Langcom February 2017

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Wikiversity Hindi eligible.
by MF-Warburg 14 Feb '17

14 Feb '17

I marked Wikiversity Hindi as eligible. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikiversity_Hindi

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Proposal for needed experts / expertise
by Milos Rancic 12 Feb '17

12 Feb '17

1. (previously (3) ) I would go with SIL's expertise with the languages of New Guinea. It looks like the Solomonic solution for our needs. 2. I agree with Michael that it's hard to find such areal experts, that we are need for Southeast Asian languages, meaning that I would go with asking André Müller to join us. If nobody objects two proposals above, I would conclude them on February 18th as our decision. 3. (previously (1) ) We still need an areal expert and hopefully Wikimedian and hopefully a native person for Central and South American languages. If we have no better idea till February 18th, I would publish our request on wikimedia-l.

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After the project creation
by Milos Rancic 12 Feb '17

12 Feb '17

It would be nice if the LangCom member, who has taken care about creation of the particular project, writes at least a article about the language and culture (and possible previously created projects) and send it to wikimedia-l and to Wikimedia PR to publish it on blog.wikimedia.org. It doesn't have to be, but it would be definitely nice. If the member who has lead the project up to creation doesn't want/like/whatever writing such an article, please let us know and somebody else could take that task.

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Membership changes
by Milos Rancic 11 Feb '17

11 Feb '17

One issue: membership. == Membership == * Accepting any new member would still require consensus of those who expressed their opinion. (Nothing has changed.) * LangCom members should read messages in a timely fashion (at least twice per week), and to contribute on such decisions, where appropriate, within the deadline, or otherwise presumably at least once per month (this could be a simple +1). Lapses in participation would result in a "warning" after three months, and revocation of membership after six. (Note: This is actual proposal for the policy change!) * At this moment of time we have 17 members. One of them has very specific role (Zadiak, Wikiversity). I don't remember if I heard at all three of them. Five of them are quite quiet during the last few years. While it's good to create a general limit of 10-15 members, I think it is not useful at the moment, as we don't have all necessary expertise inside of the committee. However, on the long run, we could limit accepting new members from already covered areas. In relation to Wikimedia and computers in general we are pretty strong and I see no reason to increase the number of LangCom members based on those types of expertise. However, we lack in expertise and connections related to, most importantly, South (and Central) America and Southeast Asia (including Austronesian languages). It would be good to have somebody for the languages of New Guinea (~1500 of them). I would also like to see a little bit of ethnnolinguistic diversity inside of the committee. At the moment we are 16/17 native Indo-European speakers and just two members are not of European ancestry. In other words, I think another African member should be welcome, as well. My proposal (so, please, comment this paragraph if you don't agree or you want to make addition or change!) is to publish on wikimedia-l that we are searching for three member profiles, which should be, ideally, similar to Oliver: (1) A Wikimedian and expert in South and Central American indigenous languages; (2) A Wikimedian and expert in Southeast Asian (including Austronesian) languages; (3) A Wikimedian and expert in New Guinea languages. That would raise the number of LangCom members to 20 and from this point of time, we should wait to lose at least 7-8 members before adding any new.

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Approval of Khowar Wikipedia
by Satdeep Gill 10 Feb '17

10 Feb '17

Hi everyone, I have earlier tried to push this request but could not see it later on. Khowar community has been consistently contributing to develop Khowar Wikipedia in Wikimedia Incubator. Here is the request on meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Khowar Catanaylsis shows at least 3 editors for more than 2 years: https://tools.wmflabs.org/meta/catanalysis/index.php?cat=0&title=wp/khw&wik… While there have been more than 3 editors during some months as well. I believe the creation of Khowar Wikipedia will give the necessary boost the whole community and the members who have stopped editing in the past will resume editing. All the required messages have been translated on translatewiki. Hence, I propose the creation of Khowar Wikipedia. -- Regards Satdeep Gill

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Governance changes
by Milos Rancic 10 Feb '17

