By the way, I created a draft for a policy on "calling votes", which includes these details. I can send it in a few hours.

2017-05-17 22:50 GMT+02:00 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
OK. Here is, first, my initial email. I will resend relevant
communication afterwards:

== Voting ==

This is also proposal, so read it and comment if you don't agree or
you want any addition.

1) No voting

1.1) According to the Closing projects policy [1], particular member
of the committee analyzes discussion and, if decides that the project
should be closed, sends the request to WMF Board.

1.2) Clear-cut situations for making a language eligible for Wikimedia
projects: the language has a valid ISO 639-3 code, there are no
significant issues in relation to the language itself, the population
of speakers is significant, request made by a native speaker. In this
case, any committee member can mark language / project eligible.

1.3) Approval without obvious formal requirements. No project will be
approved without them.

2) Simple majority (of those who expressed opinion)

2.1) Eligibility of a language with a valid ISO 639-3 code, but
without significant population of native speakers. (Note: this covers
ancient, constructed, reviving and languages with small number of
speakers.)

2.2) Eligibility of a language without a valid ISO 639-3 code, but
valid BCP 47 code. (Note: this covers Ecuadorian Quechua.)

2.3) Eligibility of a language with significant collision between
prescriptive and descriptive information. (Note: this covers
"macrolangauges".)

2.4) Project approval if not 1.3.

3) 2/3 majority (of those who expressed opinion)

3.1) Any change of the rules, including the committee's role in
possible changes of the Language proposal policy [2] and Closing
projects policy [1].

4) Consensus (of those who expressed opinion)

4.1) A new member of the Language committee should not be opposed by
any of the current committee member.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Closing_projects_policy
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy


On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 10:48 PM, Oliver Stegen <oliver_stegen@sil.org> wrote:
> The first email that I can see only contains sections 1.2, 1.3 and 2.2, i.e.
> it looks like substantial parts of the proposal are missing. Please upload
> the entire proposal somewhere and send the link. Thanks.
>
>
>
> On 17-May-17 22:43, Milos Rancic wrote:
>>
>> Oliver, are you able to see the first email in the thread?
>>
>> On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 10:40 PM, Oliver Stegen <oliver_stegen@sil.org>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Imho, it would be helpful to have a link to the amended proposal, rather
>>> than having to wade through previous discussion. Possible to upload and
>>> send
>>> such a link?
>>> (Or maybe that has already happened and I just can't find the link? In
>>> which
>>> case sorry for not finding it - please still send it to this list.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 17-May-17 20:33, Milos Rancic wrote:
>>>>
>>>> We should start finishing this issue. May all of you check the
>>>> previous discussion and say if you agree in general with the proposal
>>>> amended by MF-Warburg? If so, I would make the next draft.
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Feb 12, 2017 at 12:52 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 6:19 PM, MF-Warburg <mfwarburg@googlemail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 1.2) Clear-cut situations for making a language eligible for
>>>>>>> Wikimedia
>>>>>>> projects: the language has a valid ISO 639-3 code, there are no
>>>>>>> significant issues in relation to the language itself, the population
>>>>>>> of speakers is significant, request made by a native speaker. In this
>>>>>>> case, any committee member can mark language / project eligible.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This is already what we are doing. But if such a case should turn out
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> be
>>>>>> contentious, we would discuss it even after someone marked it as
>>>>>> eligible
>>>>>> without discussion. At least that would have been my expectation. So
>>>>>> if
>>>>>> we
>>>>>> want to make such a detailed policy, could we please add that as well?
>>>>>
>>>>> Agreed.
>>>>>
>>>>>>> 1.3) Approval without obvious formal requirements. No project will be
>>>>>>> approved without them.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What does this mean exactly?
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, it could be described more in detail. I thought that we can't
>>>>> vote about approving a new Wikipedia if they didn't translate 500
>>>>> MediaWiki messages and similar. I was too lazy to take a look into the
>>>>> exact conditions for approval. In other words, we could discuss about
>>>>> the activity, but we can't discuss to approve the project if it's not
>>>>> written in particular language. And similar.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Ok, this is our current issue with Lingua Franca Nova and Ancient
>>>>>> Greek.
>>>>>> Shouldn't we better discuss about the underlying policy regarding
>>>>>> constructed and ancient languages? A general rule seems better than
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> possibility to allow everything by a majority vote.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes. But it would anyway require majority vote. What's the difference
>>>>> between Ancient Greek and Sumerian? Would we allow Wikipedia in
>>>>> Sumerian? Classical Hebrew? ...
>>>>>
>>>>>>> 2.2) Eligibility of a language without a valid ISO 639-3 code, but
>>>>>>> valid BCP 47 code. (Note: this covers Ecuadorian Quechua.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't recall that we ever discussed allowing projects with BCP47
>>>>>> codes.
>>>>>> Again, isn't this something that should be discussed as a policy?
>>>>>
>>>>> In general, we should discuss and (hopefully) approve usage BCP 47
>>>>> formally, as well. However, it is so wide territory, that it's hard to
>>>>> make a consistent rule about it: Why should we approve qu-ec and why
>>>>> we shouldn't approve en-au? Why it's better to use mn-mong for
>>>>> Mongolian instead of mvf? ...
>>>>>
>>>>>> The combination of 3.1 and 4.1 would be bad insofar as it allows a 2/3
>>>>>> majority to introduce a new member anyway.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes. But that would mean that there is something really bad going on
>>>>> here.
>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, Langcom works with the principle that a proposal is approved
>>>>>> unless
>>>>>> a
>>>>>> member is against it, in which case the proposal dies (it is not
>>>>>> exactly
>>>>>> rejected, n'est-ce pas?).
>>>>>> At times I have been quite annoyed by it as well. I think however that
>>>>>> in
>>>>>> general it works quite well. Over the course of the years in which I
>>>>>> have
>>>>>> been a langcom member now, I sometimes thought about whether the
>>>>>> “governance“ could be improved. But my personal conclusion always was:
>>>>>> not
>>>>>> really. It wouldn't harm to formalize a rule for getting rid of a
>>>>>> theoretical trollish member opposing everything without a reason. But
>>>>>> apart
>>>>>> from that? I'm not really sure that introducing majority voting will
>>>>>> help
>>>>>> much.
>>>>>
>>>>> Time and efforts required for arguing with only one person and having
>>>>> in mind that it's useless makes LangCom dysfunctional. Besides that,
>>>>> in few years we could have even 100 requests for eligibility per year.
>>>>> It's likely that 60-70 would be valid, but it's also likely that we
>>>>> would have to spend extraordinary time on discussion about 10-20 of
>>>>> them. Even if it's once per month, it would be stressful enough and
>>>>> lead us into the new period of hibernation.
>>>>>
>>>>> Besides that, it's not about random persons here, but about people
>>>>> with enough professional and personal integrity. It is normal that we
>>>>> don't agree about everything and that we should accept if more members
>>>>> of LangCom decided to approve the project.
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Langcom mailing list
>>>> Langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcom
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
>>>> http://www.avg.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Langcom mailing list
>>> Langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcom
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Langcom mailing list
>> Langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcom
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Langcom mailing list
> Langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcom

_______________________________________________
Langcom mailing list
Langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/langcom