoiding hoaxes and being responsive to 
new-project communities.  The chances that such a community is a good-faith 
community that is being hurt by delay are probably much greater than the 
chances that such a community is a hoax community. So while I think we need a 
chance for our due diligence, we should not be allowed an arbitrarily long time 
to do that due diligence, either.

Steven


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From: Langcom  on behalf of 
langcom-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org 
Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2019 8:00 AM
To: langcom@lists.wikimedia.org 
Subject: Langcom Digest, Vol 70, Issue 12

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 08:52:07 +0300
From: "Amir E. Aharoni" 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee

Subject: Re: [Langcom] Proposed amendment to LPP (was: Final approval
for four projects)

Sorry, no.

No verification at all and simply assuming good faith after some arbitrary
time is asking for trouble. There already were cases of hoaxes in the past.
Not many cases, but they did happen, and we're talking about a whole site,
even one case is major trouble.

HOWEVER, I absolutely do recognize that we have unnecessary and harmful
bottlenecks in the approval process, and because of that I'm working on
another proposal that will ease up at least some of these bottlenecks.

I've just came back from Wikimania, and I'm immediately going for a
vacation until the end of August, but after that—expect surprises,
hopefully good ones.

--
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[Langcom] Proposed amendment to LPP (was: Final approval for four projects)

[Steven White]

Gerard wrote:


Hoi,
Define unreasonable. Amir gave an estimation when it is reasonable to
expect a result.
Thanks,
  GerardM


For the current instance, based on where we are now, Amir's estimation is fine. 
As long as someone is actually trying to follow up on these projects, and gives 
a reasonable estimate as to how long it will take, I'm fine.

James's question, and mine, is more around the big picture.  Please remember 
that three of the four projects we are talking about here (Guiane Creole WP, 
Saraiki WP, Tacawit Wiktionary) were identified in an email I wrote on 17 
December 2018 (about eight months ago) as already being provisionally approved 
and awaiting language verification. The fourth (Mon WP) is perhaps a month 
newer.  But 7-8 months and longer—Saraiki WP was provisionally approved in 
October 2018—is absolutely not reasonable by any standard.  Quite frankly, I 
was desperate to do something to move these along, because being nice and 
playing by the rules was doing absolutely nothing. (Remember, too, that I wrote 
pleasant, polite reminders to the committee about these four projects on March 
14 and June 6.) I'm sorry, Gerard, that you didn't like me doing what I did. 
But what I did is far less objectionable than requiring communities to wait 
this long for us to complete language verification.

To that end, I am proposing the following amendment to the provision about 
language verification. I am open to some adjustments, but allowing projects to 
sit this long and wait for us is just not acceptable.  Where this amendment is 
to be added is in the Language Committee's Handbook, Final 
Approval,
 item #2. Subitem #3 is to be followed by new subitem #4:

4. The Language Committee has 30 days from the time a project is provisionally 
approved—meaning: approved, except for language verification—to identify and 
contact an expert for the language verification. If no expert is contacted 
within 30 days, then on the assumption of good faith, the project will be 
finally approved.  If an expert is contacted within 30 days, the Language 
Committee has an additional 60 days to obtain the final language verification. 
If no language verification (or failure of language verification) is received 
by then, on the assumption of good faith, the project will be finally approved. 
Overall, any project for which the Language Committee has failed to get 
language verification (or failure of language verification) within 90 days will 
be approved on the assumption of good faith.

I think this gives us plenty of time to do what we need to do, without 
requiring communities to wait on us for months without comment.  This would 
apply for all projects receiving provisional approval from this point on.  But 
in parallel, given that Amir started working on these four projects around 
August 15, I would also propose that if we have not finalized language 
verification by October 15, these four projects also be finally approved.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Langcom Digest, Vol 70, Issue 8

[Steven White]

As long as Amir is actually trying to contact experts, I am ok to wait. The 
fact that no one on the committee was bothering to work on language 
verification was my principal problem.

And, Gerard, when you start doing your job on this committee, I will answer you.

Steven White
koala19...@hotmail.com
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Re: [Langcom] Final approval for four projects

[Steven White]

Gerard, does this mean that you are reaching out to language experts? Which 
ones? Thanks!

Steven
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[Langcom] Final approval for four projects

[Steven White]

Now that things are starting to move again, I intend to approve four projects:  
Guiane Creole WP, Saraiki WP, Mon WP and Tacawit (Shawiya) Wiktionary.  No, 
none of these has been verified. But this is not the fault of the people who 
created the projects, this is the fault of the Language Committee, which did 
not do its job.  Accordingly, I will approve and send to phabricator for 
creation all four of these projects by 17:00 UTC on Monday, 19 August.  I will 
not do that in a particular case only if ALL of the following happens:

  *   Someone objects in a particular case that they have reason to be 
concerned about the validity of the language.
  *   That person also specifically commits to contacting an expert immediately.
  *   Then, within 48 hours, that person has contacted the expert, and 
identified the expert to the mail list.
  *   Then, the expert has 7 days to respond.

Otherwise, I need to fall back on "Assume Good Faith". And look, if one of 
these turns out to be another Siberian, we'll be embarrassed, and we'll delete 
the project.  But I've been watching all of these projects for the last two 
years, and I don't have any reason to believe there is a problem.

If anyone tries to object in any way other than the specific way I have 
outlined above, I intend to ignore that person.  Sorry, but at this point, the 
Committee only has the right to intervene if it intends to become active again 
and do its job.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] I need help

[Steven White]

Amir,

Thank you for responding.  If I had to summarize things in one sentence, it 
would be that on the whole the members of this committee mostly seem not to be 
involved in any kind of real way.

This is particularly true on-wiki. In my view, on-wiki is still supposed to be 
the core of what this is all about. And other than you, MF-Warburg and 
occasionally Satdeep, I can hardly remember a member of the Language Committee 
responding—for example at Talk:Language committee on Meta.  I’m supposed to be 
a clerk, not necessarily even responding substantively. I do, and that’s OK to 
a point, but can’t anyone else ever be there?

Still, I’d venture my biggest frustration is with the fact that people on the 
committee are not even doing minimal work based on what gets posted to this 
mail list. For example:  There are four projects that were tentatively approved 
in October-December 2018, pending language verification. I pointed this out 
again in an email on March 14. And I pointed it out again in an email on June 
6. And nothing has happened; there have barely even been grunted responses from 
the Committee. If there is one piece of business I really have not wanted to 
get involved in, it’s discussing language eligibility with experts.  Can’t 
anyone act on these? Really? How long do we let a project sit in this status 
without verification? At some point, these people deserve an answer, and if we 
cannot get verification—and we assume good faith—that answer should be yes.

(Related to both of the above, I am going to write the committee, probably 
tomorrow, about two other requests: one to close Bulgarian Wikinews, and the 
other the ongoing discussion about this Literary Chinese Wikisource request. I 
have recommendations for both, but could people really look on-wiki at the 
discussions, and not just depend on my summaries? Please? And then engage in a 
real discussion? These are not simple questions.)

