[Foundation-l] Community draft of language proposal policy

[Tim Starling]

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> The IETF has been involved in incorporating the ISO-639-3 for over a year
> since the moment this version of the standard became official. The new
> proposed RFC will be the RFC 4646-bis. Many languages that we recognise in
> the Wikimedia Foundation are not recognised in the RFC 4646. It is exactly
> because of this standard being behind the time that we use the ISO-639-3.

You are making a requirement that a language proposal must have a *unique*
ISO 639-3 code. That is much more restrictive than what I am suggesting.
I'm saying that we shouldn't need a unique language code of any kind. All
we need is a domain name and something to put in the lang attribute. As
far as I'm concerned, the lang attribute can be "und", and the domain name
can be a 7-letter transliteration. Both can be changed at any time after
the creation of the project.

We've been ahead of the standards bodies in the past, and we've moved
wikis when they've caught up. I see no reason why we can't do it again.

-- Tim Starling