Wikibooks
Meitei<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikibo…
and Wikinews
Meitei<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikine…
(mni). We've just marked the Wikipedia and Wiktionary requests as eligible. The same
person proposed these two requests, but has created no content yet. I'm placing them
on hold, but actually encouraging the contributor to focus on the first two projects first
and not totally scattering the effort.
Wikinews
Hausa<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikinew…
(ha). First language of over 40 million in West Africa. 2,000-page Wikipedia and 200-page
Wiktionary exist. No content created here yet; putting on hold.
Wikisource Literary
Chinese<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikis…
(lzh). This is the tricky request of this set. I can use some guidance. But frankly, at
least in the short term, I'm inclined to mark eligible. Let me explain.
* At first glance, I couldn't understand why this content would not be better
served within Chinese Wikisource. And I asked the proposer that question
here<https://wikisource.org/wiki/Category_talk:Literary_Chinese>se>.
* The answer had some complexity, and there is (in fact) a certain amount of
duplication of content at the moment between the lzh test in Old Wikisource and Chinese
Wikisource.
* Ultimately, the answer came down to something like this: Literary Chinese is not
(simply) an early form of Chinese, but rather was a literary lingua franca for people in
many lands of that part of the world. If one were to use French as an analogy, Literary
Chinese is more comparable to Latin than to Old French. And I would add that Literary
Chinese (lzh) has a different langcode from Old Chinese (cch) or Middle Chinese (ltc).
* To continue the analogy a bit, the proposer suggests that if all the content in
Literary Chinese had to be included in Chinese Wikisource, it would be equivalent to
putting all Latin content in French Wikisource—where the language of the interface,
discussions, templates, and what have you is French, not Latin, and therefore not fully
accessible to speakers of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc. Similarly, here, putting the
content in Chinese Wikisource would make the contents less accessible to people whose
vernacular is Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc., but whose literary history is tied to
Literary Chinese.
Given that there is more inherent flexibility to allow projects in historical languages
for Wikisources than for other projects, and given the above arguments, I think we should
mark this request as eligible. But I'm going to wait seven days on this for comments
from the Committee.
Steven
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