I’m also frustrated with something that the committee can’t entirely control: 
the technical block at Phabricator preventing creation of new wikis. Now part 
of the frustration stems from the fact that I’ve used that as an excuse not to 
bring new wikis here for tentative approval. (The reality of why I haven’t done 
that, of course, is at least as much about the fact I have such a hard time 
securing language verification from the Committee.) But part of it is real: how 
long do people have to wait before getting their projects approved?

I’ll add: Phabricator seems to be moving on recoding some of the projects that 
use non-standard language codes, or at least adding the standard codes as 
aliases. That’s fine as far as it goes, and I’ll admit that this is probably 
easier than fixing the real problem blocking new wiki creation. Still, can’t we 
somehow try to get the developers to put a higher priority on new wiki 
creation? There are a few people who care a lot about the code issue, but in 
nearly all cases, that hasn’t been a really important problem. The fact that we 
can’t create new wikis is a really important problem.

And I’ll conclude by noting that people are starting to ask, “Why can’t we get 
verification now, notwithstanding the technical problems?” The only honest 
answer I can give is that LangCom doesn’t have its act together to do 
verification. If people want me to give that answer online, then I will. 
Better: get these verification requests moving, so that I can start pushing 
other projects along.

Thank you for listening.

Steven


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(Amir wrote:)

Hi,

There's a phenomenon on wikis: Sometimes, when a person becomes an expert
at doing some kind of routine work, everyone else gets used to it and
decides that they don't have to do it, because the expert will take care of
it. No-one even bothers to learn the expert's modus operandi.
Unfortunately, the possibility that the expert will burn doesn't occur to
anyone. I am guilty of this myself.

Steven, I appreciate your work immensely. As a clerk, you reinvigorated the
Language committee's work and improved our processes.

Please let me where can I help, and I'll try my best.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Faharoni.wordpress.comdata=02%7C01%7C%7C15f43989287448b2997108d7197abc1e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C637005887237858562sdata=QGzcOPNRpYzQlL8PNI4wLULyy5h9c2wgrjK2rJE%2Fm3c%3Dreserved=0
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬


‫בתאריך יום ב׳, 5 באוג׳ 2019 ב-1:13 מאת ‪Steven White‬‏ <‪
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[Langcom] I need help

[Steven White]

I need help. I'm doing all the work right now, and it's not fun any more. If I 
don't see some real commitments from some of you to get back involved ON-WIKI 
in about the next week, I intend to resign as clerk and as sysop on Incubator, 
and I'll leave the mess behind for the rest of you.

Steven White
koala19...@hotmail.com
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[Langcom] Four projects still on hold pending language verification

[Steven White]

Circling back to an email time-stamped Thu Mar 14 18:29:07 UTC 2019, I would 
note that there are still four projects sitting and waiting for language 
verification: Guiane Creole WP, Saraiki WP, Mon WP and Tacawit (Shawiya) 
Wiktionary.  And as a community member 
notes,
 it's really been quite a long time that these projects are waiting.

Guiane Creole is my fault, as I need to get in touch with the expert whose name 
I was given.  I know that MF-W was looking into a couple of the others. Has 
there been any luck on any of these?  I have the names of some experts on 
Tacawit that I can share with someone who might be willing to contact them (if 
I haven't already).  I really need a Committee member or two to step up and 
follow up on these. I don't consider myself enough of an expert to handle this 
issue.

Important question:  How long is "too long" at this stage before we concede 
that the delays are our fault, and that we should assume good faith and approve 
the projects without an explicit language validation?

Steven


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[Langcom] Wikisource Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

I never went back and closed this.  The recommendation that I made in an email 
time-stamped Wed Apr 24 16:09:43 UTC 2019 was this:

  *   I think we need to leave the content of zhwikisource alone now, but allow 
additional lzh content on oldwikisource, with rules against duplication.
  *   By process of elimination, I'd recommend "placing on hold" for now. I 
really don't see consensus coalescing here.  Also, I think there's a good 
enough chance that this test never goes anywhere that we may as well wait to 
see what happens before committing to a decision.  (And, to tell the truth, in 
most cases like this, where there is little actual activity in the test, that's 
what we actually usually do until there is proof of activity.)
 *   If you're not willing to do that, I would go for "eligible" IF AND 
ONLY IF that doesn't mean we're committing to the future of any existing 
content either way. In principle, this lzh ought to be eligible, and there's 
nothing wrong with saying so. But if we think that "eligible" automatically 
means that content MUST be moved in the future if an lzhwikisource is created, 
then I would "reject", because I don't think that moving content out of 
zhwikisource will ever be a viable option.

MF-Warburg and Michael supported this, while Gerard opposed. Does anyone else 
have an opinion? If not, I will go ahead and mark this proposal as "on hold", 
as outlined here.

Steven


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[Langcom] Revision to Language Proposal Policy

[Steven White]

I was quite busy IRL during May. There were a number of things open at the end 
of April that I need the Committee to circle back to.

The first item is the revision to the Language Proposal Policy, which can be 
found 
here.
  As you may recall, the most controversial piece of my original proposal had 
to do with non-Wikisource projects in ancient and historical languages. But 
that piece was removed before I took the proposal to the community at Meta. The 
result was a revision proposal that was mostly technical, in that it codified 
certain existing practices already being used by LangCom but not explicit in 
the Policy.

The discussion can be found 
here.
  There were two serious "oppose" !votes, but both focused on items that were 
not included in the proposed changes at all:  (i) changing the requirement for 
an ISO 639–3 code, and (ii) ancient/historical language projects.  Otherwise, 
the community was basically fine with the proposed changes.  There were some 
suggestions for changing the wording a bit, and I incorporated most of those.  
Since the wording changed a bit, I'd like the Committee to have a look and make 
sure it is OK with the revision proposal as now worded.  If there are no 
objections in seven days, I will go ahead and implement.

Steven


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[Langcom] Wikisource Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

There are still different opinions on this: Gerard and Michael would reject the 
proposal, MF-W would accept it as eligible. Let me outline points of agreement 
first, then points of disagreement. Then I'd like to propose a next step, and 
see what people think.

Agreement:

  1.  Even MF-W agrees that, at least in the short-to-mid-term, nobody is 
talking about pulling apart the current zhwikisource, and spinning the lzh 
content into a new project.
  2.  (I think) All agree that lzh served a role in East Asia similar to the 
role of Latin in Europe. Accordingly, policy allows a separate lzh project and 
doesn't demand that lzh content be moved into a zh project.

Disagreement:

  1.  If we mark this as "eligible", does that mean that when the test on 
Multilingual Wikisource becomes approvable (if ever), we categorically MUST 
move all the lzh content from zhwikisource into the new project? Or can lzh 
content exist in both places?
  2.  (I think) Just because policy allows a separate lzh project doesn't mean 
it requires one; we can still require all lzh content to be put into the zh 
project.
 *   If #2 is true, though, there is still a concern that the zh project 
will not meet the needs of non-Mandarin speakers with respect to lzh content.

The only reason we really even have a problem is the bullet point under 
"Disagreement #2". If not for that, we could reject the language request 
without a problem. And I'm convinced that at present, that's more of a 
theoretical issue being put out by the proponents of an lzh Wikisource than it 
is a practical problem people are having right now. Still, we can't entirely 
discount it.

