Hoi, In Berlin, in parallel to the MediaWiki http://mediawiki.org/ hackathon, members of the language committeehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committeeof the Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org/ will meet for a first time in real life.
As I read the roster of the people who may attend, I am amazed at their qualifications. All people are involved in their Wikipediashttp://wikipedia.org/in the Incubator http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, they are linguists, standard people, a script expert, Wikimedians.
The first line of our business will be to evaluate what we do. We will get to know each other better and we will talk endlessly about language, Wikipedia and what not.
You can help us be more focused by suggesting topics to our agenda. Anything goes and when we understand the issue raised, we will attempt to formulate an opinion. When such an opinion is actionable, we will raise it with the people that can make a difference.
The topics may be all over the map and they do not need to be confined to the language policyhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policyor even the Wikimedia Foundation. When there are issues in MediaWiki, we may pop over to the people at the Hackathon and ask their opinion. Thanks, GerardM
On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 4:37 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
Hoi, In Berlin, in parallel to the MediaWiki http://mediawiki.org/ hackathon, members of the language committeehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committeeof the Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org/ will meet for a first time in real life.
Gerard,
It's great that the langcom will be meeting in person for the first time ever! Two logistical questions: 1) you mean the committee will meet in May along with the hackathon, correct? AFAIK the dates have not been set; the decision was made to not have this in parallel with the chapters meeting as in the past. 2) do you have a link on meta for an agenda page?
cheers, Phoebe
On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 21:51, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
- you mean the committee will meet in May along with the hackathon,
correct? AFAIK the dates have not been set; the decision was made to not have this in parallel with the chapters meeting as in the past.
Yes. Because of the same reason we won't meet during the WM CON, which was the initial plan.
- do you have a link on meta for an agenda page?
Not yet, but we'll create it soon. A couple of us already have ideas about the agenda.
On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
As I read the roster of the people who may attend, I am amazed at their qualifications. All people are involved in their Wikipediashttp://wikipedia.org/in the Incubator http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, they are linguists, standard people, a script expert, Wikimedians.
Hey Gerard,
Very impressed with the wide spread of languages/backgrounds in the Language Committee...and lovely that you'll are meeting for the first time.
One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian languages in the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the committee want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is fluent in one or more Asian languages?
Cheers Bishakha
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com wrote:
One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian languages in the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the committee want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is fluent in one or more Asian languages?
In principle yes, but... [1]
Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise, their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically useless.
It is even worse if we are talking about, let's say, an expert in solely Hindi or Tamil. We have Wikipedias in both languages and we don't need further expertize for those languages. Besides that, English is widely spoken lingua franca of South Asia and we can communicate with interested parties. Unlike, let's say, the situation in former USSR or Latin America, where many speakers of indigenous languages primarily speak Russian or Spanish as their lingua franca. So, if we need to cover some area with a fluent speaker of lingua franca, our primary goal should be Spanish for now.
At the other side, a linguist with combined knowledge of a couple of languages from different primary groups would be very helpful. For example, a Hindi linguist who is expert in Austro-Asiatic languages and who is familiar with SIL and Wikimedia. But, more than that, if it is about person with good connections at some larger Indian or Chinese university (or, at least, a not so shy student of linguistics) and who is familiar with SIL and Wikimedia -- it would be quite good.
We've already started to get requests for projects in not well known languages. For example, this one [2][3] is very well described, thanks to the fact that university exists there [4]. So, at this point of time, for the primary job of LangCom, we need at least partially extraordinary linguists. And, again, not by expertise, but by attitude. Ideally, someone like Joseph Greenberg [5].
However, this was about present tasks of LangCom and we are not going to Berlin to talk [just] about them. We could talk about those issues via mailing list.
Except having fun while thinking is there any reachable expert for some language and being happy to see new project alive, LangCom tasks are quite boring. The most of the requests are about new Wikimedia projects in a language which already has at least one project (usually Wikipedia). And, because of the numbers, at some point, number of Wikimedia languages will reach a stable number. It is not likely that we will have projects in languages with ~100 speakers or even ~1000. If such language has writing system -- which is not likely --, and if there are literate people with such language as native -- which is not likely -- they have much more important tasks to do than to write an encyclopedia: to gather linguistic and ethnological heritage of a culture which probably won't exist in 50 years.
