[Foundation-l] Policy modification (was possible reconsideration)

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
It is possible to request a code for a revived extinct language. The
argument in favour of such a code is likely to be adopted by the
organisations that issue the relevant codes. "Ancient" languages cannot
start a project because by definition expressions in that language are
exclusively in the past.

There have been those that say that you can express modern language with old
terminology. I have asked specialists about this notion and they reject
this. When you want to learn Ancient Greek you learn the grammar by exercise
and write new text, you create problems in understanding the vocabulary that
is part of the language when studying modern text. The WMF is about
learning, when a project is known to be flawed from its inception, when
there are methods to make the distinction between the modern and the
original usage clear, it is unconscionable to accept languages under the
code defining the language as ancient or extinct when there is a clear route
of making this difference clear.

When community decision means that this strategy is not explored because of
a wish not to do this, the community is not listening to arguments and hence
there is no wish to seek a consensus.

It is not really important if everybody agrees on a policy. I do not happy
with the way the policy is currently explained. However, I am extremely
happy with the policy as it means that we do not have to argue all the time.
Changing the policy in a way that makes it less predictable and observable
would quickly make the policy largely irrelevant and it would rapidly
degenerate both the policy and the committee into a dysfunctional state.
Thanks,
     GerardM

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 1:08 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Jesse Plamondon-Willard wrote:
> > Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I think that if the will of the community goes against the decision of
> >> the committee, perhaps it is time for the committee to reconsider.
> >>
> > I agree that community consensus on the policy should override
> > committee consensus. However, there was no community consensus; we had
> > a dozen or two people voicing conflicting opinions and proposals about
> > whether to keep, remove, or replace that clause in the policy. Where
> > there is a complete lack of community direction on that clause, I
> > think it's within the committee's purpose to maintain the current
> > policy.
> >
> Absolutely, assuming that the policy was properly adopted in the first
> place.  Keeping and removing are clear options, but each proposal to
> replace needs to be viewed as a separate option.  It's not enough to say
> that we need to replace something without saying what we want to replace
> it with.  If the replacers have a conflicting variety of proposals let
> them work out an agreement among themselves.  In parliamentary procedure
> this is what the sub-amendment process does.  Only after the
> sub-amendments have been sorted out does the amendment come up for
> adoption.
> > If we were to strike out policy for which there is no community
> > consensus, the result would be the same because we'd be forced to stop
> > processing ancient languages until we had a policy under which to do
> > so. However, I think holding requests in limbo indefinitely is a bad
> > practice.
> >
> >
> The first expression here seems ambiguous as to whether the original
> policy had no consensus or the striking out had no consensus.  If there
> is no policy the processing of each affected language would need to be
> treated as a separate issue with the full range of the usual arguments
> being repeated.  I do agree that keeping requests in limbo is bad.
>
> Ec
>
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