In the short run, I think we could keep everyone happy by not touching current 
lzh content on zhwikisource, while allowing other lzh content to be created on 
oldwikisource. (There is precedent for allowing content on oldwikisource in 
parallel to content in a separate Wikisource, though in the main case I think 
of, Polish, that's done for copyright reasons. And we'd want to encourage some 
ground rules about duplication of documents, since that's not a concern in the 
Polish case.) Even if we agree to that, though, the question remains: How do we 
resolve the status of the language request? So here's how I see all the 
possible options playing out:

  *   Eligible.  This does mean that at some point, if the lzh test becomes 
approvable, we agree it can be approved. I'm OK with this option if the answer 
to "disagreement #1" is that we are not necessarily committing that all lzh 
content would have to be moved to an lzh Wikisource. We can kick the can down 
the road, and also don't have to commit that lzh content will not be moved, 
either. If we do this, I would make it clear on eligibility that we are not 
committing to what that means for the future for the current lzh content of 
zhwikisource.
  *   Place on hold. (option 1) We can see if enough contributors actually come 
to work on lzh content on oldwikisource to make that viable, or whether by a 
year from now it becomes a non-issue. (option 2) It goes on hold because we 
decide that we're just not going to decide now, and we'll revisit it if and 
when that's appropriate.
  *   Reject.  This doesn't actually mean we don't allow lzh content to stay on 
oldwikisource. After all, there are a number of projects in ancient languages 
that have been rejected by LangCom but where tests still exist on Incubator 
because the rules for Incubator are less strict than the rules for subdomain 
project eligibility/approval. Since the rules for oldwikisource are even less 
strict than the rules for Incubator, the lzh "test" could stay on 
oldwikisource. But this option basically says that this content will always 
stay on oldwikisource.

My recommendation

  *   I think we need to leave the content of zhwikisource alone now, but allow 
additional lzh content on oldwikisource, with rules against duplication.
  *   By process of elimination, I'd recommend "placing on hold" for now. I 
really don't see consensus coalescing here.  Also, I think there's a good 
enough chance that this test never goes anywhere that we may as well wait to 
see what happens before committing to a decision.  (And, to tell the truth, in 
most cases like this, where there is little actual activity in the test, that's 
what we actually usually do until there is proof of activity.)
 *   If you're not willing to do that, I would go for "eligible" IF AND 
ONLY IF that doesn't mean we're committing to the future of any existing 
content either way. In principle, this lzh ought to be eligible, and there's 
nothing wrong with saying so. But if we think that "eligible" automatically 
means that content MUST be moved in the future if an lzhwikisource is created, 
then I would "reject", because I don't think that moving content out of 
zhwikisource will ever be a viable option.

Please respond promptly to this if you will. I'd love to close this off 
(finally).

[Langcom] Some updates

[Steven White]

  1.  The proposal to modify LPP has now been on-wiki at 
Meta
 for seven days. There has been a modest amount of support, little discussion, 
and almost no opposition. (The exception to that is from one user who really 
wants us to overhaul the use of ISO 639-3 as the language standard. Since I 
explicitly excluded that subject from the discussion, I discount that 
opposition for this purpose.)
  2.  I closed a request to close Tajik Wikibooks as unsuccessful/withdrawn. 
The main concern here was that there hadn't been much content creation 
recently—but, of course, inactivity is not a reason to close an otherwise valid 
project. There is some concern that some content might be either (a) more 
appropriate for Wikisource, or (b) original short stories or poems that don't 
really fit Wikibooks's remit. But the community will address that itself, and 
the OP withdrew the request when some new content was added.
  3.  A follow-up on Literary Chinese Wikisource will follow this message 
directly.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Unicode requirement

[Steven White]

Encoding, yes. Sorry, that was sloppy on my part.


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Re: [Langcom] Unicode requirement

[Steven White]

To get back to the original question, I'd echo what MF-Warburg said: I've never 
seen an actual written requirement for this.

That said, I was (finally) about to post the proposed modifications to LPP this 
week. I could add either a requirement or an advisory statement on this 
subject. (Advisory statement would say something to the effect of "If no 
Unicode font exists for the script your language is written in, it may be 
technically difficult for the Wikimedia servers to serve the project 
reliably.") Thoughts?

Steven


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[Langcom] Circling back to items that are still pending for the Language Committee

[Steven White]

Tentatively approved projects

  *   MF-Warburg has tried to reach out to language experts for the Saraiki 
Wikipedia and Tacawit Wiktionary.  (I presume you've still heard nothing.)
  *   I am working on experts for Guianan Creole.
  *   Has anyone tried for Mon?

Question: Is there a time limit here? (Should there be?) If we can't succeed in 
getting confirmation, don't we need at some point to say "Assume good faith; 
approve."?  A situation like this is really likely to discourage people and 
send them away, and that from our fault, not theirs.

LPP update

I heavily revised my initial draft in light of MF-Warburg's private-list email 
of December 30. In particular, I removed all references to the possibility of 
non-Wikisource projects in ancient/historical languages, and tightened up much 
of the rest of the proposal. (I did leave two footnotes in, but that's because 
they're really true references, to SIL's policy.)  Please have one more look at 
the draft at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:StevenJ81/sandbox. I'd like 
to post this publicly by next Monday or Tuesday.

I have promised the Committee I would start a separate discussion about 
allowing Wikipedias (only) in extinct languages. I plan to do that when the 
current LPP revision is finished.

Eligibility of Wikisource Literary Chinese
There are still Committee members on both sides of this. Later today or 
tomorrow I will try to summarize where I think we are now, and what next steps 
might be.

Steven

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Re: [Langcom] VOTE: Approval of Hindi Wikisource

[Steven White]

I did expect MF-Warburg to put in a "no" vote here, and I also reminded him 
on-wiki. Even counting him as a "no", though, this passes:

YES:  Gerard, Michael, Satdeep, Jon Harald, Amir.
NO: MF-W

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages: Wikisource Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

Michael, I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you favoring rejecting the 
request?
Steven


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Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2019 14:14:15 +
From: Michael Everson 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee

Subject: Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages: Wikisource Literary
Chinese

Fine, then. No need to do anything. Close it.

Michael

> On 5 Mar 2019, at 18:47, Steven White  wrote:
>
>• There are currently about 150 active contributors to zhwikisource.
>• The current zhwikisource community is adamantly opposed to this 
> proposal. It does not want lzh content separated out. The community sees it 
> as a part of the continuum of language that it is curating.
>


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Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages: Wikisource Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

Frankly, I had hoped to kick that question down the road a bit. But Michael's 
comment illustrates, to some extent, the concern with people always relying on 
my summaries and not digging into the discussion, especially when the 
discussion in lengthy.

First, let me link to the discussion again:   
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikisource_Literary_Chinese

As I've said before, I think if we were starting off from a blank slate, there 
would be a strong argument that we ought to allow a separate Wikisource in 
Literary Chinese. The analogy to Latin is actually a pretty good one. To the 
extent the analogy is good, it's really no more appropriate (in theory) to 
force Literary Chinese into a Mandarin Wikisource (or a Cantonese Wikisource) 
than it would be to force Latin into a French Wikisource or an Italian 
Wikisource.

