Tentatively approved projects
* MF-Warburg has tried to reach out to language experts for the Saraiki Wikipedia and Tacawit Wiktionary. (I presume you've still heard nothing.)
* I am working on experts for Guianan Creole.
* Has anyone tried for Mon?
Question: Is there a time limit here? (Should there be?) If we can't succeed in getting confirmation, don't we need at some point to say "Assume good faith; approve."? A situation like this is really likely to discourage people and send them away, and that from our fault, not theirs.
LPP update
I heavily revised my initial draft in light of MF-Warburg's private-list email of December 30. In particular, I removed all references to the possibility of non-Wikisource projects in ancient/historical languages, and tightened up much of the rest of the proposal. (I did leave two footnotes in, but that's because they're really true references, to SIL's policy.) Please have one more look at the draft at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:StevenJ81/sandbox. I'd like to post this publicly by next Monday or Tuesday.
I have promised the Committee I would start a separate discussion about allowing Wikipedias (only) in extinct languages. I plan to do that when the current LPP revision is finished.
Eligibility of Wikisource Literary Chinese
There are still Committee members on both sides of this. Later today or tomorrow I will try to summarize where I think we are now, and what next steps might be.
Steven
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Michael, I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you favoring rejecting the request?
Steven
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________________________________
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2019 14:14:15 +0000
From: Michael Everson <everson(a)evertype.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee
<langcom(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages: Wikisource Literary
Chinese
Fine, then. No need to do anything. Close it.
Michael
> On 5 Mar 2019, at 18:47, Steven White <Koala19890(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> • There are currently about 150 active contributors to zhwikisource.
> • The current zhwikisource community is adamantly opposed to this proposal. It does not want lzh content separated out. The community sees it as a part of the continuum of language that it is curating.
>
Hi folks! This post is slightly off-topic, but still relevant I think.
For this year's Wikimania in Stockholm, the program design is a bit
different than what it has been in previous years. The program will have
several spaces with overarching topics. I have nominated languages as one
of the spaces, volunteering as a space leader. However, I need one or more
co-leaders from the community at large to help organize this, which is why
I'm sending this mail. I was wondering if anyone here (and that includes
any observers from outside LangCom) would be interested in doing this with
me?
The tasks at hand are about forming the Wikimania program when it comes to
languages – not only reviewing relevant proposals that come in with the
call for papers, but figuring out what kinds of talks/sessions there should
be, and encouraging people to submit relevant talks.
If anyone is interested in helping out with this, please let me know
off-list. I'm very excited about what we can get out of this new approach
to the program!
I did expect MF-Warburg to put in a "no" vote here, and I also reminded him on-wiki. Even counting him as a "no", though, this passes:
YES: Gerard, Michael, Satdeep, Jon Harald, Amir.
NO: MF-W
Steven
Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>
Frankly, I had hoped to kick that question down the road a bit. But Michael's comment illustrates, to some extent, the concern with people always relying on my summaries and not digging into the discussion, especially when the discussion in lengthy.
First, let me link to the discussion again: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikisource_Liter…
As I've said before, I think if we were starting off from a blank slate, there would be a strong argument that we ought to allow a separate Wikisource in Literary Chinese. The analogy to Latin is actually a pretty good one. To the extent the analogy is good, it's really no more appropriate (in theory) to force Literary Chinese into a Mandarin Wikisource (or a Cantonese Wikisource) than it would be to force Latin into a French Wikisource or an Italian Wikisource.
So much for "in theory", "if we were starting off from a blank slate". But we're not, and the facts on the ground still make this a far more difficult decision in practice. I'd really encourage LangCom members to try read through the lengthy discussion. But I will still provide some key points here.
Concerning the current zhwikisource wiki and its lzh content:
* The current zhwikisource (let's call it that for now) has approximately 300,000 content pages. In the discussion, it has been estimated that at least half, and perhaps as much as 90%, of that content is Literary Chinese (lzh). (This partly depends how you count. Some pages in Mandarin, for example, are actually author pages for authors whose writing is in Literary Chinese.)
* There are currently about 150 active contributors to zhwikisource.
* The current zhwikisource community is adamantly opposed to this proposal. It does not want lzh content separated out. The community sees it as a part of the continuum of language that it is curating.
* Some people point out that "zhwikisource", by ordinary Wikimedia use of codes, is really "Mandarin Wikisource", not "Chinese Wikisource". That is true enough, in principle. However, excluding Literary Chinese and zhwikisource, there are five other Chinese Wikisource projects, one independent (Min-Nan) and four on oldwikisource. They total about 80 content pages, so really play a negligible role.
* I worked hard to try to determine if Chinese political influence was adversely impacting curation of lzh content on zhwikisource. Nobody provided evidence that there was a problem.
Concerning the proposal:
* One user in particular is the proposer and champion of this request.
* He has received a small amount of support in the discussion, just about all on the theoretical grounds that Literary Chinese is as deserving of a separate project as Latin.
* In practical terms, I have tried to determine why the proposer wants a separate project. The answer I get most often is that "it's a separate language and should have a separate project". Fair enough. Yet, when I have tried to ask if there have been particular problems with lzh content on Wikisource, I have not really gotten an answer. When I have pressed, the user says zhwikisource is not curating lzh material properly—but when I ask for details, I get none—no evidence, and no description of a problem. It's not absolutely out of the question that there are language issues getting in the way. Still, that's not my sense of it.
* Most of the current zhwikisource community feel he's trying to create his own playground to use. I'm not prepared to support that opinion. I'm also not prepared to reject that opinion.
A couple of other points that occur to me as I put this together:
* There is no question that LangCom has the authority to approve a separate Literary Chinese Wikisource project. It is far less clear to me that LangCom has the authority to order the current zhwikisource wiki to be broken apart against the express opposition of its community.
