Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Crazy Lover]

My proposal:

1.- Have a set of simple rules approved by community.

2.- A langcom integrate enterly by lingüists.

C.m.l.


  
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Aphaia]

As another historical note from Wikimania 2008 ...

In our session (of mine and Arria Belli) which focused on translation,
a girl who seemed to be Arabic but not known to me from where she came
asked me if there would be a possibility of āmmiyya Wikipedias. I
don't know which āmmiyya she cared for and don't know if she has
joined the Egyptian Arabic. But it could be a sign some literal people
thought it serious ... despites of other folks' questionable attitude.

I am rather inclined to Alsebaey's position. If they think it the best
aim they could achive, just give them a chance and blessings. It won't
ruin other projects at worst, hopefully.

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
> Mohamed Magdy wrote:
>> (I heard that people were happy at Wikimania (Florence?)
>> because of that proposal but I fail to understand why the Egyptian people
>> there didn't express their opinion about it (it was in Egypt :!).
>
> I was sitting next to an Egyptian VIP in the front row when the
> announcement was made, and he laughed and indicated that he thought this
> was stupid.
>
> It is not up to me to make any decisions nor have any particular opinion
> about Egyptian, but this is one of many data points that suggest to me
> that the current process is widely regarded as being broken.
>
> --Jimbo
>
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-- 
KIZU Naoko
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese)
Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Marcus Buck]

Michael Bimmler hett schreven:
> I must say, I find this a bit of a difficult claim to make just out of
> the air. What is your supporting evidence for US and Canada having
> "the same mindset" and "the same mentality", other than the mindset
> which both states also share with Germany, France, Britain,
> Switzerland, Norway, Sweden etc.?
>
> Michael
I didn't state they have any particular shared mindset that sets them 
off from the countries you named.

Marcus Buck

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Michael Bimmler]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Marcus Buck  wrote:
> Ray Saintonge hett schreven:
>> That's an outrageous assumption.  Canadians who attend an international
>> sporting event between Americans and any other country will most often
>> cheer for the other country.  Since 1959 Canada has never broken
>> diplomatic relations with Cuba, and has not participated in the US
>> adventures against Vietnam and Iraq.
>>
>> Ec
>>
> Rivalry in sports is a good example of what I spoke of: animosities
> between neighbors. There can even be outspoken rivalries between
> neighboring villages or towns, although both places share every single
> value or custom or mentality. The mindset is identical and still they
> can be engaged in contention. But if their basic values or customs are
> threatened by a third party, they will forget their little animosities

I must say, I find this a bit of a difficult claim to make just out of
the air. What is your supporting evidence for US and Canada having
"the same mindset" and "the same mentality", other than the mindset
which both states also share with Germany, France, Britain,
Switzerland, Norway, Sweden etc.?

Michael

-- 
Michael Bimmler
mbimm...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Marcus Buck]

Ray Saintonge hett schreven:
> That's an outrageous assumption.  Canadians who attend an international 
> sporting event between Americans and any other country will most often 
> cheer for the other country.  Since 1959 Canada has never broken 
> diplomatic relations with Cuba, and has not participated in the US 
> adventures against Vietnam and Iraq.
>
> Ec
>   
Rivalry in sports is a good example of what I spoke of: animosities 
between neighbors. There can even be outspoken rivalries between 
neighboring villages or towns, although both places share every single 
value or custom or mentality. The mindset is identical and still they 
can be engaged in contention. But if their basic values or customs are 
threatened by a third party, they will forget their little animosities 
and stand side by side.
Cuba is just a little Communist island off the coast of America. There's 
no reason for Canada to show aggression towards Cuba cause Cuba does not 
threaten anybody. If Cuba would threaten common values of the USA and 
Canada, Canada would join the USA in its anti-Cuban actions.
But we are rapidly degressing from the topic...

Identity has layers. Some layers are very emotional, but still 
unimportant. Sports for example. People can get very hot about sports, 
but they won't fight wars about it (the Football War being no 
counter-example). Other layers seem to be less hot-blooded, cause they 
emerge only rarely, but they can be existential and thus lead to 
embittered enmities.

Marcus Buck

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
It is tragic to learn that the two Wikipedias cannot find it in themselves
to cooperate. The two projects did not merge because at the time the
position was taken that the standard orthography was not accepted. It would
be really cool if a sense of sanity and friendship would prevail and have
the two projects merge..

My question remains; what could an expert do more ?? In the end it is about
what we accept in our projects and we do allow for this sad situation to
persist
Thanks,
  GerardM

2009/1/12 Amir E. Aharoni 

> 2009/1/12 Gerard Meijssen :
> > We only accept one Wikipedia for one language. The fact that we still
> have
> > what is called the be-tarask.wikipedia.org is only because people were
> of
> > the opinion that we should retain the work that was done. Now I wonder
> what
> > more experts could add to this.
>
> I am not an *expert* in Belarusian, but i know a little more about
> this language than the average Russian speaker does.
>
> Both projects are OK. Both have several dedicated and caring people
> working on them. Both have certain problems. But their biggest problem
> is shared: the duplication of effort hurts them all.
>
> Merging them will benefit Wikipedia as a whole and its Belarusian
> edition in particular and there should be free choice of orthography,
> as it is in the Wikipedias in English, Portuguese and Catalan.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
>  I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2009/1/12 Gerard Meijssen :
> We only accept one Wikipedia for one language. The fact that we still have
> what is called the be-tarask.wikipedia.org is only because people were of
> the opinion that we should retain the work that was done. Now I wonder what
> more experts could add to this.

I am not an *expert* in Belarusian, but i know a little more about
this language than the average Russian speaker does.

Both projects are OK. Both have several dedicated and caring people
working on them. Both have certain problems. But their biggest problem
is shared: the duplication of effort hurts them all.

Merging them will benefit Wikipedia as a whole and its Belarusian
edition in particular and there should be free choice of orthography,
as it is in the Wikipedias in English, Portuguese and Catalan.

-- 
Amir Elisha Aharoni

heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
At the time there was a request for the STANDARD orthography of the Belarus
language to be supported, The then be.wp community refused *any *content in
that orthography with the argument that the current orthography is Stalinist
and, that they reject it because of this. Given that Wikipedia is intended
to be educational, it is important that it connects to people who are taught
in  the Belarus educational system. This makes the political and exclusive
choice for the old orthography unacceptable.

We only accept one Wikipedia for one language. The fact that we still have
what is called the be-tarask.wikipedia.org is only because people were of
the opinion that we should retain the work that was done. Now I wonder what
more experts could add to this.

This does however not mean that the be-tarask.wp is a bad project. There are
other projects that are way more problematic.
Thanks,
  GerardM

2009/1/12 Tomasz Ganicz 

> 2009/1/11 Milos Rancic :
> > On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 9:34 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> >> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Tomasz Ganicz 
> wrote:
> >>> Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
> >>> Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
> >>> knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
> >>> groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
> >>> experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
> >>> historical and cultural background related to language problems which
> >>> is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.
> >>
> >> Actually, it is a misunderstanding of Michael's knowledge. His
> >> expertise is, for example, making an orthography for a random language
> >> [without orthography]. In fact, we need exactly his kind of linguists.
> >> As I mentioned, we are working on raising expertise quality inside of
> >> LangCom.
> >
> > And just to be more precise. After a couple of years of interacting
> > with people in relation to Wikimedia projects, I realized that it is
> > not so possible to get a random academician and put them into some
> > Wikimedian working body. Usually, those persons are not so interested.
> >
> > I see that we have two more options for finding persons with relevant
> > level of expertise:
> > * to find Wikimedians with this kind of expertise; or
> > * that some interested academician contacts us.
>
> Well,
>
> I did't want to come back to Belarus Wikipedia case, but at that time
> I have found quite easily 2 good experts. One from Univ. of Warsaw,
> vice-head o Belaruss literature department and one from Univ of Oxford
> (an emeritus professor, specializing in Belaruss politics and
> history). It wasn't very difficulit to ask them and get the answers -
> quite long and IMHO quite professional.I asked at that time if there
> is any interst for LangComm in reading this. The answer was "no", as
> at that time the decission was already taken, the situation was quite
> hot and arguments showing that the decission wasn't so clever were not
> listen simply by default. The stinky egg was already broken and
> members of LangComm were simply trying not to smell it :-)
>
> I don't think that such kind of experts good in one case only should
> be members of LangComm. It probably doesn't make sense. But it does
> make sense to find them for specific purposes and then ask questions
> before making final decission. It can be done. Most of them give you
> an answer or at least point you to the places you can find it itself.
> LangComm should consist of the people who are clever enough to ask
> relevant questions and be able to understand and analyse the asnwers.
>
> --
> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
> http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
> http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Ray Saintonge]

Marcus Buck wrote:
> Tim Starling hett schreven:
>   
>> Marcus Buck wrote:
>> 
>>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation 
>>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic 
>>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use 
>>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard 
>>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. 
>>>   
>> I have heard this before, but I am not convinced, because I have heard
>> conflicting things from Egyptian people. I don't suppose you have a
>> credible reference where I can read more about this, and which supports
>> these claims?
>> 
> There's no obvious or agreed-upon measure for the proximity of dialects 
> or languages nor for identity attitudes. All findings are inherently vague.
> What did you hear conflicting things about? About the big differences 
> and problems with mutual intelligibility of Arabic dialects or about the 
> notion of "one Arabic nation"?
>   
As one attended Wikimania in Alexandria I found that Egyptians were 
quite proud to let it be known that they are not Arabs.  The notion of 
"one Arabic nation" seems more like an imperial Saudi attitude.
> Well, that Arabic has a wide variety of different dialects, is obvious, 
> if we look at the basic facts. Arabic is spoken over an area that spans 
> thousands of kilometers. Arabic spread from its central area in Arabia 
> in the 7th century due to the spread of Islam. 
Islam as a religion, or as a political force?
> Since then the dialects 
> developed different from the standard that didn't change much since then 
> due to it's liturgical character (just like Latin). Latin was in vulgar 
> use since about the 1st century. So Latin Vulgar had 2000 years to 
> change and Arabic Vulgar only 1300 years. Therefore Latin Vulgar should 
> be roughly 50% more diverse than Arabic Vulgar (Please put the emphasis 
> on "roughly" cause language change is of course not linear). 
In Egypt Latin only had about 700 years beginning in the first century 
BC, and even then it had to compete with Greek and Coptic.  The 
introduction of Latin in Egypt was also more imperial than religious.  
Similarly the roots of Latin in Europe were with the Roman conquests.  
Ecclesiastical Latin only became a factor after the fall of the Roman 
Empire, and in more countries than the ones who now speak Romance 
languages. Islam succeeded in Turkey and Persia, yet these countries 
retained their languages.  It could very well be that Islam conquered 
Egypt at a time of linguistic instability.  In the rest of sparsely 
populated North Africa there wasn't much of a literate environment to 
put up any resistance.  With all the foreign invaders wanting a piece of 
Egypt over the centuries, with the British meddling in Egyptian affairs 
as late as 1956, they deserve credit for their efforts to distill their 
own language from a very noisy background.
> [English is 
> spread over a very wide area too and does not show that much variation. 
> But English spread from England only 400 years ago and most of the 
> speakers shifted to English only in very recent times. So outside of 
> England there are no real dialects (and even England is no country with 
> a pronounced dialectal landscape). Therefore the whole subject of 
> "dialects" is a very obscure thing to many speakers of English.]
>   
Dialects don't need so much as 400 years to develop.  In the US there 
can be remarkable differences between the way of speaking in the eastern 
and western parts of Tennessee.  Ebonics is viewed by some as a separate 
language.  In the some parts of the US the influence of Spanish causes a 
great deal of concern. In French visitors from France can find it 
difficult to understand some Québécois, and it is only 250 years since 
the Conquest. 
> The notion of the "one Arabic nation" is even more vague. We have to 
> keep in mind, that mentalities do not necessarily differentiate between 
> different identity-building elements. Identity can be based on 
> ethnicity, on language, on religion, on common history, on citizenship 
> or on arbitrary mixtures of these aspects. The most important connecting 
> element for people in the Middle East is religion. The Islam. The Islam 
> connects them to people with entirely different languages too. But the 
> Standard Arabic language  is connected to the Islam also, cause it's the 
> liturgical language of the Islam. Saying, that Arabic is a macrolanguage 
> can easily touch religious feelings. That's irrational, but happens. So 
> there are many different levels of identity and interconnections between 
> those levels of identity. It's possible, that you talked to Egyptians 
> and they said "those damned Syrians" or otherwise showed few "Panarabic 
> loyalty". But that doesn't mean there is no common identity. 
What common identity? Just because both speak a form of Arabic, and both 
are predominantly Muslim

Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Tim Starling]

Platonides wrote:
> Mohamed Magdy wrote:
>> * I think it would be doable to make a tab that Egyptianizes (or any other
>> dialect) the Arabic article, that is, if we have some sort of conversion
>> memory, that is if the dialect is stable (or standard), the dialect differs
>> from a place to another, from a muhafazah to another (
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhafazah). if anyone knows the technical
>> method we could make a trial instead of the great mess of dialect
>> Wikipedias. I'm not too sure about this compromise yet.
> 
> If there're clear (algoritmic) rules for that, it can be done.
> See at http://zh.wikipedia.org/ how it can be viewed on seven! different
> variants.

The Chinese variants just use conversion tables, not an algorithm. That's
the only kind of conversion that can be done by the current software.

If literacy is the aim of this Egyptian Arabic project, then perhaps a
useful first step would be to implement a de-vocalising filter. That
should be possible with the current software. Then, with the filter on by
default, editors can add vocalic marking in the edit box without annoying
too many people. That's the approach that seems to be indicated by pages
7-12 of this paper:

http://papers.ldc.upenn.edu/EALL/ArabicLiteracy.pdf

Like zh-min-nan, we'd probably be accused of encouraging baby-talk, but if
the community was behind it then it could go ahead.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Mark Williamson]

The differences are certainly more than spelling, but there exists a
continuum for a variety like Egyptian Arabic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-creole_speech_continuum

I don't know if it would be accurate to classify Egyptian Arabic as a
creole, but such a continuum certainly exists AFAIK between the most
basilectal, rural varieties and more urban varieties that are more
influenced by education.