But, there are sets of tasks which Wikimedia is able to do and which LangCom should initiate. And for those sets of tasks we'll need more people all over the world, no matter what is their linguistic knowledge. Some of them are:
1) Active approach in creation of Wikimedia projects for languages with writing system and more than ~100.000 of speakers. Those languages are very living, but it is usually a matter of Internet access and living conditions why they don't have Wikipedia yet. BTW, there are a couple of 1M+ languages without Wikipedia, too. This is the task where anyone in particular geographical area could be very useful.
2) Missing computer tools. The most of deaf people literate in their native (sign) languages are not able to have Wikipedia. 60% of Mongols are not able, too. That's just because only Internet Explorer supports top to bottom writing. Many languages have significant problems with writing it by computer. It varies from having minor but frustrating difficulties (any right to left writing system while trying to write, let's say, URL), up to missing symbols in Unicode.
3) Missing basic tools. Many languages don't have writing systems. It is about the majority of world's languages, actually. And some of those languages could survive with proper care.
So, this meeting will be used to think about changing the course of LangCom: from passive decision-making body, to active working body. And we need your input of that kind. And yes, we are fully aware of our Euro-centric membership. And while there is no need to have 100 members of a decision-making body which would have just less and less job, there is a need for a number of members and contributors if we are going to widen our scope.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Yerevan ;) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alekano_language [3] http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=gah [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Goroka [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Greenberg
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com wrote:
One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian languages in the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the committee want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is fluent in one or more Asian languages?
In principle yes, but... [1]
Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise, their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically useless.
Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in different languages when they need to? I seem to recall you guys having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the language before they are created.
So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the "administrative committee" at this time. At least that's how I remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never made any decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit only from European countries, you will find a very different group of opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in many languages, who can bring us different perspectives.
2011/2/23, Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org:
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com wrote:
One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian languages in the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the committee want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is fluent in one or more Asian languages?
In principle yes, but... [1]
Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise, their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically useless.
Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in different languages when they need to? I seem to recall you guys having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the language before they are created.
So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the "administrative committee" at this time. At least that's how I remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
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As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented regions to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know a good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them in touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least incorporate the knowledge.
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2011/2/24 M. Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never made any decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit only from European countries, you will find a very different group of opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in many languages, who can bring us different perspectives.
2011/2/23, Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org:
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com wrote:
One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian
languages
in the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the committee want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is fluent in one or more Asian languages?
In principle yes, but... [1]
Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise, their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically useless.
Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in different languages when they need to? I seem to recall you guys having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the language before they are created.
So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the "administrative committee" at this time. At least that's how I remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
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There are currently 13 members of the committee, all of them live in Europe, the US or Canada with the sole exception of Amir Aharoni, who currently lives in Jerusalem but lived in Russia until 1991 and whose native language is Russian. I find it hard to believe that the language committee has been actively recruiting Wikimedians or others in Asia, Latin America or Africa but faced constant rejection and lack of interest from all people in those places, which is the impression I got from what you said. I think the appropriate reaction to such a strong imbalance (and it is a very strong one) is not to say "Well, we will be happy to have them if they ever want to join" but to say "We recognize that this is an issue and we will actively recruit people to try to rectify it."
2011/2/24, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org:
As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented regions to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know a good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them in touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least incorporate the knowledge.
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2011/2/24 M. Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never made any decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit only from European countries, you will find a very different group of opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in many languages, who can bring us different perspectives.
2011/2/23, Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org:
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com wrote:
One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian
languages
in the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the committee want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is fluent in one or more Asian languages?
In principle yes, but... [1]
Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise, their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically useless.
Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in different languages when they need to? I seem to recall you guys having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the language before they are created.
So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the "administrative committee" at this time. At least that's how I remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
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{{sofixit}} :)
2011/2/24 M. Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
There are currently 13 members of the committee, all of them live in Europe, the US or Canada with the sole exception of Amir Aharoni, who currently lives in Jerusalem but lived in Russia until 1991 and whose native language is Russian. I find it hard to believe that the language committee has been actively recruiting Wikimedians or others in Asia, Latin America or Africa but faced constant rejection and lack of interest from all people in those places, which is the impression I got from what you said. I think the appropriate reaction to such a strong imbalance (and it is a very strong one) is not to say "Well, we will be happy to have them if they ever want to join" but to say "We recognize that this is an issue and we will actively recruit people to try to rectify it."
