Hoi, The process of a language is quite straight forward. As the requirements for a new project are well published and by and large well known, When a linguistic entity has an ISO-639-3 code and when it is not a constructed language or an extinct language, it becomes eligible. When there are circumstances that are different or complicating, the language committee is asked for an opinion. We do not require a quorum, we are maybe not "typical" but we can our job done.
In the final step of the process, we inform the chair of the board of our recommendation for approving a new project. We are currently in the process of approving a new project and we have asked Michael Snow for his opinion of the process. He indicated that we are to send this message to the members of the board and, if we do not get questions or a negative indication we may assume that there is consent.
Given that all our requests for the creation of new projects are approved in this way, there is hardly any need for you to question that due process has been followed. Again, nothing happens if the language committee is not in agreement. The current practice has resulted in more viable projects, it has lead to an improvement in the localisation of our projects. I would argue that the current process has proven itself. Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 10:31 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi,
- Why is it improperly labeled? This helps to prevent issues in the
future.
As noted in other response -- the summary didn't refer to the language requested, so could not be easily found or prioritized in response to inquiries.
- The mailing list of the language committee is available for members of
the
language committee only. The language committee works by full consensus, consequently when any one objects to something that needs approval, it is not approved. So consequently we do not have anything to show for you,
but
as has been indicated befor,e at the time when the status of eligibility was to be decided for Egyptian Arabic, the question was raised by me if
it
should be considered eligible and this was discussed on the list, the
answer
we agreed on was "yes".
How many people actually, actively, agreed to it, and on what basis?
- I do not know who told you that only two members discussed this but
given
the way that only one voice is enough to prevent something from going through, it does not need much discussion when people approve.
- So we do discuss things when we find a need for it.
As an operational matter, we need to be able to rely on the langcom's decisions to carry weight, or else we have to do more individual research into your requests, which means we can't respond to them as quickly as you'd like.
If a failure to discuss is taken as approval, this may indicate that the committee's process is dysfunctional.
Typically, a quorum (minimum number of discussion participants) is required to ensure that adequate attention has been paid to requests. Does the language committee currently have a quorum requirement? What is it, and was it reached in this particular discussion?
- What we do not find is that when requests are approved and accepted by
the
board that they are created. It is not the first time that this proved a problem.
Please note that setup of language subdomains of existing project sites is totally outside the scope of the business of the board of directors of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The business of the board is to set a direction for the company, hire an executive to manage the day-to-day operations of the company moving in that direction, and provide oversight of how well the company is doing that job and whether the company is spending donor money effectively.
If operational requests you care about are behind, don't waste your or the board's time invoking the board -- come to me directly and ask what's the hold-up.
In this case, the general hold-up for a long time was simply that the tech team was spending most effort on low-level site operations; reconfiguration and new wiki setup requests were handled either by volunteer admins doing general housecleaning on the queue, or by direct handling of a particular request brought to our attention.
Apparently this particular request was either unseen or uninteresting to volunteer admins going through the queue, and no one reached out specifically to us about it.
We're now clearing out general backlogs and are trying to ensure that the requests are legitimate -- there's nothing less fun than changing a site configuration or setting up a new language site and then finding out the community didn't actually want it!
If the existing infrastructure for language setup approval is not working effectively at establishing a firm consensus, I'd like to make sure we fix that process -- it'll be easier on everybody. Approved requests will carry more weight, they'll get taken care of faster, and we're less likely to have to reverse something already set up.
- -- brion
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