Word order in most regional varieties of Arabic is different from
Classical Arabic.

As far as the differences between "written" Egyptian Arabic and fus'ha
(standard), from what I have seen so far, much of arz.wp is written in
a style that is easily intelligible with fus'ha for me at least, but
then I've only studied the language for 4 semesters so I would defer
that question to native speakers.

Mark

2009/1/11 Tim Starling :
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>> Most of the grammatical features you cited are shared with Standard
>> Arabic... that's not a list of differences, it's a general description
>> of Egyptian Arabic with a couple of differences noted. Written in
>> Arabic script, short vowels aren't distinguished most of the time, so
>> that's irrelevant anyhow.
>
> That may be so, but the rest of the linked page, and some other pages on
> that site, did answer most of my questions. The fact that MSA exists as a
> spoken form, and that standard written Arabic is an accurate rendering of
> it, certainly puts to rest my comparison with historical spelling in
> English. Also the fact that it has a different word order (SVO vs VSO)
> suggests that characterising the differences as "spelling" is not
> accurate. The section on literacy was also relevant. So my thanks to Milos
> for pointing it out.
>
> I think it sorts out most of the linguistic questions for me, so that just
> leaves the political ones, which as always are more complex and
> emotionally charged.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Tim Starling]

Mark Williamson wrote:
> Most of the grammatical features you cited are shared with Standard
> Arabic... that's not a list of differences, it's a general description
> of Egyptian Arabic with a couple of differences noted. Written in
> Arabic script, short vowels aren't distinguished most of the time, so
> that's irrelevant anyhow.

That may be so, but the rest of the linked page, and some other pages on
that site, did answer most of my questions. The fact that MSA exists as a
spoken form, and that standard written Arabic is an accurate rendering of
it, certainly puts to rest my comparison with historical spelling in
English. Also the fact that it has a different word order (SVO vs VSO)
suggests that characterising the differences as "spelling" is not
accurate. The section on literacy was also relevant. So my thanks to Milos
for pointing it out.

I think it sorts out most of the linguistic questions for me, so that just
leaves the political ones, which as always are more complex and
emotionally charged.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Mark Williamson]

Most of the grammatical features you cited are shared with Standard
Arabic... that's not a list of differences, it's a general description
of Egyptian Arabic with a couple of differences noted. Written in
Arabic script, short vowels aren't distinguished most of the time, so
that's irrelevant anyhow.

Mark

2009/1/11 Milos Rancic :
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:12 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
>> Arabic may have spread from Morocco to Malaysia, but Cairo is quite close
>> to the Arabian peninsula, so I wonder if you're not overgeneralising.
>
> From: http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?menu=004&LangID=51
>
> "Egyptian Arabic is distinguished by a larger vowel inventory than
> Classical Arabic, with four short vowels (plus epenthetic schwa) and
> six long vowels, compared to three short vowels and six long vowels in
> Classical Arabic. Consonantal changes have included the loss of
> interdental fricatives. Egyptian Arabic is also characterized by two
> regular phonological processes lacking in Standard Arabic. First, all
> long vowels become shortened in unstressed positions and before
> consonant clusters. And second, many instances of short i and u are
> dropped by a process known as high vowel deletion. For example, when
> the feminine suffix -a is added to the participle kaatib "having
> written (masc.)", the i is deleted, resulting in katba.
>
> Like other varieties of Arabic, Egyptian Arabic derives the bulk of
> its vocabulary by applying a number of patterns or templates to a
> stock of consonantal roots. For example, from the triliteral root
> (three-consonant root) g-w-z with the basic meaning of "pair" is
> derived gooz "pair; husband", yiggawwiz "to get married", gawaaz
> "marriage", and migwiz "double". As an example of a template, the
> template maCCaC is used to derive many nouns referring to a place
> where an activity is done by substituting the C's in the template with
> the consonants of a triliteral root, such as: maktab "office" (a place
> where one writes) and maTbax "kitchen" (a place where one cooks).
>
> Verbs occur in two aspects: the perfective and the imperfective. The
> perfective is usually translated as a past tense or present perfect.
> Its conjugational morphology consists entirely of suffixes, for
> example: katab "he wrote", katabit "she wrote", katabt "I wrote",
> katabna "we wrote". The plain imperfective form is used much like an
> infinitive or subjunctive, as yiktib "he writes" in biyHibb yiktib"he
> likes to write".  The imperfective also serves as the basis for the
> present and future tenses with particles bi and Ha, as in biyiktib "he
> writes" and Hayiktib "he will write". The conjugational morphology of
> the imperfective employs both prefixes and suffixes.
>
> For example, from the imperfective stem ktib we get yiktib "he
> writes", tiktib "she writes", and yiktibu "they write". The imperative
> is formed by leaving off the prefix of the imperfective. Verbs, and
> certain other elements, are usually negated by simultaneous use of the
> particles ma- and -š. Sometimes these particles are affixed to either
> side of the verb, as in the past tense makatabš "he didn't write",
> while in other cases, the particles combine to form the separate word
> miš "not" which occurs before the verb, as in the future miš Hayiktib
> "he won't write".
>
> In addition to the direct object clitics found in Standard Arabic,
> Egyptian Arabic also has indirect object clitics which follow any
> direct object clitic but precede negative -š. For example, "he wrote"
> is katab, "he wrote it (fem.)" is katabha, "he wrote it to you" is
> katabhaalak, and finally "he didn't write it to you" is makatabhalakš.
>
> As in Standard Arabic, nouns are either masculine or feminine, and
> either singular, dual, or plural, and plurals are either sound
> (regular) or broken (irregular) employing a suffix or broken
> (irregular) employing a different template, as described in the Arabic
> Overview. Broken plurals are not restricted to a small subset of the
> vocabulary and are frequently used even with loanwords having three or
> four consonants, such as the English loanword sikšin "section" >
> sakaašin"sections". Many adjectives also have broken plural forms.
>
> Egyptian Arabic is much less averse to borrowing than Standard Arabic,
> and the sources from which it has borrowed reflects the influence that
> different peoples have had in Egypt over its history. Many borrowings
> remain from Coptic, a Cushitic language which has been dead for
> several centuries but which was the dominant language in Egypt when
> the Arabs first arrived. Borrowings from Coptic are concentrated in
> fields of activity for which were foreign to Peninsular Arabic
> culture, such as agriculture. Later borrowings came primarily from
> Greek, Italian, French, and English. Most new borrowings are from
> English.
>
> Like other modern dialects, though unlike Standard Arabic, the
> predominant word order in Egyptian Arabic is Subject V

Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:12 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
> Arabic may have spread from Morocco to Malaysia, but Cairo is quite close
> to the Arabian peninsula, so I wonder if you're not overgeneralising.

From: http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?menu=004&LangID=51

"Egyptian Arabic is distinguished by a larger vowel inventory than
Classical Arabic, with four short vowels (plus epenthetic schwa) and
six long vowels, compared to three short vowels and six long vowels in
Classical Arabic. Consonantal changes have included the loss of
interdental fricatives. Egyptian Arabic is also characterized by two
regular phonological processes lacking in Standard Arabic. First, all
long vowels become shortened in unstressed positions and before
consonant clusters. And second, many instances of short i and u are
dropped by a process known as high vowel deletion. For example, when
the feminine suffix -a is added to the participle kaatib "having
written (masc.)", the i is deleted, resulting in katba.

Like other varieties of Arabic, Egyptian Arabic derives the bulk of
its vocabulary by applying a number of patterns or templates to a
stock of consonantal roots. For example, from the triliteral root
(three-consonant root) g-w-z with the basic meaning of "pair" is
derived gooz "pair; husband", yiggawwiz "to get married", gawaaz
"marriage", and migwiz "double". As an example of a template, the
template maCCaC is used to derive many nouns referring to a place
where an activity is done by substituting the C's in the template with
the consonants of a triliteral root, such as: maktab "office" (a place
where one writes) and maTbax "kitchen" (a place where one cooks).

Verbs occur in two aspects: the perfective and the imperfective. The
perfective is usually translated as a past tense or present perfect.
Its conjugational morphology consists entirely of suffixes, for
example: katab "he wrote", katabit "she wrote", katabt "I wrote",
katabna "we wrote". The plain imperfective form is used much like an
infinitive or subjunctive, as yiktib "he writes" in biyHibb yiktib"he
likes to write".  The imperfective also serves as the basis for the
present and future tenses with particles bi and Ha, as in biyiktib "he
writes" and Hayiktib "he will write". The conjugational morphology of
the imperfective employs both prefixes and suffixes.

For example, from the imperfective stem ktib we get yiktib "he
writes", tiktib "she writes", and yiktibu "they write". The imperative
is formed by leaving off the prefix of the imperfective. Verbs, and
certain other elements, are usually negated by simultaneous use of the
particles ma- and -š. Sometimes these particles are affixed to either
side of the verb, as in the past tense makatabš "he didn't write",
while in other cases, the particles combine to form the separate word
miš "not" which occurs before the verb, as in the future miš Hayiktib
"he won't write".

In addition to the direct object clitics found in Standard Arabic,
Egyptian Arabic also has indirect object clitics which follow any
direct object clitic but precede negative -š. For example, "he wrote"
is katab, "he wrote it (fem.)" is katabha, "he wrote it to you" is
katabhaalak, and finally "he didn't write it to you" is makatabhalakš.

As in Standard Arabic, nouns are either masculine or feminine, and
either singular, dual, or plural, and plurals are either sound
(regular) or broken (irregular) employing a suffix or broken
(irregular) employing a different template, as described in the Arabic
Overview. Broken plurals are not restricted to a small subset of the
vocabulary and are frequently used even with loanwords having three or
four consonants, such as the English loanword sikšin "section" >
sakaašin"sections". Many adjectives also have broken plural forms.

Egyptian Arabic is much less averse to borrowing than Standard Arabic,
and the sources from which it has borrowed reflects the influence that
different peoples have had in Egypt over its history. Many borrowings
remain from Coptic, a Cushitic language which has been dead for
several centuries but which was the dominant language in Egypt when
the Arabs first arrived. Borrowings from Coptic are concentrated in
fields of activity for which were foreign to Peninsular Arabic
culture, such as agriculture. Later borrowings came primarily from
Greek, Italian, French, and English. Most new borrowings are from
English.

Like other modern dialects, though unlike Standard Arabic, the
predominant word order in Egyptian Arabic is Subject Verb Object
(SVO)."

This is a lot. Not like difference between Hittite and English, but it
is like differences between Old Church Slavonic and Serbian or between
Latin and Italian.

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Tim Starling]

Marcus Buck wrote:
> Tim Starling hett schreven:
>> Marcus Buck wrote:
>>   
>>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation 
>>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic 
>>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use 
>>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard 
>>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th 
>>> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid... 
>>> Latin is a godly language."
>>> 
>> I have heard this before, but I am not convinced, because I have heard
>> conflicting things from Egyptian people. I don't suppose you have a
>> credible reference where I can read more about this, and which supports
>> these claims?
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>   
> There's no obvious or agreed-upon measure for the proximity of dialects 
> or languages nor for identity attitudes. All findings are inherently vague.
> What did you hear conflicting things about? 

Specifically the nature of the difference between Standard Arabic and
Egyptian Arabic.

> About the big differences 
> and problems with mutual intelligibility of Arabic dialects or about the 
> notion of "one Arabic nation"?
> Well, that Arabic has a wide variety of different dialects, is obvious, 
> if we look at the basic facts. Arabic is spoken over an area that spans 
> thousands of kilometers. Arabic spread from its central area in Arabia 
> in the 7th century due to the spread of Islam. 

Arabic may have spread from Morocco to Malaysia, but Cairo is quite close
to the Arabian peninsula, so I wonder if you're not overgeneralising.

An attendee at Wikimania 2008 compared the difference between Egyptian
Arabic and Standard Arabic to the difference between written English and
spoken English, or written and spoken French, which seems to me to be
somewhat different to the difference between French and Latin. It is, of
course, a matter of degree.

> So Latin Vulgar had 2000 years to 
> change and Arabic Vulgar only 1300 years. Therefore Latin Vulgar should 
> be roughly 50% more diverse than Arabic Vulgar (Please put the emphasis 
> on "roughly" cause language change is of course not linear).

I'm not really interested in your back-of-the-envelope calculations. I was
hoping that you might have some more detailed study that you can point me to.

Quoting again:
> There's no obvious or agreed-upon measure for the proximity of dialects 
> or languages nor for identity attitudes. All findings are inherently vague.

You seem to be preparing the ground to dismiss any kind of study which
contradicts your opinion. Linguistics might be hard work, and fraught with
subjectivity, but that's no reason to dismiss the whole field out of hand.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 1:04 AM, Tomasz Ganicz  wrote:
> I did't want to come back to Belarus Wikipedia case, but at that time
> I have found quite easily 2 good experts. One from Univ. of Warsaw,
> vice-head o Belaruss literature department and one from Univ of Oxford
> (an emeritus professor, specializing in Belaruss politics and
> history). It wasn't very difficulit to ask them and get the answers -
> quite long and IMHO quite professional.I asked at that time if there
> is any interst for LangComm in reading this. The answer was "no", as
> at that time the decission was already taken, the situation was quite
> hot and arguments showing that the decission wasn't so clever were not
> listen simply by default. The stinky egg was already broken and
> members of LangComm were simply trying not to smell it :-)
>
> I don't think that such kind of experts good in one case only should
> be members of LangComm. It probably doesn't make sense. But it does
> make sense to find them for specific purposes and then ask questions
> before making final decission. It can be done. Most of them give you
> an answer or at least point you to the places you can find it itself.
> LangComm should consist of the people who are clever enough to ask
> relevant questions and be able to understand and analyse the asnwers.

