[Foundation-l] Projects in simple languages

Milos Rancic millosh at gmail.com
Mon Jun 20 14:40:07 UTC 2011


On 06/20/2011 04:29 PM, Milos Rancic wrote:
> After a month of on-list talk -- sometimes very heated, sometimes very
> quiet -- Language committee has agreed about the next wording of the
> part of the new policy [1] related to the simple languages:
> 
> * Can there be wikis in "simple" languages?
> *: Yes, in principle. But two special criteria would need to be met: the
> language should be a "world language" with many L2 users, and there must
> be a reliable, published specification of the controlled language to be
> used. Examples are [[w:en:Basic English|Basic English]] and
> [[w:fr:Français fondamental|Français fondamental]]. (In reality it does
> not appear that there ''are'' many controlled languages other then
> English and French.)
> 
> In practice, it means that:
> * It is likely that just Wikipedia in simple French would be approved.
> If there are reliable and published specifications of other world
> languages (Russian, Spanish, Arabic etc.), group interested in creating
> project in simple language has to present it to the LangCom.
> * It is likely that border cases would be discussed in Language
> committee on case-by-case basis. For example, German is not a world
> language, but at least discussion would be opened if strong arguments
> would be given, including widely accepted definition of simple language.
> * It is not a matter of LangCom would any Wikipedia (or any other
> Wikimedia project) host project in corresponding simple language inside
> of a separate namespace -- with or without specification.

I forgot to give the only link:
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_proposal_policy/New_policy




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