So much for "in theory", "if we were starting off from a blank slate". But 
we're not, and the facts on the ground still make this a far more difficult 
decision in practice. I'd really encourage LangCom members to try read through 
the lengthy discussion. But I will still provide some key points here.

Concerning the current zhwikisource wiki and its lzh content:

  *   The current zhwikisource (let's call it that for now) has approximately 
300,000 content pages. In the discussion, it has been estimated that at least 
half, and perhaps as much as 90%, of that content is Literary Chinese (lzh).  
(This partly depends how you count. Some pages in Mandarin, for example, are 
actually author pages for authors whose writing is in Literary Chinese.)
  *   There are currently about 150 active contributors to zhwikisource.
  *   The current zhwikisource community is adamantly opposed to this proposal. 
It does not want lzh content separated out. The community sees it as a part of 
the continuum of language that it is curating.
  *   Some people point out that "zhwikisource", by ordinary Wikimedia use of 
codes, is really "Mandarin Wikisource", not "Chinese Wikisource". That is true 
enough, in principle. However, excluding Literary Chinese and zhwikisource, 
there are five other Chinese Wikisource projects, one independent (Min-Nan) and 
four on oldwikisource. They total about 80 content pages, so really play a 
negligible role.
  *   I worked hard to try to determine if Chinese political influence was 
adversely impacting curation of lzh content on zhwikisource.  Nobody provided 
evidence that there was a problem.

Concerning the proposal:

  *   One user in particular is the proposer and champion of this request.
  *   He has received a small amount of support in the discussion, just about 
all on the theoretical grounds that Literary Chinese is as deserving of a 
separate project as Latin.
  *   In practical terms, I have tried to determine why the proposer wants a 
separate project. The answer I get most often is that "it's a separate language 
and should have a separate project". Fair enough. Yet, when I have tried to ask 
if there have been particular problems with lzh content on Wikisource, I have 
not really gotten an answer. When I have pressed, the user says zhwikisource is 
not curating lzh material properly—but when I ask for details, I get none—no 
evidence, and no description of a problem. It's not absolutely out of the 
question that there are language issues getting in the way. Still, that's not 
my sense of it.
  *   Most of the current zhwikisource community feel he's trying to create his 
own playground to use. I'm not prepared to support that opinion. I'm also not 
prepared to reject that opinion.

A couple of other points that occur to me as I put this together:

  *   There is no question that LangCom has the authority to approve a separate 
Literary Chinese Wikisource project. It is far less clear to me that LangCom 
has the authority to order the current zhwikisource wiki to be broken apart 
against the express opposition of its community.
  *   It is even less clear to me that it would be a good idea.  There is a 
great risk that the current community would simply walk away (bad outcome). 
There is also a great risk that the current community would move to take over 
the new wiki and force out the proposer (bad outcome). Then someone like MF-W 
would have done a lot of work to split the project, but with very little in the 
way of progress to show for it (bad outcome).

At this point, I would respond to Michael's question: No, I don't think that 
the Literary Chinese content would be moved out to a new wiki—at least, not so 
fast, and perhaps not at all.

One other thing that I just looked up:

  *   There is one big difference between the Literary Chinese case and the 
Latin case. zh is a macrolanguage code for Chinese, and Literary Chinese (lzh) 
is a member of that macrolanguage. If you argue that zhwikisource can (in 
principle) be a Wikisource project that covers the entire range of the 
macrolanguage, then lzh content unquestionably 

[Langcom] VOTE: Approval of Hindi Wikisource

[Steven White]

Previous discussions have not resulted in a consensus to approve this project. 
I am therefore putting it to a vote.

The project meets the nominal requirements for final approval:

  *   It has about 7,500 pages.
  *   For November-February, it had over ten registered editors in each month 
with at least ten edits. (In fact, it had at least four in each month, and 
usually more, with at least 100 edits.)
 *   There was a period in 2016-17 when most months had at least three 
editors with at least ten edits.
 *   March 2019 already has four editors with at least ten edits, three of 
whom have at least 100—and it's only the fourth day of the month.
 *   These statistics do not include some pages and contributions in the 
category "Hindi" (as opposed to the core category "हिन्दी").
  *   Of the approximately 3,700 translations in MediaWiki Core, only four are 
untranslated.

MF-W has two principal objections.  (If I have not stated these with sufficient 
clarity, please correct me.)

  *   First, he sees no reason to rush—if the project stays active it will be 
approved in due course.
 *   I would respond to that as follows: Perhaps that is true. But if 
anything, I see many complaints on-wiki that it takes a long time for LangCom 
to decide on things, so that frequently people get tired of waiting and move 
on. If a project ceases to be active in general, that's one thing. But if it 
ceases to be active because we routinely fail to act, that's another thing 
entirely.
 *   Related, MF-W feels that perhaps three months of activity is not 
sufficient to prove an active community exists. If so, we should discuss that 
separately. But based on long-standing practices here, that is the advice that 
I give on-wiki. Until we decide on a different standard, it's only fair for us 
to follow that one.
  *   Second, he is still not fully convinced that we need separate language 
subdomains for Wikisource. Again, that is a subject for a different discussion, 
but the Hindi Wikisource community has been working with the current rules in 
mind.

There is nothing about this vote that triggers the need for a 2/3 majority. So 
a simple majority will decide. Please vote even if you have commented 
previously on this subject. The vote will close seven days after this email is 
posted—meaning at approximately 16:40 UTC on 11 March.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages: Wikisource Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

Where this discussion stands at present is this:

  *   Gerard is opposed to allowing this, on the grounds that there is a solid 
community of contributors on zh Wikisource that opposes, and only evidence for 
one or two people who support it.
  *   MF-W favors marking this as "eligible", as to a great extent Literary 
Chinese is to the modern group of Chinese languages as Latin is to Romance 
languages. Just as neither French Wikisource nor Italian Wikisource would 
really be the right place for Latin content, so too neither Mandarin Wikisource 
nor Cantonese Wikisource, say, is inherently the right place for Literary 
Chinese content.
 *   That having been said, MF-W also appreciates that there is a lot of 
Literary Chinese content already in Chinese/Mandarin Wikisource. Also, if I 
read his email of 21 February (19:50 UTC) correctly, he is not proposing that 
we move the Literary Chinese content out of Chinese Wikisource (at least at the 
present time).
  *   I think that we agree that in the long run we don't need or want 
duplicated content in these projects.

I'm open to suggestions. But at present, the compromise position I would like 
to suggest is this:

  *   We mark this request as "on hold", pending evidence that a community 
exists that will create content in a Literary Chinese Wikisource test on 
oldwikisource. This is completely consistent with our practice in many other 
cases. We often have requests that are nominally eligible, but where no content 
is ever created—or perhaps a few pages are created right after the request is, 
and then people walk away. If a year passes with no further meaningful 
contributions, we close the request as "rejected-stale", inviting a new request 
in the future. By taking this approach, on-wiki activity would drive the 
subsequent result:
 *   If, as Gerard assumes, only one or two people are involved, we can 
decide that there is not an independent community for this project, and we can 
reject it.
 *   If there is a community that is seriously interested in this, the "on 
hold" will become an "eligible", as MF-W wishes.
  *   I am going to suggest a special rule here: that documents in Literary 
Chinese that already exist on zh Wikisource not be duplicated on, nor 
moved to, oldwikisource.  (I suppose, to be fair, that the rule needs to cut 
the other way, too.)
 *   I am also going to suggest that even if the proposal becomes 
"eligible" in the near future, we are explicitly withholding our opinion as to 
how to execute any final approval until that problem is actually before us.

