Hi,

There's something that I had to consider several times recently: If there are doubts about a language's eligibility for having its own Wikipedia, but it does have an ISO code, is there any reason to deny translation into it in translatewiki?

More precisely: The language definitely passes criterion 2 in "Requisites for eligibility" [1] ("The language must have a valid ISO 639 1–3 code"), but there is no conclusive decision about whether it passes criterion 3 ("The language must be sufficiently unique that it could not coexist on a more general wiki").

Example 1: Montenegrin (cnr), which was discussed lately, and about which most of the Language committee seems to have the opinion that it doesn't pass criterion 3.

Example 2: Ancash Quechua (qwh). There is some discussion about it at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Ancash_... , but I cannot find any discussion by committee members (other than Steven). (I don't have an opinion about it myself, and I'm not opposed to marking it as eligible.)

Example 3: Dari (prs). This was already rejected by the committee with an explanation similar to Montenegrin, but it is already enabled in translatewiki. (Curiously, translatewiki also has Zoroastrian Dari [gbz]; I'm not sure why, but I'm not really opposed to it.)

I'd say that in such cases, localization in translatewiki should usually be allowed. In translatewiki we have English, UK English, and Canadian English; German and Formal German (Sie); Hungarian and Formal Hungarian. If these are eligible for translatewiki, then I'd say that cnr and qwh are eligible for translatewiki, because both seem to have at least some differences from related languages.

Of course, there's the question of whether Language Committee decisions apply to translatewiki at all, given that it's not really a Wikimedia project, but it's probably legitimate to at least express an opinion.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy#Requisites_for_elig...

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