Hoi,
There is a strong sentiment against allowing for the Egyptian Arabic
Wikipedia by those who prefer a unified Arabic Wikipedia. They have used all
kinds of arguments but in essence they refuse others to work on what is
after all a recognised separate language. When they argue that it will
fracture the effort for the Arabic Wikipedia, they forget that it is not
their time and effort they are directing. When they argue that not much is
written in Egyptian Arabic, they forget that this is no different for many
languages like Limburgian as well. Their problem is that their view of a
world where everyone speaks the same language is at odds with how it is
perceived others.
There is a request for an Egyptian Arabic Wiktionary in the pipe line and
with 99,81% for the MediaWiki messages and 97.51% they have demonstrated
their comitment to this effort. It is all the more remarkable because they
do not have their Wikipedia yet. It is a clear testament to their wish to do
well for their language.
The point of the language committee is that it has the remit to decide on
these issues.Consequently there are situations where some will not agree
what it is that the committee decides and it means that there will be no
public consensus. This is to be expected and accepted.
Brion, when you have specific questions as to the approval of Egyptian
Arabic, raise them. What you are doing is calling the process itself into
doubt. As it is clear that you are not familiar with the process in the
first place, the policy as it is does not allow for extinct and constructed
languages and you write that such languages are created, I think you should
create the arz.wikipedia.org.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 11:58 PM, Brion Vibber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > Egyptian Arabic is recognised as a language by the International
> > Standardisation Organisation (ISO) in its ISO-639-3 standard.
>
> Well, so is Klingon! :) An ISO-639-3 listing doesn't by itself confer
> appropriateness for use; it merely confirms that the language can be
> referred to with a standardized code.
>
> Appropriateness for use in a Wikimedia project tends to vary quite a
> bit; in some areas we avoid creating wikis for national variants of
> larger language groups, in other areas we create a lot of national and
> subnational variants.
>
> Since this is a written medium, national or subnational language
> variants are usually most controversial where there isn't a standard
> orthography and the requested form is not commonly used in written
> communication. (On the other hand, even extinct languages are frequently
> given wikis where they have a long written historical context.)
>
>
> I'm only asking about arz specifically because:
>
> a) It's recently come up as we're tidying up the backlog, so it's at the
> top of the pile
>
> b) I've gotten specific questions about the approval process for arz, so
> we're making sure everything's clear before setting it up
>
> c) The public discussion I have seen was not conclusive, and it's not
> yet clear that the langcom discussion was conclusive either.
>
> If the discussion was conclusive, then we'll be happy to finish it up.
> But since I'd rather not go through this every time we have another wiki
> to create, I want to make sure that the process is clear.
>
> - -- brion
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