Greetings and Happy New Year 2008 to all!
This year has been declared by the UN as "International Year of Languages."* What exactly that will mean depends in part on what UNESCO - which is charged with coordinating the Year - and in part on what various groups and individuals dealing with languages and linguistics decide to make of it.
I would like to propose that Wikimedia - which is in many ways on the cutting edge of multilingual exploitation of the potential of the web, but which has some language projects slated for deletion after a period of being "closed" (which I understand also means being placed in an "incubator" status) - declare for the duration of the IYL (2008) a moratorium on deletion of language projects.
The moratorium period would also be used to discuss (and implement) new means to save and develop projects in incubator status, which may involve any of the following and more:
* A "mentor" or "champion" for each project that is "closed"/"in the incubator"
** This person would advocate for the project within Wikimedia and outside, and coordinate efforts on its behalf
* Developing a methodology or set of guidelines for searching for relevant experts and language bodies that might help with the project in question
* An "incubator" period longer than the currently typical (as I understand it) one year for languages that meet certain criteria
** The criteria would probably involve the number of speakers
* Develop a project proposal for outside funding to support development of Wikimedia projects in less-widely spoken languages
A permanent change might also be considered:
* Change in terminology since "close" and "delete" sound equally final to average users, when in fact a "closed" project still lives
I'm particularly concerned about this issue because some African language projects are at risk, and I think that part of the problem is that there needs to be new ways of proactively identifying people and resources to save and develop such editions. I would mention that for example the Afar Wikipedia is slated for closure (which I understand means it is on the "incubator" and not deleted), but at the same time Afar has a locale and there is a project to localize AbiWord in it. That's an interesting juxtaposition of facts, which is probably not unusual, but is not always (or perhaps almost never?) noted in discussions on closure/deletion.
Part of the problem is successfully reaching people who are activists or "mavens" (per Gladwell's Tipping Point) for/in the language who simply are not connected with Wikipedia or perhaps not even really aware of it or how it could be useful in their efforts. Setting up a system with something like a mentor and a longer stay of execution for inactive projects could pay off with more active projects in more languages sooner - beginning with the ones that exist but are not yet active.
Part of the problem with closing a project while saying that "well, when there's a community, they can apply for a new project" is that the bar is also raised. It is much easier to work with the fact that the Wikipedia space is already there and get a handful of individuals involved to get it started than to have to prove the concept and get a group organized to apply for a new project. Much easier to push start a car with the key in the ignition than to take away the key until they get a proper repair job done.
Anyway I put this forth for discussion in the spirit of IYL 2008. All the best.
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfriL10n.org
On Jan 3, 2008 1:03 PM, Don Osborn dzo@bisharat.net wrote:
Greetings and Happy New Year 2008 to all!
This year has been declared by the UN as "International Year of Languages."* What exactly that will mean depends in part on what UNESCO - which is charged with coordinating the Year - and in part on what various groups and individuals dealing with languages and linguistics decide to make of it.
I would like to propose that Wikimedia - which is in many ways on the cutting edge of multilingual exploitation of the potential of the web, but which has some language projects slated for deletion after a period of being "closed" (which I understand also means being placed in an "incubator" status) - declare for the duration of the IYL (2008) a moratorium on deletion of language projects.
The moratorium period would also be used to discuss (and implement) new means to save and develop projects in incubator status, which may involve any of the following and more:
I agree on this. Perhaps one year is enough time to settle the "wikicouncil" to work on thath subjects.
I am not really sure that I agree with the idea of the moratorium, since the projects nominated for deletion are really those not active for years, former one-editor projects where the only editor has lost interest. Those with the slightest activity are not deleted, with the exception of clear fraud like ru-sib.
I agree though that clear and transparent rules must be established for the release of the projects from the incubator. I feel that now the rules are on the harsher side, so that many projects which made it couple of years ago and can be now considered to be moderately successful, would not have a chance now. Even worse, the rules seems to change quickly and without notice, and are applied retroactively. For instance, Sakha Wikipedia was conditionally approved in 2006, then the rules were changed and they were told to translate the interface, and when they translated the interface, the project was still not open since the rules were changed again to require five active editors. I know that this really makes people extremely frustrated, and I will not be surprised if the whole project gets abandoned just because it stays in the Incubator for years.