10 Feb '17

Based on the input from the previous couple of days, I am listing them. Some of them are in the form of the request for comment, some of them are in the form of the proposal. So, please, comment if you disagree with some of the items. == Membership == * Accepting any new member would still require consensus of those who expressed their opinion. (Nothing has changed.) * LangCom members should read messages in a timely fashion (at least twice per week), and to contribute on such decisions, where appropriate, within the deadline, or otherwise presumably at least once per month (this could be a simple +1). Lapses in participation would result in a "warning" after three months, and revocation of membership after six. (Note: This is actual proposal for the policy change!) * At this moment of time we have 17 members. One of them has very specific role (Zadiak, Wikiversity). I don't remember if I heard at all three of them. Five of them are quite quiet during the last few years. While it's good to create a general limit of 10-15 members, I think it is not useful at the moment, as we don't have all necessary expertise inside of the committee. However, on the long run, we could limit accepting new members from already covered areas. In relation to Wikimedia and computers in general we are pretty strong and I see no reason to increase the number of LangCom members based on those types of expertise. However, we lack in expertise and connections related to, most importantly, South (and Central) America and Southeast Asia (including Austronesian languages). It would be good to have somebody for the languages of New Guinea (~1500 of them). I would also like to see a little bit of ethnnolinguistic diversity inside of the committee. At the moment we are 16/17 native Indo-European speakers and just two members are not of European ancestry. In other words, I think another African member should be welcome, as well. My proposal (so, please, comment this paragraph if you don't agree or you want to make addition or change!) is to publish on wikimedia-l that we are searching for three member profiles, which should be, ideally, similar to Oliver: (1) A Wikimedian and expert in South and Central American indigenous languages; (2) A Wikimedian and expert in Southeast Asian (including Austronesian) languages; (3) A Wikimedian and expert in New Guinea languages. That would raise the number of LangCom members to 20 and from this point of time, we should wait to lose at least 7-8 members before adding any new. == Voting == This is also proposal, so read it and comment if you don't agree or you want any addition. 1) No voting 1.1) According to the Closing projects policy [1], particular member of the committee analyzes discussion and, if decides that the project should be closed, sends the request to WMF Board. 1.2) Clear-cut situations for making a language eligible for Wikimedia projects: the language has a valid ISO 639-3 code, there are no significant issues in relation to the language itself, the population of speakers is significant, request made by a native speaker. In this case, any committee member can mark language / project eligible. 1.3) Approval without obvious formal requirements. No project will be approved without them. 2) Simple majority (of those who expressed opinion) 2.1) Eligibility of a language with a valid ISO 639-3 code, but without significant population of native speakers. (Note: this covers ancient, constructed, reviving and languages with small number of speakers.) 2.2) Eligibility of a language without a valid ISO 639-3 code, but valid BCP 47 code. (Note: this covers Ecuadorian Quechua.) 2.3) Eligibility of a language with significant collision between prescriptive and descriptive information. (Note: this covers "macrolangauges".) 2.4) Project approval if not 1.3. 3) 2/3 majority (of those who expressed opinion) 3.1) Any change of the rules, including the committee's role in possible changes of the Language proposal policy [2] and Closing projects policy [1]. 4) Consensus (of those who expressed opinion) 4.1) A new member of the Language committee should not be opposed by any of the current committee member. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Closing_projects_policy [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy

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Membership request (WAS: Ancient Greek)
by Jan van Steenbergen 08 Feb '17

08 Feb '17

> Also, unlike a decade ago, LangCom has expert legitimacy and integrity > now, as well as a decade of experience. That's the reason why I don't > think that any group would use majority as a tool to push unreasonable > decisions. Speaking of which... Would it be possible for me to apply for membership of the Langcom? I've been following the discussions on this mailing list for about two years now, and I hope I might be helpful to you. A short introduction: My name is Jan van Steenbergen, I'm 46 years old and I live in IJmuiden, the Netherlands. I work as a professional translator and interpreter Polish <> Dutch. Linguistics is both my work and my hobby. My main fields of interest are Slavic languages, constructed languages, Cyrillic and Eastern Europe. My "language package" can be found on my user page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:IJzeren_Jan (mind, the languages listed there are those that I have actually learned to some degree – there are dozens of other languages I can understand, or know the basics of). I've been editing Wikipedia sporadically since 2003 as an anonymous user, and have been more active after I created my first user account in 2004. My home wiki is nlwiki, where I am currently an admin. I've been editing several other language versions as well, but less frequently. As I already explained in my post about Lingua Franca Nova, when it comes to the question whether a language should be allowed to have its own wiki or not, my primary criterion would be viability/sustainability. In other words, does a potential project have good perspectives for success? Obviously, a large community of native speakers is a good thing to start with, but if a language has 50 mln. speakers and there is nobody willing to work on a wiki, then the project is doomed to become a failure anyway. What we surely want to avoid is dead wikis where practically every article is just three or four words. On the other hand, if a language has no native speakers at all, yet it is still able to generate a prospering wiki, then I am all for it. Even a wiki in a language without native speakers can become a success, provided that the language is well-documented, stable and complete, and provided that there are enough people willing to work on it. As far as I am concerned, if a language is doing well in the Incubator for a longer period, that means it has passed the exam. Best regards, Jan van Steenbergen

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Lingua Franca Nova
by MF-Warburg 07 Feb '17

07 Feb '17

There is a request for Wikipedia in "Lingua Franca Nova", which is a constructed language with an ISO 639-3 code. < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Lingua…> I'm bringing it up because there is currently a very active contributor on Incubator. A previous request was rejected in 2008. Of course, the Language Proposal Policy says: If the proposal is for an artificial language such as Esperanto, it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion (this requirement is being discussed by the language committee). What are your opinions about the degree of recognition? Can the language be eligible or should it be rejected? I have never heard of this language before, but I am of course only a linguistic layman.

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Request for Wikipedia in Chamyuet rejected
by Milos Rancic 07 Feb '17

07 Feb '17

I've rejected request for Wikipedia in "Chamuyet". They say it's the "real Cantonese". No article on Wikipedia with that name, ~160 hits on Google, request page on meta is the fifth. I would bet on trolling. I left the message to them to come back with ISO 639-3 code. [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Chamyu…

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[ISO 639-3] New language added
by Danny B. 07 Feb '17

07 Feb '17

Effective on 2017-02-02, the following language has been added to ISO 639-3: wbs - West Bengal Sign Language Kind regards Danny B.

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Langcom February 2017