Yes, this is a good point. As far as I am introduced, this is
LangCom's practice for a longer period of time. But, it is good to
organize those contacts.

I also agree with your point related to LangCom members profile. But,
it is also good to have in-house solution for regular issues (and we
have it now).

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 3:04 AM, Marcus Buck  wrote:
> Tim Starling hett schreven:
>> Marcus Buck wrote:
>>
>>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation
>>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic
>>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use
>>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard
>>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th
>>> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid...
>>> Latin is a godly language."
>>>
>>
>> I have heard this before, but I am not convinced, because I have heard
>> conflicting things from Egyptian people. I don't suppose you have a
>> credible reference where I can read more about this, and which supports
>> these claims?
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>
> There's no obvious or agreed-upon measure for the proximity of dialects
> or languages nor for identity attitudes. All findings are inherently vague.
> What did you hear conflicting things about? About the big differences
> and problems with mutual intelligibility of Arabic dialects or about the
> notion of "one Arabic nation"?
> Well, that Arabic has a wide variety of different dialects, is obvious,
> if we look at the basic facts. Arabic is spoken over an area that spans
> thousands of kilometers. Arabic spread from its central area in Arabia
> in the 7th century due to the spread of Islam. Since then the dialects
> developed different from the standard that didn't change much since then
> due to it's liturgical character (just like Latin). Latin was in vulgar
> use since about the 1st century. So Latin Vulgar had 2000 years to
> change and Arabic Vulgar only 1300 years. Therefore Latin Vulgar should
> be roughly 50% more diverse than Arabic Vulgar (Please put the emphasis
> on "roughly" cause language change is of course not linear). [English is
> spread over a very wide area too and does not show that much variation.
> But English spread from England only 400 years ago and most of the
> speakers shifted to English only in very recent times. So outside of
> England there are no real dialects (and even England is no country with
> a pronounced dialectal landscape). Therefore the whole subject of
> "dialects" is a very obscure thing to many speakers of English.]
> The notion of the "one Arabic nation" is even more vague. We have to
> keep in mind, that mentalities do not necessarily differentiate between
> different identity-building elements. Identity can be based on
> ethnicity, on language, on religion, on common history, on citizenship
> or on arbitrary mixtures of these aspects. The most important connecting
> element for people in the Middle East is religion. The Islam. The Islam
> connects them to people with entirely different languages too. But the
> Standard Arabic language  is connected to the Islam also, cause it's the
> liturgical language of the Islam. Saying, that Arabic is a macrolanguage
> can easily touch religious feelings. That's irrational, but happens. So
> there are many different levels of identity and interconnections between
> those levels of identity. It's possible, that you talked to Egyptians
> and they said "those damned Syrians" or otherwise showed few "Panarabic
> loyalty". But that doesn't mean there is no common identity. I'm sure
> you will easily find New Yorkers saying "those damned New Jerseyians" or
> US Americans saying "those damned Canadians". It's normal to have
> animosities with the people you know best, your closest neighbors (cause
> there's few reason to be angry about people you have no contact to). But
> if it comes to identity or loyalty, New Yorkers and New Jerseyians,
> Americans and Canadians, and Egyptians and Syrians will stand close and
> stick together.

Just to add here Scots. English with ~1000 years of divergent
development is considered now as a separate language. Also, there are
significantly different English creoles, like Jamaican is. Scots, EA
and French may be treated as well developed creoles with some
convergent tendencies with Celtic (Scots), Egyptian (EA) and Celtic
and Germanic (French) substratum.

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Marcus Buck]

Tim Starling hett schreven:
> Marcus Buck wrote:
>   
>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation 
>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic 
>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use 
>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard 
>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th 
>> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid... 
>> Latin is a godly language."
>> 
>
> I have heard this before, but I am not convinced, because I have heard
> conflicting things from Egyptian people. I don't suppose you have a
> credible reference where I can read more about this, and which supports
> these claims?
>
> -- Tim Starling
>   
There's no obvious or agreed-upon measure for the proximity of dialects 
or languages nor for identity attitudes. All findings are inherently vague.
What did you hear conflicting things about? About the big differences 
and problems with mutual intelligibility of Arabic dialects or about the 
notion of "one Arabic nation"?
Well, that Arabic has a wide variety of different dialects, is obvious, 
if we look at the basic facts. Arabic is spoken over an area that spans 
thousands of kilometers. Arabic spread from its central area in Arabia 
in the 7th century due to the spread of Islam. Since then the dialects 
developed different from the standard that didn't change much since then 
due to it's liturgical character (just like Latin). Latin was in vulgar 
use since about the 1st century. So Latin Vulgar had 2000 years to 
change and Arabic Vulgar only 1300 years. Therefore Latin Vulgar should 
be roughly 50% more diverse than Arabic Vulgar (Please put the emphasis 
on "roughly" cause language change is of course not linear). [English is 
spread over a very wide area too and does not show that much variation. 
But English spread from England only 400 years ago and most of the 
speakers shifted to English only in very recent times. So outside of 
England there are no real dialects (and even England is no country with 
a pronounced dialectal landscape). Therefore the whole subject of 
"dialects" is a very obscure thing to many speakers of English.]
The notion of the "one Arabic nation" is even more vague. We have to 
keep in mind, that mentalities do not necessarily differentiate between 
different identity-building elements. Identity can be based on 
ethnicity, on language, on religion, on common history, on citizenship 
or on arbitrary mixtures of these aspects. The most important connecting 
element for people in the Middle East is religion. The Islam. The Islam 
connects them to people with entirely different languages too. But the 
Standard Arabic language  is connected to the Islam also, cause it's the 
liturgical language of the Islam. Saying, that Arabic is a macrolanguage 
can easily touch religious feelings. That's irrational, but happens. So 
there are many different levels of identity and interconnections between 
those levels of identity. It's possible, that you talked to Egyptians 
and they said "those damned Syrians" or otherwise showed few "Panarabic 
loyalty". But that doesn't mean there is no common identity. I'm sure 
you will easily find New Yorkers saying "those damned New Jerseyians" or 
US Americans saying "those damned Canadians". It's normal to have 
animosities with the people you know best, your closest neighbors (cause 
there's few reason to be angry about people you have no contact to). But 
if it comes to identity or loyalty, New Yorkers and New Jerseyians, 
Americans and Canadians, and Egyptians and Syrians will stand close and 
stick together.

Marcus Buck

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Mark Williamson]

(oops, should be "divergent")

2009/1/11 Mark Williamson :
> Some Arabic varieties are more different than others. I would support
> a Wikipedia in Derja, for example (Maghrebi Arabic).
>
> Mark
>
> 2009/1/11 Tim Starling :
>> Marcus Buck wrote:
>>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation
>>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic
>>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use
>>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard
>>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th
>>> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid...
>>> Latin is a godly language."
>>
>> I have heard this before, but I am not convinced, because I have heard
>> conflicting things from Egyptian people. I don't suppose you have a
>> credible reference where I can read more about this, and which supports
>> these claims?
>>
>> -- Tim Starling
>>
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Mark Williamson]

Some Arabic varieties are more different than others. I would support
a Wikipedia in Derja, for example (Maghrebi Arabic).

Mark

2009/1/11 Tim Starling :
> Marcus Buck wrote:
>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation
>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic
>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use
>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard
>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th
>> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid...
>> Latin is a godly language."
>
> I have heard this before, but I am not convinced, because I have heard
> conflicting things from Egyptian people. I don't suppose you have a
> credible reference where I can read more about this, and which supports
> these claims?
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Jesse Plamondon-Willard]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 5:21 PM, Jesse Plamondon-Willard
 wrote:
> ...and there is an upcoming proposal for a quorum to ensure that
> no other decision can be made without community consensus.

(That should be "subcommittee consensus", of course.)

-- 
Yours cordially,
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Tim Starling]

Marcus Buck wrote:
> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation 
> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic 
> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use 
> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard 
> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th 
> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid... 
> Latin is a godly language."

I have heard this before, but I am not convinced, because I have heard
conflicting things from Egyptian people. I don't suppose you have a
credible reference where I can read more about this, and which supports
these claims?

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Mark Williamson]

Luxembourgish has an ISO code, doesn't it? Why wouldn't it be allowed?

Mark

2009/1/11 Ziko van Dijk :
> The problem seems to be not the lack of a linguist's knowledge. We
> Wikimedians are not sure or unanimous about what to expect from a Wikipedia
> language edition, and what languages (language communities) we trust to
> conform to our expectations.
>
> My thoughts about the questions discussed here:
>
> - The language comittee could be organised differently, with more rules
> about communication and decision making and also majority rule instead of a
> veto for every member.
>
> - I don't think that Gerard deserves the aggression I have noticed here.
>
> - Wikipedia can not be a solution for all problems of the world. Language
> planning is difficult and includes also the implementation of a language
> (acquisition planning, status planning). I do not believe that creating an
> encyclopaedia should be at the beginning of this long way.
>
> - Our present day rules for new proposals would outlaw language editions
> already existing and doing well, like Esperanto ("constructed"), Latin
> ("ancient") or Luxembourgish (dialect). It would be a pity if a Wikipedia
> language edition does not exist for the only reason that a rule prohibits
> it.
>
> - Labeling languages and forbidding them is not a good point to start. It
> should not be said "this is a dialect, we don't want ist", but looked
> whether there is an actual linguistic community that already uses the
> language for purposes similar to Wikipedia (scientific, popularizing texts).
>
> - And, as already said, the decisive point is what we expect from a
> Wikipedia. For some the Wikia of "Lingua Franca Nova" would have been a
> great Wikipedia, for others it shows that a Wikipedia in it would have been
> disappointing.
>
> Ziko
>
>
> P.S. Maybe I should go on with translating my handbook about multilingual
> Wikipedia to English.
>
>
>
> 2009/1/11 Milos Rancic 
>
>> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 9:34 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>> > On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Tomasz Ganicz 
>> wrote:
>> >> Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
>> >> Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
>> >> knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
>> >> groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
>> >> experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
>> >> historical and cultural background related to language problems which
>> >> is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.
>> >
>> > Actually, it is a misunderstanding of Michael's knowledge. His
>> > expertise is, for example, making an orthography for a random language
>> > [without orthography]. In fact, we need exactly his kind of linguists.
>> > As I mentioned, we are working on raising expertise quality inside of
>> > LangCom.
>>
>> And just to be more precise. After a couple of years of interacting
>> with people in relation to Wikimedia projects, I realized that it is
>> not so possible to get a random academician and put them into some
>> Wikimedian working body. Usually, those persons are not so interested.
>>
>> I see that we have two more options for finding persons with relevant
>> level of expertise:
>> * to find Wikimedians with this kind of expertise; or
>> * that some interested academician contacts us.
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Ziko van Dijk
> NL-Silvolde
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2009/1/11 Milos Rancic :
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 9:34 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Tomasz Ganicz  wrote:
>>> Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
>>> Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
>>> knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
>>> groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
>>> experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
>>> historical and cultural background related to language problems which
>>> is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.
>>
>> Actually, it is a misunderstanding of Michael's knowledge. His
>> expertise is, for example, making an orthography for a random language
>> [without orthography]. In fact, we need exactly his kind of linguists.
>> As I mentioned, we are working on raising expertise quality inside of
>> LangCom.
>
> And just to be more precise. After a couple of years of interacting
> with people in relation to Wikimedia projects, I realized that it is
> not so possible to get a random academician and put them into some
> Wikimedian working body. Usually, those persons are not so interested.
>
> I see that we have two more options for finding persons with relevant
> level of expertise:
> * to find Wikimedians with this kind of expertise; or
> * that some interested academician contacts us.

Well,

I did't want to come back to Belarus Wikipedia case, but at that time
I have found quite easily 2 good experts. One from Univ. of Warsaw,
vice-head o Belaruss literature department and one from Univ of Oxford
(an emeritus professor, specializing in Belaruss politics and
history). It wasn't very difficulit to ask them and get the answers -
quite long and IMHO quite professional.I asked at that time if there
is any interst for LangComm in reading this. The answer was "no", as
at that time the decission was already taken, the situation was quite
hot and arguments showing that the decission wasn't so clever were not
listen simply by default. The stinky egg was already broken and
members of LangComm were simply trying not to smell it :-)

I don't think that such kind of experts good in one case only should
be members of LangComm. It probably doesn't make sense. But it does
make sense to find them for specific purposes and then ask questions
before making final decission. It can be done. Most of them give you
an answer or at least point you to the places you can find it itself.
LangComm should consist of the people who are clever enough to ask
relevant questions and be able to understand and analyse the asnwers.

-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Ziko van Dijk]

The problem seems to be not the lack of a linguist's knowledge. We
Wikimedians are not sure or unanimous about what to expect from a Wikipedia
language edition, and what languages (language communities) we trust to
conform to our expectations.

My thoughts about the questions discussed here:

- The language comittee could be organised differently, with more rules
about communication and decision making and also majority rule instead of a
veto for every member.

- I don't think that Gerard deserves the aggression I have noticed here.

- Wikipedia can not be a solution for all problems of the world. Language
planning is difficult and includes also the implementation of a language
(acquisition planning, status planning). I do not believe that creating an
encyclopaedia should be at the beginning of this long way.

- Our present day rules for new proposals would outlaw language editions
already existing and doing well, like Esperanto ("constructed"), Latin
("ancient") or Luxembourgish (dialect). It would be a pity if a Wikipedia
language edition does not exist for the only reason that a rule prohibits
it.

- Labeling languages and forbidding them is not a good point to start. It
should not be said "this is a dialect, we don't want ist", but looked
whether there is an actual linguistic community that already uses the
language for purposes similar to Wikipedia (scientific, popularizing texts).