* It is even less clear to me that it would be a good idea. There is a great risk that the current community would simply walk away (bad outcome). There is also a great risk that the current community would move to take over the new wiki and force out the proposer (bad outcome). Then someone like MF-W would have done a lot of work to split the project, but with very little in the way of progress to show for it (bad outcome).
At this point, I would respond to Michael's question: No, I don't think that the Literary Chinese content would be moved out to a new wiki—at least, not so fast, and perhaps not at all.
One other thing that I just looked up:
* There is one big difference between the Literary Chinese case and the Latin case. zh is a macrolanguage code for Chinese, and Literary Chinese (lzh) is a member of that macrolanguage. If you argue that zhwikisource can (in principle) be a Wikisource project that covers the entire range of the macrolanguage, then lzh content unquestionably fits there. To contrast, Latin shares an ISO 639-5 collective code with other Romance languages, but is not part of the same macrolanguage.
After all this, I personally see only two possibilities:
1. We take "zhwikisource" to be defined as potentially pertaining to the entire macrolanguage, and on those grounds reject this request.
2. We leave lzh content in place for now in zhwikisource. We allow some lzh content to be added to multilingual Wikisource anyway, with no commitment that in the future such content will be merged with content in zhwikisource. We will try to avoid duplicating documents. (There is precedent for that kind of arrangement, though right now it seems to be limited to content restrictions due to copyright law.)
Steven
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________________________________
From: Langcom <langcom-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of langcom-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org <langcom-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2019 8:06 PM
To: langcom(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Langcom Digest, Vol 66, Issue 2
Message: 3
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2019 01:06:37 +0000
From: Michael Everson <everson(a)evertype.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee
<langcom(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Requests for new languages: Wikisource Literary
Chinese
If we have a separate Wikisource for Literary Chinese, then obviously the Literary Chinese that is on the standard Chinese site should be moved to the new site. With links, of course.
Michael Everson
Previous discussions have not resulted in a consensus to approve this project. I am therefore putting it to a vote.
The project meets the nominal requirements for final approval:
* It has about 7,500 pages.
* For November-February, it had over ten registered editors in each month with at least ten edits. (In fact, it had at least four in each month, and usually more, with at least 100 edits.)
* There was a period in 2016-17 when most months had at least three editors with at least ten edits.
* March 2019 already has four editors with at least ten edits, three of whom have at least 100—and it's only the fourth day of the month.
* These statistics do not include some pages and contributions in the category "Hindi" (as opposed to the core category "हिन्दी").
* Of the approximately 3,700 translations in MediaWiki Core, only four are untranslated.
MF-W has two principal objections. (If I have not stated these with sufficient clarity, please correct me.)
* First, he sees no reason to rush—if the project stays active it will be approved in due course.
* I would respond to that as follows: Perhaps that is true. But if anything, I see many complaints on-wiki that it takes a long time for LangCom to decide on things, so that frequently people get tired of waiting and move on. If a project ceases to be active in general, that's one thing. But if it ceases to be active because we routinely fail to act, that's another thing entirely.
* Related, MF-W feels that perhaps three months of activity is not sufficient to prove an active community exists. If so, we should discuss that separately. But based on long-standing practices here, that is the advice that I give on-wiki. Until we decide on a different standard, it's only fair for us to follow that one.
* Second, he is still not fully convinced that we need separate language subdomains for Wikisource. Again, that is a subject for a different discussion, but the Hindi Wikisource community has been working with the current rules in mind.
There is nothing about this vote that triggers the need for a 2/3 majority. So a simple majority will decide. Please vote even if you have commented previously on this subject. The vote will close seven days after this email is posted—meaning at approximately 16:40 UTC on 11 March.
Steven
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Where this discussion stands at present is this:
* Gerard is opposed to allowing this, on the grounds that there is a solid community of contributors on zh Wikisource that opposes, and only evidence for one or two people who support it.
* MF-W favors marking this as "eligible", as to a great extent Literary Chinese is to the modern group of Chinese languages as Latin is to Romance languages. Just as neither French Wikisource nor Italian Wikisource would really be the right place for Latin content, so too neither Mandarin Wikisource nor Cantonese Wikisource, say, is inherently the right place for Literary Chinese content.
* That having been said, MF-W also appreciates that there is a lot of Literary Chinese content already in Chinese/Mandarin Wikisource. Also, if I read his email of 21 February (19:50 UTC) correctly, he is not proposing that we move the Literary Chinese content out of Chinese Wikisource (at least at the present time).
* I think that we agree that in the long run we don't need or want duplicated content in these projects.
I'm open to suggestions. But at present, the compromise position I would like to suggest is this:
* We mark this request as "on hold", pending evidence that a community exists that will create content in a Literary Chinese Wikisource test on oldwikisource. This is completely consistent with our practice in many other cases. We often have requests that are nominally eligible, but where no content is ever created—or perhaps a few pages are created right after the request is, and then people walk away. If a year passes with no further meaningful contributions, we close the request as "rejected-stale", inviting a new request in the future. By taking this approach, on-wiki activity would drive the subsequent result:
* If, as Gerard assumes, only one or two people are involved, we can decide that there is not an independent community for this project, and we can reject it.
* If there is a community that is seriously interested in this, the "on hold" will become an "eligible", as MF-W wishes.
* I am going to suggest a special rule here: that documents in Literary Chinese that already exist on zh Wikisource <u>not</u> be duplicated on, nor moved to, oldwikisource. (I suppose, to be fair, that the rule needs to cut the other way, too.)
* I am also going to suggest that even if the proposal becomes "eligible" in the near future, we are explicitly withholding our opinion as to how to execute any final approval until that problem is actually before us.
I would appreciate the Committee's feedback on this.
Steven
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