Hi,
For as long as I remember being involved with the Language committee, there
hasn't been a clear definition of what does "active in the Incubator"
exactly mean. Is there a specific number of articles, number of users, or
number of weeks or months of continuous activity?
My impression is that the committee does it by intuition. It's not
necessarily bad, because every language community has its own story. Quite
often, however, various people ask me about it, and I would really love to
have a better answer than "intuition".
Unless I'm missing something, a precise definition cannot be found on any
of these pages:
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(requesters)
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(committee)
Something a bit closer to a definition appears on language request pages on
Meta through the template: "The community needs to develop an active test
project; it must remain active until approval (automated statistics, recent
changes). It is generally considered active if the analysis lists at least
three active, not-grayed-out editors listed in the sections for the
previous few months."
The words "at least three active, not-grayed-out editors" are quite
precise, but "the previous few months"—not really.
Some things to consider:
* If "at least three active, not-grayed-out editors listed in the sections
for the previous few months" is the policy, can it be copied to
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy ?
* Is "three active, not-grayed-out editors" good as it is? Too strict? Too
lax? Too easy to game?
* Should we perhaps write something like "at least three active,
not-grayed-out editors listed in the sections for the previous few months,
^but every case will be checked manually by Language committee members
separately^"? This is the actual practice anyway, as far as I can tell.
Other suggestions are welcome.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore