On Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:31:47 +0000, Chris Down <neuro.wikipedia(a)googlemail.com> wrote: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects%… and http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proposals_for_closing_projects/… -- Brian Salter-Duke b_duke(a)bigpond.net.au [[User:Bduke]] is single user account with en:Wikipedia main account. Also on Meta-Wiki, Wikiversity, fr:Wikipedia and others. Treasurer, Wikimedia Australia Inc, Go Wikimedia Australia Inc, Go!

On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:03:12 +0000, Al Tally <majorly.wiki(a)googlemail.com> wrote: Yes, I missed the point about "any" project. However how is a user from Simple who hears about the closure of their project to know that when they go there to give their opinion, they have to prove their standing in the community? I think this is just another example of how remote Meta is for the average editor on other projects. I thought your comment in the firts link above was a bit bitey. Brian. -- Brian Salter-Duke b_duke(a)bigpond.net.au [[User:Bduke]] is single user account with en:Wikipedia main account. Also on Meta-Wiki, Wikiversity, fr:Wikipedia and others. Treasurer, Wikimedia Australia Inc, Go Wikimedia Australia Inc, Go!

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 09:36:52PM -0500, Casey Brown wrote: Well in this case I'm missing it. Also, I do not know whether I am odd, but I hardly ever look at the main page, the community portal, etc on any of the projects I work on. Now on simple at:- http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal there is:- Proposal for closure A proposal to close Simple English Wikipedia has been made. The first line is a link to the discussion on meta. I have not come across any other mention of this discussion on simple and no mention of having to have 100 edits on other projects to participate in the discussion on meta. How is the poor editor on simple to know this, if s/he does not visit meta normally? What am I missing? Brian. -- Brian Salter-Duke b_duke(a)bigpond.net.au [[User:Bduke]] is single user account with en:Wikipedia main account. Also on Meta-Wiki, Wikiversity, fr:Wikipedia and others. Treasurer, Wikimedia Australia Inc, Go Wikimedia Australia Inc, Go!

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 12:05:43PM +0800, H wrote: They notified the simple community but did not mention that you had to "prove" yourslef before commenting. I noticed that. Very sensible. I agree. This discussion is quite different from a discussion on a small wp that never got off the ground. It matters. I agree. The discussion is not very deep. That was one of the things that worried me. Of course. That is why I want the very widest discussion and the final decision to close something like htis to be taken at the most authoritive level. Brian. -- Brian Salter-Duke b_duke(a)bigpond.net.au [[User:Bduke]] is single user account with en:Wikipedia main account. Also on Meta-Wiki, Wikiversity, fr:Wikipedia and others. Treasurer, Wikimedia Australia Inc, Go Wikimedia Australia Inc, Go!

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 4:05 AM, H <hillgentleman(a)gmail.com> wrote: Er, the community was notified. Not by the proposer, but by someone else. They do know about it though. No issue here. -- Alex (User:Majorly)

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke(a)bigpond.com.au>wrote;wrote: It was also announced on Simple talk, the Wikipedia's community page; if an editor does not know that it is usually required to provide a link to a home wiki, they can be asked to provide a link. It's not a problem. I don't know where you get the idea that the process isn't open. -- Alex (User:Majorly)

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Al Tally <majorly.wiki(a)googlemail.com> wrote: That's a valid point, including a link to your home-wiki or a wiki that satisfies the requirements. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

2009/2/23 Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke(a)bigpond.com.au>au>: The proposal is almost certainly going to fail, so there is no need to seek wider knowledge of it. If the people proposing it want to let more people know in the hope of getting more votes in favour, then they are welcome to do so (as long as it is done fairly), but I think the general community only needs to step in if it looks like the proposal will pass without adequate discussion, and that's not the case here.

