Hello,
Gerard is emotional because for him somehow all boils down to freedom of speech. I had an argument earlier with him on foundation-I and questioned the process and he would repeatedly go to "why do you want to inhibit the freedom of others when no one is trying to do the same to you". I tried to point out this is pretty irrelevant to what I am asking to no avail. I asked whether I could see the deliberation of LangCom regarding this case when he said 'Langcom took into account all the issues you raised while making a decision' but he said those are confidential (even Ting raised an objection to that!), and then later on said the 'deliberations' consisted of him declaring it on the mailing list and no one objected.
Regardless of the issue of Masry, I for one would like to see more transparency out of langcom, I would like to see the deliberations of its members archived somewhere and I would like to see what are the rules of discussions (like what Brion said about the minimum of ppl required for a discussion). Posting a proposal and recieving no answer doesnt necessarily mean everyone considered the subject, it may also mean that they didnt. Also, if that is your process, how do you determine when a member of langcom becomes inactive?
On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:10 AM, Bilal Abdul Kader bilalak@gmail.comwrote:
Hi Gerard, This will be my last contribution to this topic but it seems you are taking the issue emotionally. Brion is not asking for more than a due process. I really do not see the argument of pro-masri or anti-masri in his words.
Wikipedia should not be used to advance nationalist causes. Rather, it provides an open medium to disseminate information and let people collaborate to build an encyclopedia that others can use.
bilal
On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 4:35 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.comwrote:
Hoi, There is a strong sentiment against allowing for the Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia by those who prefer a unified Arabic Wikipedia. They have used all kinds of arguments but in essence they refuse others to work on what is after all a recognised separate language. When they argue that it will fracture the effort for the Arabic Wikipedia, they forget that it is not their time and effort they are directing. When they argue that not much
is
written in Egyptian Arabic, they forget that this is no different for
many
languages like Limburgian as well. Their problem is that their view of a world where everyone speaks the same language is at odds with how it is perceived others.
There is a request for an Egyptian Arabic Wiktionary in the pipe line and with 99,81% for the MediaWiki messages and 97.51% they have demonstrated their comitment to this effort. It is all the more remarkable because
they
do not have their Wikipedia yet. It is a clear testament to their wish to do well for their language.
The point of the language committee is that it has the remit to decide on these issues.Consequently there are situations where some will not agree what it is that the committee decides and it means that there will be no public consensus. This is to be expected and accepted.
Brion, when you have specific questions as to the approval of Egyptian Arabic, raise them. What you are doing is calling the process itself into doubt. As it is clear that you are not familiar with the process in the first place, the policy as it is does not allow for extinct and
constructed
languages and you write that such languages are created, I think you
should
create the arz.wikipedia.org.
Thanks, GerardM
On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 11:58 PM, Brion Vibber brion@wikimedia.org wrote:
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Egyptian Arabic is recognised as a language by the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO) in its ISO-639-3 standard.
Well, so is Klingon! :) An ISO-639-3 listing doesn't by itself confer appropriateness for use; it merely confirms that the language can be referred to with a standardized code.
Appropriateness for use in a Wikimedia project tends to vary quite a bit; in some areas we avoid creating wikis for national variants of larger language groups, in other areas we create a lot of national and subnational variants.
Since this is a written medium, national or subnational language variants are usually most controversial where there isn't a standard orthography and the requested form is not commonly used in written communication. (On the other hand, even extinct languages are
frequently
given wikis where they have a long written historical context.)
I'm only asking about arz specifically because:
a) It's recently come up as we're tidying up the backlog, so it's at
the
top of the pile
b) I've gotten specific questions about the approval process for arz,
so
we're making sure everything's clear before setting it up
c) The public discussion I have seen was not conclusive, and it's not yet clear that the langcom discussion was conclusive either.
If the discussion was conclusive, then we'll be happy to finish it up. But since I'd rather not go through this every time we have another
wiki
to create, I want to make sure that the process is clear.
- -- brion
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