Am Di., 5. Feb. 2019 um 00:18 Uhr schrieb Steven White <
koala19890(a)hotmail.com>gt;:
MF-W, I never saw your email on the proposed LPP
changes at the time.
What's more, I just looked through my email again, and still didn't see it.
I only found your response when I looked at the online archive of the
private list. I don't know what happened there, but I really was not trying
to ignore any input. I promise you that, and apologize that it must appear
otherwise.
That is credible to me; that's a somewhat known bug I think. I also
sometimes don't receive a certain mail from a mailing list and am then
surprised when an answer to such a mail appears.
I will not post the proposed changes live today at all. I will move them
back to my sandbox, unhide them, and incorporate many
of your comments.
Look here <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:StevenJ81/sandbox>
(perhaps an hour after this email): Just a few points in response to that
email:
- The reason I added the introductory remark is that people always
keep asking why such-and-such project is allowed (Latin Wikipedia is often
cited) when it goes against policy. I added that line to forestall the
constant questions. If you don't think it should stay, that's fine, but
that's why I put it.
I see. If kept, I'd rewrite it with something that doesn't necessitate
explaining the term "grandfathered". It could also be put at the
introduction to the policy page (section "The language committee processes
requests...") right now, I guess.
- New point 1 was old point 1, too. (It's not actually a new point.)
The only thing that actually changed was a footnote leading to the place
where completely new projects can be requested. On the current version of
the page you'll see that. I can remove if you want, but it was already
there.
(Must have been some problem with the automatic numbering wrt the points).
The
footnote is new, isn't it? I suggest putting the link to "Proposals for
new projects" into the text instead of a footnote, as a compromise [I
dislike footnotes ;)]
- Point 2 included the BCP 47 issue already. But I will remove the 2/3
vote bit.
- Point 3: I will shorten the macrolanguage part.
- Point 4: Concerning ancient languages:
- I was confused, then, by what happened with Coptic. When I went
back just now and looked at the discussion on Coptic in July 2017, what I
saw didn't really say much on a Coptic Wikipedia; it spoke more to the
possibility of a Wikisource and of interface translation, with some people
saying that potentially they could see a Coptic Wikipedia being allowed in
the future. Then you marked the project on-wiki as "eligible".
Ehm wow. I'm surprised that that happened.
- It seems to me that it will be hard to say that Coptic can be
eligible but Ancient Greek cannot. I tried to write that provision
narrowly, so as to capture Ancient Greek without opening the door to every
ancient language in history. I do think, especially given Coptic, that we
need to allow Ancient Greek. But if the Committee thinks it's better to say
"we decided to allow it notwithstanding policy as an exception",
that's OK.
As I said in the mail from 30 Dec, I think we need a fundamental decision
on
principles of what ancient languages should be allowed, if any.
- I think Wikipedia is different from other projects with respect to
ancient languages, though. I think it's entirely reasonable to imagine that
someone who knows Latin or Ancient Greek might go to those Wikipedias to
look up something about Rome or Athens. (That's certainly as reasonable as
someone going to Jamaican Creole Wikipedia to look up something about
Jamaica.) I don't think I can really see that someone would go to an
Ancient Greek or Latin Wikivoyage to look at travel issues, even about Rome
or Athens. That's why I handled those differently.
That makes sense (though I wouldn't be surprised if someone comes up with
some
unexpected usecases, though maybe not for Wikivoyage).