This is wrong; the Siberian Wikipedia had an active userbase but was closed because it was deemed to be in a "fake" language. Mark skype: node.ue 2009/2/23 Al Tally <majorly.wiki(a)googlemail.com>om>:

That may be your opinion, but that doesn't mean it can't be done, hasn't been done before, or won't be done again. Mark skype: node.ue 2009/2/23 Al Tally <majorly.wiki(a)googlemail.com>om>:

Brian Salter-Duke wrote: A further argument against having this principally discussed on Meta is that those who are best served by Simple do not have the language skills to participate fully in a discussion where there is unlimited use of language. Ec

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 6:06 PM, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: Normally they are closed by Meta-wiki regulars, who all happen to be trusted to some extent on Meta and elsewhere. I'd probably give a discussion like this to a steward to close. Really though, any trusted person who hasn't voted can close it. -- Alex (User:Majorly)

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: Meta is a multilingual wiki - though English tends to be used as the lingua franca. -- Alex (User:Majorly)

Ray Saintonge wrote: In light of that, I understand that there is some kind of simple wikipedia usage among the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) distribution. Perhaps someone could clarify, but if this is the case, then that would make the likelihood that this already failing proposal would pass even more remote. Cary Bass

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: If anyone is interested, I believe the other language most suited to such a project would be French, because of its lingua franca status in large parts of the developing world. Thanks, Pharos

Andrew Gray wrote: Work for easy-to-read Swedish was started in 1968, and since 1987 operates as a government-sponsored foundation, described in this Swedish Wikipedia article, http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrum_f%C3%B6r_l%C3%A4ttl%C3%A4st On that Swedish foundation's website, you can also find information about them in English, French, German, and Spanish, http://www.lattlast.se/ (Le Centre Facile à Lire; La fundación sueca de nombre Centro de Lectura Fácil) Someone should compile an article on en.wikipedia about such initiatives in various countries. The article [[Simple English]] branches out to various special forms, but doesn't provide the international overview of the topic. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

Andrew Gray wrote: My attempt at a constructive contribution to this thread would be to suggest that every Simple Wikipedia language, no matter large or small, should start at a Simple Incubator. The incubator seems a proven concept (it has delivered live babies, yes?). To me it seems a no-brainer that Simple Communities in every language would only activate a sub-set of their languages community, and this implies to me that as such the community could do with bootstrapping in the fashion that incubators do. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

"No, Absolutely not." Eh? "No, Absolutely not." to what precisely? You say incubator should be a phase for projects? I said simple should incubate for even larger languages. Where is the "No, Absolutely not." directed at? Gerard Meijssen wrote:

I could be wrong, but I think you're misreading the point here. It's that we should Incubate more Simples in more languages, not that we need a Simple Incubator... -Chad On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com

Not cold water for me. I must confess I've never been a fan of Simple. -Chad On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:

We are not, and you're misinterpreting Gerard's post; what he says is that we do not allow any more simple projects; deciding over existing projects is not something we do, and not something we even *want* to do. 2009/2/26 Geoffrey Plourde <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com> -- Jon Harald Søby http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jon_Harald_S%C3%B8by

2009/2/26 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: How do we get rid of you? -- geni

2009/2/26 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: You are in a position of power thus I repeat how do we get rid of you? -- geni

i think there is a valid point here though. you are on a committee that has a certain level of power. committees who make decisions on behalf of the committee should surely be able to be held to account by the community. if you look at this comment in this way then it can be interpreted as "when is the committe re-elected, what will be the voitng process etc". regards mark On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 5:53 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:

2009/2/26 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>: Right so in order to get rid of you we have to elect people to the board who will vote to disband you. See if you had just straight said that it would have saved time. -- geni

Hello, There have been a lot of points raised, so I'll answer a few generally. (All messages from committee members, including this one, are personal messages and don't represent the committee.) New simple-language wikis will not be created under the current policy, simply because the policy does not have objective criteria that would allow them. Do we allow any simple wikis, like a "simple Cherokee" Wikipedia? If not, what objective criteria distinguish deserving from non-deserving languages? If so, should we also permit scientific-language wikis, and any other arbitrary variant contributors may legitimately propose? If not, what criteria distinguish deserving from non-deserving variants? There are two ways to create new simple-language wikis. The first, most obvious but most difficult, is to formulate those criteria so that the policy can be changed to allow them. The second is to circumvent the policy, by convincing the Board to accept such a proposal directly. (The second may be possible, but would be very unfair to contributors who want a simple non-English wiki, which won't have the same amount of popular support to sway the Board.) The language committee itself was created by Board approval, and can be dismantled or have its membership changed by Board approval. Without a language subcommittee, requests would need to be processed by the Board or the sysadmins directly. More likely, the membership would be changed in case of problems. I think the language committee does more good than ill, but persons who disagree can certainly gather together and propose a change. -- Yours cordially, Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)