- And, as already said, the decisive point is what we expect from a
Wikipedia. For some the Wikia of "Lingua Franca Nova" would have been a
great Wikipedia, for others it shows that a Wikipedia in it would have been
disappointing.

Ziko


P.S. Maybe I should go on with translating my handbook about multilingual
Wikipedia to English.



2009/1/11 Milos Rancic 

> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 9:34 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Tomasz Ganicz 
> wrote:
> >> Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
> >> Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
> >> knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
> >> groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
> >> experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
> >> historical and cultural background related to language problems which
> >> is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.
> >
> > Actually, it is a misunderstanding of Michael's knowledge. His
> > expertise is, for example, making an orthography for a random language
> > [without orthography]. In fact, we need exactly his kind of linguists.
> > As I mentioned, we are working on raising expertise quality inside of
> > LangCom.
>
> And just to be more precise. After a couple of years of interacting
> with people in relation to Wikimedia projects, I realized that it is
> not so possible to get a random academician and put them into some
> Wikimedian working body. Usually, those persons are not so interested.
>
> I see that we have two more options for finding persons with relevant
> level of expertise:
> * to find Wikimedians with this kind of expertise; or
> * that some interested academician contacts us.
>
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NL-Silvolde
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 9:34 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Tomasz Ganicz  wrote:
>> Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
>> Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
>> knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
>> groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
>> experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
>> historical and cultural background related to language problems which
>> is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.
>
> Actually, it is a misunderstanding of Michael's knowledge. His
> expertise is, for example, making an orthography for a random language
> [without orthography]. In fact, we need exactly his kind of linguists.
> As I mentioned, we are working on raising expertise quality inside of
> LangCom.

And just to be more precise. After a couple of years of interacting
with people in relation to Wikimedia projects, I realized that it is
not so possible to get a random academician and put them into some
Wikimedian working body. Usually, those persons are not so interested.

I see that we have two more options for finding persons with relevant
level of expertise:
* to find Wikimedians with this kind of expertise; or
* that some interested academician contacts us.

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:10 PM, Tomasz Ganicz  wrote:
> Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
> Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
> knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
> groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
> experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
> historical and cultural background related to language problems which
> is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.

Actually, it is a misunderstanding of Michael's knowledge. His
expertise is, for example, making an orthography for a random language
[without orthography]. In fact, we need exactly his kind of linguists.
As I mentioned, we are working on raising expertise quality inside of
LangCom.

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
This is not that strange. The time span for discussion is brief. Discussion
is relevant until the moment when it is decided that a language is eligible.
When a language is eligible, the people who work on a proposal have to
fulfill the rest of the requirements but do so in the understanding that
their work will not be in vain. Most of the discussions about EA were from
the time when the proposal had already been given the eligible status.

Most of the arguments used are the same arguments seen in other requests.
People often feel really strongly about "their" language. The results are
often quite ugly; for one language the choice of the official orthography
makes you a Stalinist. The choice of an "official" orthography splits
languages along the lines of borders.  People writing their mother tongue
are called dumb.
Thanks,
  GerardM


2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 

> > So, there are two conclusions: (1) I may imagine the process which had
> > happened in relation to EA approval: no one made any serious objection
> > and it passed. (2) There are two LangCom members introduced better in
> > the linguistic issues, so the expertise level is raised and I think
> > that it will be raised more in the future.
> >
> >
> I find it hard to believe that the tons and tons of discussion on EA's
> proposal page didnt generate any comments from the committee except a brief
> conversation between Gerard and one member. That may mean that they were
> disengaged at the  time or have not been given enough time to consider
> before the actual approval occured. Either way it points out a fault in the
> policy because both of which are practically undetectable in the current
> process. It is strange that we require a minimum number of people to
> participate in most of our actions (like admin elections for example) but
> approving a new wiki will occur with only a request and one reply.
>
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> Muhammad Alsebaey
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

> So, there are two conclusions: (1) I may imagine the process which had
> happened in relation to EA approval: no one made any serious objection
> and it passed. (2) There are two LangCom members introduced better in
> the linguistic issues, so the expertise level is raised and I think
> that it will be raised more in the future.
>
>
I find it hard to believe that the tons and tons of discussion on EA's
proposal page didnt generate any comments from the committee except a brief
conversation between Gerard and one member. That may mean that they were
disengaged at the  time or have not been given enough time to consider
before the actual approval occured. Either way it points out a fault in the
policy because both of which are practically undetectable in the current
process. It is strange that we require a minimum number of people to
participate in most of our actions (like admin elections for example) but
approving a new wiki will occur with only a request and one reply.


-- 
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Muhammad Alsebaey
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

Just an off topic, you do realize that me and the original poster of this
thread are different people, right? I do ask because you kind of mixed our
arguments in the last part of your post. The original poster probably has a
more 'vivid' choice of words than I usually do :) .

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 4:45 AM, Gerard Meijssen
wrote:

> Hoi,
> The current policy is really objective; a request for a project will be
> honoured when it complies with a set of prerequisites.
>
>   - is the language recognised as a language in the ISO-639-3
>   - is the language sufficiently unique
>   - is there a sufficiently large corpus in the incubator
>   - is there a community of a sufficient size so that we can trust the
>   community to do well
>   - are the requirements for localisation met
>
> When the notions of the main language group are to be considered the
> criteria for new projects become less objective. At this time the fights of
> what is a language are fought in the ISO. This is where people come up with
> what is considered a consensus  on what languages exist. This consensus is
> not universally shared but the best that can be had.
>
> When people talk about languages, they enter a field where many things are
> taken for granted that are absolutely not straight forward. A language like
> Limburgian does not have one formal orthography. It consists of many
> dialects and it morphs at its edges into what are arguably other dialects
> of
> other languages and yet we have a Limburgian Wikipedia that is doing pretty
> well. When you have a languages like English, a person from Newcastle and a
> person from the Bayou are unlikely to understand each other well if at all.
> Given that Geordie is not considered a language, we do not allow for a
> Geordie Wikipedia. The ISO-639-6 might recognise Geordie as a linguistic
> entity, the ISO-639-6 will recognise at least 25.000 linguistic entities
> but
> does that mean that we want to consider all of them for a Wikipedia ?
>
> When you talk about the historical and cultural background of languages,
> you
> have to appreciate how that works out in our environment. When you look at
> the Wikipedias in extinct languages like Anglo Saxon and Gothic, the texts
> arguably do not reflect the language that is spoken in the days when they
> were living languages. Gothic was not written in the Latin script and
> fights
> about equivalent issues are being fought on the Anglo Saxon Wikipedia. It
> is
> easy to argue that these Wikipedias do not teach anything that helps
> understand the original texts in those languages. Are these the historical
> and cultural things you want to be considered ?
>
> Marcus Buck mentioned that in the Arabic world the standard Arabic language
> is seen as an unifying force. This is very much a political statement.
> Given
> that the language policy explicitly states that political arguments are not
> taken in consideration, many if cultural, sociological and historical
> arguments are explicitly left out of the equation. An other recurring
> argument is that new wikipedias detract from the "original" Wikipedia. The
> people who make this argument insist on what *others *can and cannot do.
> When people want to work on Egyptian Arabic, why should they work on a
> Wikipedia that they do not consider their own?
>
> When you talk about reasonable decisions, what is it that makes something
> reasonable? The fact that people like Mohamed consider Egyptian Arabic as
> ignorant makes clear their position, but is that reasonable ? The language
> committee has only a remit to help new languages move along, This was to
> prevent more dysfunctional projects, projects with no new articles, no
> community, projects asked for by people who think Wikipedia is like a stamp
> collection.
>
> In the end there are two arguments that Mohamed has that have some
> validity;
> are there sufficiently knowledgeable people in the committee and do enough
> people consider issues with the process. We have already added new people
> and Pathoschild indicated that he is working on proposals for change. The
> current process is well structured, it is at the time of giving eligibility
> that the validity of a language is considered. It is at this time when
> there
> were no objections from within the committee.
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
> Only people who do make mistakes all others have a perfect record.
>
>
>
> 2009/1/11 Tomasz Ganicz 
>
> > 2009/1/11 Milos Rancic :
> >
> >
> > > So, there are two conclusions: (1) I may imagine the process which had
> > > happened in relation to EA approval: no one made any serious objection
> > > and it passed. (2) There are two LangCom members introduced better in
> > > the linguistic issues, so the expertise level is raised and I think
> > > that it will be raised more in the future.
> > >
> >
> > Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
> > Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
> > knowle

Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2009/1/11 Gerard Meijssen :

> When you talk about reasonable decisions, what is it that makes something
> reasonable? The fact that people like Mohamed consider Egyptian Arabic as
> ignorant makes clear their position, but is that reasonable ? The language
> committee has only a remit to help new languages move along, This was to
> prevent more dysfunctional projects, projects with no new articles, no
> community, projects asked for by people who think Wikipedia is like a stamp
> collection.
>

Do not expect me to answer such the question, as I am not defintely
expert in Arabic language. A don't know if your decission about
Egyptian Wikipedia was right or wrong. I am even not attacing you, as
I am quite sure you are not an expert in this area as well. Hope, you
know, you do not know everything :-) I just reapat again. This is just
a good example of  good question for real expert, which you do not
take into account but simply ignore, which causes problems with
LangComm we discuss now. It is impossible to avoid cultural,
historical and political impact of decision like closing and opening
Egyptian Wikipedia or Bellaruss Wikipedia, so they HAVE TO BE TAKEN
INTO ACCOUNT, even if you do not like it.

If you do not have experts in arabic languages having good knowledge
about cultural and historical issues in current LangComm - try to find
them. I belive there are independent experts for example at arabic
literature departments at good universities in US or UK, which you may
trust, they are not connected with any side of the conflict and which
might help you to avoid doing silly mistakes, by ignoring important
cultural and historical issues. Any language is a result of longer or
shorter social process, this is not just a technical problem.

-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> The current policy is really objective; a request for a project will be
> honoured when it complies with a set of prerequisites.
>
>- is the language recognised as a language in the ISO-639-3
>- is the language sufficiently unique
>- is there a sufficiently large corpus in the incubator
>- is there a community of a sufficient size so that we can trust the
>community to do well
>- are the requirements for localisation met
>   

Just to be clear, I think what you want to really say is that the
criteria are mechanically applied. Of course the choice of
criteria is a separate question and may or may not be
objective. Even a completely mechanically applied set of
criteria can (at least arguendo) be a subjective choice
dependant on ideological biases even of very drastic kinds.

Just because the rules are the same for all, doesn't mean the
rules aren't biased.

I am not making any more pointed comment on the policy as
such, just clarifying the logical structure in the aid of further
discussion.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Nikola Smolenski]

On Sunday 11 January 2009 01:18:55 Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:08 AM, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
> > I was sitting next to an Egyptian VIP in the front row when the
> > announcement was made, and he laughed and indicated that he thought this
> > was stupid.
> >
> > It is not up to me to make any decisions nor have any particular opinion
> > about Egyptian, but this is one of many data points that suggest to me
> > that the current process is widely regarded as being broken.
>
> Jimmy, just to remind you that people in one academic institution in
> Belgrade laughed when you mentioned Bosnian language in 2005. But,
> things are somewhat changed now.

Milos, please don't misinterpret events. Jimbo did not quite mention Bosnian 
language in 2005, and actually that is exactly the reason people laughed. 
And, they haven't laguhed dismissively as said Egyptian VIP, but actually 
cheered.

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
The current policy is really objective; a request for a project will be
honoured when it complies with a set of prerequisites.

   - is the language recognised as a language in the ISO-639-3
   - is the language sufficiently unique
   - is there a sufficiently large corpus in the incubator
   - is there a community of a sufficient size so that we can trust the
   community to do well
   - are the requirements for localisation met

When the notions of the main language group are to be considered the
criteria for new projects become less objective. At this time the fights of
what is a language are fought in the ISO. This is where people come up with
what is considered a consensus  on what languages exist. This consensus is
not universally shared but the best that can be had.

When people talk about languages, they enter a field where many things are
taken for granted that are absolutely not straight forward. A language like
Limburgian does not have one formal orthography. It consists of many
dialects and it morphs at its edges into what are arguably other dialects of
other languages and yet we have a Limburgian Wikipedia that is doing pretty
well. When you have a languages like English, a person from Newcastle and a
person from the Bayou are unlikely to understand each other well if at all.
Given that Geordie is not considered a language, we do not allow for a
Geordie Wikipedia. The ISO-639-6 might recognise Geordie as a linguistic
entity, the ISO-639-6 will recognise at least 25.000 linguistic entities but
does that mean that we want to consider all of them for a Wikipedia ?

When you talk about the historical and cultural background of languages, you
have to appreciate how that works out in our environment. When you look at
the Wikipedias in extinct languages like Anglo Saxon and Gothic, the texts
arguably do not reflect the language that is spoken in the days when they
were living languages. Gothic was not written in the Latin script and fights
about equivalent issues are being fought on the Anglo Saxon Wikipedia. It is
easy to argue that these Wikipedias do not teach anything that helps
understand the original texts in those languages. Are these the historical
and cultural things you want to be considered ?

Marcus Buck mentioned that in the Arabic world the standard Arabic language
is seen as an unifying force. This is very much a political statement. Given
that the language policy explicitly states that political arguments are not
taken in consideration, many if cultural, sociological and historical
arguments are explicitly left out of the equation. An other recurring
argument is that new wikipedias detract from the "original" Wikipedia. The
people who make this argument insist on what *others *can and cannot do.
When people want to work on Egyptian Arabic, why should they work on a
Wikipedia that they do not consider their own?

When you talk about reasonable decisions, what is it that makes something
reasonable? The fact that people like Mohamed consider Egyptian Arabic as
ignorant makes clear their position, but is that reasonable ? The language
committee has only a remit to help new languages move along, This was to
prevent more dysfunctional projects, projects with no new articles, no
community, projects asked for by people who think Wikipedia is like a stamp
collection.

