Dear Gerard
Thank you, this kind of feedback is very help. You say:
*The point of the policy is to explicitly invalidate any and all
arguments that were used before. There is no point in looking in older
history, at best it shows the genesis of the policy.*
What I take from this is that
(1) The decision was made as an internal matter by LangCom without
consultation
(2) It is primarily designed to shut down arguments about Ancient
Languages
I fully sympathise with why you did this, re (2). You received may
requests for AL projects that made no sense, some got through the gate no
doubt and you needed to make this stop.
However the policy has left a lot of unresolved problems, at least for
the Latin project, and most likely for Sanskrit and Ancient Chinese, all of
whom are disqualified from further progress. There is a question as to how
this plays out for potential funding or project building, and how LangCom
ensures the existing projects meet their mission (in my view it seems to
leave this problem aide, despite the remit of the committee). Finally there
is a question as to whether Ancient Greek in particular deserves a shot at
a project.
My point is simply that issues like this require a consultation process,
to *test for such problems, and mitigate against them*.
The current proposal attempt to mitigate such problems by creating a very
slightly looser ruleset. As such it is not a consultation on the
mitigations and effects of the current policy.
So tthe Committee must not simply assume that is if does not like the
current RFC it can simply leave the current policy in place. The current
policy still lacks consultatation and carries all the rough edges you would
expect.
Thank you again for responding
Jim
On 13 Sep 2021, at 07:19, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Hoi,
The point of the policy is to explicitly invalidate any and all arguments
that were used before. There is no point in looking in older history, at
best it shows the genesis of the policy.
Thanks,
GerardM
On Mon, 13 Sept 2021 at 00:57, Jim Killock <jim(a)killock.org.uk> wrote:
On 12 Sep 2021, at 21:09, MF-Warburg <mfwarburg(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
(NB that this mail was sent in on Friday, I have approved it only now as
a list admin, because I haven't been able to until now.)
Thank you for approving it and taking the time to respond.
Am So., 12. Sept. 2021 um 21:46 Uhr schrieb Jim Killock <
jim(a)killock.org.uk>gt;:
While there may have been no requirements at the
time to provide a
rationale, people who feel the policy is not set in exactly the
right place
are left with *no formal explanation *as to why the Language Committee
devised the rules as it did.
At least, nobody has responded to my requests for
documentation from
2007 showing how the decision was made. If it is or can be made
available,
that would be great. I have listed what I know at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Start_allowing_ancient…
I really don't understand this. 2007 is prior to my time in Langcom and
I have no knowledge I could share about the decisions made back then.
However, I also don't see how this would help now. Some members have
previously commented in the "start allowing ancient languages" RFC with
good reasons as to why such projects shouldn't be approved. If there are
"secret reasons from 2007", they can only further support not allowing
ancient languages, probably.
This is a problem in itself, but I think is also a
large factor in the
upset felt by people who find their projects are declined.
There is a
policy, but it is not explained. the justifications are communicated to
them adhoc and it is extremely hard for people understand why Wikimedia has
this policy, as it is in fact, unexplained in any formal document. Instead,
people whose projects are turned down are asked to accept the adhoc
explanations of Wikimedia volunteers. This is bound to cause friction and
grievance.
If anything can be published from the time, that
would of course be
very helpful.
If this is a legitimate concern, I feel like the already existing short
explanation at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy#Specific_issues
should be made more detailed, with some of the reasons already given, if
the current "disallowing" of ancient languages stays in place. That seems
better than digging up 2007 discussions.
That is exacly what I mean by “reverse engineering”. If you don’t have
the reasoning available, and can’t show the consultation process that
helped arrive at this, then any reasoning now is purely gueswork, or the
preferred but unconsulted view of the Committee.
In essence, it remains an untransparent process and open to accusations
of being arbitrary.
I don’t think that is a sound way forward.
[...]
*>The way forward*
*>Publish if available, but do not engineering the 2007 decision:* I do
not think the committee should now reverse engineer the reasons for the
2007 decision, if it turns out to be unavailable, especially as it probably
was made without much public consultation or evidence gathering.
*>If the documentation does turn up*, it is still twenty years old and
there is still a need to take a look at the performance of the current ALWs
and think about how they should be best supported.
As above.
*>Pause before looking again at the recommendations made on the current
RFC.* Rather I think there should be a period of evidence gathering and
reflection about ALWs. Once this evidence is gathered, some observations
and recommendations can flow back to the RFC process.
Can I also ask you to take a pause? I, too, mean this in good faith. But
every time I try to follow what is happening at the RFC, new walls of texts
have appeared and the RFC now has 5 appendices - it's like every day a new
one pops up, and they all were created by you. Indeed I like to assess
things thoroughly and carefully, which I feel like I cannot do if the
proposals are piling up at such speed.
Yes, absolutely. I am at the end of my own intellectual journey on this.
I do appreciate I have created a lot of material anjd I would appreciate
feedback.
The next step IMO is the evidence gathering to see what kind of policy
is justifed
But also, I believe there is a way forward which would start to deal
with the actual substantive problems - that is starting a programme of
support for the Ancient Language Wikis or ALWs, once we know what state
they are in and what they do well.
As I explain at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Start_allowing_ancient…
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Start_allowing_ancient_languages/Appendix_V:_Discussion:_putting_an_''Ancient_Language_strategy''_together>
this would require shifting the current policy in order to tackle a lot
of problematic practice without it looking like an attempt to push those
wikis away.
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