On 9 Feb 2017, at 14:30, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
- Accepting any new member would still require consensus of those who
expressed their opinion. (Nothing has changed.)
OK
- LangCom members should read messages in a timely fashion (at least
twice per week), and to contribute on such decisions, where appropriate, within the deadline, or otherwise presumably at least once per month (this could be a simple +1). Lapses in participation would result in a "warning" after three months, and revocation of membership after six. (Note: This is actual proposal for the policy change!)
This is hard to do. There is a lot of discussion on this list and lots of it is not relevant to an actual vote. Subject lines don’t indicate where a vote actually is. Perhaps we could use wiki pages for actual voting? That would also track both voters and non-voters.
However, we lack in expertise and connections related to, most importantly, South (and Central) America and Southeast Asia (including Austronesian languages). It would be good to have somebody for the languages of New Guinea (~1500 of them).
How many of those have populations large enough to want or need an encyclopaedia? The Tok Pisin Wiki exists and Hiri Motu is in the incubator. Wikipedia says “Papua New Guinea has more languages than any other country, with over 820 indigenous languages, representing 12% of the world's total, but most have fewer than 1,000 speakers”; Enga might be a candidate.
I would also like to see a little bit of ethnnolinguistic diversity inside of the committee. At the moment we are 16/17 native Indo-European speakers and just two members are not of European ancestry. In other words, I think another African member should be welcome, as well.
One problem is that little is known (in the Anglophonie anyway) about many of these languages. Many of the articles on African languages are very short and sketchy.
My proposal (so, please, comment this paragraph if you don't agree or you want to make addition or change!) is to publish on wikimedia-l that we are searching for three member profiles, which should be, ideally, similar to Oliver: (1) A Wikimedian and expert in South and Central American indigenous languages; (2) A Wikimedian and expert in Southeast Asian (including Austronesian) languages; (3) A Wikimedian and expert in New Guinea languages.
André Müller might be good for (2). I don’t know if he’s a Wikipedian. But areal experts like these may well be hard to find.
Michael