Hi,
There's the official Language proposal policy: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy
There are also the less official, but pretty useful "Handbooks" for the committee and for the requesters:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(requesters) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(committee)
I suggest adding a few things there based on the experience of the last few years.
To the "requesters" handbook, I suggest adding the following notes in the beginning of the "Making a new request" section:
# Please create a request only if you speak the language in question and plan to write content in it, or if you are doing on behalf of specific people who do. Requests that don't indicate involvement by people who speak the language will likely be rejected or deleted. # If you read the Language proposal policy, and you think that the language is eligible according to it, you should start writing content in the Incubator as early as possible. You don't have to wait for Language committee's approval for it. Existence of content in the Incubator may help the approval process.
To the "committee" handbook, I suggest the following changes: 1. Add a suggestion to subscribe to [[Talk:Language committee]]. The Subscribe feature has existed for a couple of years already, but I somehow realized that I should subscribe to that page only today.
2. Add the following point to the "Verify as eligible / reject ineligible requests" section: If the request is for a language that may be eligible, verify that it is made by people who know the language and plan to write content in it or are in direct contact with people who are. If not, the request may be rejected or even deleted.
Rationale: People sometimes make requests for languages that they don't know, but about which they are curious for various reasons. This is sometimes done with good intentions, but experience shows that it is not actually effective. Seeing a previously rejected request can be discouraging for people who seriously want to start a new one, so in some cases, it may make more sense to simply delete it, especially if there is no meaningful discussion. We already discussed it on this mailing list a few months ago, and I'd like to make it a bit more formalized.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
Hi,
# Please create a request only if you speak the language in question and plan to write content in it, or if you are doing on behalf of specific people who do. Requests that don't indicate involvement by people who speak the language will likely be rejected or deleted.
This seems mostly fair but it's a bit limiting. One could write the language without speaking it, I suggest replacing "speak" by "know". It would be particularly important for Wikisources (where technically no knowledge of the language is needed; although in practice, it is more than helpful to know it).
Cheers, Nicolas
Tiõrv!
# If you read the Language proposal policy, and you think that the language is eligible according to it, you should start writing content in the Incubator as early as possible. You don't have to wait for Language committee's approval for it. Existence of content in the Incubator may help the approval process. I don't think this is a good idea. We have had enough editors in the past try to use the existence of material in a language on the incubator to try and force their project to be recognized when they full well know that their project would never be approved otherwise. In some cases, they have also used the existence of a project on the incubator off-wiki to make others believe they are approved by the language committee.
The existence of content in languages that will never be approved just creates more work for everyone. When they inevitably get deleted or their project turned down, the work doesn't stop with the deletion, particularly with the users who are combative.
t. K ________________________________ From: Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2025 4:04 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee langcom@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Langcom] suggested additions to Language committee Handbooks
Hi,
There's the official Language proposal policy: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy
There are also the less official, but pretty useful "Handbooks" for the committee and for the requesters:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(requesters) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(committee)
I suggest adding a few things there based on the experience of the last few years.
To the "requesters" handbook, I suggest adding the following notes in the beginning of the "Making a new request" section:
# Please create a request only if you speak the language in question and plan to write content in it, or if you are doing on behalf of specific people who do. Requests that don't indicate involvement by people who speak the language will likely be rejected or deleted. # If you read the Language proposal policy, and you think that the language is eligible according to it, you should start writing content in the Incubator as early as possible. You don't have to wait for Language committee's approval for it. Existence of content in the Incubator may help the approval process.
To the "committee" handbook, I suggest the following changes: 1. Add a suggestion to subscribe to [[Talk:Language committee]]. The Subscribe feature has existed for a couple of years already, but I somehow realized that I should subscribe to that page only today.
2. Add the following point to the "Verify as eligible / reject ineligible requests" section: If the request is for a language that may be eligible, verify that it is made by people who know the language and plan to write content in it or are in direct contact with people who are. If not, the request may be rejected or even deleted.
Rationale: People sometimes make requests for languages that they don't know, but about which they are curious for various reasons. This is sometimes done with good intentions, but experience shows that it is not actually effective. Seeing a previously rejected request can be discouraging for people who seriously want to start a new one, so in some cases, it may make more sense to simply delete it, especially if there is no meaningful discussion. We already discussed it on this mailing list a few months ago, and I'd like to make it a bit more formalized.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.comhttp://aharoni.wordpress.com/ “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
I understand the concern, but I'm trying to find a balance between: * openness to good-faith contribution * reducing bad contributions * making the formalities of the approval process easier and more sensible * giving people a chance to demonstrate their seriousness as early as possible
An impossible dream, I know.
