Language proposal policy

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WM:LPP

This page outlines the policy that governments proposals to open new language subdomains of existing projects. Note that this is a proposal, and is neither binding nor necessarily accurate.

There are several points you must consider when creating a new language. Please review the full text of this page before submitting a proposal.

Procedure

Prerequisites

Please ensure that the following statements are all correct concerning the proposed language:
1. The proposal is to open a new language Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, or Wikiversity.
  Meta-Wiki, The Wikimedia Commons, and Wikispecies are multilingual projects, so that there are no separate editions for individual languages. Wikisource has its own request page.
2. That language project does not already listed (see the complete list of Wikimedia projects).
3. The language is sufficiently different from any current language (see the complete list of Wikimedia projects) to be mutually incomprehensible.
  Where this is questionable, the issue should be decided by the normal process described below. Different written forms of the same basic language should be included on the same wiki, possibly on different pages.
  
  It has a valid ISO 639-2 or ISO 639-3 draft code, or you have proposed a compatible language code.
  
  If there is no standard ISO code for your language, you will need to propose a code that is more than three letters long. The recommended format combines a generic code for the language family (such as gem for Germanic languages) with a three letter code for the proposed language (such as fiu-vro combining "other Finno-Ugric languages" with a code invented for the Voro language). This procedure may not be ideal for all circumstances, but should be followed if reasonable.
4. The proposal has a sufficient number of speakers to form a viable community and audience. If the proposal is for an artificial language such as Esperanto, it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion.
  Many users consider fictional languages (such as Klingon) to be unacceptable, and such proposals may get strong support. A precedent of note is the Klingon Wikipedia, which was eventually shut down (see proposal talk page).

Initial proposal

Please ensure that the following statements are all correct concerning yourself and your proposal:
1. You have an account on this Meta-Wiki.
2. You have provided all required information. In particular, you have filled in all fields of the proposal template (see below).

Discussion and gathering a community

Users are encouraged to discuss whether it is a good idea to open the new language. However, this is not a vote. Even if there is apparently overwhelming support, the proposal may be denied if there are strong arguments against its creation and insufficiently strong arguments in support.

At least five active editors on a Wikimedia project must be interested in working on that language. You are encouraged to search for interested contributors yourself, as this may speed up the process considerably. These users must explicitly state that they are willing to contribute time and effort to the project. Note that a project may be closed if there is little or no activity within the first year.

Closing a proposal

A Meta administrator will close the proposal after one month or once the decision to be taken is clear, at their discretion. They will take into account all arguments in favour and in opposition to the new language. The number of users supporting or opposing is irrelevant.

The Meta administrator closing the proposal must be impartial, having no overriding opinion regarding the proposal. This does not mean that they cannot participate in the discussion by providing unbiased facts or links to precedent discussions. The decision may be reviewed by other Meta administrators.

Submitting the proposal

Once a Meta administrator has closed the proposal, and after sufficient time has passed for other impartial administrators to review the decision, it will be submitted to the developers via the appropriate mailing lists.

This may be a lengthy process, since the developers are very busy and new language creation is not a high priority. You are strongly encouraged to write articles, interface files, and help or instruction pages on the Development wiki. This may accelerate the process over a proposal with no active community. For Wikipedia proposals, the List of articles all languages should have may be useful in doing this.

Frequently asked questions

Please read the above procedure, particularly the prerequisites, for other information.

Can there be wikis in ancient languages?
Yes. There are already wikis available in Latin, Old English, Gothic and Pali.

Can there be wikis in artificial languages?
Yes. There are already wikis available in Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Interlingue, Lojban, Volapük and Novial. See the relevant note under the prerequisites for cautionary information about fictional languages.

How many speakers are necessary?
There should be enough speakers to form a viable community and audience. Whether a particular language qualifies depends on discussion.