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.