Thank you for this nice summary.
Being a linguist myself, I would like to add one thing:
This question cannot be decided on linguistic grounds alone. The
situation of what once was called "Serbocroatian" _always_ has a
political dimension, too. The ISO codes were added probably due to
political considerations, too. And if "having an ISO code" is the
criterion, we should stick with that and not fight over whether that
code is linguistically justified or not.
If there is an active community, I would not be in favor of closing or
marking as ineligible.

Best,
jan

Am 2023-04-28 19:32, schrieb Jon Harald Søby:
> Montenegrin is probably the longest-standing issue we have in the
> language committee, and it has been requested numerous times through
> the years. In the beginning of the language committee, the nation of
> Montenegro itself was brand new, and Montenegrin had already been
> "lumped in" with Serbian for a long time (well, at least since the
> Serbo-Croatian code was split up).
>
> For a number of years, and this may be why LangCom's stance on
> Montenegrin has been the same, Montenegrin simply didn't meet one of
> the formal criteria: having an ISO 639 code. Then, in 2017, the
> language finally got its own code, but there was skepticism within the
> committee because the code was an ISO 639-2 code and not an ISO 639-3
> code. The registrar for ISO 639-2 is the US Library of Congress, while
> the registrar for ISO 639-3 is SIL International. For all their
> faults, the latter is at least perceived to be more linguistic-minded,
> but many people saw the code coming to ISO 639-2 first as a sign that
> this was a _politically_ motivated decision, and not a
> _linguistically_ motivated one. A single language (and not a language
> group/macrolanguage) having a code in ISO 639-2 and not in ISO 639-3
> was a highly unusual situation.
>
> However, it seems to me that the code was also added to ISO 639-3
> later without much fanfare, though there isn't the usual paper trail
> on the ISO website: https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/cnr
>
> I have dug up previous discussions from the mailing lists that I would
> advice all language committee members to read through. Most of them
> are on the internal list, because the discussions happened before we
> reached consensus to have a public list. That means they are not
> available to external list observers, but committee members should
> have access. If you don't, reach out to me off-list, and I will help
> guide you through the process.
>
> 1. April 2007: The thread "Incubator and conditional approvals [4]".
> It is a very long thread, the parts most relevant for Montenegrin
> happen in mails 2–8, but the rest can be an interesting read too if
> you want more context.
>
> 2. March 2010: A single email "Request for Wikipedia in Montenegrin
> [5]" from our now-former member, User:Millosh, who is himself Serbian
> and therefore knows the local situation quite well.
>
> 3. December 2010: The thread "Montenegrin Wikipedia rejected [6]"; it
> was rejected because a pending request to add an ISO 639-3 code for
> Montenegrin was rejected (or not acted upon?) by the registering
> authority.
> 4. May 2011: The thread "Montenegrin 4 [7]"; rejected because of
> continued lack of ISO 639 code.
> 5. Also May 2011: The thread "orthographies and macro-languages [8]",
> giving some details about the relationship of the various
> Serbo-Croatian languages.
> 6. July 2011: Parts of the thread "Eligible status for Wikipedia in
> Tunisian Arabic [9]", which went a bit off that topic.
>
> 7. March 2017: The thread "Rejection of Wikipedia Prekmurian [10]",
> with more details.
> 8. December 2017: The thread "Montenegrin Wikipedia (URGENT) [11]",
> which came after the ISO 639-2 code was approved, but before it was
> added to ISO 639-3.
>
> And then there's the current thread.
>
> As we can see, I don't think there was ever a clear consensus to
> outright reject Montenegrin. There was a consensus for many years to
> wait until they potentially got an ISO 639 code, but when that finally
> happened, it happened in what I would describe as an "out-of-process
> way", which seemed perhaps "suspicious" on linguistic grounds.
>
> ons. 26. apr. 2023 kl. 13:28 skrev Kimberli Mäkäräinen
> <kimberli.makarainen@tuni.fi>:
>
>> I think it would be a good idea to look more into this, preferably
>> by asking linguists specializing in this language/these languages
>> for their opinion. Having an ISO code is not a guarantee one way or
>> another that they are separate languages and there are plenty of
>> languages bundled under a single ISO code.
>>
>> mvh. K
>>
>> -------------------------
>>
>> From: Jon Harald Søby <jhsoby@gmail.com>
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2023 4:55 PM
>> To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee
>> <langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Subject: [Langcom] Re: Montenegrin - ineligible?
>>
>> Thanks for bringing it up, Amir. I promised a user a while back [1]
>> to bring up the Montenegrin issue again, but I haven't done anything
>> about it yet.
>>
>> The last proper discussion we had about Montenegrin in this list was
>> in this thread [2] from March 2018 (+ this reply [3] from Steven).
>> Since then the language committee's composition has changed a bit,
>> but I don't know if the situation wrt. Montenegrin recognition has
>> changed – back then, the ISO 639-2 code for Montenegrin was quite
>> new. But it could be good to hear some more opinions from within the
>> committee before it's marked as ineligible again.
>>
>> tir. 25. apr. 2023 kl. 14:53 skrev MF-Warburg
>> <mfwarburg@googlemail.com>:
>>
>> I agree.
>>
>> Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> schrieb am Di., 25.
>> Apr. 2023, 14:26:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> There's this old, contentious discussion:
>>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Montenegrin_5
>>
>>
>> I somehow thought that it's already marked as ineligible, but it
>> isn't. I'd say that it should be marked as such. I've allowed
>> localization in that language on translatewiki, similarly to en-gb,
>> de-ch, etc., but it doesn't seem distinct enough for a whole
>> Wikipedia.
>>
>> Does anyone disagree? If not, I'll be bold and mark it as ineligible
>> in a week.
>>
>> --
>> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע
>> אַהֲרוֹנִי
>> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>> ‪“We're living in pieces,
>> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
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>
> --
>
> mvh
> Jon Harald Søby _______________________________________________
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>
> --
>
> mvh
> Jon Harald Søby
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by#Montenegrin_Wiki
> [2]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/X2CGBZ53VRY66Z4FSWJQBAPGOI3447GH/
> [3]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/ROKNRZMJDUCFDJFMXNXQ7XSC7NKMOTSG/
> [4]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/SHTWGL2X4P6CSPBNOYFZPWB3YXQHMXC4/
> [5]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/Y353WE3DXCVYJJ2P2CUTMYQX5EUV5HOY/
> [6]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/5IS5EGP5OGC52D6N3SXL5C4RML7PKG2R/
> [7]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/BNCFO6RKUDCVMANTXWKTWY5QGQ35V6DV/
> [8]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/7PCHCWS7ZXG2SBT26HBC2GQODTRBRMI4/
> [9]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom-internal@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/HVA4IZV2B6BZGHL6LNUMHATZ4QTF3LKB/
> [10]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/J4RIHJQ2N7CTGYIIYU2PNUIGEWWJGUAZ/
> [11]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/langcom@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/QKZNPMXWMTVS6BLTG2UMHPM7KM4MYPST/
> _______________________________________________
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--
Jan Wohlgemuth
Depok, Indonesia
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