I would appreciate the Committee's feedback on this.
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages: Wikisource Literary Chinese

[Steven White]

My bias was toward approach 3. On the whole, I agree with MF-W that at least 
for the time being I'm OK with having Literary Chinese content in both places. 
Still, our general practice right now is that even if a project is notionally 
eligible, we want to make sure that some semblance of a community has gathered 
and that some content is being created. if that doesn't happen, we close the 
request as "rejected/stale".

In this case, so far, there is one contributor interested, who has created only 
a handful of pages. My feeling is that we should put the proposal on hold, 
pending involvement of more people. If more people become involved, I will mark 
it eligible. But if no one else comes along, then we will mark it 
"rejected/stale".  Any thoughts?
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Final summary of 2018 activity

[Steven White]

Thank you. I couldn't track down the expert whose name I was given for Guianan 
Creole, and will continue to work with the community on that. Does anyone have 
contacts for Mon, or do I need to try to track someone down for that?

Steven


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For the record, I have contacted experts for Saraiki and Tacawit.

Am Di., 8. Jan. 2019 um 00:29 Uhr schrieb Steven White <
koala19...@hotmail.com>:

>- 4 others are tentatively approved, but are awaiting language
>verification: Wikipedias in Guianan Creole, Mon and Saraiki, and Wiktionary
>in Tacawit.
>

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Re: [Langcom] Approval for Hindi Wikisource

[Steven White]

MF-W (and Committee): Hindi Wikisource has already far surpassed the 
eligibility requirement for February, making a fourth consecutive eligible 
month. There are 5,554 pages in the test project. In my view, for what that's 
worth:

  *   If MF-W wants to start a discussion on not spinning off future Wikisource 
projects, he can certainly do that. I'd venture that such a change would 
require both a 2/3 vote in this committee and also Board approval, though I may 
be mistaken. But we can go down that path, no doubt.
  *   It would be highly unfair to apply such a rule to Hindi Wikisource, which 
has worked diligently toward a project under the current rules. Even if we 
change the rules going forward, this project should be approved.

MF-W, are you willing to withdraw your objection so that we can move this 
forward? Thanks.
Steven


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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Approval for Hindi Wikisource (MF-Warburg)


--

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2019 01:58:48 +0100
From: MF-Warburg 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee

Subject: Re: [Langcom] Approval for Hindi Wikisource
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Am Di., 29. Jan. 2019 um 16:46 Uhr schrieb Steven White <
koala19...@hotmail.com>:

> Leaving aside the question of whether we should change policies about
> separate-language Wikisource projects for the time being, I'll note that
> our longstanding policy has been that three consecutive months of
> qualifying activity is sufficient to meet the "active test community"
> requirement. I routinely tell that to test communities. If we want to
> change that in the future, we can do so. But in this case, the test
> community has already done everything we have asked of it.
>
> Besides, while it is important to ensure that each wiki we approve
> continues to have a contributing community, I worry less about Wikisource
> (and Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote) than I do about
> Wikipedia–Wikinews–Wikitravel. Information gets stale (or is quite subject
> to political manipulation) in the latter group, less so in the former group.
>
> So I think we need to proceed with this approval.
> Steven
>



Yes, "active" is thought of as "at least several months", and "at least
several" means at least 3. So here we're at the lower threshold, not at
some level where we "need to" approve.

> I agree with Steven here. A sysop from multilingual Wikisource reached
out to me recently to ask if we are going to have a separate Hindi
Wikisource soon, since it was feared that the multilingual Wikisource might
become the de facto Hindi Wikisource.

I have read that as well somewhere. What kind of argument is that supposed
to be? It's not like any other languages' "space" is taken up by the Hindi
content.
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[Langcom] Proposed changes to LPP

[Steven White]

The changes I proposed to LPP, which I first shared with the rest of the 
Committee on the private email list on 3 December 2018, will be posted on Meta 
for discussion a little later today (my time). The page containing the 
(proposed) revised policy is 
here;
 discussion will be on that page's talk page.  I intend to leave the discussion 
up until the end of February, unless discussion really fades out before then.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Approval for Hindi Wikisource

[Steven White]

Leaving aside the question of whether we should change policies about 
separate-language Wikisource projects for the time being, I'll note that our 
longstanding policy has been that three consecutive months of qualifying 
activity is sufficient to meet the "active test community" requirement. I 
routinely tell that to test communities. If we want to change that in the 
future, we can do so. But in this case, the test community has already done 
everything we have asked of it.

Besides, while it is important to ensure that each wiki we approve continues to 
have a contributing community, I worry less about Wikisource (and Wiktionary, 
Wikibooks, Wikiquote) than I do about Wikipedia–Wikinews–Wikitravel. 
Information gets stale (or is quite subject to political manipulation) in the 
latter group, less so in the former group.

So I think we need to proceed with this approval.
Steven


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[Langcom] Moving some items forward

[Steven White]

  1.  I am no longer going to announce explicitly here every time I mark a 
"Request for new languages" either "eligible" (because it's obviously eligible) 
or "rejected as stale" (because that's the only reason it's being rejected). I 
think I've been doing this long enough now that you trust I will do these 
things competently. I will, of course, continue to post all cases where I think 
there is room for discussion, and certainly all requests for approvals.
  2.  Has anyone yet reached out to the contacts to verify Saraiki Wikipedia? 
As a reminder, those went out November 15.
  3.  Guianan Creole Wikipedia sent me contact information for a linguist, but 
I have not been able to locate that person and am following up with the test 
community myself.
  4.  There are three other tests awaiting language verification. I will reach 
out to those communities to see if they can provide some contacts for language 
verification.
  5.  Hindi Wikisource will be marked approved next Tuesday if there are no 
objections on-wiki.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Approval for Hindi Wikisource

[Steven White]

Looks good. I posted an announcement on Meta today, which needs to run seven 
days before we can pull the trigger.

Steven White
koala19...@hotmail.com
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Today's Topics:

1. Approval for Hindi Wikisource (Satdeep Gill)


--

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:35:13 +0530
From: Satdeep Gill 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee

Subject: [Langcom] Approval for Hindi Wikisource
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hi all,

Hindi community has been doing a lot of activity on Multilingual Wikisource
for the past few months.

The project fulfills the criteria as of now [1][2] and I would propose its
creation as a standalone project.

