1. Is there any progress on getting the content verified?
2. The bulk of the content is on Armenian Wikipedia (hywiki). But there is a small amount of content on Incubator (Wp/hyw), too.
Steven
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I hereby submit Shan Wikipedia (Wp/shn) to be evaluated for approval. It will need language verification; can someone please work on that? In the meantime, please look it over for provisional approval.
Steven
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I think this first set of five Wikipedia requests from 2012 is pretty straightforward, even if I am going to leave three of them open for a week to make sure nobody has a problem with my proposed disposition of the requests. However, do please start keeping an eye on these, because the next couple of sets are going to raise some policy questions that I am really going to need LangCom as a whole to address. Thank you.
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Wikipedia Mi'kmaq<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Micmac> (mic): Aboriginal language of New England and the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. 7200 native speakers. Test has over 200 pages, albeit mostly one-liners with pictures. Eligible.
Valencian Wikipedia<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Valenc…>: This is described as the main language of the autonomous community of Valencia in Spain, and has 2.4 million speakers. It has no langcode, and a request for one was rejected in 2006, on the grounds that Valencian is simply a variety of Catalan. (SIL/Ethnologue still describes this as a dialect of Catalan.) Catalan Wikipedia apparently allows content in Valencian. Holding for one week for LangCom comments, but I propose to reject, while encouraging potential contributors to contribute to Catalan Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Prussian 2<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Prussi…> (prg): Prussian went extinct in the 18th century, but there are serious revival efforts underway, and apparently a first, new native speaker. Test has had some modest activity in recent months. I'm thinking we should mark as eligible, while noting that if and when it actually comes to a point of approval—it has fewer than 20 pages right now—we'd hope to see that the language revival is continuing outside WMF.
Wikipedia Khinalug<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Khinal…> (kjj): Endangered language of Northeast Caucasus with about 1,000 speakers. Test has about 100 pages. Eligible.
Wikipedia Romanized Khowar<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Romani…>: (1) There is no evidence that there is really a community needing this, particularly as a separate project. (Further, there's no evidence it couldn't be done by script converter.) (2) This is another project by RA Chitrali, whom we had trouble with on the original Khowar Wikipedia project not too long ago. Propose to reject. (On-wiki, I'm just going to use explanation 1 above. Explanation 2 is simply an additional reason to be skeptical.)
Steven
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Wiktionary Khasi<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wiktionary_Khasi>: Legitimate request with respect to a language of portions of India and Bangladesh. However, no content was ever created, so closing as stale.
Wiktionary Bodo<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wiktionary_Bodo>: This is a language of about 1.5 million people of NE India. Wikipedia request was marked eligible in 2017. I am marking this as eligible as well. However, the requests, and most of the content on both projects on Incubator, were created by a single, young contributor with a penchant for using multiple accounts. Accordingly, the WP eligibility note has a caveat that any future project approval must include a checkuser to make sure that there is a legitimate community working on the test. I am going to link this request page to that caveat. (Note: neither project has been active recently, so I don't think that's going to be a problem in the immediate future.)
Wiktionary Riffian<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wiktionary_Riffi…>: One of the Tamazight/Berber "collective" group of languages, its Wikipedia test has a substantial amount of content. No content was ever created here, though. The Wikimedians of Tamazight User Group<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Tamazight_User_Group><http://Wikimedians%20of%20Tamazight%20User%20Group> is looking into whether anyone is interested in starting this, so I will place on hold for now.
Wiktionary Slavey<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wiktionary_Slavey>: This is a language of aboriginal peoples of northwest Canada, and the test has a fair amount of content. The complication to this is that the project is coded at the macrolanguage level. Now, the only activity in Incubator is this macrolanguage Wiktionary project, and as far as it goes, the Wikipedia articles "North Slavey language" and "South Slavey language" both redirect to the article "Slavey language<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavey_language>". (The WP article also suggests that the linguistic/dialect differences are pronunciation differences, so not necessarily even germane to a written project.) I am going to assume that this is a case where it is appropriate to have the project in the macrolanguage, and will therefore mark it eligible, with a reminder that it needs to serve both language communities. But I will wait a week for comments from the Committee before doing so. (I do have a query out to Wikimedia Canada; if they specifically favor the macrolanguage project or favor not having a macrolanguage project, I will report back here.)
