As per the procedure on

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Start_a_new_edition

I'd like to launch three new editions later today or tomorrow: Portuguese, Polish, and Romanian. For Portuguese, I count Carlosar as a valid vote, because he has made 3000+ edits on the English Wikinews, and he is a native speaker.

For future editions, I'd also like to suggest changing the language procedure in the following way:

The "activity on existing Wikimedia projects" requirement can be dropped if a few support pages (FAQ, Mission Statement, etc.) are created on Meta for the project to be launched. These can be translations or original creations.

Such an effort indicates a genuine interest in working on a Wikinews edition in a language. It also reduces the dependency of new projects on existing ones -- we already know that many key people working on Wikinews have not done substantial work on Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects. There would still be a requirement of at least 5 signatures, so it's not just one person playing an overarching role.

If this works out, perhaps we can substitute one procedure for another; I prefer the translation procedure, because it also makes sure that certain pages are in place before the wiki is set up (a problem on some new editions which were essentially blank for several days).

I'd like to credit the Memory Alpha wiki for this procedure, which has successfully used it for setting up new languages.

Regards,

Erik