1.
https://eur04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https:%2F%2Ftools.wmflabs.org%2Fmeta%2Fcatanalysis%2Findex.php%3Fcat%3D1%26title%3D%E0%A4%B9data=02%7C01%7C%7C3a2d32a64640465d56d908d680614279%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C636837552541413407sdata=P2DS%2BQgPBB9im7dNnSF9bitit%2BKb%2BY9ILKwaOkzBv6Y%3Dreserved=0िन्दी=sourceswiki

2.https://tools.wmflabs.org/robin/?tool=codelookup=hi

Best
Satdeep
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[Langcom] Final summary of 2018 activity

[Steven White]

Hi, all. In 2018, the following happened:

  *   13 new project subdomains were created: 5 Wikipedia, 2 Wikisource, 2 
Wikivoyage, 1 each of Wiktionary, Wikiversity, Wikiquote and Wikinews.
  *   2 others were fully approved, and are awaiting creation: Wikipedia 
Western Armenian and Wikisource Neapolitan.
  *   4 others are tentatively approved, but are awaiting language 
verification: Wikipedias in Guianan Creole, Mon and Saraiki, and Wiktionary in 
Tacawit.

Concerning requests for new languages:

  *   All requests created in 2012 or earlier have now been resolved as 
"eligible" or "rejected", with the exception of two Wikipedia requests around 
the Balochi macrolanguage and one of its member languages. (Satdeep Gill was 
looking into that issue in 2017, but no further progress has been reported. We 
will circle back to that one shortly.)
  *   All requests created from the beginning of 2017 through 17 December 2018 
have also been addressed. Most were marked as "eligible" or "rejected", but 32 
are on hold pending test project activity, while the eligibility of one 
(Literary Chinese Wikisource) is still under review.
  *   All requests for Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikisource and Wikiversity projects 
have been addressed.  Requests for Wikivoyage and Wikiquote projects from 2013 
have also been addressed.
  *   Remaining to do: 72 Wikipedia requests (2013–2016), 21 Wiktionary 
requests (2013–2016), 9 Wikivoyage (2014–2016), 4 Wikiquote (2015–2016), and 
four very recent requests.

Concerning requests for project closures:

  *   All requests for project closures that were pending at the beginning of 
2018 were resolved.
  *   There are two open requests in discussion now at Meta.

Happy new year to all!
Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Provisionally approved projects still awaiting language verification

[Steven White]

Having heard nothing further from MF-W's linguist, I am marking Western 
Armenian Wikipedia as approved.
Steven


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Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2018 17:24:02 +
From: Michael Everson 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee

Subject: Re: [Langcom] Provisionally approved projects still awaiting
language verification
Message-ID: <22b1c1b9-21ba-43d8-891e-463d4b7f5...@evertype.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;   charset=utf-8

On 17 Dec 2018, at 23:39, Steven White  wrote:
>
>• Western Armenian Wikipedia: MF-W: Did you ever hear from the 
> linguist you contacted? This has been awaiting language verification since 
> August, and Wikimedia Armenia says it's satisfied. So I think if you haven't 
> heard from your linguist by this weekend, we should just approve.

I agree.

M


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[Langcom] Provisionally approved projects still awaiting language verification

[Steven White]

  1.  Western Armenian Wikipedia: MF-W: Did you ever hear from the linguist you 
contacted? This has been awaiting language verification since August, and 
Wikimedia Armenia says it's satisfied. So I think if you haven't heard from 
your linguist by this weekend, we should just approve.
  2.  Saraiki Wikipedia: I sent possible contacts for language verification to 
the Committee on November 15. Has anyone tried to contact one of those people?
  3.  Tacawit Wiktionary
  4.  Guianan Creole Wikipedia

I'd love to get at least two of these done by the end of the year. Thanks in 
advance.

Steven


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[Langcom] Proposed approval of Mon Wikipedia

[Steven White]

I hereby propose approval of Mon Wikipedia. It meets all approval requirements, 
though as first project in the language, it will require language verification 
for approval. Because we're getting in near the holidays, I'm going to leave 
this open both here and Meta through December 31, to make sure everyone gets a 
chance to look.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Proposed approval of Guianan Creole Wikipedia

[Steven White]

No worries. There will be no final approval until that happens.
Steven


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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2018 17:46:39 +0200
From: "Amir E. Aharoni" 

The activity definitely looks good, so I'm not opposed to approving it, but
more than ever I'd like to hear an expert's approval. It's the usual
practice, but I had particular difficulty finding any information online
about this language.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי

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[Langcom] Proposed approval of Guianan Creole Wikipedia

[Steven White]

I am proposing approval of the Guianan Creole 
Wikipedia. It has ticked off all 
the boxes it needs to tick off: active community, interface translation, 
reasonable number of pages.

The one potential problem with this test is that the ratio of articles to stubs 
is low. (That is, it has a lot of stubs, compared to quality articles.) The 
reason for this is that the small, but enthusiastic, team working on the test 
project kept wanting some guidance from LangCom as to how much content was 
needed in order to get an approval. By design, we don't really have a specific 
standard for that. In the absence of that guidance, the team kept creating 
short pages; it took me a long time to convince them to stop, and to focus on 
filling out complete pages instead.

They have now started to do that, and have a core of pages in areas of specific 
interest to the community of Guiane that are filled out and up to quality 
standards. They are continuing to work on that. But enough stubs were created 
early in the game that from a ratio perspective, it would take the team a long 
time to get to what we'd ordinarily prefer to see. Now, I have been working 
with this team regularly for a long while—probably at least two years. They 
feel they have worked hard, but they are getting anxious. I firmly believe that 
if this test is approved, the team will continue to work on the project, and 
will be able to recruit additional contributors. I am concerned that if we say 
no—particularly if I am not able to give specific guidance on how many 
"complete" pages are enough—they are going to give up and walk away.

Let me add: the stubs are not junk. They're just stubs. The team has worked 
hard to do the right thing all along, and their focus is in a good place now. 
Thank you for your consideration.

Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Final approval of Western Armenian Wikipedia

[Steven White]

Fair enough. How about this: if you've heard from this linguist within a week 
of your email (so next Monday, 16:30 UTC), then we'll wait until you get a 
definitive answer from him/her. If you haven't even received a response by 
then, we'll go ahead and approve on Wikimedia Armenia's say-so.

Steven


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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2018 17:33:06 +0100
From: MF-Warburg 

Hello. During the weekend I contacted a new linguist. I would prefer to
wait a few days for his possible response.


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[Langcom] Wikipedia requests from the first half of 2017 (third set)

[Steven White]

Wikipedia 
Mon 
(mnw): Language of around a million speakers in Myanmar and Thailand. Recently 
a very active test. Eligible.
Wikipedia Sgaw 
Karen
 (ksw): Four million speakers in Myanmar and Thailand (check). It has only four 
mainspace pages, but these have been added periodically since the request. So 
I'm inclined to mark eligible and to encourage participation.
Wikipedia 
Maranao
 (mrw): Filipino language with about 3/4 million speakers. No test project. On 
hold.

Steven


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[Langcom] Proposed approval of Neapolitan Wikisource

[Steven White]

I hereby submit Neapolitan 
Wikisource to be evaluated 
for approval. It meets all approval requirements, and the community confirms it 
wants a subdomain, rather than to stay on Old Wikisource. Discussion here and 
on Meta are both open for seven days.

Steven
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[Langcom] Wikipedia requests from the first half of 2017 (second set)

[Steven White]

These five requests were created on a single day by a single user. That user 
has not been on Meta since, and has not been on any WMF project since about a 
month after making the requests.

  *   All refer to Indian languages having 1 million or more speakers.
  *   In all cases, no test-project content was ever created.