In the end there are two arguments that Mohamed has that have some validity;
are there sufficiently knowledgeable people in the committee and do enough
people consider issues with the process. We have already added new people
and Pathoschild indicated that he is working on proposals for change. The
current process is well structured, it is at the time of giving eligibility
that the validity of a language is considered. It is at this time when there
were no objections from within the committee.
Thanks,
  GerardM

Only people who do make mistakes all others have a perfect record.



2009/1/11 Tomasz Ganicz 

> 2009/1/11 Milos Rancic :
>
>
> > So, there are two conclusions: (1) I may imagine the process which had
> > happened in relation to EA approval: no one made any serious objection
> > and it passed. (2) There are two LangCom members introduced better in
> > the linguistic issues, so the expertise level is raised and I think
> > that it will be raised more in the future.
> >
>
> Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
> Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
> knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
> groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
> experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
> historical and cultural background related to language problems which
> is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.
>
> --
> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
> http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
> http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html
>
> _

Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2009/1/11 Milos Rancic :


> So, there are two conclusions: (1) I may imagine the process which had
> happened in relation to EA approval: no one made any serious objection
> and it passed. (2) There are two LangCom members introduced better in
> the linguistic issues, so the expertise level is raised and I think
> that it will be raised more in the future.
>

Well, I think there should be not only computer-linguists experts like
Evertype in LangCom, but you desperately need people who have good
knowledge about culture, sociology and history of the main language
groups, or at least you should be ready to ask relevant outside
experts. I have a feeling that current LangCom completely ignores
historical and cultural background related to language problems which
is quite often a key to make resonable decissions.

-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 7:21 AM, Muhammad Alsebaey  wrote:
> With all due respect to all the work Gerard has done, my issue with him is
> simple (should be apparent by now), he approved EA based on a mail exchange
> he had with only one committee member, painted that in a public email as a
> unanimous decision, and it turned out that 4 of his committee members were
> inactive at the time and at least one (I have not heard from the others yet)
> had at least some issues with the decision. I will be completely satisfied
> with a simple acknowledgment that the process was faulty, and that he is
> willing to work to rectify it for the future, as of now, I only see that he
> sees absolutely nothing wrong with what happened.  I just want to see a
> clear path for that not to happen again in LangCom, I have been encouraged
> by Jesse's comments, but they still remain pretty much in contrast with the
> position Gerard maintains.

Two weeks ago or so Gerard (or someone else, I forgot) announced that
Finnish Wikiversity passed. I didn't say anything around this issue
because I don't see anything wrong with it. I could say "OK", "I am
fine with it", but I felt it as fully redundant.

Less than a week ago someone from LangCom proposed closing the
proposal of Southern Min in Hanji (this thread is not yet finished, so
it is not archived) with reasoning that they may use conversion engine
between Latin and Hanji. The other LangCom member agreed with that.
But, Michael Everson and I disagreed with that. Simply, it is not
possible to make a [simple] conversion engine between one phonographic
and one logographic script. (Other issues may be discussed, but a
possibility to solve it with a conversion engine is not a
possibility.)

So, there are two conclusions: (1) I may imagine the process which had
happened in relation to EA approval: no one made any serious objection
and it passed. (2) There are two LangCom members introduced better in
the linguistic issues, so the expertise level is raised and I think
that it will be raised more in the future.

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

hmm I didnt do an extensive search the first time around but I was looking
at their writing guidelines and they say they encourage writing in either
Latin or Arabic, which means that as of now, more articles are encouraged,
and I think dudi is the admin MahmudMasri, who is still very active as I can
see. I do agree though it is not widespread as I can only find few articles
after another search, still, it is invited openly in their guidelines...


On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 10:55 PM, Marcus Buck  wrote:

> Muhammad Alsebaey hett schreven:
> >> The mission of the foundation is an educational one. So it would be
> >> better to ask the uneducated masses of Egypt, whether they feel a gain
> >> from a Wikipedia in their language or whether they stick with the
> >> "Latin" Wikipedia.
> >>
> >> Marcus Buck
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > It is interesting to me to see that Masri condones writing in a Latinized
> > alphabet, I didnt know that until I saw Mohamed's email, so I went
> looking
> > and they say you can write in both Arabic and 'latinized' characters. I
> said
> > earlier that I am against deleting any project already opened with an
> active
> > user base, still I fail to see how articles like the following are of any
> > use to anybody but an elite few who would like to see their language more
> > westernized, and are using Wikipedia to give ground to such
> > experimentation... Do people actually think that the illiterate masses
> are
> > willing to learn a totally new alphabet that is of no use to them in
> daily
> > life just to read some information on Wikipedia? anyone else seeing this
> > premise as kind of nonsensical?
> >
> >
> http://arz.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%86%D8%B8%D8%A7%D9%85_%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%83%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%8A_(%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%83%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A9)
> >
> > http://arz.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%83%D9%88%D8%AA%D8%A7
> >
> >
> I don't know, how widespread knowledge of Latin letters is, but I'm
> quite sure, that you are right. Latin letters shouldn't be encouraged. I
> did some "random article" and in 36 random articles (that's a 10% sample
> of arz.Wikipedia) I found no article written in Latin letters. So I
> guess, articles in Latin letters are a very limited number. Both
> examples given by you were created by Dudi on the Incubator. It seems
> Dudi isn't active anymore, no edits since November. The account wasn't
> even recreated after the move from the Incubator to the wiki (but
> perhaps he chose another username). It seems, the problem is very limited.
>
> Marcus Buck
>
>
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-- 
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Muhammad Alsebaey
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Marcus Buck]

Muhammad Alsebaey hett schreven:
>> The mission of the foundation is an educational one. So it would be
>> better to ask the uneducated masses of Egypt, whether they feel a gain
>> from a Wikipedia in their language or whether they stick with the
>> "Latin" Wikipedia.
>>
>> Marcus Buck
>>
>>
>> 
> It is interesting to me to see that Masri condones writing in a Latinized
> alphabet, I didnt know that until I saw Mohamed's email, so I went looking
> and they say you can write in both Arabic and 'latinized' characters. I said
> earlier that I am against deleting any project already opened with an active
> user base, still I fail to see how articles like the following are of any
> use to anybody but an elite few who would like to see their language more
> westernized, and are using Wikipedia to give ground to such
> experimentation... Do people actually think that the illiterate masses are
> willing to learn a totally new alphabet that is of no use to them in daily
> life just to read some information on Wikipedia? anyone else seeing this
> premise as kind of nonsensical?
>
> http://arz.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%86%D8%B8%D8%A7%D9%85_%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%83%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%8A_(%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%83%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A9)
>
> http://arz.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%83%D9%88%D8%AA%D8%A7
>
>   
I don't know, how widespread knowledge of Latin letters is, but I'm 
quite sure, that you are right. Latin letters shouldn't be encouraged. I 
did some "random article" and in 36 random articles (that's a 10% sample 
of arz.Wikipedia) I found no article written in Latin letters. So I 
guess, articles in Latin letters are a very limited number. Both 
examples given by you were created by Dudi on the Incubator. It seems 
Dudi isn't active anymore, no edits since November. The account wasn't 
even recreated after the move from the Incubator to the wiki (but 
perhaps he chose another username). It seems, the problem is very limited.

Marcus Buck


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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

Milos,

With all due respect to all the work Gerard has done, my issue with him is
simple (should be apparent by now), he approved EA based on a mail exchange
he had with only one committee member, painted that in a public email as a
unanimous decision, and it turned out that 4 of his committee members were
inactive at the time and at least one (I have not heard from the others yet)
had at least some issues with the decision. I will be completely satisfied
with a simple acknowledgment that the process was faulty, and that he is
willing to work to rectify it for the future, as of now, I only see that he
sees absolutely nothing wrong with what happened.  I just want to see a
clear path for that not to happen again in LangCom, I have been encouraged
by Jesse's comments, but they still remain pretty much in contrast with the
position Gerard maintains.

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:27 AM, Marcus Buck  wrote:
> > elisabeth bauer hett schreven:
> >> 2009/1/11 Marcus Buck :
> >>
> >>
> >>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation
> >>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard
> Arabic
> >>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of
> use
> >>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs.
> Standard
> >>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th
> >>> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid...
> >>> Latin is a godly language."
> >>>
> >>
> >> So, tell me...
> >> Which language do the egyptian newspapers use?
> >> In which language are the egyptian books written?
> >> Which language does Naguib Mahfus use in his books?
> >> Which language do the children learn at school?
> >> Which language do you use in a letter when you apply for a job?
> >>
> >> greetings,
> >> elian
> > The answer to all of this is: Standard Arabic. That's exactly what I was
> > pointing at. There's a strong non-conscious POV forcing the people to
> > use a language for writing, that is very different from their native
> > language. What language do most Mari use, when writing to other Mari?
> > Russian. Aymara will most likely use Spanish when writing to other
> > Aymara. Does that mean, that Mari is a dialect of Russian and Aymara a
> > dialect of Spanish? Of course not. But it's a symptom of a very deeply
> > internalized feeling of inferiority. A feeling spurred by Russian and
> > Spanish speakers feeling superiority over those uneducated non Spanish
> > speakers and non Russian speakers.
> >
> > A 13th century monk would have argued:
> >
> > Which language do the Royal chronicles use?
> > In which language is the Vulgata written?
> > Which language does Francis of Assisi use in his books?
> > Which language do the novices learn at monastery school?
> > Which language do you use in a letter when you petition to the
> sovereign's court?
> >
> >
> > The use of Latin restricted knowledge to those who were educated in the
> > monasteries. The dismissal of Latin was an act of emancipation for the
> > speakers of the vernaculars. I do not know enough about Arabic to judge
> > whether pushing the vernaculars would be an act of intellectual
> > emancipation or an act of divide et impera.
> >
> > If the idea of writing in the vernacular would be obviously ridiculous,
> > nobody would do it. There are people who want to work on arz, so they
> > must see some use in it. Maybe they are still wrong. We can only figure
> > it out, if we allow them to try.
> >
> > By the way: You mention schools. When schools became mandatory in the
> > course of the 18th, 19th century, many people had humanistic and
> > educational goals. But from the very beginning it was also a tool for
> > the country's rulers to manipulate the brains of young people. To induce
> > attachment to the king and to prepare boys to be good soldiers. To make
> > the children loyal citizens. That's still valid today. Language is one
> > measure of bending the pupils' mind (of bending all people's minds). By
> > teaching the national language, that in many cases is different from the
> > native language, you estalish a direct channel to the mind. This channel
> > is in the sole occupancy of the authorities and there's no need to share
> > it with other information transmitters, cause the native environment
> > uses another language (at least that was true in the time, when schools
> > became mandatory. Today there are more diverse information channels).
> > Language is a tool of power. That's the reason, why VIPs are no good
> > source for opinions about languages not supported by the powers in
> > force. Somebody who is Very Important has to stay in touch with the
> > powers in force to keep being important. Touching the balance of power
> > by supporting languages other than the language of power is dangerous if
> > you have to keep a status.
> > The mission of the foundation is an educ

Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

>
> The mission of the foundation is an educational one. So it would be
> better to ask the uneducated masses of Egypt, whether they feel a gain
> from a Wikipedia in their language or whether they stick with the
> "Latin" Wikipedia.
>
> Marcus Buck
>
>
It is interesting to me to see that Masri condones writing in a Latinized
alphabet, I didnt know that until I saw Mohamed's email, so I went looking
and they say you can write in both Arabic and 'latinized' characters. I said
earlier that I am against deleting any project already opened with an active
user base, still I fail to see how articles like the following are of any
use to anybody but an elite few who would like to see their language more
westernized, and are using Wikipedia to give ground to such
experimentation... Do people actually think that the illiterate masses are
willing to learn a totally new alphabet that is of no use to them in daily
life just to read some information on Wikipedia? anyone else seeing this
premise as kind of nonsensical?

http://arz.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%86%D8%B8%D8%A7%D9%85_%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%83%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%8A_(%D9%83%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%AA%D9%88%D9%83%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A9)

http://arz.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%83%D9%88%D8%AA%D8%A7


-- 
Best Regards,
Muhammad Alsebaey
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 2:46 AM, geni  wrote:
> 2009/1/11 Milos Rancic :
>> Jimmy, just to remind you that people in one academic institution in
>> Belgrade laughed when you mentioned Bosnian language in 2005. But,
>> things are somewhat changed now.
>
> Not really. There is still little evidence that it is a language
> distinct from the rest of the Central-South Slavic diasystem.

1. If you are really interested in linguistic issues, please avoid
folk linguistics. Try with Peter Trudgill's works [1].

2. I didn't express any kind of opinion related to outsiders. Or you
want to tell me that you know better the cultural climate in Belgrade?