Cheers, Yaroslav
Greetings and Happy New Year 2008 to all!
This year has been declared by the UN as "International Year of Languages."* What exactly that will mean depends in part on what UNESCO - which is charged with coordinating the Year - and in part on what various groups and individuals dealing with languages and linguistics decide to make of it.
I would like to propose that Wikimedia - which is in many ways on the cutting edge of multilingual exploitation of the potential of the web, but which has some language projects slated for deletion after a period of being "closed" (which I understand also means being placed in an "incubator" status) - declare for the duration of the IYL (2008) a moratorium on deletion of language projects.
The moratorium period would also be used to discuss (and implement) new means to save and develop projects in incubator status, which may involve any of the following and more:
- A "mentor" or "champion" for each project that is "closed"/"in the
incubator"
** This person would advocate for the project within Wikimedia and outside, and coordinate efforts on its behalf
- Developing a methodology or set of guidelines for searching for relevant
experts and language bodies that might help with the project in question
- An "incubator" period longer than the currently typical (as I understand
it) one year for languages that meet certain criteria
** The criteria would probably involve the number of speakers
- Develop a project proposal for outside funding to support development of
Wikimedia projects in less-widely spoken languages
A permanent change might also be considered:
- Change in terminology since "close" and "delete" sound equally final to
average users, when in fact a "closed" project still lives
I'm particularly concerned about this issue because some African language projects are at risk, and I think that part of the problem is that there needs to be new ways of proactively identifying people and resources to save and develop such editions. I would mention that for example the Afar Wikipedia is slated for closure (which I understand means it is on the "incubator" and not deleted), but at the same time Afar has a locale and there is a project to localize AbiWord in it. That's an interesting juxtaposition of facts, which is probably not unusual, but is not always (or perhaps almost never?) noted in discussions on closure/deletion.
Part of the problem is successfully reaching people who are activists or "mavens" (per Gladwell's Tipping Point) for/in the language who simply are not connected with Wikipedia or perhaps not even really aware of it or how it could be useful in their efforts. Setting up a system with something like a mentor and a longer stay of execution for inactive projects could pay off with more active projects in more languages sooner - beginning with the ones that exist but are not yet active.
Part of the problem with closing a project while saying that "well, when there's a community, they can apply for a new project" is that the bar is also raised. It is much easier to work with the fact that the Wikipedia space is already there and get a handful of individuals involved to get it started than to have to prove the concept and get a group organized to apply for a new project. Much easier to push start a car with the key in the ignition than to take away the key until they get a proper repair job done.
Anyway I put this forth for discussion in the spirit of IYL 2008. All the best.
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfriL10n.org
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I agree though that clear and transparent rules must be established for the release of the projects from the incubator.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. If we are going to have a moratorium on closing projects, then we should also have a moratorium on opening new projects. These should only last until we have developed a such a clear policy concerning project creations and closings. Such a moratorium should not last for an entire year.
I think that we create far too many projects, certainly more then we have the communities to support them. The key word here is "community". one or two speakers of the language who show some interest do not constitute a "community".
I propose that small languages should not get differentiated projects. That is, we should have either:
(a) multilingual per-project incubators (multilingual wikipedia, multilingual wikibooks, etc) where all small languages would develop content and communities until such time as they were established enough to get their own projects, or
(b) have undifferentiated per-language projects for languages that are too small. That is, for a small language, they would only have a single project that was wikipedia, wikibooks, wiktionary, etc. As the project grew and gained community support, it could be differentiated into separate projects.
By doing either of these things, we prevent creating projects that have no support, but we are still able to offer support to small languages.
--Andrew Whitworth
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
On Jan 3, 2008 9:32 PM, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@gmail.com wrote:
I agree though that clear and transparent rules must be established for the release of the projects from the incubator.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. If we are going to have a moratorium on closing projects, then we should also have a moratorium on opening new projects. These should only last until we have developed a such a clear policy concerning project creations and closings. Such a moratorium should not last for an entire year.