In principle, I could probably delete these as not being serious proposals. 
Instead, what I will actually do is to put all five on hold, and see if that 
brings anyone out who is interested in creating content.

Wikipedia Bhili 
(bhb)
Wikipedia Gondi 
(gon)
Wikipedia Khandeshi 
(khn)
Wikipedia Kurukh 
(kru)
Wikipedia Mundari 
(unr)

Steven


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[Langcom] Resources for language verification (Saraiki Wikipedia)

[Steven White]

  *   http://www.bzu.edu.pk/v2_faculty.php?id=33
  *   http://www.iub.edu.pk/teachers.php?id=26

Someone should please see to this. Thank you.
Steven



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[Langcom] Wikipedia requests from the first half of 2017 (first set)

[Steven White]

Wikipedia 
Serer
 (srr): Language of 1.5 million people in West Africa. Content is being 
created. Eligible.
Wikipedia 
Nias
 (nia): Indonesian language of 3/4 million. Test has about 15 pages, but 
content creation has been regular over time. Eligible.
Wikipedia 
Itawis
 (itv): Language of about 120,000 from northern Philippines. No content 
created. On hold.
Wikipedia 
Namtrik
 (gum): Indigenous language of Colombia, within perhaps 25,000 speakers. No 
content created. On hold.

Wikipedia 
Sindhi
 (in Devanagari script)(snd):  Only three pages were created here, and just at 
the time of the request. But there's a larger question here: It seems there may 
have been a history on the current Sindhi Wikipedia 
(sd.wikipedia.org) project wherein those writing in 
Arabic script eventually forced out those who wanted to write in Devanagari 
script. We would certainly prefer that some kind of script converter be put in 
place, but what happens if the current sdwiki community doesn't want it? Then 
large numbers of Sindhi speakers in India become disenfranchised in favor of 
Sindhi speakers from Pakistan. Any thoughts?

Steven


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[Langcom] Two (three) projects still awaiting language verification

[Steven White]

This is a reminder that two projects are provisionally approved, pending 
language verification:

Western Armenian Wikipedia
Saraiki Wikipedia

Additionally, if there are no objections from LangCom, and no objections raised 
by the official announcement on Meta, then

Tacawit Wiktionary

will also need language verification.

Steven


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[Langcom] Current "other" requests

[Steven White]

Wikibooks 
Meitei
 and Wikinews 
Meitei
 (mni). We've just marked the Wikipedia and Wiktionary requests as eligible. 
The same person proposed these two requests, but has created no content yet. 
I'm placing them on hold, but actually encouraging the contributor to focus on 
the first two projects first and not totally scattering the effort.

Wikinews 
Hausa
 (ha).  First language of over 40 million in West Africa. 2,000-page Wikipedia 
and 200-page Wiktionary exist. No content created here yet; putting on hold.

Wikisource Literary 
Chinese
 (lzh).  This is the tricky request of this set. I can use some guidance. But 
frankly, at least in the short term, I'm inclined to mark eligible. Let me 
explain.

  *   At first glance, I couldn't understand why this content would not be 
better served within Chinese Wikisource. And I asked the proposer that question 
here.
  *   The answer had some complexity, and there is (in fact) a certain amount 
of duplication of content at the moment between the lzh test in Old Wikisource 
and Chinese Wikisource.
  *   Ultimately, the answer came down to something like this: Literary Chinese 
is not (simply) an early form of Chinese, but rather was a literary lingua 
franca for people in many lands of that part of the world. If one were to use 
French as an analogy, Literary Chinese is more comparable to Latin than to Old 
French. And I would add that Literary Chinese (lzh) has a different langcode 
from Old Chinese (cch) or Middle Chinese (ltc).
  *   To continue the analogy a bit, the proposer suggests that if all the 
content in Literary Chinese had to be included in Chinese Wikisource, it would 
be equivalent to putting all Latin content in French Wikisource—where the 
language of the interface, discussions, templates, and what have you is French, 
not Latin, and therefore not fully accessible to speakers of Spanish, 
Portuguese, Italian, etc. Similarly, here, putting the content in Chinese 
Wikisource would make the contents less accessible to people whose vernacular 
is Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc., but whose literary history is tied to 
Literary Chinese.

Given that there is more inherent flexibility to allow projects in historical 
languages for Wikisources than for other projects, and given the above 
arguments, I think we should mark this request as eligible. But I'm going to 
wait seven days on this for comments from the Committee.

Steven


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[Langcom] Proposed approval of Tacawit Wiktionary

[Steven White]

I hereby submit Tacawit Wiktionary (Wt/shy) to be evaluated for approval.
It will need language verification; can someone please work on that?
In the meantime, please look it over for provisional approval.
(Note: its interface translations at translatewiki.net are coded as shy-Latn, 
not "plain" shy.)

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[Langcom] Current Wiktionary requests

[Steven White]

Wiktionary 
Meitei
 (mni): Ten pages so far, with a more active Wikipedia project in parallel. 
Eligible.
Wiktionary Central Sierra 
Miwok
 (csm): Endangered North American indigenous language. About 26 pages. Eligible.
Wiktionary 
Tulu
 (tcy): 1.85 million speakers of Dravidian language in India. About 100 pages 
in test. Eligible.
Wiktionary Eastern 
Pwo
 (kjp): Wikipedia just marked eligible in last set. Has a fair amount of recent 
activity, and 25 pages of content. Eligible.
Wiktionary 
Pali
 (pi): Now a liturgical language only. Previously independent project was 
imported to Incubator by 2009 at the latest. Until October 2018 last edit of 
any kind on the project was in 2011. Should reject, but allow to remain at 
Incubator. Waiting one week for any comments.

Steven


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[Langcom] Current Wikipedia requests (third set)

[Steven White]

Wikipedia Eastern 
Pwo
 (kjp) Language of Myanmar with about one million speakers. Test has over 100 
pages of content. Eligible.
Wikipedia 
Ga 
(gaa) Language of about 3/4 million people in the vicinity of Accra, Ghana. 
Test has two pages. Marking on hold.


Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Western Armenian Wikipedia

[Steven White]

You definitely need to examine pages from hywiki. That constitutes most of the 
content for the future wiki; there are only a few pages on Incubator, and they 
were written later.

How that's organized, I don't know. Go to its RFL page on Meta and ask, I guess.

Steven White


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[Langcom] Current Wikipedia requests (second set)

[Steven White]

Wikipedia Brazilian Sign 
Language
 (bzs): Reasonable amount of content.  Eligible.


Wikipedia 
Hla'alua
 (sxr): Taiwanese aboriginal language that is nearly extinct, but there is a 
lot of content here (>100 pages). Eligible.


Wikipedia 
SaiSiyat
 (xsy): Taiwanese language with about 4,000 speakers, and over 100 pages of 
content. Eligible.


Wikipedia 
Thao 
(ssf): This Taiwanese language was changed from endangered to extinct in the 
last round of actions at SIL in January 2018, but the test project has over 350 
pages. I think I should reject, but continue to allow in Incubator. I will wait 
a week for comments on this.


Wikipedia 
Etruscan
 (ett): Ancient language. Test has two pages. Again, I think I should reject, 
as it's unlikely to meet the Latin/Ancient Greek standard. But like projects in 
other historical languages, it can stay on Incubator.  Again, I will wait a 
week for comments on this.