Steven
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Same from me. Your contributions have always been worthwhile and insightful, and I will miss your participation here. All the best, Steven
Housekeeping: LangCom page on Meta has been updated. An administrator of the private list should handle unsubscription accordingly.
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Limburgish Wikinews (Wn/li) is eligible for approval. Please have a look and tell me what you think. (Ooswesthoesbes has been a contributor, and endorses the project as ready, too.)
(side note: I'm waiting on the test-admins of the Cantonese Wiktionary test to fill in a couple of blanks on the Meta request page, and then I'm going to mark it as approved and open a phabricator requst.)
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These are both Simple English projects, and while I am recommending rejecting both, the reasoning is a bit different in each case. And while I'm at it, I'm also going to address a 2016 request for a Simple English Wikiversity. Since all three are rejects, I'll wait one week to make sure LangCom members have an opportunity to comment.
Simple English Wikibooks<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikibooks_Simple…> – This project was closed in 2010, and much content was transferred to English Wikibooks, especially content that is now in the Wikijunior section of that project. (Consequent to a recent rejected request to delete that project, I added a link to that Wikijunior content on the closure notice at :b:simple:.) Most of the discussion on the RFL page had to do more with whether Simple English is really a language or not. But nobody really gave a good reason why English Wikibooks isn't a more appropriate venue for this type of content. So I intend to reject, encouraging English Wikibooks to support content in Simple English.
Simple English Wikivoyage<http://Requests%20for%20new%20languages/Wikivoyage%20Simple%20English> – This request was made by a user who is, if not an outright LTA, certainly a gadfly. I told the user that he should check to see if Simple English Wikipedia were willing to incubate this. (They are not. In rejecting the proposal, the community basically pointed out that they have a hard enough time managing the simple language issues they already have in Wikipedia, without adding more to their workload.) I also told the user he could check with English Wikivoyage to see if that project were willing to incubate this. He has not done so, as far as i can tell. I will reject, with the caveat that we don't want to see another request on this until/unless there is already content incubating either at simplewiki or envoyagewiki.
Simple English Wikiversity<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikiversity_Simp…> – Similar argument to the Wikibooks argument, and the community at English Wikiversity is open to hosting content both for young students and for "English as a Second Language" students. So no need here for another project. I intend to reject.
Steven
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Cantonese Wiktionary (Wt/yue) is eligible for approval. Please have a look and tell me what you think.
Steven
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Shout-out to User:Ooswesthoesbes for doing the bulk of the work in helping me do the summer 2018 update on Incubator statistics. Criteria for "substantial/active" are now: 25 mainspace pages and/or one non-administrative page creation since 1/1/2018. Given that, and excluding Santali Wikipedia, which has been created, but not yet deleted from Incubator, the current statistics are as follows:
* There are 1,018 tests with at least one valid content page. Of those, 443 (44%) are substantial and/or active.
* Of the 1,018 tests, 518 are Wikipedias, 194 are Wiktionaries, and 306 are others.
* Of the 443 substantial/active tests, 14 currently meet the activity standard for approval. (A couple of the 14 are borderline cases, but I'm willing to include them for statistical purposes.) Of the 14, only one is actually ready for approval. (Email to follow.)
* Of the 575 tests that are not substantial/active, about 2/3 contain five mainspace pages or fewer.
Without doing a full statistical summary, I will add that with the creation of Chinese Wikiversity this summer, neither Beta Wikiversity nor Multilingual Wikisource has any test that meets the activity standard for approval. (In fact, only one test on these two wikis—Hebrew Wikiversity—has even two regular contributors every month.)
Steven
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