I think that we create far too many projects, certainly more then we have the communities to support them. The key word here is "community". one or two speakers of the language who show some interest do not constitute a "community".
I propose that small languages should not get differentiated projects. That is, we should have either:
(a) multilingual per-project incubators (multilingual wikipedia, multilingual wikibooks, etc) where all small languages would develop content and communities until such time as they were established enough to get their own projects, or
(b) have undifferentiated per-language projects for languages that are too small. That is, for a small language, they would only have a single project that was wikipedia, wikibooks, wiktionary, etc. As the project grew and gained community support, it could be differentiated into separate projects.
By doing either of these things, we prevent creating projects that have no support, but we are still able to offer support to small languages.
--Andrew Whitworth
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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
Hoi, Where you write that the motivations for language projects differ, you give exactly one of the best reasons why in my opinion there are solid reasons not to have too precise and fixed rules. For some languages you may want to be a bit more lenient when you have reasons to do so. In the end it is a balance and when the balance is right, you want to be able to approve a new project.
Having a good localisation is not red tape. It is in my opinion essential to make it easy for readers of the language. Having five editors is imho a more iffie requirement, you have to appreciate though that we have had several projects that were maintained by one person and this led to problems like the language not being the language as advertised, the project losing momentum when that single person leaves. The object of the requirements or red tape if you will is that our new project have a better chance of not losing some momentum.
As to the policy, the existing policy has been approved by the board, they give permission to start projects on the recommendation of the language committee. As to the people on the LC, most are self appointed bosses then again there is quite a group of people in the LC most of them are not really active. The LC is not involved in existing projects. That was explicitly stated at the start. So we are not involved in closing projects. I am happy to say that projects will not be killed but can become part of Incubator. This gives at least criteria before a language version of a project can be restarted.
So to conclude, I am happy to discuss motivation for specific situations. I am however not happy to have more firm and formal rules. Every language is different and in the end it is a matter of balance. In this we also learn and this changes how we express opinions (we hardly ever vote).
Thanks, GerardM
On Jan 4, 2008 9:46 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
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
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hello Yaroslav,
Before I try to answer your questions, please keep in mind that the language subcommittee never makes any official public messages; any comments by subcommittee members, including myself, are personal comments that don't necessarily reflect subcommittee opinion as a whole. The 100-article limit noted by GerardM is a personal criteria and not an official requirement (as listed at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy#Requisites
), though it of course comes up in constructive subcommittee
discussion about each project.
The official policy for the approval of new subdomains is public at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy >. This policy is applied equally to all requests (barring rare exceptional cases). The subcommittee is specifically entrusted by the board with developing the policy to ensure that new projects flourish, and to avoid inactive or problematic projects as we have had in the past. So far we have had great success, but suggestions are always welcome.
I try my best to make subcommittee decisions as transparent as possible. I archive all subcommittee discussion to < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_subcommittees/Languages/Arch...
, although recent messages have not yet been archived because I was
away over December. The policy is also public, and you can track changes by simply watching the page history. In addition, the page at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages > shows the status of every current and recently closed request, as well as the date the status last changed. Further, there are a set of statistics on test projects at < http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pathoschild/Status >, and I'll be finishing a public comprehensive analysis tool in the next few days to replace them. If you have any viable suggestions for more transparency, feel free to contact me any time.
Members of the language subcommittee are not openly elected. The original members were approved by the special projects committee, and additional members where appointed by subcommittee consensus from the community. I'm not opposed in principle to an election process similar to stewards (with board appointment), but I'm concerned that might lead to a subcommittee of members with little or no applicable expertise or experience, or with a political agenda.
The policy is not applied retroactively, particularly given that existing projects are outside the subcommittee's scope. However, any adjustment in the criteria are of course applied to all future decisions, regardless of when the request was first filed. It would be difficult to track changes and only enforce the policy in place at the time each request was filed, and counterproductive to do so since the adjustments are aimed at improving the sustainability of good projects and filtering out bad projects.
The language subcommittee's name is a little bit misleading, which often leads to questions about why we don't also process closures or make decisions about existing projects. Maybe in the future the subcommittee will be assigned further responsibilities, but right now a more correct name would be something like "new language subdomain subcommittee". We have nothing at all to do with closures (still processed by community voting) or temporary sysophood (processed by stewards on < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions
).
