So, here's the problem: the request appears to be for something other than what we usually know as "a Wikipedia in a language".

The disclaimer at the top of the current nys main page says: "the use of Noongar language is encouraged but not essential as we recognise wer acknowledge the different stages of people's ability to write wer read Noongar".

This goes against what is done in ~290 other Wikipedias. Wikipedias are divided by language. Not by country, culture, religion, ethnic group, or belonging to a community or any other identity.

I'm not saying that the content of this incubator is totally bad or totally illegitimate. I'm saying that this content is a wiki site of a community of Noongar people, that is not necessarily written in the Noongar language. What we are supposed to approve is an wiki encyclopedia in the Noongar language, and this is simply not what the current incubator is. So according to the current policies this cannot be approved.

All that said, I'm not, in principle, opposed to the existence of a wiki site about the Noongar culture (or any other culture), that will be written in English (or any other language), and that will have different content policies from Wikipedia in English (or in any other language). The current "strategic direction" document ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction ) hints at the possibility and the desirability of creating projects like this, but for all practical purposes, no such project exists at the moment, and I really don't see how can Langcom in its current form create it.

Perhaps the Noongar wiki, which is Noongar by its cultural belonging and not necessary by language, can be the pioneer of such a project, but this is a topic for a wider discussion with the Wikimedia community and with the Board, and not something that the Langcom can approve.

Needless to say, I'd be totally happy if a group of people who do know Noongar, would create an actual Wikipedia in the Noongar language: move pages in English to some other space, only leave pages in the Noongar language, and improve them to a level of what the Atikamekw (atj) and Dinka (din) Wikipedias were a few months ago when they graduated from incubator: 100+ articles, many of them about local topics, without a lot of links, images, and templates, but with enough local knowledge and basic text quality.

I don't want to speak for the rest of the Langcom, but I surely won't make the absence of a fully standardized orthography a blocker to creating the language. If a Wikipedia is one of the first things to be published in this language, it's totally fine by me if the orthography is not perfectly standard and stable. But sorry, it cannot be in English.


--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

2017-12-16 5:05 GMT+02:00 Gnangarra <gnangarra@wikimedia.org.au>:
Kaya Folks

We have completed all the tasks asked of us in berlin and continue to expand the translations and the article content.  As I see it we are ready to go, 

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Nyungar

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Gideon Digby
Vice President - Wikimedia Australia
M: 0434 986 852

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