[Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

[GerardM]

Hoi,
When we are to support languages, we have to support them well and, we have
to support them in an equal way. With Incubator we have the potential of
having people prove that there language is viable as a new language. For
users the ability of having support of their user interface is an important
factor of this.

The technical  procedures of creating new languages are faulty because they
do not create message files for these languages and when new projects are
created, the only place where these language files are created are the new
projects. When you ask for these message files to be imported into MediaWiki
proper, there are too many hoops to jump through.

It is for this reason that we explicitly want the message files to be
created in the Incubator and have the messages created in this way supported
in MediaWiki. At this moment we are waiting for the developers to create the
missing message files in the Incubator.

If you can find a friendly developer to create these message files in
Incubator, when the basic messages have been translated, we LOVE to have
more projects.

You have to appreciate that by having a committee, a committee that spends a
lot of time to come up with some sensible policies, they have to have a
certain authority because only this will make things move forward. The
requirement of the message files has  been communicated on many occasions.
It is the one thing stopping projects becoming full projects.

Thanks,
     GerardM

On 3/26/07, Arbeo M <arbeo.wiki at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for your reply, Jesse.
>
> 2007/3/26, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) <pathoschild at gmail.com>:
>
> > The policy is not at fault for the delays.
> Correct
>
>
> > but we still have to get the policy development
> > out of the way first.
>
> You mean the subcommittee itself considers [[Meta:Language proposal
> policy]]
> not final? Is that what you're saying? If so, why did it reject requests
> (e.
> g.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Ladin)
> "in accordance with the Language proposal
> policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy>"
> for incompatibility with the same?
>
>
> > I've said this so many times I'm starting to doubt whether it's
> > possible, but it should not take much longer. Assuming nobody suddenly
> > notices another all-important problem and forces a full halt, we
> > should begin processing requests within a week or two.
>
> So what exactly is the problem?
>
>
>
> > Although the current delays are unacceptable, please be careful not to
> > mistakenly hearken back to the good old days before the subcommittee;
>
> We agree that there's no going back to the old, often chaotic system. I
> still think that a language subcommittee _can_ play a positive role in
> fostering multilingualism. But unfortunately that's only a potentiality so
> far, while the reality is far from it. So let's see to changing that.
>
>
>
> > Feedback on the policy would be much appreciated. Is there anything in
> > particular you oppose or dislike?
>
> The policy is not bad, especially since it picks up many criteria that had
> previously been applied already, in a less formalized manner. Of course,
> one
> could always place a slightly different emphasis here and there but the
> very
> last thing we need now is another endless, tedious policy discussion.*
> What
> we really need now are _results_. What I'm really dreading is a new,
> infinite discussion of principles locking out all those fellow Wikipedians
> who speak Kabyle, Lower Sorbian and forth for another, dunno, three years.
>
> So I'd suggest to work with what we have. Let's apply the Language
> proposal
> policy _judiciously_, not prohibitively. Especially, let's not expect
> potential new Wikipedians to do things that are not part of the policy and
> then wonder why highly promising new projects never come to live. Let's
> always bear in mind that proposers of new Wikipedias from remote regions
> of
> the earth might not necessarily have ten years of Internet experience and
> be
> wiki-savvy and that many of them don't understand English as well as you
> and
> I. Let's support them proactively. Let's never forget that there's tens of
> millions of people out there who are currently excluded from our treasure
> of
> free knowledge because they cannot understand any of the languages we're
> using at the moment.
>
> And above all: Let's put aside un-wikilike nitpicking and boldly say:
> "Yes, you can. Go ahead. Welcome aboard, good to have you here!"
>
> Have a good day everybody
> --Arbeo
>
>
> * Just one small suggestion. Policy says under section "Conditional
> approval":
> "At least five active users must edit that language regularly before a
> test
> project will be considered successful." I'd set a lower requirement (e. g.
> 3
> users) here for small languages (under, say, 100,000 speakers or so) in
> order to make the policy non-discriminatory. While it might be fairly easy
> for communities like the Kabyle to round up a start-up team of five
> editors,
> it is probably disproportionately difficult for small language
> communities.
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