3. Besides two first issues, you completely missed the point. Those
persons didn't laugh when Jimmy mentioned Serbian and Croatian, but
they laughed when he mentioned Bosnian.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Trudgill

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:27 AM, Marcus Buck  wrote:
> elisabeth bauer hett schreven:
>> 2009/1/11 Marcus Buck :
>>
>>
>>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation
>>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic
>>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use
>>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard
>>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th
>>> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid...
>>> Latin is a godly language."
>>>
>>
>> So, tell me...
>> Which language do the egyptian newspapers use?
>> In which language are the egyptian books written?
>> Which language does Naguib Mahfus use in his books?
>> Which language do the children learn at school?
>> Which language do you use in a letter when you apply for a job?
>>
>> greetings,
>> elian
> The answer to all of this is: Standard Arabic. That's exactly what I was
> pointing at. There's a strong non-conscious POV forcing the people to
> use a language for writing, that is very different from their native
> language. What language do most Mari use, when writing to other Mari?
> Russian. Aymara will most likely use Spanish when writing to other
> Aymara. Does that mean, that Mari is a dialect of Russian and Aymara a
> dialect of Spanish? Of course not. But it's a symptom of a very deeply
> internalized feeling of inferiority. A feeling spurred by Russian and
> Spanish speakers feeling superiority over those uneducated non Spanish
> speakers and non Russian speakers.
>
> A 13th century monk would have argued:
>
> Which language do the Royal chronicles use?
> In which language is the Vulgata written?
> Which language does Francis of Assisi use in his books?
> Which language do the novices learn at monastery school?
> Which language do you use in a letter when you petition to the sovereign's 
> court?
>
>
> The use of Latin restricted knowledge to those who were educated in the
> monasteries. The dismissal of Latin was an act of emancipation for the
> speakers of the vernaculars. I do not know enough about Arabic to judge
> whether pushing the vernaculars would be an act of intellectual
> emancipation or an act of divide et impera.
>
> If the idea of writing in the vernacular would be obviously ridiculous,
> nobody would do it. There are people who want to work on arz, so they
> must see some use in it. Maybe they are still wrong. We can only figure
> it out, if we allow them to try.
>
> By the way: You mention schools. When schools became mandatory in the
> course of the 18th, 19th century, many people had humanistic and
> educational goals. But from the very beginning it was also a tool for
> the country's rulers to manipulate the brains of young people. To induce
> attachment to the king and to prepare boys to be good soldiers. To make
> the children loyal citizens. That's still valid today. Language is one
> measure of bending the pupils' mind (of bending all people's minds). By
> teaching the national language, that in many cases is different from the
> native language, you estalish a direct channel to the mind. This channel
> is in the sole occupancy of the authorities and there's no need to share
> it with other information transmitters, cause the native environment
> uses another language (at least that was true in the time, when schools
> became mandatory. Today there are more diverse information channels).
> Language is a tool of power. That's the reason, why VIPs are no good
> source for opinions about languages not supported by the powers in
> force. Somebody who is Very Important has to stay in touch with the
> powers in force to keep being important. Touching the balance of power
> by supporting languages other than the language of power is dangerous if
> you have to keep a status.
> The mission of the foundation is an educational one. So it would be
> better to ask the uneducated masses of Egypt, whether they feel a gain
> from a Wikipedia in their language or whether they stick with the
> "Latin" Wikipedia.

First of all, I may sign every Marcus' word in this and previous email.

There is one more issue which I mentioned in the previous iteration
related to EA [Sports]. Having education in the native language is a
very important cultural achievement. Instead between 1/4 and 1/5 of
inhabitants who don't know to read and write you [Egyptians etc.] will
have much better ratio. Besides examples which I gave the last time,
here are two more: one of the poorest countries in Europe, Albania,
with relative majority of Muslim inhabitants, has 98.7% of literate
people; not so rich Azerbaijan (yes, it could be much richer) with
90%+ Muslim majority has 98.8% of literate people. This is something
less than 1/100 of inhabitants who don't know to read and write. In
both of countries Arabic is a language for religious purposes, while
native languages are educational. More educated per

Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Marcus Buck]

elisabeth bauer hett schreven:
> 2009/1/11 Marcus Buck :
>
>   
>> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation
>> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic
>> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use
>> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard
>> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th
>> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid...
>> Latin is a godly language."
>> 
>
> So, tell me...
> Which language do the egyptian newspapers use?
> In which language are the egyptian books written?
> Which language does Naguib Mahfus use in his books?
> Which language do the children learn at school?
> Which language do you use in a letter when you apply for a job?
>
> greetings,
> elian
The answer to all of this is: Standard Arabic. That's exactly what I was 
pointing at. There's a strong non-conscious POV forcing the people to 
use a language for writing, that is very different from their native 
language. What language do most Mari use, when writing to other Mari? 
Russian. Aymara will most likely use Spanish when writing to other 
Aymara. Does that mean, that Mari is a dialect of Russian and Aymara a 
dialect of Spanish? Of course not. But it's a symptom of a very deeply 
internalized feeling of inferiority. A feeling spurred by Russian and 
Spanish speakers feeling superiority over those uneducated non Spanish 
speakers and non Russian speakers.

A 13th century monk would have argued:

Which language do the Royal chronicles use?
In which language is the Vulgata written?
Which language does Francis of Assisi use in his books?
Which language do the novices learn at monastery school?
Which language do you use in a letter when you petition to the sovereign's 
court?


The use of Latin restricted knowledge to those who were educated in the 
monasteries. The dismissal of Latin was an act of emancipation for the 
speakers of the vernaculars. I do not know enough about Arabic to judge 
whether pushing the vernaculars would be an act of intellectual 
emancipation or an act of divide et impera.

If the idea of writing in the vernacular would be obviously ridiculous, 
nobody would do it. There are people who want to work on arz, so they 
must see some use in it. Maybe they are still wrong. We can only figure 
it out, if we allow them to try.

By the way: You mention schools. When schools became mandatory in the 
course of the 18th, 19th century, many people had humanistic and 
educational goals. But from the very beginning it was also a tool for 
the country's rulers to manipulate the brains of young people. To induce 
attachment to the king and to prepare boys to be good soldiers. To make 
the children loyal citizens. That's still valid today. Language is one 
measure of bending the pupils' mind (of bending all people's minds). By 
teaching the national language, that in many cases is different from the 
native language, you estalish a direct channel to the mind. This channel 
is in the sole occupancy of the authorities and there's no need to share 
it with other information transmitters, cause the native environment 
uses another language (at least that was true in the time, when schools 
became mandatory. Today there are more diverse information channels). 
Language is a tool of power. That's the reason, why VIPs are no good 
source for opinions about languages not supported by the powers in 
force. Somebody who is Very Important has to stay in touch with the 
powers in force to keep being important. Touching the balance of power 
by supporting languages other than the language of power is dangerous if 
you have to keep a status.
The mission of the foundation is an educational one. So it would be 
better to ask the uneducated masses of Egypt, whether they feel a gain 
from a Wikipedia in their language or whether they stick with the 
"Latin" Wikipedia.

Marcus Buck

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[geni]

2009/1/11 Milos Rancic :
> Jimmy, just to remind you that people in one academic institution in
> Belgrade laughed when you mentioned Bosnian language in 2005. But,
> things are somewhat changed now.

Not really. There is still little evidence that it is a language
distinct from the rest of the Central-South Slavic diasystem.

-- 
geni

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[elisabeth bauer]

2009/1/11 Marcus Buck :

> In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation
> united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic
> is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use
> to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard
> Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th
> century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid...
> Latin is a godly language."

So, tell me...
Which language do the egyptian newspapers use?
In which language are the egyptian books written?
Which language does Naguib Mahfus use in his books?
Which language do the children learn at school?
Which language do you use in a letter when you apply for a job?

greetings,
elian

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 12:08 AM, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
> Mohamed Magdy wrote:
>> (I heard that people were happy at Wikimania (Florence?)
>> because of that proposal but I fail to understand why the Egyptian people
>> there didn't express their opinion about it (it was in Egypt :!).
>
> I was sitting next to an Egyptian VIP in the front row when the
> announcement was made, and he laughed and indicated that he thought this
> was stupid.
>
> It is not up to me to make any decisions nor have any particular opinion
> about Egyptian, but this is one of many data points that suggest to me
> that the current process is widely regarded as being broken.

Jimmy, just to remind you that people in one academic institution in
Belgrade laughed when you mentioned Bosnian language in 2005. But,
things are somewhat changed now.

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Marcus Buck]

Jimmy Wales hett schreven:
> Mohamed Magdy wrote:
>   
>> (I heard that people were happy at Wikimania (Florence?)
>> because of that proposal but I fail to understand why the Egyptian people
>> there didn't express their opinion about it (it was in Egypt :!).
>> 
>
> I was sitting next to an Egyptian VIP in the front row when the 
> announcement was made, and he laughed and indicated that he thought this 
> was stupid.
>
> It is not up to me to make any decisions nor have any particular opinion 
> about Egyptian, but this is one of many data points that suggest to me 
> that the current process is widely regarded as being broken.
>
> --Jimbo
I agree, that the current process of new language edition approval has 
major flaws and can be regarded as broken to some degree. And I will not 
take a definite stance in the matter of arz.Wikipedia.

But please be aware, that the question of whether or not language 
editions in language varieties widely regarded as "dialects" are 
"stupid", "useless" or "laughable" is highly POV. We European or 
American outsiders have few personal POV about the matter, but we don't 
know much about the real linguistic differences. Those who know about 
the differences, have very deep personal POVs. If we grow up in a 
specific society, we unconsciously internalize the prevalent POVs of 
that society at a very early age. It's hard to overcome those POVs.

In the Arabic world there's a prevalent POV, that Arabs form one nation 
united by the use of the Arabic language. But in reality Standard Arabic 
is something like Latin. With the difference, that Latin fell out of use 
to make place for the Romance languages. So Egyptian Arabic vs. Standard 
Arabic is like French vs. Latin. And the Egyptian VIP is like a 13th 
century monk. "Writing in the language of the people. How stupid... 
Latin is a godly language."
By the way: This "uniform nation" and "stupid language" thing is not a 
Arabian world only thing, that the Europeans got rid of by kicking 
Latin's ass. The whole repeats itself on lower levels. Look at French 
vs. Occitan. If you ask Sarkozy or the Parisiens, Occitan is a French 
dialect. As citizens of the French Republic they should speak French. 
Trying to establish Occitan as a language on par with French is trying 
to destroy the unite French nation. But from a linguistic POV Occitan is 
not very closely related to French. Not closer than to Catalan, Spanish 
or Italian.
Catalan being the next example. The Spanish saw it as a Spanish dialect. 
But they couldn't manage to drum that "fact" into the Catalans and 
Catalan finally became a "recognized" language.

So if the Egyptian VIP laughs, he does not laugh a linguistic laughter, 
but a political laughter.

The emancipation of Arabic "dialects" could lead to the establishment of 
a Arabience language family like Latin fell apart in the Romance 
language family. And that's what many Arabs fear, just as the Latin 
monks didn't like the end of Latin. But the 'future' (that means 
contemporary) Italians and French and Portuguese live happily with the 
former vernaculars.

Allowing the Arab dialects to go this way is a highly political 
decision. Forbidding it would be too. So there is no way Wikimedia could 
avoid making a political stance. But from the POV of 'Freedom' we should 
allow. If we forbid that's a definite stance. If we allow, there are 
still two possible outcomes: Latin will fall or it stand strong and 
Vulgar will stay vulgar.

Marcus Buck

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Typically the time period is a couple of days up to a week. Pathoschild has
asked our least active members if they were still interested in being a
member. He indicated that he was going to make proposals. I am still waiting
for those.
Thanks,
 GerardM

2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 

> Do you have a set time limit for people to respond in? a week? a month? and
> what about the 4 inactive persons, how do you consider them inactive? what
> if you had 7 inactive members out of 10 at a time and didnt know it, would
> it still be a 'unanimous' decision?
>
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > You are wrong. If one person had objected at the time, the proposal would
> > not have been made eligible.
> > Thanks,
> > GerardM
> >
> > 2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 
> >
> > > Which creates the situation we are in, according to you,  all members
> of
> > > the
> > > language committee were explicitly asked to consider the issues that I
> > and
> > > others raised, but since only one out of the 10+ people responded,
> > > therefore
> > > they must have all considered all the issues and have no comment, and
> the
> > > decision is unanimous. I am not going to debate with you how this
> doesnt
> > > sound very logical, It is sufficient to say you are now finding out
> that
> > > there were at least 1 objecting and 4 inactive members after you
> declared
> > > the decision 'unanimous'.
> > >
> > > On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > As I have been saying before, the language committee works on the
> basis
> > > > that
> > > > if only one person objects, something does not move forward. Many
> > > subjects
> > > > are raised on our mailing list where people are notified that
> something
> > > is
> > > > going to be done and when nobody objects within a certain time frame,
> > the
> > > > proposal is moved forward.
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > GerardM
> > > >
> > > > 2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 
> > > >
> > > > > So Based on the the Archives Jesse and Casey graciously provided
> the
> > > link
> > > > > to, the only discussion about Masry I found was:
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-07#Wikipedia_Egyptian_Arabic
> > > > >
> > > > > When I raised the issue of Masry on this mailing list, raising what
> I
> > > > > thought was valid concerns, and at the same times others were
> raising
> > > > such
> > > > > concerns on meta, Gerard's response was, and I quote:
> > > > >
> > > > > I have indicated that the language
> > > > > > committee was unanimous in deciding that the Egyptian Arabic
> > > Wikipedia
> > > > > > request was eligible.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > As indicated earlier, all members of the language
> > > > > > committee were explicitly asked to consider the issue that you
> > raise.
> > > > The
> > > > > > consequence of this is that in my opinion you refuse people the
> > > freedom
> > > > > to
> > > > > > work on a project in their language, languages that are eligible
> > > under
> > > > > the
> > > > > > language policy of the WMF.
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > Per above link, I see a discussion only between two members (Gerard
> > and
> > > > > Jon). I am pretty confused how did that constitute a 'unanimous
> > > > decision'.
> > > > > Wouldn't that be a gross mis-characterization?
> > > > >
> > > > > Wouldn't refusal to point me to archived discussion *then*
> > > > > mis-characterizing what really happened on the list be grounds for
> > some
> > > > > kind
> > > > > of audit?
> > > > >
> > > > > Forgive me If I am wrong, but that is the only information I have
> to
> > > work
> > > > > on, if I am wrong, I apologize to Gerard.
> > > > >
> > > > > Best Regards,
> > > > > Muhammad Alsebaey
> > > > > ___
> > > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > > Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > > >
> > > > ___
> > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Best Regards,
> > > Muhammad Alsebaey
> > > ___
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > ___
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>
>
>
> --
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

Do you have a set time limit for people to respond in? a week? a month? and
what about the 4 inactive persons, how do you consider them inactive? what
if you had 7 inactive members out of 10 at a time and didnt know it, would
it still be a 'unanimous' decision?

