[Foundation-l] IYL'08: Moratorium on deleting language projects?

Sat Jan 5 00:46:46 UTC 2008

Hoi,
Where you write that the motivations for language projects differ, you give
exactly one of the best reasons why in my opinion there are solid reasons
not to have too precise and fixed rules. For some languages you may want to
be a bit more lenient when you have reasons to do so. In the end it is a
balance and when the balance is right, you want to be able to approve a new
project.

Having a good localisation is not red tape. It is in my opinion essential to
make it easy for readers of the language. Having five editors is imho a more
iffie requirement, you have to appreciate though that we have had several
projects that were maintained by one person and this led to problems like
the language not being the language as advertised, the project losing
momentum when that single person leaves. The object of the requirements or
red tape if you will is that our new project have a better chance of not
losing some momentum.

As to the policy, the existing policy has been approved by the board, they
give permission to start projects on the recommendation of the language
committee. As to the people on the LC, most are self appointed bosses then
again there is quite a group of people in the LC most of them are not really
active. The LC is not involved in existing projects. That was explicitly
stated at the start. So we are not involved in closing projects. I am happy
to say that projects will not be killed but can become part of Incubator.
This gives at least criteria before a language version of a project can be
restarted.

So to conclude, I am happy to discuss motivation for specific situations. I
am however not happy to have more firm and formal rules. Every language is
different and in the end it is a matter of balance. In this we also learn
and this changes how we express opinions (we hardly ever vote).

Thanks,
    GerardM

On Jan 4, 2008 9:46 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod at mccme.ru> wrote:

> Hoi Gerard,
>
> I think there are two issues to address. First, different groups of small
> language projects obviously have very different problems, and I am not
> qualified to discuss all of them. I know better about the problems of the
> WPs of the smaller languages of former Soviet Union. They typically have
> several hundred thousand to several millions native speakers, and all
> these speakers are also fluent in Russian. Part of the motivation of
> editors to create these WPs is to save the language from extinction and
> encourage the native speakers who are living in big cities and do not have
> contact with other speakers to preserve the language and to edit
> Wikipedia. In some cases, the collection of texts in WP is the biggest in
> the language everywhere in the internet. It always works, sometimes
> quicker, sometimes slower. But even for projects with several thousand
> articles it is usually difficult to find more than a dozen regular
> editors. It is particularly very unlikely that a project would grow in
> such a way in the Incubator - no potential editor is going to find it, it
> does not get media attention etc. The question is whether we would like to
> encourage such use of Wikipedia, or we barely put red tape by setting some
> restriction: minimally five different editors every month, several hundred
> articles etc. And as far as I am concerned this is the question to be
> answered by WMF, possibly with a preceding discussion in the community.
> Some policy on the issue must be established by WMF.
>
> Another issue, whatever policy on encouraging/discouraging smaller
> language projects is established, is transparency. I think you guys in the
> Language Subcommittee are doing very good job, and I had pleasant
> interactions with some of you on Meta and Incubator, but the decisions
> come (or not come) as a bolt from the blue. Is the committee elected? When
> you say that projects with less than 100 articles are dead, is it your own
> opinion, opinion of Language Subcommittee, policy of Language Subcommittee
> or policy of WMF? Why are the policies for opening new projects not
> written anywhere down, change without notice and are applied
> retroactively? How does it come that LS has the entire responsibility for
> opening new projects but has no relation whatsoever to existing projects,
> even their closure? How could it be that at the same time as the closure
> of Lak WP is discussed, a temporary admin status is not granted since the
> project is active enough to have a permanent admin? And I guess many
> people who are regulars on Meta and Incubator can ask dozens of questions
> like this. As I said I really respect what you guys are doing, and I
> understand that it is absolutely necessary, but I am pretty sure everybody
> would welcome more transparency and more written rules concerning project
> localization.
>
> Cheers,
> Yaroslav
>
>
> > Hoi,
> > The projects that are being closed are not being closed to any
> particular
> > policy. That is bad in and of itself. What is good is that we at least
> > have
> > an understanding that projects can go to the Incubator to revive them.
> > Project with no localisation, with less then 100 articles are hardly
> > relevant on any scale. The language committee has no dealing with the
> > pre-existing projects, this is in many ways a mixed blessing.
> >
> > The new projects for a new language have at least minimal localisation,
> > what
> > is considered minimal is determined by the people at BetaWiki; they are
> > the
> > most relevant messages for our READERS. For subsequent projects we
> insist
> > on
> > a full localisation of MediaWiki and this policy is bearing fruit; the
> > MediaWiki languages is particularly good for languages that want to
> start
> > a
> > new project. A good example is Sranan Tongo that only recently was given
> > conditional approval and started localisation and is doing well.
> >
> > When people vote for a particular project to start, they do not realise
> > that
> > their vote is quite meaningless. People are in favour or against often
> for
> > political reasons. The only thing they do is create a stir. People who
> > walk
> > the walk and talk the talk make the difference. People who create
> credible
> > articles in the Incubator, people that do the localisation. People that
> > create a presence for their language once the project is approved.
> >
> > Projects are approved and they are sometimes for languages that are
> quite
> > small. It takes a few dedicated people to start a new language and, it
> > takes
> > dedication, prolonged dedication to make a successful project. We are
> > HAPPY
> > to approve new languages and projects and, I do want to make the
> > International Year of Languages a success by making sure that the
> > localisation of MediaWiki is a cornerstone to what makes a Wikipedia
> > relevant combined with a minimum of well written articles.
> >
> > If you want to have Wikipedias for African languages, then people that
> are
> > literate in those languages have to show their interest. Wikipedia is a
> > written project. When people want localisation, we can now help them by
> > creating .po files for MediaWiki. This allows for the use of tools like
> > Computer Aided Translation tools. Open Progress has financially
> supported
> > the Wikiread functionality for OmegaT (a GPL licensed CAT tool). We hope
> > to
> > get you Wikiwrite as well so that you can both read and write MediaWiki
> > articles from withing OmegaT.
> >
> > Stopping the closure of WMF projects is currently not in the cards.
> There
> > are people who do not appreciate the relevance of supporting under
> > resourced
> > languages and are really aggressive. The only sane thing is to be
> prudent
> > in
> > approving new projects. As to the differentiation of incubator projects,
> > this is effectively already the case for Wikibooks. However, for a
> > separate
> > language version of Wikibooks, approval is required.
> >
> > Where you suggest stronger requirements when a language already exists,
> > this
> > is already the case. For a follow up project the localisation has to be
> > complete. This means that the Turkish request for a Wikiversity will
> wait
> > until this requirement is met. (The Turkish language projects are lively
> > and
> > not problematic). In essence the suggestions are already in place.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
> >
>
>
>
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