I'm non-voting, of course, so I'm not going to offer an opinion, per se. But, Gideon, I keep hearing "in Berlin". Whom did you speak to in Berlin? LangCom people? Board members? If it was board members, then we might actually need some guidance as to what the board was thinking, and as to what they might like us to do about this.
Steven
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Kaya Folks
We have completed all the tasks asked of us in berlin and continue to
expand the translations and the article content. As I see it we are ready
to go,
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Nyungar
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Gideon Digby
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One week has passed, and two members spoke in favor, with one opposed. This project is therefore approved.
Steven
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Well, there was a discussion starting about December 3, 2016 that MF-Warburg started. Milos and Gerard responded favorably (providing language check was positive). Amir was concerned the test might have been too stubby. There were no other comments, and there’s been nothing since (except for discussion about the lack of response of a language expert).
The test has been running on Incubator for nearly 11 years. It’s probably still a little on the stubby side, in my view. But it’s remained active all year while awaiting “language confirmation”, all the interface translation is done, and it’s got a lot of pages. And they’ve clearly cleaned up the quality of the language. So here’s my suggestion:
* Let’s open a new discussion week here, just for transparency.
* I’d suggest (but of course can’t demand) not letting “stubbiness” get in the way at this point. When I inform them of approval, I’ll certainly strongly encourage them to build up the pages they already have going forward. The community has been active, and its members have been really patient in continuing to work on for all these years. I think they deserve our recognition and support at this point.
Steven
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In a way, Oliver, that just emphasizes my point. Everyone on this Committee is a volunteer, every bit as much as the contributors to the new projects. I don't think anyone can expect volunteers here to make themselves crazy with work, either. On the other hand, at a certain point, contributors to test projects are entitled to some resolution from us. And if they've been working hard, doing legitimate work, that resolution should be favorable, and shouldn't depend on our ability or inability to get a response from language experts.
I'm inclined to propose a new rule. Following is a draft, not a request for a vote, just to lay some ideas on the table for everyone:
RULE (DRAFT). To Handbook (committee), Final Approval, item #2<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(committee)#Fin…>, add the following:
4. If experts have been contacted (per item 1. above) but do not respond, the test wiki community should be asked to provide the names of two additional (different) language experts, and those should be contacted as above.
5. If those experts also do not respond, and at least six months have passed since the first request for language verification, the following procedure applies:
5.1. LangCom makes a determination whether it thinks the test project content is presumed legitimate. This is to be based, subjectively, on the length of time the test has been open, the size of the test, and the number of different contributors that have participated over time.
5.2. If LangCom believes the test project content is legitimate, a vote can be called. The project can be approved if 2/3 of all members voting, with at least five positive votes, agree.
5.3. Otherwise (or if the vote does not succeed), the test community is told that language verification has failed, and that they need to continue working on the test project for another six months, at which time another attempt will be made for language verification.
Again, these are just ideas for now.
Steven
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I was going to hold off on this until the holidays are over, but rather remarkably, unless somebody hacked the Library of Congress's web site<https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_changes.php>, Montenegrin has been granted an ISO 639–2 code ("cnr"). This has been in the air over the last month, and represents the first addition to ISO 639–2 in over five years. The Montenegrin community is jumping for joy, and I've just full-protected the page Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Montenegrin 5<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Monten…> on Meta because the discussion is getting out of hand.
If srwiki, hrwiki and bswiki didn't exist, we wouldn't have to create this one, either. But I have to admit that I don't really see any way we can currently justify not approving this project (as "eligible"). My questions are, therefore:
* Am I right about that?
* Is LangCom willing to see this project marked as "eligible" based on an ISO 639-2 code alone?
* The rules are that non-collective ISO 639-2 codes are supposed to be reflected in ISO 639-3 as well. So do I wait until this code is published by SIL?
* If so, what happens if SIL does not take action?
Steven
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This is another Wikidata language-tag request.
Note to people posting such requests: Please describe in the title of the posting what it is, instead of making us guess. Thanks.
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2017 has been the most successful year for new projects since 2013. Ten projects have been created, two more are in language verification, and one more is awaiting the end of a week's formal notice on Meta.
The last project I am presenting for approval during 2017 is Pashto Wikivoyage<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikivoyage_Pashto>. I marked it "eligible" today. In fact, it is ready for approval. Satdeep Gill had a bit of a look last week, and he seemed to think the project team was doing good work.
Seven-day clock starts now. Thank you.
Steven
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One week is up here, with two speaking in favor and one opposed. We could keep this open here a few more days, as the formal notice period on Meta has four more days to run anyway.
In any event, the main contributors were planning to focus on interface translation during their school vacations. Should I have them go back and create more content pages instead? Or simply encourage them to continue to create content pages after the project is moved into subdomain?
Steven
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Dear colleagues:
As the end of the conventional calendar year approaches, and many of you may be going away for a bit to enjoy time with family and friends, I want to summarize what happened in 2017, as well as the tasks and issues I think are already pending and waiting for us at the beginning of 2018:
2017:
* Ten projects approved and created, the most in a single year since 2014.
* Another two projects simply await completion of the formal, seven-day comment period at Meta before final approval. I expect both to have phabricator tasks open by year-end for their creation.
* Two other projects are tentatively approved, pending language verification.
Specific issues currently open:
* Decision on the Nungar (Wikipedia) project
* Opening of a moderated discussion on Meta in Spanish about the language issues at Nahuatl Wikipedia (action item: Maor)
* Language verification and final approvals of Ingush and Gorontalo Wikipedias
Policy issues currently open:
* Creation of parallel projects in second scripts where a project already exists: See my email of 5 Dec, 15:39 UTC<https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/langcom/2017-December/001710.html>
* Clarification on policy as to what conlangs (and, for that matter historical languages) should be eligible: This is partly an outgrowth of the LFN approval, and partly an outgrowth of the longstanding requests by communities like the "Ancient Greek" community, especially given that LangCom has marked "Coptic" as approved.
New specific issues to be opened at the beginning of 2018:
* Eligibility of Montenegrin Wikipedia. Some media reports out of Montenegro—and some correspondence between certain Wikimedians and SIL—suggest that a langcode for Montenegrin (cnr) will be published by SIL in the January 2018 approval release. Montenegrins are already screaming for their project. Although Montenegrin—and for that matter, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian—are all mutually intelligible, I assume that if this code is, in fact, approved, then this project will be eligible. I'd like to get an early confirmation of that so that if and when the code is published, I can act promptly.
* Proposal to close Cebuano Wikipedia<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_C…>. There is a proposal to remove all the bot-created content and port the rest of the project to Incubator. Given that cebwiki has over five million pages, that's absurd on its face. But some of the bot content is of poor quality. So I'm not sure what should happen with this proposal, or what we can/should do about it.
* Merger of Beta Wikiversity into Incubator. The most recent version of this remains open. I think we should decide one way or the other if this is happening or not and be done with it.
* I will continue to introduce RFL requests that have been open for a long time.
Happy new year to all!
Steven
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