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 4:02 PM, Gerard Meijssen
wrote:

> Hoi,
> You are wrong. If one person had objected at the time, the proposal would
> not have been made eligible.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> 2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 
>
> > Which creates the situation we are in, according to you,  all members of
> > the
> > language committee were explicitly asked to consider the issues that I
> and
> > others raised, but since only one out of the 10+ people responded,
> > therefore
> > they must have all considered all the issues and have no comment, and the
> > decision is unanimous. I am not going to debate with you how this doesnt
> > sound very logical, It is sufficient to say you are now finding out that
> > there were at least 1 objecting and 4 inactive members after you declared
> > the decision 'unanimous'.
> >
> > On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Hoi,
> > > As I have been saying before, the language committee works on the basis
> > > that
> > > if only one person objects, something does not move forward. Many
> > subjects
> > > are raised on our mailing list where people are notified that something
> > is
> > > going to be done and when nobody objects within a certain time frame,
> the
> > > proposal is moved forward.
> > > Thanks,
> > > GerardM
> > >
> > > 2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 
> > >
> > > > So Based on the the Archives Jesse and Casey graciously provided the
> > link
> > > > to, the only discussion about Masry I found was:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-07#Wikipedia_Egyptian_Arabic
> > > >
> > > > When I raised the issue of Masry on this mailing list, raising what I
> > > > thought was valid concerns, and at the same times others were raising
> > > such
> > > > concerns on meta, Gerard's response was, and I quote:
> > > >
> > > > I have indicated that the language
> > > > > committee was unanimous in deciding that the Egyptian Arabic
> > Wikipedia
> > > > > request was eligible.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > As indicated earlier, all members of the language
> > > > > committee were explicitly asked to consider the issue that you
> raise.
> > > The
> > > > > consequence of this is that in my opinion you refuse people the
> > freedom
> > > > to
> > > > > work on a project in their language, languages that are eligible
> > under
> > > > the
> > > > > language policy of the WMF.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > Per above link, I see a discussion only between two members (Gerard
> and
> > > > Jon). I am pretty confused how did that constitute a 'unanimous
> > > decision'.
> > > > Wouldn't that be a gross mis-characterization?
> > > >
> > > > Wouldn't refusal to point me to archived discussion *then*
> > > > mis-characterizing what really happened on the list be grounds for
> some
> > > > kind
> > > > of audit?
> > > >
> > > > Forgive me If I am wrong, but that is the only information I have to
> > work
> > > > on, if I am wrong, I apologize to Gerard.
> > > >
> > > > Best Regards,
> > > > Muhammad Alsebaey
> > > > ___
> > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > >
> > > ___
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Best Regards,
> > Muhammad Alsebaey
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
You are wrong. If one person had objected at the time, the proposal would
not have been made eligible.
Thanks,
 GerardM

2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 

> Which creates the situation we are in, according to you,  all members of
> the
> language committee were explicitly asked to consider the issues that I and
> others raised, but since only one out of the 10+ people responded,
> therefore
> they must have all considered all the issues and have no comment, and the
> decision is unanimous. I am not going to debate with you how this doesnt
> sound very logical, It is sufficient to say you are now finding out that
> there were at least 1 objecting and 4 inactive members after you declared
> the decision 'unanimous'.
>
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > As I have been saying before, the language committee works on the basis
> > that
> > if only one person objects, something does not move forward. Many
> subjects
> > are raised on our mailing list where people are notified that something
> is
> > going to be done and when nobody objects within a certain time frame, the
> > proposal is moved forward.
> > Thanks,
> > GerardM
> >
> > 2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 
> >
> > > So Based on the the Archives Jesse and Casey graciously provided the
> link
> > > to, the only discussion about Masry I found was:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-07#Wikipedia_Egyptian_Arabic
> > >
> > > When I raised the issue of Masry on this mailing list, raising what I
> > > thought was valid concerns, and at the same times others were raising
> > such
> > > concerns on meta, Gerard's response was, and I quote:
> > >
> > > I have indicated that the language
> > > > committee was unanimous in deciding that the Egyptian Arabic
> Wikipedia
> > > > request was eligible.
> > > >
> > >
> > > As indicated earlier, all members of the language
> > > > committee were explicitly asked to consider the issue that you raise.
> > The
> > > > consequence of this is that in my opinion you refuse people the
> freedom
> > > to
> > > > work on a project in their language, languages that are eligible
> under
> > > the
> > > > language policy of the WMF.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > Per above link, I see a discussion only between two members (Gerard and
> > > Jon). I am pretty confused how did that constitute a 'unanimous
> > decision'.
> > > Wouldn't that be a gross mis-characterization?
> > >
> > > Wouldn't refusal to point me to archived discussion *then*
> > > mis-characterizing what really happened on the list be grounds for some
> > > kind
> > > of audit?
> > >
> > > Forgive me If I am wrong, but that is the only information I have to
> work
> > > on, if I am wrong, I apologize to Gerard.
> > >
> > > Best Regards,
> > > Muhammad Alsebaey
> > > ___
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Best Regards,
> Muhammad Alsebaey
> ___
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

Which creates the situation we are in, according to you,  all members of the
language committee were explicitly asked to consider the issues that I and
others raised, but since only one out of the 10+ people responded, therefore
they must have all considered all the issues and have no comment, and the
decision is unanimous. I am not going to debate with you how this doesnt
sound very logical, It is sufficient to say you are now finding out that
there were at least 1 objecting and 4 inactive members after you declared
the decision 'unanimous'.

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Gerard Meijssen
wrote:

> Hoi,
> As I have been saying before, the language committee works on the basis
> that
> if only one person objects, something does not move forward. Many subjects
> are raised on our mailing list where people are notified that something is
> going to be done and when nobody objects within a certain time frame, the
> proposal is moved forward.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> 2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 
>
> > So Based on the the Archives Jesse and Casey graciously provided the link
> > to, the only discussion about Masry I found was:
> >
> >
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-07#Wikipedia_Egyptian_Arabic
> >
> > When I raised the issue of Masry on this mailing list, raising what I
> > thought was valid concerns, and at the same times others were raising
> such
> > concerns on meta, Gerard's response was, and I quote:
> >
> > I have indicated that the language
> > > committee was unanimous in deciding that the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia
> > > request was eligible.
> > >
> >
> > As indicated earlier, all members of the language
> > > committee were explicitly asked to consider the issue that you raise.
> The
> > > consequence of this is that in my opinion you refuse people the freedom
> > to
> > > work on a project in their language, languages that are eligible under
> > the
> > > language policy of the WMF.
> > >
> > >
> > Per above link, I see a discussion only between two members (Gerard and
> > Jon). I am pretty confused how did that constitute a 'unanimous
> decision'.
> > Wouldn't that be a gross mis-characterization?
> >
> > Wouldn't refusal to point me to archived discussion *then*
> > mis-characterizing what really happened on the list be grounds for some
> > kind
> > of audit?
> >
> > Forgive me If I am wrong, but that is the only information I have to work
> > on, if I am wrong, I apologize to Gerard.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> > Muhammad Alsebaey
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
As I have been saying before, the language committee works on the basis that
if only one person objects, something does not move forward. Many subjects
are raised on our mailing list where people are notified that something is
going to be done and when nobody objects within a certain time frame, the
proposal is moved forward.
Thanks,
 GerardM

2009/1/11 Muhammad Alsebaey 

> So Based on the the Archives Jesse and Casey graciously provided the link
> to, the only discussion about Masry I found was:
>
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-07#Wikipedia_Egyptian_Arabic
>
> When I raised the issue of Masry on this mailing list, raising what I
> thought was valid concerns, and at the same times others were raising such
> concerns on meta, Gerard's response was, and I quote:
>
> I have indicated that the language
> > committee was unanimous in deciding that the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia
> > request was eligible.
> >
>
> As indicated earlier, all members of the language
> > committee were explicitly asked to consider the issue that you raise. The
> > consequence of this is that in my opinion you refuse people the freedom
> to
> > work on a project in their language, languages that are eligible under
> the
> > language policy of the WMF.
> >
> >
> Per above link, I see a discussion only between two members (Gerard and
> Jon). I am pretty confused how did that constitute a 'unanimous decision'.
> Wouldn't that be a gross mis-characterization?
>
> Wouldn't refusal to point me to archived discussion *then*
> mis-characterizing what really happened on the list be grounds for some
> kind
> of audit?
>
> Forgive me If I am wrong, but that is the only information I have to work
> on, if I am wrong, I apologize to Gerard.
>
> Best Regards,
> Muhammad Alsebaey
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
This is a personal attack, an attack that is the result of discontent of the
way in which the policy of the language committee has been implemented.

So let me show where Mohammed is wrong. First of all, the language committee
is multiple people. Recently two high powered people were added to the
language committee. They are Michael Everson, who is so much of an expert in
this field that he rates his own Wikipedia article and Milos Rancic, a
linguist and a steward of the WMF. It is also incorrect that I would be the
only one "doing" things. The last request to the board for a Pontic
Wikipedia was written by Pathoschild. With such people actively involved,
the argument that I can force my will on them is ... a bit off.

Second, Mohammed is upset about one issue only. The existence of the
Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia. Mohammed is on one side of a dispute. He is under
the impression that I am on the other side of this. The people who are on
the other side of his dispute are the people who requested the Egyptian
Arabic Wikipedia and who are making the most of their project.

At the time when the request for the arz.wp was made, I asked the members of
the language committee if Egyptian Arabic was eligible. I got the reply that
it should be because it is recognised as a separate language. Nobody
objected to this and consequently the language was given the status of
eligible. The reason why I consulted the other members of the committee was
exactly because I foresaw people objecting forcefully. I have not been
disappointed. I am disappointed by Pathoschild's assertion that there was
not enough discussion, he should have spoken up at the time.

As far as the localisation for Egyptian Arabic is concerned, there is a
request for an Egyptian Arabic Wiktionary and it is to fulfill the
requirement for a secondary project that the localisation is doing so well.

Key in the current policy is that we have looked for objective criteria to
base the policy on. Using the ISO-639-3 standard is at the basis of how
languages are identified on the Internet. We publish our content on the
Internet so it was an obvious choice. The procedure and the requirements are
well published. It does not make everybody happy, including myself but it
does its job.

I have discussed illiteracy at some point. It is a well established fact
that learning to read and write is best done by learning to read and write
in the mother tongue. I have been involved in the translation of a study
about the use of SignWriting in Saudi Arabia that proved this point. There
are many such studies, and they make it quite clear that a close connection
between the written language and the spoken language improves literacy. When
the basic reading and writing skills are learned, a second language is
learned much easier and this has a lasting impact on the abilities of a
student.

It may surprise you, but I have a long history of trying to achieve things
for languages like the Arabic language. At some stage there was an
opportunity to have the complete English language Wikipedia translated by a
state of the art machine translaton engine. For all kinds of reasons this
did not happen. One of the reasons was the availability of servers.

The Arabic Wikipedia is doing really well. It has a consistently excellent
localisation, and it is growing nicely. If anything I am surprised that it
is not bigger then it is. In the discussions about Egyptian Arabic, I have
made the point repeatedly that the best way of proving the point that
standard Arabic is superior is by making sure that the Arabic Wikipedia is
indeed superior.

As to Latin script in the arz.wikipedia, that is news to me. If this existed
while in the Incubator, the project would not have had approval. I am
disappointed about this. If anything, this damages the project considerably.

Given that Egyptian Arabic is indeed a separate language, it is not feasible
to do full justice to the language by using machine translation. Machine
translation only work up to a point. One such tool that is likely to do a
great job is called Apertium, this tool is particularly good at translating
closely related languages, and I am sure that you agree that this applies...
I would be happily surprised if a real effort is given in creating such a
machine translation.

Thanks,
 GerardM



2009/1/10 Mohamed Magdy 

> Hi all,
>
> I would like to propose the dismantling of the language committee and
> creating a new one (not including Gerard, of course).
>
> Why?
> Because it is chronically malfunctioning.
> Manifested in:
> # Gerard is forcing all his opinion, anything else is going nowhere.
> # Other members don't really care and leave it, unfortunately for us, to
> Gerard.
>
> Background:
> I read about how unfair the LangCom before but I didn't really care because
> it wasn't affecting a language I care about. Then came the dreadful
> proposal
> for a dialect Wikipedia in my dialect, Egyptian dialect. At first, I wasn't
> sure in the

Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Jesse Plamondon-Willard]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Muhammad Alsebaey  wrote:
> So Based on the the Archives Jesse and Casey graciously provided the link
> to, the only discussion about Masry I found was:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-07#Wikipedia_Egyptian_Arabic

Yes, there was no discussion about approving the Egyptian Arabic
Wikipedia before its creation. That is the reason for the various
changes that occurred (and are occurring) after the wiki was created,
to ensure this never happens again.

-- 
Yours cordially,
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

So Based on the the Archives Jesse and Casey graciously provided the link
to, the only discussion about Masry I found was:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-07#Wikipedia_Egyptian_Arabic

When I raised the issue of Masry on this mailing list, raising what I
thought was valid concerns, and at the same times others were raising such
concerns on meta, Gerard's response was, and I quote:

I have indicated that the language
> committee was unanimous in deciding that the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia
> request was eligible.
>

As indicated earlier, all members of the language
> committee were explicitly asked to consider the issue that you raise. The
> consequence of this is that in my opinion you refuse people the freedom to
> work on a project in their language, languages that are eligible under the
> language policy of the WMF.
>
>
Per above link, I see a discussion only between two members (Gerard and
Jon). I am pretty confused how did that constitute a 'unanimous decision'.
Wouldn't that be a gross mis-characterization?

Wouldn't refusal to point me to archived discussion *then*
mis-characterizing what really happened on the list be grounds for some kind
of audit?

Forgive me If I am wrong, but that is the only information I have to work
on, if I am wrong, I apologize to Gerard.