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact me or respond here.
Hi Jesse and Gerard,
thanks for you valuable comments. Actually, I needed some time to think about the issue.
I appreciate your points and I can leave with the fact that there are no written policies, and that requirements are slightly different from project to project. I also see a great improvement in the recent months, for instance, a large group of incubator projects has been given the conditionally approved status etc.
Still, I also see that people are desperate to leave comments on all available discussion pages, claiming that though the projects they are promoting fulfilled all the requirements still no decision is coming after months. This may sound a technical problem but in fact for a smaller language opening a project is a big deal which gets media attention and helps a lot to attract new contributors. Even a technical delay of a couple of months for creation of an already approved wp may have some negative media coverage.
My understanding (please correct me if I am wrong on the point) is that this is happening since the manpower behind the decision is insufficient: the committee is not big enough, some of the members of the committee are not active, and in the end only several members have to do all the job. Whatever excellent these members are, this slows down things enormously.
This brings an obvious question: if the members are neither elected nor appointed by an authoritative body, why do not you just take more people who would be willing to do the job? I am not sure what the optimum size of the committee would be, but I think at the present stage just recruiting more members would really help speeding out things and at least sorting out the requests which are there for months without any changes.
Another thing is dealing with the existing projects. I would still find it more logical if the same body deals with the creation of new projects and audit of existing projects, even if the criteria might be different for the two things. I am not sure who has to decide, and it would definitely require more manpower, but such development would definitely make sense for me.
Cheers, Yaroslav
Hello Yaroslav,
Before I try to answer your questions, please keep in mind that the language subcommittee never makes any official public messages; any comments by subcommittee members, including myself, are personal comments that don't necessarily reflect subcommittee opinion as a whole. The 100-article limit noted by GerardM is a personal criteria and not an official requirement (as listed at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy#Requisites
), though it of course comes up in constructive subcommittee
discussion about each project.
The official policy for the approval of new subdomains is public at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy >. This policy is applied equally to all requests (barring rare exceptional cases). The subcommittee is specifically entrusted by the board with developing the policy to ensure that new projects flourish, and to avoid inactive or problematic projects as we have had in the past. So far we have had great success, but suggestions are always welcome.
I try my best to make subcommittee decisions as transparent as possible. I archive all subcommittee discussion to < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_subcommittees/Languages/Arch...
, although recent messages have not yet been archived because I was
away over December. The policy is also public, and you can track changes by simply watching the page history. In addition, the page at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages > shows the status of every current and recently closed request, as well as the date the status last changed. Further, there are a set of statistics on test projects at < http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pathoschild/Status >, and I'll be finishing a public comprehensive analysis tool in the next few days to replace them. If you have any viable suggestions for more transparency, feel free to contact me any time.
Members of the language subcommittee are not openly elected. The original members were approved by the special projects committee, and additional members where appointed by subcommittee consensus from the community. I'm not opposed in principle to an election process similar to stewards (with board appointment), but I'm concerned that might lead to a subcommittee of members with little or no applicable expertise or experience, or with a political agenda.
The policy is not applied retroactively, particularly given that existing projects are outside the subcommittee's scope. However, any adjustment in the criteria are of course applied to all future decisions, regardless of when the request was first filed. It would be difficult to track changes and only enforce the policy in place at the time each request was filed, and counterproductive to do so since the adjustments are aimed at improving the sustainability of good projects and filtering out bad projects.
The language subcommittee's name is a little bit misleading, which often leads to questions about why we don't also process closures or make decisions about existing projects. Maybe in the future the subcommittee will be assigned further responsibilities, but right now a more correct name would be something like "new language subdomain subcommittee". We have nothing at all to do with closures (still processed by community voting) or temporary sysophood (processed by stewards on < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions
).
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact me or respond here.
-- Yours cordially, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
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Yaroslav,
The policy is written at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy >. There are sometimes particular considerations for exceptional projects, but the policy requirements are applied universally.