The existence of content, by itself, is not a reason to approve. There are other requirements. If people try to use this argument to "force" approval, they can be simply ignored.
It happened several times that a request for a language that appears to be eligible was closed because there was no content in the Incubator. A few random examples:
* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Bhili * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kumaoni * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Mundari
There are more.
I'm not even sure that these rejections are correct formally: An active Incubator is not a requirement for eligibility at all according to the proposal policy; it's a requirement for final approval. And I strongly suspect that they send a wrong message for potential good contributors who don't read the fine print that says that it can be reconsidered if they start contributing. I occasionally want to delete all those rejected requests entirely, or to change some of them to "eligible".
On the other hand, there are examples like this: * https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Likpakp...
The requester says: "I was waiting for the verification before i create the test project".
So it looks like in some cases, it creates a deadlock. One way to solve the deadlock is to say that past *practice* to reject a request because there's no test project is over because it doesn't conform to the policy. It's pretty OK, but I also want to give people a sensible opportunity to show that they actually know the language in the most practical way possible: writing articles.
Perhaps my suggested wording for the handbook is not the best way to express it, and I'm open to other suggestions. I hope that this email clarifies my intention.
(I should add that, for what it's worth, the Incubator itself now explicitly prohibits writing in languages that people don't know. I added this rule a few months ago to https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Manual after gaining consensus on community discussion pages, so if content exists, but it's bad (for this reason), it can be ignored by the Committee and deleted by Incubator administrators for not conforming to explicit policy.)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
בתאריך יום ו׳, 13 ביוני 2025 ב-10:07 מאת Kimberli Mäkäräinen < kimberli.makarainen@tuni.fi>:
Tiõrv!
# If you read the Language proposal policy, and you think that the language is eligible according to it, you should start writing content in the Incubator as early as possible. You don't have to wait for Language committee's approval for it. Existence of content in the Incubator may help the approval process.
I don't think this is a good idea. We have had enough editors in the past try to use the existence of material in a language on the incubator to try and force their project to be recognized when they full well know that their project would never be approved otherwise. In some cases, they have also used the existence of a project on the incubator off-wiki to make others believe they are approved by the language committee.
The existence of content in languages that will never be approved just creates more work for everyone. When they inevitably get deleted or their project turned down, the work doesn't stop with the deletion, particularly with the users who are combative.
t. K
*From:* Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il *Sent:* Thursday, June 12, 2025 4:04 PM *To:* Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee <langcom@lists.wikimedia.org
*Subject:* [Langcom] suggested additions to Language committee Handbooks
Hi,
There's the official Language proposal policy: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy
There are also the less official, but pretty useful "Handbooks" for the committee and for the requesters:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(requesters) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(committee)
I suggest adding a few things there based on the experience of the last few years.
To the "requesters" handbook, I suggest adding the following notes in the beginning of the "Making a new request" section:
# Please create a request only if you speak the language in question and plan to write content in it, or if you are doing on behalf of specific people who do. Requests that don't indicate involvement by people who speak the language will likely be rejected or deleted. # If you read the Language proposal policy, and you think that the language is eligible according to it, you should start writing content in the Incubator as early as possible. You don't have to wait for Language committee's approval for it. Existence of content in the Incubator may help the approval process.
To the "committee" handbook, I suggest the following changes:
- Add a suggestion to subscribe to [[Talk:Language committee]]. The
Subscribe feature has existed for a couple of years already, but I somehow realized that I should subscribe to that page only today.
- Add the following point to the "Verify as eligible / reject ineligible
requests" section: If the request is for a language that may be eligible, verify that it is made by people who know the language and plan to write content in it or are in direct contact with people who are. If not, the request may be rejected or even deleted.
Rationale: People sometimes make requests for languages that they don't know, but about which they are curious for various reasons. This is sometimes done with good intentions, but experience shows that it is not actually effective. Seeing a previously rejected request can be discouraging for people who seriously want to start a new one, so in some cases, it may make more sense to simply delete it, especially if there is no meaningful discussion. We already discussed it on this mailing list a few months ago, and I'd like to make it a bit more formalized.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Langcom mailing list -- langcom@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to langcom-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
I agree with all four of your original suggestions, Amir. About the point raised by Kimberli, ideally we would just handle all requests concerning new languages very quickly to give people the go-ahead to edit on Incubator. However, for some languages which were "frequently hijacked" we already blocked content creation in the Incubator, with a note that real users should contact Langcom. Maybe that is enough.
The old requests that you mentioned that were closed - that was an old way of handling such requests, where you now suggest that such requests should simply be deleted. We wouldn't lose anything by a deletion of these requests now.