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[Langcom] Current Wikipedia requests (first set)

[Steven White]

Wikipedia Southern 
Uzbek
 (uzs): Afghanistan version of Uzbek, spoken by 4.2 million. Theoretically 
eligible, but only three pages created so far. Placing on hold.

Wikipedia 
Pahlavi
 (Middle Persian)(pal): This Persian has been essentially extinct since the 
11th century; surviving literature is mainly related to Zoroastrianism. See 
enwiki article. This project 
should probably be rejected, but be allowed at Incubator like a number of other 
ancient-language test projects with valid language codes. Waiting a week for 
comments.

Wikipedia 
Meitei
 (mni): Language is the lingua franca of the Indian state of Manipur, with 
about 1.5 MM speakers. Has a reasonable amount of content. Eligible, but mostly 
one person's work, so I will warn that person to gather a community.

Wikipedia 
Narom
 (nrm): About 4,000 speakers in Sarawak. In theory, could be eligible. In 
practice, the complication here is that its language code is currently occupied 
by Normand Wikipedia, so I'd need to create a temporary code in Incubator to 
host this. That's not a problem per se, but the request was made by an IP, and 
my request for a registered user to be involved has not been answered yet. So 
I'm going to put this on hold for now.

Wikipedia 
Shawiya
 (shy): Berber/Tamazight variety that is the second most commonly spoken one 
(after Kabyle) in Algeria. This test has only one page, but there is actually 
an active Wiktionary project on Incubator just marked as eligible. Will put on 
hold for now, but probably that will flip soon to eligible.


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[Langcom] Tentative approval of Saraiki Wikipedia

[Steven White]

I hereby submit Saraiki Wikipedia (Wp/skr) to be evaluated for approval. It 
will need language verification; can someone please work on that? In the 
meantime, please look it over for provisional approval. (Note: we have done a 
CU on its principal contributors, and have found no problem with them.)

Steven


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[Langcom] Current status of "Requests for new languages"

[Steven White]

Hi. I thought I would provide everyone with an update on where things currently 
stand.


  1.  We're still waiting for language verification on Western Armenian 
Wikipedia.
  2.  All requests dating to 2012 or earlier have now been addressed, with the 
exception of two requests concerning the Balochi macrolanguage and one of its 
constituent languages. We are still waiting for a recommendation from Satdeep 
Gill on that.
  3.  For non-Wikipedia projects, all requests dating from the beginning of 
2017 through May 2018 have been addressed. For Wikipedia, all requests dating 
from July 2017 through May 2018 have been addressed. In some cases, these 
requests were put "on hold", and those will be reviewed after one year "on 
hold".


Following are my priorities for the rest of 2018:


  *   Respond to all current (2018) requests.
  *   Respond to all remaining Wikipedia 2017 requests.
  *   Update the policy language around ancient/historical languages, and mark 
the Wikipedia Ancient Greek request as eligible.  (Anyone can feel free to 
draft this. Hint, hint.)
  *   If there is time, I will then move on to 2013 requests.


Steven


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[Langcom] Wikivoyage requests from 2017

[Steven White]

Two of the three open requests are simple and eligible: Wikivoyage Nepali and 
Wikivoyage Belarusian.


The test supporting the third request, Wikivoyage 
Gilaki,
 has a main page and one content page created around the time of the RFL 
request, and then nothing. So I will mark that one on hold pending some more 
activity.


Steven


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Re: [Langcom] Tentative approval of Shan Wikipedia

[Steven White]

I take this to mean that we can move forward with final approval. Just one 
comment, and one question:

Comment: I can’t formally close this and create the phabricator task until 
Wednesday, because I didn’t post the public notice on Meta until last Wednesday.
Question: Do I need to say something about the whole coding issue on the 
approval page and/or in the phabricator task?

Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2018 03:00:03 +0200
From: André Müller 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee

Subject: Re: [Langcom] Tentative approval of Shan Wikipedia
Message-ID:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Thanks for the mention!

Yes, it looks good to me, although my Mac has some problems with the "comma
tone", but that's also the case when I write something in Shan. I am
positively surprized about the number of articles and that many of them
aren't just stubs but actually quite long (I don't speak Shan fluently
enough to actually read through an entire long article before getting
tired). I also expected there to be issues with Unicode vs. Zawgyi vs.
other encodings for Shan, because there are several different encodings for
Shan, just like there are for Burmese. The articles are all in Unicode,
great!
However, this also means, that at least in the near future, while Burma is
still a "non-Unicode country", most Shan speakers with laptop and interest
might not be able to write articles.

I can only hope that a Jinghpaw Wikipedia will someday be as
well-progressing.

Best wishes from Zurich,
— André


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[Langcom] Wiktionary requests from 2017

[Steven White]

Wiktionary 
Khasi:
 Legitimate request with respect to a language of portions of India and 
Bangladesh. However, no content was ever created, so closing as stale.
Wiktionary 
Bodo:
 This is a language of about 1.5 million people of NE India. Wikipedia request 
was marked eligible in 2017. I am marking this as eligible as well. However, 
the requests, and most of the content on both projects on Incubator, were 
created by a single, young contributor with a penchant for using multiple 
accounts. Accordingly, the WP eligibility note has a caveat that any future 
project approval must include a checkuser to make sure that there is a 
legitimate community working on the test. I am going to link this request page 
to that caveat. (Note: neither project has been active recently, so I don't 
think that's going to be a problem in the immediate future.)
Wiktionary 
Riffian:
 One of the Tamazight/Berber "collective" group of languages, its Wikipedia 
test has a substantial amount of content. No content was ever created here, 
though. The Wikimedians of Tamazight User 
Group
 is looking into whether anyone is interested in starting this, so I will place 
on hold for now.
Wiktionary 
Slavey:
 This is a language of aboriginal peoples of northwest Canada, and the test has 
a fair amount of content. The complication to this is that the project is coded 
at the macrolanguage level. Now, the only activity in Incubator is this 
macrolanguage Wiktionary project, and as far as it goes, the Wikipedia articles 
"North Slavey language" and "South Slavey language" both redirect to the 
article "Slavey language". (The 
WP article also suggests that the linguistic/dialect differences are 
pronunciation differences, so not necessarily even germane to a written 
project.) I am going to assume that this is a case where it is appropriate to 
have the project in the macrolanguage, and will therefore mark it eligible, 
with a reminder that it needs to serve both language communities. But I will 
wait a week for comments from the Committee before doing so.  (I do have a 
query out to Wikimedia Canada; if they specifically favor the macrolanguage 
project or favor not having a macrolanguage project, I will report back here.)


Steven


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[Langcom] Tentative approval of Shan Wikipedia

[Steven White]

I hereby submit Shan Wikipedia (Wp/shn) to be evaluated for approval. It will 
need language verification; can someone please work on that? In the meantime, 
please look it over for provisional approval.

Steven

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Re: [Langcom] LangCom: Stepping down

[Steven White]

Same from me. Your contributions have always been worthwhile and insightful, 
and I will miss your participation here.  All the best, Steven


Housekeeping: LangCom page on Meta has been updated. An administrator of the 
private list should handle unsubscription accordingly.



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