Yes, there is a serious problem right now with processing times. A significant cause of this is the need for subcommittee members to manually check each project, which is time-consuming even with the current analysis script. I'm almost finished work on a new analysis script that provides much more comprehensive information (thus requiring less manual work), and can be used by anyone. Both of these improvements should dramatically decrease the workload and improve processing time.
We did try recruiting new members a few months ago, but they quickly became inactive. One of the new members admitted feeling overwhelmed and intimidated by the workload and the extent and complexity of discussion; I'm hoping the technical changes I've been working on will reduce and simplify some of the work, and encourage the inactive members to participate more. Editors are welcome to help us manage requests for new languages without necessarily joining the subcommittee; for example, one editor was very helpful in notifying us of batches of projects ready to be approved at one point.
The management of existing projects would add significantly to the workload, which as I've mentioned above is not yet feasible. I think it will be in the future, once the new technical measures are in place, more members are active, and requests for new languages are further streamlined. Regardless, we cannot expand our scope without board approval, and I don't think we're ready to do that yet.
So true -- there are now several groups of people who have been turned down several times because the requirements keep changing.
STOP!
On 03/01/2008, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I am not really sure that I agree with the idea of the moratorium, since the projects nominated for deletion are really those not active for years, former one-editor projects where the only editor has lost interest. Those with the slightest activity are not deleted, with the exception of clear fraud like ru-sib.
I agree though that clear and transparent rules must be established for the release of the projects from the incubator. I feel that now the rules are on the harsher side, so that many projects which made it couple of years ago and can be now considered to be moderately successful, would not have a chance now. Even worse, the rules seems to change quickly and without notice, and are applied retroactively. For instance, Sakha Wikipedia was conditionally approved in 2006, then the rules were changed and they were told to translate the interface, and when they translated the interface, the project was still not open since the rules were changed again to require five active editors. I know that this really makes people extremely frustrated, and I will not be surprised if the whole project gets abandoned just because it stays in the Incubator for years.
Cheers, Yaroslav
Greetings and Happy New Year 2008 to all!
This year has been declared by the UN as "International Year of Languages."* What exactly that will mean depends in part on what UNESCO - which is charged with coordinating the Year - and in part on what various groups and individuals dealing with languages and linguistics decide to make of it.
I would like to propose that Wikimedia - which is in many ways on the cutting edge of multilingual exploitation of the potential of the web, but which has some language projects slated for deletion after a period of being "closed" (which I understand also means being placed in an "incubator" status) - declare for the duration of the IYL (2008) a moratorium on deletion of language projects.
The moratorium period would also be used to discuss (and implement) new means to save and develop projects in incubator status, which may involve any of the following and more:
- A "mentor" or "champion" for each project that is "closed"/"in the
incubator"
** This person would advocate for the project within Wikimedia and outside, and coordinate efforts on its behalf
- Developing a methodology or set of guidelines for searching for relevant
experts and language bodies that might help with the project in question
- An "incubator" period longer than the currently typical (as I understand
it) one year for languages that meet certain criteria
** The criteria would probably involve the number of speakers
- Develop a project proposal for outside funding to support development of
Wikimedia projects in less-widely spoken languages
A permanent change might also be considered:
- Change in terminology since "close" and "delete" sound equally final to
average users, when in fact a "closed" project still lives
I'm particularly concerned about this issue because some African language projects are at risk, and I think that part of the problem is that there needs to be new ways of proactively identifying people and resources to save and develop such editions. I would mention that for example the Afar Wikipedia is slated for closure (which I understand means it is on the "incubator" and not deleted), but at the same time Afar has a locale and there is a project to localize AbiWord in it. That's an interesting juxtaposition of facts, which is probably not unusual, but is not always (or perhaps almost never?) noted in discussions on closure/deletion.
Part of the problem is successfully reaching people who are activists or "mavens" (per Gladwell's Tipping Point) for/in the language who simply are not connected with Wikipedia or perhaps not even really aware of it or how it could be useful in their efforts. Setting up a system with something like a mentor and a longer stay of execution for inactive projects could pay off with more active projects in more languages sooner - beginning with the ones that exist but are not yet active.
