On 5/26/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
Just so everyone's up to date, Brion has set up, on my request, the Catalan edition of Wikinews, which has been in the works for some time and meets all the conditions (18 editors expressed interest, all relevant pages were translated).
That's good news for all Catalans, quite literally.
I was just wondering were exactly they requested the creation of this new wiki. I can tell it was _not_ on the "Requests for new languages" page on Meta. For there are 18 new wikis which have been approved by the community, some of them many months ago (cf. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages) and nobody cares about setting _them_ up.
Of course, I'm all in favor of a Catalan Wikinews edition and I'm glad Brion has found the time to set it up. But what I find kinda sad (especially since we're supposed to be an "open" project) is when you're trying to establish a transparent, fair and open procedure with respect to new language subdomains where every user can have their say and that is just ignored and our fellow editors who request a wiki by means of the "official" procedure have to wait forever. And then there's editors that happen to "know the right people" and they are clearly privileged.
Now, the logical conclusion of this would actually be to shut down the "Requests for new languages" page in order not to create a false impression of openness and transparency anymore, not welcome and help newcomers whose language so far doesn't have a wiki anymore and instead fully rely on backyard agreements and darwinistic selection (the "fittest" in this case being those who spend most time on the Internet). However, that wouldn't be the awesome project I once joined anymore and I surely would no longer feel like dedicating precious time and money to it.
Thank you for reading this and please bear with me for being more outspoken than usual today!
Arbeo
Approved new wikis:
Wikipedia * Wu: zh-wuu.wikipedia.org * Mazandarani: mzn.wikipedia.org * Nepal Bhasa (Newar): new.wikipedia.org * Lak: lbe.wikipedia.org * Emilian-Romagnol: eml.wikipedia.org * Buryat: bxr.wikipedia.org * Upper Sorbian: hsb.wikipedia.org * Novial: nov.wikipedia.org * Pangasinan: pag.wikipedia.org
Wikisource * Bosnian: bs.wikisource.org * Malayalam: ml.wikisource.org * Slovak: sk.wikisource.org * Slovenian: sl.wikisource.org * Min Nan (Taiwanese): zh-min-man.wikisource.org
Wikiquote * Ido: io.wikiquote.org
Wiktionary * Cebuano: ceb.wiktionary.org * Pangasinan: pag.wiktionary.org
Wikibooks * Cebuano: ceb.wikibooks.org