I finally heard back from the first person [1] I emailed now, and he basically echoed what Satdeep said: All pages he checked, except the one I mentioned in the first email, are in Saraiki.

While there may be a close similarity to Western Punjabi, I agree with Steven's point that the right time to bring that issue up would have been when we decided whether to mark the language as eligible. We did mark it as eligible (by Satdeep just over 2 years ago), and that has to mean something. To walk back on that now, after volunteers have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours working on it, is just not ok.

Therefore I would like to officially propose that we approve the Saraiki Wikipedia, as they meet all of our criteria.

[1] I'll be happy to disclose his name and details on the private list if anyone on the committee wants me to, but I don't want to do so here on the public list since I never brought that up with him.

ons. 16. okt. 2019 kl. 18:04 skrev Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby@gmail.com>:

I have not gotten a reply yet. Yesterday I emailed to more people from Pakistani universities with Saraiki departments, but no reply from any if them yet either.

ons. 16. okt. 2019, 16:29 skrev Steven White <koala19890@hotmail.com>:

Have we heard from the expert yet?

On a related subject: Do we have any Wiktionary experts here? Saraiki Wiktionary is also now approvable in theory (assuming that the language issue on the Wikipedia clears). My concern about the Saraiki Wiktionary is only that compared to a lot of Wiktionary projects, this one appears pretty basic to me: just a straight Saraiki dictionary, with little in the way of bells and whistles (pronunciation, translations to other languages, etc.). But that's just based on the gross appearance of pages, as I do not read Saraiki (or any other language written in Perso-Arabic script). So Satdeep and anyone else: Does the content look ok? Are there greater expectations of what a Wiktionary should contain—expectations we have not communicated, I will add—or is this project appropriate and acceptable?

Steven

Sent from Outlook

From: Langcom <langcom-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2019 3:38 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

I am still waiting to hear back from the expert. If he says the rest of the pages look fine, then I think we can move forward – Steven makes some good points as usual.

tor. 10. okt. 2019 kl. 21:03 skrev Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>:

Hoi,
The final stage is that we verify if the language it is said to be. When we find it is not or are not certain we have all the room to seek another authority to move forward. At this stage it becomes confusing and I am not convinced at all that we should.

Thanks,

GerardM

On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 at 19:21, Steven White <koala19890@hotmail.com> wrote:

This is effectively the same problem as we saw in the discussion of Montenegrin Wikipedia—although since all but two of us are from Europe, North America or Israel, we feel more confident making calls in a case like Montenegrin than we do here. (And, candidly, there is less chance in the Montenegrin case of being accused of racism/Euro-centrism, even if that accusation would be totally without merit in this case.)

But as I said back then, the rule as currently written is fine when the language area starts with a clean slate. If there were no Western Punjabi Wikipedia now, we could reasonably try to get a single project to try to accommodate both Western Punjabi and Saraiki. (Whether that effort would be successful is a different question, but we could try.) However, I take Satdeep's comment below to indicate that there would be serious problems trying to integrate a new Saraiki-language community into a ten-year old Western Punjabi-language community, and that he recommends against it, based on the current "facts on the ground". Besides, to some extent the time to say "no" has passed, since Satdeep marked the project as "eligible" in 2017. So I think we need to move forward with this.

Steven

Sent from Outlook

From: Langcom <langcom-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org> on behalf of Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 9, 2019 4:44 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Langcom] Wikipedia in Saraiki

...

As for the Western Punjabi/Saraiki issue, I don't know enough about that to have any opinion either way.

tir. 8. okt. 2019 kl. 19:00 skrev Satdeep Gill <satdeepgill@gmail.com>:

...

P.S. Western Punjabi and Saraiki are pretty similar and my personal view is that this should be accommodated on one Wikipedia but the sociology-political situation in Pakistan calls for a separate Wikipedia for Saraiki.

Regards

Satdeep Gill

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--

mvh

Jon Harald Søby

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