2011/2/24, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org:
As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented
regions
to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know
a
good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them
in
touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least incorporate the knowledge.
Best regards,
Lodewijk
2011/2/24 M. Williamson node.ue@gmail.com
To me, this is still a problem. If the committee never made any decisions and instead relied 100% on the opinions of others, then perhaps the composition wouldn't matter. However, think about this: if you gather a committee to make decisions about agriculture and recruit only from European countries, you will find a very different group of opinions than if you recruit from Africa or India. The same is certainly the case here. The way people think about languages and linguistic diversity differs around the world, and it is not to our benefit to have a committee composed of mostly people from one part of the world, especially considering that over 60% of Earth's population lives in Asia. What I am not suggesting is that we should invite the world's foremost expert on Hindi or Sino-Tibetan languages to be a member of the committee; what I am suggesting is that we should invite people similar to existing members, except that they happen to be from Asia, Africa, Latin America, etc. So people with a deep interest in many languages, who can bring us different perspectives.
2011/2/23, Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org:
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com
wrote:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta <
bishakhadatta@gmail.com>
wrote:
One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian
languages
in the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the committee want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who
is
fluent in one or more Asian languages?
In principle yes, but... [1]
Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise, their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically useless.
Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in different languages when they need to? I seem to recall you guys having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the language before they are created.
So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the "administrative committee" at this time. At least that's how I remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Hello,
2011/2/24 M. Williamson node.ue@gmail.com:
There are currently 13 members of the committee, all of them live in Europe, the US or Canada with the sole exception of Amir Aharoni, who currently lives in Jerusalem but lived in Russia until 1991 and whose native language is Russian. I find it hard to believe that the language committee has been actively recruiting Wikimedians or others in Asia, Latin America or Africa but faced constant rejection and lack of interest from all people in those places, which is the impression I got from what you said. I think the appropriate reaction to such a strong imbalance (and it is a very strong one) is not to say "Well, we will be happy to have them if they ever want to join" but to say "We recognize that this is an issue and we will actively recruit people to try to rectify it."
I agree with Mark here. This is also a common issue in many international organisations, and we need to take active steps to correct it for Wikimedia.
Best regards,
Yann
2011/2/24, Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org:
As far as I am aware, but please correct me if I'm wrong, the language committee has always tried to gather a large diversity from all over the world. However, it seems hard to find people from underrepresented regions to bother themselves with this boring matter (no offense). So if you know a good candidate from a region you feel is underrepresented, just put them in touch with Gerard and I'm confident they will be able to at least incorporate the knowledge.
Best regards,
Lodewijk
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 10:45, M. Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
There are currently 13 members of the committee, all of them live in Europe, the US or Canada with the sole exception of Amir Aharoni, who currently lives in Jerusalem but lived in Russia until 1991 and whose native language is Russian. I find it hard to believe that the language committee has been actively recruiting Wikimedians or others in Asia, Latin America or Africa but faced constant rejection and lack of interest from all people in those places, which is the impression I got from what you said. I think the appropriate reaction to such a strong imbalance (and it is a very strong one) is not to say "Well, we will be happy to have them if they ever want to join" but to say "We recognize that this is an issue and we will actively recruit people to try to rectify it."
There is a lot of mystification around LangCom. Most importantly, it is not a secretive active group with The Plan. It is a passive decision-making body which implements Language proposal policy [1]. Basically, any proposal for a project in a natural living language will pass if: (1) it has ISO 639-3 code, (2) it has a writing system and (3) contributors have shown sustainable activity. All three requirements are clearly measurable. And, as I said before, our job is mostly boring. If implemented strictly, a computer could make decisions. I need a couple of hours to make fully functional program.
Reasons why humans are better include just a couple of reasons: * To be able to say to them: If you don't have an ISO 639-3 code, try to get it and inform us after that. * To realize that some requests are not so well worded or categorized and to help to requesters to articulate it better. * To realize if the request is trolling.
With one hour of training, I am sure that any Wikimedian would be able to make valid decisions. I can do that job alone, as well as any member of LangCom can do it alone. The job is very comparable with front-officer's job: take application, see if it is valid, categorize it, send it to the next instance (in our case Bugzilla).
In such circumstances, having culturally diverse committee is colorful and nice, but far from any priority. So, yes, according to the present situation, something like "Well, we will be happy to have them if they ever want to join" (actually, "We will be happy to have *relevant* persons from those areas to join us.") is fully legitimate position.