I second Geni's question... how do we get rid of you? skype: node.ue 2009/2/26 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>om>:

Do you have a substantive opinion on the essence of my suggestion, that is that even large language simple projects should pass through the incubator? Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen Gerard Meijssen wrote:

i agree that there are many problems with a discussion or vote on one project impacting another. community participation and language / context barriers are one. having people discussing who themselves aren't editors or readers is another. privileging "having edited 100 articles in any one wikipedia" over "being an active daily reader, republisher, and online or offline user" or "being a developer or researcher working with WP data" is silly. For the record, lots of people who use simple: are devs or researchers who need a good small simple testbed, or people who only intend to read and use in contexts away from the original editable wiki. I would bet, though with lower odds, that this is the case for most users of WP as well, Cary writes: The simple-english snapshot has been replaced (in practice and in popularity) in the OLPC collection list by a larger snapshot from en, because of the difference in article quality and coverage. However, simple: snapshots have been requested recently by people interested in basic literacy (who weren't using WP at all before, but are coming around to the idea that simple articles can make good short readers). (@Pharos: I think French is a good idea, and there is definite interest in simple spanish articles.) And two other ideas * this is a great thing to combine with wikikids efforts : kids learning to write articles tend to add simple stubs, write about topics of interest to other early eards, and may learn many things by trying to adhere to simplified encyclopedic style. * simple: and en: could well come in the same package for offline use. a link from the top of an article could take you between the two (with pride of place before links to other languages, for instance) one could imagine other same-language variants to show there -- specialist v. overview, for instance. I don't know the right way to make this visible for online editors/readers, but harder problems have been overcome. One of the primary things limiting the growth of simple: (and its theoretical twin, 'specialist:' for 172-style detail) is its lack of visibility, despite the fact that most editors of en: could contribute meaningfully, even casually as a fun exercise, in a different english sublanguage. SJ ps - Lars - what the creators of these sublanguages have in mind / how they test their criteria is fascinating... some cross referencing with decisions made in creating esperanto et al would be fun OR. -- Samuel Klein +1 617 529 4266 One Laptop per Child On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 6:59 PM, Cary Bass <cary(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > Ray Saintonge wrote: >> Brian Salter-Duke wrote: >>> However my central point that a discussion of something as important as >>> closing one of our most important projects in a way that few know about >>> it remains. The !vote is 42:102. We get more at en:WP on a RFA. >> >> A further argument against having this principally discussed on Meta is >> that those who are best served by Simple do not have the language skills >> to participate fully in a discussion where there is unlimited use of >> language. >> >> Ec > > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > >

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 7:16 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote: Why is that a bad thing? Why should people not involved in a project be involved in deciding whether or not the project should exist? Reminds me of an anecdote by Clay Shirky ( http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html): --- 3.) The third thing you need to accept: The core group has rights that trump individual rights in some situations. This pulls against the libertarian view that's quite common on the network, and it absolutely pulls against the one person/one vote notion. But you can see examples of how bad an idea voting is when citizenship is the same as ability to log in. In the early Nineties, a proposal went out to create a Usenet news group for discussing Tibetan culture, called soc.culture.tibet. And it was voted down, in large part because a number of Chinese students who had Internet access voted it down, on the logic that Tibet wasn't a country; it was a region of China. And in their view, since Tibet wasn't a country, there oughtn't be any place to discuss its culture, because that was oxymoronic. Now, everyone could see that this was the wrong answer. The people who wanted a place to discuss Tibetan culture should have it. That was the core group. But because the one person/one vote model on Usenet said "Anyone who's on Usenet gets to vote on any group," sufficiently contentious groups could simply be voted away.