Am Fr., 13. Juni 2025 um 17:01 Uhr schrieb Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>:
I understand the concern, but I'm trying to find a balance between:
- openness to good-faith contribution
- reducing bad contributions
- making the formalities of the approval process easier and more sensible
- giving people a chance to demonstrate their seriousness as early as
possible
An impossible dream, I know.
The existence of content, by itself, is not a reason to approve. There are other requirements. If people try to use this argument to "force" approval, they can be simply ignored.
It happened several times that a request for a language that appears to be eligible was closed because there was no content in the Incubator. A few random examples:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Bhili
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kumaoni
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Mundari
There are more.
I'm not even sure that these rejections are correct formally: An active Incubator is not a requirement for eligibility at all according to the proposal policy; it's a requirement for final approval. And I strongly suspect that they send a wrong message for potential good contributors who don't read the fine print that says that it can be reconsidered if they start contributing. I occasionally want to delete all those rejected requests entirely, or to change some of them to "eligible".
On the other hand, there are examples like this:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Likpakp...
The requester says: "I was waiting for the verification before i create the test project".
So it looks like in some cases, it creates a deadlock. One way to solve the deadlock is to say that past *practice* to reject a request because there's no test project is over because it doesn't conform to the policy. It's pretty OK, but I also want to give people a sensible opportunity to show that they actually know the language in the most practical way possible: writing articles.
Perhaps my suggested wording for the handbook is not the best way to express it, and I'm open to other suggestions. I hope that this email clarifies my intention.
(I should add that, for what it's worth, the Incubator itself now explicitly prohibits writing in languages that people don't know. I added this rule a few months ago to https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Manual after gaining consensus on community discussion pages, so if content exists, but it's bad (for this reason), it can be ignored by the Committee and deleted by Incubator administrators for not conforming to explicit policy.)
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
בתאריך יום ו׳, 13 ביוני 2025 ב-10:07 מאת Kimberli Mäkäräinen < kimberli.makarainen@tuni.fi>:
Tiõrv!
# If you read the Language proposal policy, and you think that the language is eligible according to it, you should start writing content in the Incubator as early as possible. You don't have to wait for Language committee's approval for it. Existence of content in the Incubator may help the approval process.
I don't think this is a good idea. We have had enough editors in the past try to use the existence of material in a language on the incubator to try and force their project to be recognized when they full well know that their project would never be approved otherwise. In some cases, they have also used the existence of a project on the incubator off-wiki to make others believe they are approved by the language committee.
The existence of content in languages that will never be approved just creates more work for everyone. When they inevitably get deleted or their project turned down, the work doesn't stop with the deletion, particularly with the users who are combative.
t. K
*From:* Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il *Sent:* Thursday, June 12, 2025 4:04 PM *To:* Wikimedia Foundation Language Committee < langcom@lists.wikimedia.org> *Subject:* [Langcom] suggested additions to Language committee Handbooks
Hi,
There's the official Language proposal policy: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy
There are also the less official, but pretty useful "Handbooks" for the committee and for the requesters:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(requesters) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee/Handbook_(committee)
I suggest adding a few things there based on the experience of the last few years.
To the "requesters" handbook, I suggest adding the following notes in the beginning of the "Making a new request" section:
# Please create a request only if you speak the language in question and plan to write content in it, or if you are doing on behalf of specific people who do. Requests that don't indicate involvement by people who speak the language will likely be rejected or deleted. # If you read the Language proposal policy, and you think that the language is eligible according to it, you should start writing content in the Incubator as early as possible. You don't have to wait for Language committee's approval for it. Existence of content in the Incubator may help the approval process.
To the "committee" handbook, I suggest the following changes:
- Add a suggestion to subscribe to [[Talk:Language committee]]. The
Subscribe feature has existed for a couple of years already, but I somehow realized that I should subscribe to that page only today.
- Add the following point to the "Verify as eligible / reject ineligible
requests" section: If the request is for a language that may be eligible, verify that it is made by people who know the language and plan to write content in it or are in direct contact with people who are. If not, the request may be rejected or even deleted.
Rationale: People sometimes make requests for languages that they don't know, but about which they are curious for various reasons. This is sometimes done with good intentions, but experience shows that it is not actually effective. Seeing a previously rejected request can be discouraging for people who seriously want to start a new one, so in some cases, it may make more sense to simply delete it, especially if there is no meaningful discussion. We already discussed it on this mailing list a few months ago, and I'd like to make it a bit more formalized.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Langcom mailing list -- langcom@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to langcom-leave@lists.wikimedia.org
Langcom mailing list -- langcom@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to langcom-leave@lists.wikimedia.org