Hi all,
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the Kotava Wikipedia. Kotava is a conlang
created in 1978, mainly known in French-speaking countries (according to
the English Wikipedia). They have a very active test wiki in Incubator,
with more than 3,000 articles, which makes it bigger than the Novial
Wikipedia (which we approved in 2008) and about the same size as the Lingua
Franca Nova (LFN) Wikipedia (which we approved in 2017). There are several
active users, and sustained activity
<https://tools.wmflabs.org/meta/catanalysis/index.php?cat=0&title=Wp/avk&wik…>
for many months.
Does anyone have reasons for why we should not approve this project?
--
mvh
Jon Harald Søby
Technically, project approvals are supposed to be announced on Meta in case there are community objections. (There never are at this stage of the game, but we need to provide the opportunity.) I will go ahead and post Balinese at Talk:Language Committee. If 7 days pass with no objection, then we can go forward.
Steven
Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>
MF-W, do you still want to support the request for a Wikinews in Literary Chinese<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikinews_Literar…>? As mentioned previously, because Literary Chinese is considered a historical language, this project is technically against policy. (This also means we would need 2/3 in favor, if there is not consensus.)
Similar question to all: a request just came in for a Wikinews in Old English<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikinews_Old_Eng…>. Can I just reject?
Let me point out: Wikinews projects are difficult even under ideal circumstances. I doubt either of these would prove to be ideal circumstances.
Steven
Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>
If it's ready, it's ready. I'm fine with that.
Here's my only problem. There are several other projects that have seemed ready or near-ready, who have asked about this over time either on Incubator or at Meta's Talk:Language committee, and whom I have been putting off pending resolution of the Phabricator. People from some of those projects have been waiting a while, and were quite resentful that N'Ko got bumped ahead of them, for example. So while I am grateful that others are taking action on this, so that it doesn't all fall on me, I would strongly request that they/you check the following places to look for projects that might be ready:
Meta—Talk:Language committee
Incubator—Incubator:Community Portal
Both Meta and Incubator: My user talk page
Incubator—On the page Incubator:Featured wikis, any project in the middle section, unless it's one of the four already tentatively approved and awaiting language verification.
Incubator—On the page Template:Test user statistics, most projects in the boxes with a cream-colored background, except
* Any of the four already tentatively approved and awaiting language verification
* Montenegrin Wikipedia (not going there now, and recently it's been more dormant)
* Darja (Algerian Arabic) Wikipedia (because I know it's mostly a student project and quite stubby)
Now, I do not guarantee that any project you find in any of those locations will actually be ready. I just know that in many cases they've been close. Also: If they're ready, except that their activity—which was fine until several months ago—has recently fallen off (mainly due to frustration with waiting), let me know, so I can try to get those revived.
Honestly, the whole Bulgarian Wikinews event exhausted me, and now I will be away quite a lot for the Jewish holidays. So I really appreciate others' stepping up here.
Steven
PS: The four tentatively approved and awaiting language verification are the Wikipedias in Guianan Creole, Mon and Saraiki and the Wiktionary in Tacawit. Amir?
Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>
Bulgarian Wikinews was locked for all contributors except sysops yesterday. Then some content was cleaned up, as previously discussed. That cleanup is now complete.
At this point, the Phabricator task has requested that the sysadmins fully lock the project. But in fact both sysops have been deflagged now, so de facto this project is now only changeable by stewards and sysadmins. In other words, the project is closed.
Before we finalize the pseudo-deletion, there are a couple of details we need to work out at the Phabricator task. Most particularly, the original proposer has suggested (and appropriately in my view) that even if we redirect all other url's on the project to a single landing page, thereby hiding the rest of the project from public view, we should leave access to the Village Pump page and the Voting page, as the project closure proposal links to discussions on them quite frequently. That way, there will never be a question as to why this decision was made. (The alternative is to move archive copies of those pages somewhere else, perhaps to Meta.) In any event, I don't think how we do this needs to be a Committee decision; it's something I can work through with the sysadmins myself.
Thanks to all for your participation in this frankly difficult and sad process.
Steven
Sent from Outlook<http://aka.ms/weboutlook>
One other point: Better LangCom be accused of pushing the envelope slightly than to open a precedent where people can swoop in and take over dormant projects to promote an agenda. LangCom is mostly not aggressive about such things. But we need to have the backing to get involved when it's appropriate.
Steven White
koala19890(a)hotmail.com
Sent from Outlook<https://aka.ms/sdimjr> for iOS
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Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2019 10:14:11 -0700
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James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
Look, at a certain level there's some truth to it. We certainly haven't made the case here on whether or not this is actually in Bulgarian, after all.
This is a very unusual case in that we might well have seen this project as closable in the first place. Instead, we gave a group of contributors time to revive the project. We asked only that (1) they put a reasonable community in place to support the project going forward, and (2) they remove questionable content. Really, we've only been evaluating this situation on whether those two requirements were meant.
1. Three regular contributors is typically enough for a brand new project. But both the project and the contributors here have some history problems, and we didn't really even have three regular contributors (only two) until about two months ago, when it started to become clear that we might really close the project. If we were deciding to approve this project from scratch, this would perhaps be just barely enough activity to say yes--but only barely.
2. As to the part about critiquing how that RfD went down, it ties to the request to remove questionable content. I can only say that this project revival was on our watch, and we are entitled to make sure that the revival was done responsibly. We thought it wasn't. And to say that three users, one of whom has a conflict-of-interest, have a right to exclude other opinions from the discussion and decision, seems inappropriate.
My personal opinion is that LangCom bent over backwards over the course of a full year to allow the process to proceed fairly. We think we've done so. If the Board doesn't agree, that's the Board's prerogative. And we think project closure on this basis is within our remit. But if it's not, we need to rewrite the closing project policy to narrow the scope for project closures. And that will be someone else's job; I will have had enough.
Steven
Steven White
koala19890(a)hotmail.com
Sent from Outlook<https://aka.ms/sdimjr> for iOS
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Today's Topics:
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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2019 10:14:11 -0700
From: James Heilman <jmh649(a)gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee
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Subject: [Langcom] Comments on this?
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James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian