Re: [Foundation-l] On Arabic and sub-language proposals.

As you're aware better than I am, I'm sure, we have no effective way to ensure at any point that most communities share the core principles of Wikimedia. Those most invested in designing these principles simply don't represent ability in enough languages, and even the diversity that do we have is limited by the relatively small number of people involved in multiple projects and Foundation issues at the same time. Case in point is the Russian Wikibooks from not long ago, or any of a number of complaints lodged at the metapub which seem to demonstrate a disconnect between some projects and core Wikimedia values. Since our ability to measure and police such things as adherence to core values is so limited, and obviously controversial, the lang com has I think reasonably restricted itself to other considerations - notably: 1) is there an active community, sufficient to give the project a good chance of long term progress 2) has the community demonstrated its ability to manage and maintain a project in its language 3) is there a sufficient audience for the language such that the project may conceivably contribute to the core goal of Wikimedia by reaching a significant segment of humanity (describing these restrictions based on my reading of Gerard and Pathoschild on this list over the last year, as opposed to the direct wording of the policy or actual practice of which I have little experience) There are obviously other considerations that could be applied, as demonstrated by Alsebaey and Aphaia, but the language committee doesn't seem to have the expertise or the mandate to make decisions based on such criteria. The Board may, but it seems like they have avoided becoming involved at that level. Again, probably reasonable from their perspective. There seems to be no perfectly suited forum for treating these potential objections that are outside the remit of the lang com - many have noted that it could be the role of a Wikimedia Council, but I personally haven't seen a proposal for such a thing that I could support. Nathan On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 4:38 PM, Aphaia <aphaia(a)gmail.com> wrote: