[Foundation-l] An agenda for the meeting of the language committee

[M. Williamson]

How about this:

Over the past several years, new projects have been approved and
created improving our coverage of world languages. However, the vast
majority of this growth since the formation of Langcom has been in
European languages - a quick sampling reveals new Wikipedias in Rusyn
(Eastern Europe), Gagauz (Moldova and Ukraine), North Frisian (Germany
and Denmark) as well as Wikisource in Breton (France) and Venetian
(Italy), Wikiversity in Swedish and Wikibooks in Limburgish
(Netherlands, Belgium and Germany), although none of those are new
languages for WM projects. At first, there was an encouraging trend -
the first 4 Wikipedias created after the new language policy was in
place were in Kabyle (North Africa), Hakka (China and Chinese
diaspora), Bikol (Philippines) and normative Belarusian. However, this
trend seems to have changed so that now, since December of 2009, 9 new
Wikipedias have been created, but all but 1 were in European minority
languages (the exception was Banjar, of Indonesia and Malaysia).

So my question for discussion is, what, if anything, can be done to
encourage growth and improved linguistic coverage in other areas of
the world?


2011/2/19 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> Hoi,
> In Berlin, in parallel to the MediaWiki <http://mediawiki.org/> hackathon,
> members of the language
> committee<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_committee>of the
> Wikimedia
> Foundation <http://wikimediafoundation.org/> will meet for a first time in
> real life.
>
> As I read the roster of the people who may attend, I am amazed at their
> qualifications. All people are involved in their
> Wikipedias<http://wikipedia.org/>in the
> Incubator <http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>, they are
> linguists, standard people, a script expert, Wikimedians.
>
> The first line of our business will be to evaluate what we do. We will get
> to know each other better and we will talk endlessly about language,
> Wikipedia and what not.
>
> You can help us be more focused by suggesting topics to our agenda. Anything
> goes and when we understand the issue raised, we will attempt to formulate
> an opinion. When such an opinion is actionable, we will raise it with the
> people that can make a difference.
>
> The topics may be all over the map and they do not need to be confined to
> the language policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy>or
> even the Wikimedia Foundation. When there are issues in MediaWiki, we
> may
> pop over to the people at the Hackathon and ask their opinion.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
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