Hoi Gerard,
I think there are two issues to address. First, different groups of small language projects obviously have very different problems, and I am not qualified to discuss all of them. I know better about the problems of the WPs of the smaller languages of former Soviet Union. They typically have several hundred thousand to several millions native speakers, and all these speakers are also fluent in Russian. Part of the motivation of editors to create these WPs is to save the language from extinction and encourage the native speakers who are living in big cities and do not have contact with other speakers to preserve the language and to edit Wikipedia. In some cases, the collection of texts in WP is the biggest in the language everywhere in the internet. It always works, sometimes quicker, sometimes slower. But even for projects with several thousand articles it is usually difficult to find more than a dozen regular editors. It is particularly very unlikely that a project would grow in such a way in the Incubator - no potential editor is going to find it, it does not get media attention etc. The question is whether we would like to encourage such use of Wikipedia, or we barely put red tape by setting some restriction: minimally five different editors every month, several hundred articles etc. And as far as I am concerned this is the question to be answered by WMF, possibly with a preceding discussion in the community. Some policy on the issue must be established by WMF.
Another issue, whatever policy on encouraging/discouraging smaller language projects is established, is transparency. I think you guys in the Language Subcommittee are doing very good job, and I had pleasant interactions with some of you on Meta and Incubator, but the decisions come (or not come) as a bolt from the blue. Is the committee elected? When you say that projects with less than 100 articles are dead, is it your own opinion, opinion of Language Subcommittee, policy of Language Subcommittee or policy of WMF? Why are the policies for opening new projects not written anywhere down, change without notice and are applied retroactively? How does it come that LS has the entire responsibility for opening new projects but has no relation whatsoever to existing projects, even their closure? How could it be that at the same time as the closure of Lak WP is discussed, a temporary admin status is not granted since the project is active enough to have a permanent admin? And I guess many people who are regulars on Meta and Incubator can ask dozens of questions like this. As I said I really respect what you guys are doing, and I understand that it is absolutely necessary, but I am pretty sure everybody would welcome more transparency and more written rules concerning project localization.
Cheers, Yaroslav
Hoi, The projects that are being closed are not being closed to any particular policy. That is bad in and of itself. What is good is that we at least have an understanding that projects can go to the Incubator to revive them. Project with no localisation, with less then 100 articles are hardly relevant on any scale. The language committee has no dealing with the pre-existing projects, this is in many ways a mixed blessing.
The new projects for a new language have at least minimal localisation, what is considered minimal is determined by the people at BetaWiki; they are the most relevant messages for our READERS. For subsequent projects we insist on a full localisation of MediaWiki and this policy is bearing fruit; the MediaWiki languages is particularly good for languages that want to start a new project. A good example is Sranan Tongo that only recently was given conditional approval and started localisation and is doing well.
When people vote for a particular project to start, they do not realise that their vote is quite meaningless. People are in favour or against often for political reasons. The only thing they do is create a stir. People who walk the walk and talk the talk make the difference. People who create credible articles in the Incubator, people that do the localisation. People that create a presence for their language once the project is approved.
Projects are approved and they are sometimes for languages that are quite small. It takes a few dedicated people to start a new language and, it takes dedication, prolonged dedication to make a successful project. We are HAPPY to approve new languages and projects and, I do want to make the International Year of Languages a success by making sure that the localisation of MediaWiki is a cornerstone to what makes a Wikipedia relevant combined with a minimum of well written articles.
If you want to have Wikipedias for African languages, then people that are literate in those languages have to show their interest. Wikipedia is a written project. When people want localisation, we can now help them by creating .po files for MediaWiki. This allows for the use of tools like Computer Aided Translation tools. Open Progress has financially supported the Wikiread functionality for OmegaT (a GPL licensed CAT tool). We hope to get you Wikiwrite as well so that you can both read and write MediaWiki articles from withing OmegaT.
Stopping the closure of WMF projects is currently not in the cards. There are people who do not appreciate the relevance of supporting under resourced languages and are really aggressive. The only sane thing is to be prudent in approving new projects. As to the differentiation of incubator projects, this is effectively already the case for Wikibooks. However, for a separate language version of Wikibooks, approval is required.
Where you suggest stronger requirements when a language already exists, this is already the case. For a follow up project the localisation has to be complete. This means that the Turkish request for a Wikiversity will wait until this requirement is met. (The Turkish language projects are lively and not problematic). In essence the suggestions are already in place.
Thanks, GerardM