Best Regards,
Muhammad Alsebaey
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Jimmy Wales]

Mohamed Magdy wrote:
> (I heard that people were happy at Wikimania (Florence?)
> because of that proposal but I fail to understand why the Egyptian people
> there didn't express their opinion about it (it was in Egypt :!).

I was sitting next to an Egyptian VIP in the front row when the 
announcement was made, and he laughed and indicated that he thought this 
was stupid.

It is not up to me to make any decisions nor have any particular opinion 
about Egyptian, but this is one of many data points that suggest to me 
that the current process is widely regarded as being broken.

--Jimbo

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

I personally do not care about the nature of Gerard's character, he may be a
very nice person if I meet him in person ( next Wikimania maybe). I am just
refering to the way he conducted himself during the discussions on
languages. And yes, I strongly believe this was aggressive. I won't get into
such details but you can read the other thread.

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 2:38 PM, effe iets anders
wrote:

> I don´t think this is very fair. You can call Gerard a lot, but not really
> agressive... He can be very enthusiast, committed, and very sure he is
> right, and trying to persuade others, but agressive?
>
> Anyway, I don't think a mailinglist (especially not this one) is a good
> place to discuss *people* rather then subjects. Have you tried to discuss
> your problems directly with Gerard, Muhammad and David? Sometimes that
> helps.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Lodewijk
>
> 2009/1/10 David Gerard 
>
> > 2009/1/10 Muhammad Alsebaey :
> >
> > >   - Gerard has been the *only* person from LangCom that I have seen
> reply
> > >   to any of the issues, his replies are selective, he refuses to answer
> > >   whatever he doesnt think is relevant to his argument and is in
> general
> > very
> > >   aggressive, If the guys at LangCom chose him as the public face, I
> > would say
> > >   they were looking to pick fights rather than communicate decisions.
> >
> >
> > Seconded, particularly the aggression.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Casey Brown]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Muhammad Alsebaey  wrote:
> Thank you for the links, the last time I asked to look at those I was told
> the whole mailing list was private and not open to the public, I think
> opening this up is a huge step forward towards transparency.
>

Whoever told you that was misinformed or it was a misunderstanding.
There has been semi-public archives for a long time:


-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

Hi Jesse,

Thank you for the links, the last time I asked to look at those I was told
the whole mailing list was private and not open to the public, I think
opening this up is a huge step forward towards transparency.

I appreciate also your clarification about Gerard, I would have appreciated
him making that clear in the discussions that happened.

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Jesse Plamondon-Willard <
pathosch...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Muhammad Alsebaey  wrote:
> >   - Gerard has been the *only* person from LangCom that I have seen reply
> >   to any of the issues, his replies are selective, he refuses to answer
> >   whatever he doesnt think is relevant to his argument and is in general
> very
> >   aggressive, If the guys at LangCom chose him as the public face, I
> would say
> >   they were looking to pick fights rather than communicate decisions.
>
> Gerard is definitely not a subcommittee spokesperson. Every word he
> and I speak are as individual members, speaking our own opinions.
> Discussion with the subcommittee should be done on the mailing list or
> on , where
> I for example frequently respond.
>
>
> Muhammad Alsebaey  wrote:
> >   - After looking on the meta page for the committee, I asked if the
> >   committee has any mechanism for determining inactive members, if the
> process
> >   of decision is 'I sent an email and no one objected', that may mean
> >   approval, but it also may mean that people are not active. I got no
> answer
> >   for the question but Immediately after Masry controversy, two committee
> >   members resigned and one was removed for inactivity without any
> explanation
> >   given, is that an acknowledgement that the committee was
> malfunctioning? Why
> >   wasnt there some kind of public explaination.
>
> The members resigned or were removed at my proposal, one of several
> changes to ensure the problem you mentioned did not occur again. There
> are no language subcommittee announcements, but this and other
> decisions can be understood by reading the public archives:
> <
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-11#Remove_inactive_members
> >.
>
> --
> Yours cordially,
> Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
>
> ___
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> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



-- 
Best Regards,
Muhammad Alsebaey
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[effe iets anders]

I don´t think this is very fair. You can call Gerard a lot, but not really
agressive... He can be very enthusiast, committed, and very sure he is
right, and trying to persuade others, but agressive?

Anyway, I don't think a mailinglist (especially not this one) is a good
place to discuss *people* rather then subjects. Have you tried to discuss
your problems directly with Gerard, Muhammad and David? Sometimes that
helps.

Best regards,

Lodewijk

2009/1/10 David Gerard 

> 2009/1/10 Muhammad Alsebaey :
>
> >   - Gerard has been the *only* person from LangCom that I have seen reply
> >   to any of the issues, his replies are selective, he refuses to answer
> >   whatever he doesnt think is relevant to his argument and is in general
> very
> >   aggressive, If the guys at LangCom chose him as the public face, I
> would say
> >   they were looking to pick fights rather than communicate decisions.
>
>
> Seconded, particularly the aggression.
>
>
> - d.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Jesse Plamondon-Willard]

Muhammad Alsebaey  wrote:
>   - Gerard has been the *only* person from LangCom that I have seen reply
>   to any of the issues, his replies are selective, he refuses to answer
>   whatever he doesnt think is relevant to his argument and is in general very
>   aggressive, If the guys at LangCom chose him as the public face, I would say
>   they were looking to pick fights rather than communicate decisions.

Gerard is definitely not a subcommittee spokesperson. Every word he
and I speak are as individual members, speaking our own opinions.
Discussion with the subcommittee should be done on the mailing list or
on , where
I for example frequently respond.


Muhammad Alsebaey  wrote:
>   - After looking on the meta page for the committee, I asked if the
>   committee has any mechanism for determining inactive members, if the process
>   of decision is 'I sent an email and no one objected', that may mean
>   approval, but it also may mean that people are not active. I got no answer
>   for the question but Immediately after Masry controversy, two committee
>   members resigned and one was removed for inactivity without any explanation
>   given, is that an acknowledgement that the committee was malfunctioning? Why
>   wasnt there some kind of public explaination.

The members resigned or were removed at my proposal, one of several
changes to ensure the problem you mentioned did not occur again. There
are no language subcommittee announcements, but this and other
decisions can be understood by reading the public archives:
.

-- 
Yours cordially,
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[David Gerard]

2009/1/10 Muhammad Alsebaey :

>   - Gerard has been the *only* person from LangCom that I have seen reply
>   to any of the issues, his replies are selective, he refuses to answer
>   whatever he doesnt think is relevant to his argument and is in general very
>   aggressive, If the guys at LangCom chose him as the public face, I would say
>   they were looking to pick fights rather than communicate decisions.


Seconded, particularly the aggression.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Muhammad Alsebaey]

I was against the idea of creating a Masry Wikipedia (there is a looong
thread where I brought it up here), *However* I am against deleting any
Wikipedia that has been created and picked up an active community,
regardless of how controversial it is. It is simply unfair to the people who
have invested their time in the 300 something articles it has now. I think
that is the correct thing to do despite the volume of complaints from people
we are recieving on ar.wp and OTRS.

That said, I am personally taking issue with LangCom.


   - Gerard has been the *only* person from LangCom that I have seen reply
   to any of the issues, his replies are selective, he refuses to answer
   whatever he doesnt think is relevant to his argument and is in general very
   aggressive, If the guys at LangCom chose him as the public face, I would say
   they were looking to pick fights rather than communicate decisions.
   - I Have asked several times about the delibration process and how the
   tons of arguments given on the controversial Masry topic were considered, I
   one time got an answer that was simply 'Can't disclose the arguments because
   of privacy issues of committee members' and the other was 'There was no
   arguments, I asked on the mailing list if I can create it and no one said
   no'. Both answers suggest an either disengaged committee or one that doesnt
   think transparency of the decision process is important, but rather,
   secretive decision is better.
   - After looking on the meta page for the committee, I asked if the
   committee has any mechanism for determining inactive members, if the process
   of decision is 'I sent an email and no one objected', that may mean
   approval, but it also may mean that people are not active. I got no answer
   for the question but Immediately after Masry controversy, two committee
   members resigned and one was removed for inactivity without any explanation
   given, is that an acknowledgement that the committee was malfunctioning? Why
   wasnt there some kind of public explaination.



-- 
Best Regards,
Muhammad Alsebaey
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Jesse Plamondon-Willard]

(This message is not an official message from the subcommittee, just
myself as a member.)


Hello Mohamed Magdy,

As a member of the language subcommittee, I am sorry you are
disappointed with our performance, but it is not true that its members
do not care.

The Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia was approved with insufficient
subcommittee discussion, which sparked some changes inside the
subcommittee. For example, we replaced several inactive members to
increase participation, and there is an upcoming proposal for a quorum
to ensure that no other decision can be made without community
consensus.

Subcommittee discussion is publicly archived (except comments by 2
members), as you can see in these relevant discussions:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-11#Subcommittee_dissatisfaction
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-12#Wiktionary_Masry

I am also sorry we are seen as unfair; I have tried to ensure a
universal, objective policy that treats all requests equally. If you
have any suggestions, please let me know.

As for dissolving the subcommittee and recreating it with a different
membership, I would not be opposed.

-- 
Yours cordially,
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Platonides]

Mohamed Magdy wrote:
> * I think it would be doable to make a tab that Egyptianizes (or any other
> dialect) the Arabic article, that is, if we have some sort of conversion
> memory, that is if the dialect is stable (or standard), the dialect differs
> from a place to another, from a muhafazah to another (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhafazah). if anyone knows the technical
> method we could make a trial instead of the great mess of dialect
> Wikipedias. I'm not too sure about this compromise yet.

If there're clear (algoritmic) rules for that, it can be done.
See at http://zh.wikipedia.org/ how it can be viewed on seven! different
variants.



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[Foundation-l] How to dismantle a language committee

[Mohamed Magdy]

Hi all,

I would like to propose the dismantling of the language committee and
creating a new one (not including Gerard, of course).

Why?
Because it is chronically malfunctioning.
Manifested in:
# Gerard is forcing all his opinion, anything else is going nowhere.
# Other members don't really care and leave it, unfortunately for us, to
Gerard.

Background:
I read about how unfair the LangCom before but I didn't really care because
it wasn't affecting a language I care about. Then came the dreadful proposal
for a dialect Wikipedia in my dialect, Egyptian dialect. At first, I wasn't
sure in the beginning if I should support it or not, then I became sure if
this should happen, it shouldn't happen on a platform like Wikipedia (for
many reasons laid out in detail in the proposal page). I don't care if Ghaly
and company (the people who made the proposal) started that on an
independent website (Wikia or on an own domain for their campaign) but on
Wikimedia, we should do the right thing (I hope). The proposal was approved
(Gerard requires that you have the relevant ISO code and everything from
there could be done, he is a bit annoyed now becuase of all the current
proposals for dialect Wikipedias which were brought up by the Egyptian
dialect Wikipedia proposal) and the technical team had no option but to
create the wiki because Gerard gave it his blessings and the foundation
didn't say a word (I heard that people were happy at Wikimania (Florence?)
because of that proposal but I fail to understand why the Egyptian people
there didn't express their opinion about it (it was in Egypt :!).

Trivia (I like structure but..):
* Gerard is talking about how good the localization of the Egyptian dialect,
well, that is a natural thing when the localization is a matter of
copy-pasting Arabic translation and converting it to a slang form or English
words in Arabic (nothing wrong at all in that of course, we do it all the
time, but we don't do it for the sake of looking hip (there is a certain
language charisma we have in Egypt, that is, if you can speak English and
mix English with Arabic to look cool. don't know if other countries have
it), we do it only to introduce new words that we are unable to find their
equivalent in Arabic (e.g. Acetylcysteine which is أسيتيل سيستئين in Arabic,
basically English (latin) in Arabic).

* May be ISO is wrong: why people are taking ISO codes as absolute,
don't-discuss matter? in our case, we have 22 dialects of Arabic and the
pathetic decision to call them languages of the supposedly "Macro" language
Arabic, that is nonsense and it should be amended, not the blind (if not
stupid) opinion of making all these sorts of dialectical projects (
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=ara). I tried to contact
the ISO, they say to contact the local office in my country (
http://www.eos.org.eg), and as always, they have dead emails, don't know
about the phone numbers, I'm not even sure that anyone there would listen to
a word of mine, besides, I wish to see changes before my expiry date is due.


* Gerard have the false delusion of protecting the freedom of Egyptians and
taking us out of illiteracy into the light of knowledge by making a new
Wikipedia in slang and dialect. well, you are *wrong*, you are doing quite
the opposite and other people are helping you alas. hope you understand that
someday.

* Wave of ignorance: a new wave of ignorance are upon us and I don't like
Wikipedia being part of it.

* Did you know that when I tell people about this new Wikipedia, the
consiperacy theory of the west dividing us is brought up? like it wasn't
enough that the ar.wiki isn't appreciated because of the several issues we
have. no, now we have another big issue created because of the carelessness
of some people. arz.wiki is a regression, making people think of Wikipedia
as an enemy is a regression.

* Did you know that what was rejected before, is being done on that
arz.wiki? I'm talking about Arabic in latin characters Wikipedia. they have
no objections there if you write Arabic in latin (a big no no in ar.wiki or
any another respectable venue). dialect writing/Arabic in latin writing is
for fun only, nothing serious.

* They have a template on arz.wiki which is placed on articles copied from
ar.wiki that says ~"this article needs more egyptianizing" like the one on
uncyclopedia "this article needs to be more uncyclopediac" or something like
that (sorry for the lack of links).

* I think it would be doable to make a tab that Egyptianizes (or any other
dialect) the Arabic article, that is, if we have some sort of conversion
memory, that is if the dialect is stable (or standard), the dialect differs
from a place to another, from a muhafazah to another (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhafazah). if anyone knows the technical
method we could make a trial instead of the great mess of dialect
Wikipedias. I'm not too sure about this compromise yet.

So, to sum it up:
# Dissolve the current committee and m