Hoi,
The process of a language is quite straight forward. As the requirements for
a new project are well published and by and large well known, When a
linguistic entity has an ISO-639-3 code and when it is not a constructed
language or an extinct language, it becomes eligible. When there are
circumstances that are different or complicating, the language committee is
asked for an opinion. We do not require a quorum, we are maybe not "typical"
but we can our job done.
In the final step of the process, we inform the chair of the board of our
recommendation for approving a new project. We are currently in the process
of approving a new project and we have asked Michael Snow for his opinion of
the process. He indicated that we are to send this message to the members of
the board and, if we do not get questions or a negative indication we may
assume that there is consent.
Given that all our requests for the creation of new projects are approved in
this way, there is hardly any need for you to question that due process has
been followed. Again, nothing happens if the language committee is not in
agreement. The current practice has resulted in more viable projects, it has
lead to an improvement in the localisation of our projects. I would argue
that the current process has proven itself.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 10:31 PM, Brion Vibber <brion(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi,
* Why is it improperly labeled? This helps to prevent issues in the
future.
As noted in other response -- the summary didn't refer to the language
requested, so could not be easily found or prioritized in response to
inquiries.
* The mailing list of the language committee is
available for members of
the
language committee only. The language committee
works by full consensus,
consequently when any one objects to something that needs approval, it is
not approved. So consequently we do not have anything to show for you,
but
as has been indicated befor,e at the time when
the status of eligibility
was to be decided for Egyptian Arabic, the question was raised by me if
it
should be considered eligible and this was
discussed on the list, the
answer
we agreed on was "yes".
How many people actually, actively, agreed to it, and on what basis?
* I do not know who told you that only two
members discussed this but
given
the way that only one voice is enough to prevent
something from going
through, it does not need much discussion when people approve.
* So we do discuss things when we find a need for it.
As an operational matter, we need to be able to rely on the langcom's
decisions to carry weight, or else we have to do more individual
research into your requests, which means we can't respond to them as
quickly as you'd like.
If a failure to discuss is taken as approval, this may indicate that the
committee's process is dysfunctional.
Typically, a quorum (minimum number of discussion participants) is
required to ensure that adequate attention has been paid to requests.
Does the language committee currently have a quorum requirement? What is
it, and was it reached in this particular discussion?
* What we do not find is that when requests are
approved and accepted by
the
board that they are created. It is not the first
time that this proved a
problem.
Please note that setup of language subdomains of existing project sites
is totally outside the scope of the business of the board of directors
of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The business of the board is to set a direction for the company, hire an
executive to manage the day-to-day operations of the company moving in
that direction, and provide oversight of how well the company is doing
that job and whether the company is spending donor money effectively.
If operational requests you care about are behind, don't waste your or
the board's time invoking the board -- come to me directly and ask
what's the hold-up.
In this case, the general hold-up for a long time was simply that the
tech team was spending most effort on low-level site operations;
reconfiguration and new wiki setup requests were handled either by
volunteer admins doing general housecleaning on the queue, or by direct
handling of a particular request brought to our attention.
Apparently this particular request was either unseen or uninteresting to
volunteer admins going through the queue, and no one reached out
specifically to us about it.
We're now clearing out general backlogs and are trying to ensure that
the requests are legitimate -- there's nothing less fun than changing a
site configuration or setting up a new language site and then finding
out the community didn't actually want it!
If the existing infrastructure for language setup approval is not
working effectively at establishing a firm consensus, I'd like to make
sure we fix that process -- it'll be easier on everybody. Approved
requests will carry more weight, they'll get taken care of faster, and
we're less likely to have to reverse something already set up.
- -- brion
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