But, my idea was never that LangCom should stay there. Yes, I want to see LangCom as an active working body.
And I am, actually, actively searching for new members. I found Michael, Antony and Amir. But, it is not an easy task. You have to know a couple of things about candidate is (1) reasonable and (2) competent person who is (3) introduced in Wikimedia and (4) willing to participate. About (3) and (4): we've got 5 (five) applications for a couple of months (not sure, maybe almost half of year passed). And (1) and (2) need to be checked somehow. It could be checked by Wikipedia contributions, lists posts and personally (in real life or via net).
And there are a lot of similar descriptions of the situation which I could give. Everything is on the line: if we are talking about the present situation, then <something>; if we are talking about the ideas for the future, then <something opposite>.
It is obviously that we'll need to discuss about active recruitment in May, if we move toward more activity. In other words: complain noted. So, you can go further with other suggestions :)
Hoi, You are correct :) Thanks, GerardM
On 24 February 2011 00:50, Casey Brown lists@caseybrown.org wrote:
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 06:55, Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta@gmail.com
wrote:
One thought occurred to me: there is no representation of Asian
languages in
the committee (and I don't mean only Indian languages). Would the
committee
want to consider an expansion in membership to include someone who is
fluent
in one or more Asian languages?
In principle yes, but... [1]
Linguistic qualifications for becoming a LangCom member are not so simple. After a couple of years in LangCom, I may say that many professors of linguistics don't fit. And the main reason is not their knowledge, but attitude toward languages. Or, to be more precise, their boldness. For example, LangCom tasks require from one Indo-Europeanist to give expertize on any Indo-European language, but many of them would say that the classification of, let's say, Kurdish languages is not the part of their job, but the part of the job of an expert in Iranian languages. Such expert in LangCom is basically useless.
Doesn't the language committee also actively seek out experts in different languages when they need to? I seem to recall you guys having all test wikis checked by a linguist/expert who speaks the language before they are created.
So it's not like people who speak Asian (or other similar) languages aren't being actively involved, it's just that none of them are in the "administrative committee" at this time. At least that's how I remember it being explained many threads ago. :-)
-- Casey Brown Cbrown1023
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How about this:
Over the past several years, new projects have been approved and created improving our coverage of world languages. However, the vast majority of this growth since the formation of Langcom has been in European languages - a quick sampling reveals new Wikipedias in Rusyn (Eastern Europe), Gagauz (Moldova and Ukraine), North Frisian (Germany and Denmark) as well as Wikisource in Breton (France) and Venetian (Italy), Wikiversity in Swedish and Wikibooks in Limburgish (Netherlands, Belgium and Germany), although none of those are new languages for WM projects. At first, there was an encouraging trend - the first 4 Wikipedias created after the new language policy was in place were in Kabyle (North Africa), Hakka (China and Chinese diaspora), Bikol (Philippines) and normative Belarusian. However, this trend seems to have changed so that now, since December of 2009, 9 new Wikipedias have been created, but all but 1 were in European minority languages (the exception was Banjar, of Indonesia and Malaysia).
So my question for discussion is, what, if anything, can be done to encourage growth and improved linguistic coverage in other areas of the world?
2011/2/19 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, In Berlin, in parallel to the MediaWiki http://mediawiki.org/ hackathon, members of the language committeehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committeeof the Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org/ will meet for a first time in real life.
As I read the roster of the people who may attend, I am amazed at their qualifications. All people are involved in their Wikipediashttp://wikipedia.org/in the Incubator http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, they are linguists, standard people, a script expert, Wikimedians.
The first line of our business will be to evaluate what we do. We will get to know each other better and we will talk endlessly about language, Wikipedia and what not.
You can help us be more focused by suggesting topics to our agenda. Anything goes and when we understand the issue raised, we will attempt to formulate an opinion. When such an opinion is actionable, we will raise it with the people that can make a difference.
The topics may be all over the map and they do not need to be confined to the language policyhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policyor even the Wikimedia Foundation. When there are issues in MediaWiki, we may pop over to the people at the Hackathon and ask their opinion. Thanks, GerardM _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 15:31, M. Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
So my question for discussion is, what, if anything, can be done to encourage growth and improved linguistic coverage in other areas of the world?
It requires active approach. Instead of defining the rules and stick with them, it requires to educate possible contributors.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org