[Foundation-l] Sakha Wikipedia passed 7000 articles

[Marcus Buck]

  An'n 26.08.2010 23:21, hett Gerard Meijssen schreven:
> Hoi,
> Let us have a sense of history here. When the language committee started,
> there were no linguists or other experts members on the committee. We were
> really happy when we got someone who is part of the standard bodies that are
> relevant to what we do. It meant that we had a way to assess what the
> likelihood was for requests to the standard bodies. The only problem was
> that for professional reasons it is not possible to publish the point of
> views expressed publicly. As this may affect the employability, this is not
> a trivial matter and confidentiality is the only way got relevant and
> significant contributions.
>
> As a consequence, the mailing list for the language committee became
> confidential. At a later date, some members were not happy with a
> confidential list and wanted to make *their* contributions public. I opposed
> this  because it is not that hard to deduce what someone said by the answers
> from others. As a consequence I keep my contributions private to the members
> of the committee.
>
> At a later date we started to seek expert opinion about the contributions in
> the incubator to ensure that contributions were in the language that goes
> with the ISO-639-3 code. The comments of these experts are in some cases
> best kept private. We seek assurances for ourselves so that we can honestly
> inform the WMF board that in our opinion a project in a new language can
> start.
>
> The policy allows for only one Wikipedia per language and, requests by
> people that seek to force one orthography or one script do not find
> acceptance in the policy and by the committee. At that we deliberately keep
> such deliberations outside of the WMF LC and leave it to the standard bodies
> to define what makes a specific language.
>
> If this gives you the impression that there is not that much to discuss, you
> are completely correct.
> Thanks,
>          GerardM
In other words: most of the members of the committee agree that 
transparency is useful for the list and you are boycotting their move 
towards more transparency.

As I have said in reply to Jesse, I do not object to confidentiality if 
experts from conflict regions choose to not make public their opinions. 
I do not consider reasons related to employment a valid reason. I cannot 
really imagine any situation where an employer would say "ZOMG, you 
supported a wikipedia in X?!? that'll have consequences!" but if it's 
like that and the person cannot give information then search another 
expert. If Karen is in a situation like this: Well, delete the history 
of her userpage and let her contribute pseudonymously. The employer 
won't know. Just use pseudonyms! Even the experts from conflict regions 
will be safe with pseudonyms. Better than publishing the names without 
the content.

Marcus Buck
User:Slomox