Part of the problem with closing a project while saying that "well, when there's a community, they can apply for a new project" is that the bar is also raised. It is much easier to work with the fact that the Wikipedia space is already there and get a handful of individuals involved to get it started than to have to prove the concept and get a group organized to apply for a new project. Much easier to push start a car with the key in the ignition than to take away the key until they get a proper repair job done.
Anyway I put this forth for discussion in the spirit of IYL 2008. All the best.
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfriL10n.org
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Either that, or grandfather in proposals that were made prior to all of the new requirements.
On 03/01/2008, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
So true -- there are now several groups of people who have been turned down several times because the requirements keep changing.
STOP!
On 03/01/2008, Yaroslav M. Blanter putevod@mccme.ru wrote:
I am not really sure that I agree with the idea of the moratorium, since the projects nominated for deletion are really those not active for years, former one-editor projects where the only editor has lost interest. Those with the slightest activity are not deleted, with the exception of clear fraud like ru-sib.
I agree though that clear and transparent rules must be established for the release of the projects from the incubator. I feel that now the rules are on the harsher side, so that many projects which made it couple of years ago and can be now considered to be moderately successful, would not have a chance now. Even worse, the rules seems to change quickly and without notice, and are applied retroactively. For instance, Sakha Wikipedia was conditionally approved in 2006, then the rules were changed and they were told to translate the interface, and when they translated the interface, the project was still not open since the rules were changed again to require five active editors. I know that this really makes people extremely frustrated, and I will not be surprised if the whole project gets abandoned just because it stays in the Incubator for years.
Cheers, Yaroslav
Greetings and Happy New Year 2008 to all!
This year has been declared by the UN as "International Year of Languages."* What exactly that will mean depends in part on what UNESCO - which is charged with coordinating the Year - and in part on what various groups and individuals dealing with languages and linguistics decide to make of it.
I would like to propose that Wikimedia - which is in many ways on the cutting edge of multilingual exploitation of the potential of the web, but which has some language projects slated for deletion after a period of being "closed" (which I understand also means being placed in an "incubator" status) - declare for the duration of the IYL (2008) a moratorium on deletion of language projects.
The moratorium period would also be used to discuss (and implement) new means to save and develop projects in incubator status, which may involve any of the following and more:
- A "mentor" or "champion" for each project that is "closed"/"in the
incubator"
** This person would advocate for the project within Wikimedia and outside, and coordinate efforts on its behalf
- Developing a methodology or set of guidelines for searching for relevant
experts and language bodies that might help with the project in question
- An "incubator" period longer than the currently typical (as I understand
it) one year for languages that meet certain criteria
** The criteria would probably involve the number of speakers
- Develop a project proposal for outside funding to support development of
Wikimedia projects in less-widely spoken languages
A permanent change might also be considered:
- Change in terminology since "close" and "delete" sound equally final to
average users, when in fact a "closed" project still lives
I'm particularly concerned about this issue because some African language projects are at risk, and I think that part of the problem is that there needs to be new ways of proactively identifying people and resources to save and develop such editions. I would mention that for example the Afar Wikipedia is slated for closure (which I understand means it is on the "incubator" and not deleted), but at the same time Afar has a locale and there is a project to localize AbiWord in it. That's an interesting juxtaposition of facts, which is probably not unusual, but is not always (or perhaps almost never?) noted in discussions on closure/deletion.
Part of the problem is successfully reaching people who are activists or "mavens" (per Gladwell's Tipping Point) for/in the language who simply are not connected with Wikipedia or perhaps not even really aware of it or how it could be useful in their efforts. Setting up a system with something like a mentor and a longer stay of execution for inactive projects could pay off with more active projects in more languages sooner - beginning with the ones that exist but are not yet active.
Part of the problem with closing a project while saying that "well, when there's a community, they can apply for a new project" is that the bar is also raised. It is much easier to work with the fact that the Wikipedia space is already there and get a handful of individuals involved to get it started than to have to prove the concept and get a group organized to apply for a new project. Much easier to push start a car with the key in the ignition than to take away the key until they get a proper repair job done.
Anyway I put this forth for discussion in the spirit of IYL 2008. All the best.
Don Osborn
Bisharat.net
PanAfriL10n.org
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-- Refije dirije lanmè yo paske nou posede pwòp bato.
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