Dear fellow LangCom members,

I've thought about Steve's proposal and have come to the conclusion that we should accept it. More and more volunteer-based committees of non-profit organisations appoint such clerks. (I've seen it in an international school context which was run by a volunteer board.)

The main advantage, imho, is that (quite apart from lightening the load of administrative burdens) such a clerk can keep us on our toes. Especially when a lull in interaction comes up (which is bound to happen in the future just as regularly as it has happened in the past - life is too busy for most if not all of us).

So, I vote for appointing Steve as our clerk.

In the hope of speeding up LangCom's tasks,

Oliver Stegen (User:Baba Tabita)

On 03-Nov-17 17:29, Steven White wrote:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I would like to propose that the Language Committee formally appoint me as clerk.  In a similar vein to the way clerks work for bodies like the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, my purpose in this is to keep things moving on-wiki that do not really require a member of the LangCom to post on-wiki directly, except as a matter of formal procedure.  Thus, for example, I would see this appointment as authorizing the following actions:

• Marking projects as "eligible" when it's obvious—for example, languages that clearly have a large speaker base, and perhaps already have an open Wikimedia project. Anything that is remotely controversial—langcode is for a macrolanguage or constructed language, little or no speaker base, ancient language, etc.—I would not mark, unless expressly authorized by LangCom.  Even when I mark an obvious project as "eligible", I would post here that I have done so.
• Marking new project proposals or closing project proposals as approved or not approved when (and only when) a definitive decision has been taken according to the rules set out by LangCom. For example, based on Oliver's posting of 29 October, if there is no further comment on the matter, I would mark the requests to close Nahuatl Wikipedia and Transkievica Wikipedia as rejected on 5 November, one week after Oliver's posting. 

There are two main reasons that I am requesting you to appoint me formally. At a certain level, the rules already allow me to take such actions on-wiki if I find compelling enough reason—discussions are unreasonable, disruptive, personal, etc. However, there is room for people to object on the technical grounds that only LangCom members may do these things.  

Further, if there were a strong history of LangCom members in fact handling these things promptly on-wiki, there would be no need for me to make this request. But the history, if anything, is otherwise. So I think this would be a positive step for LangCom to take in order to reduce the number of open RFL and PCP requests sitting out there in limbo.

Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,

Steven White (User:StevenJ81)

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