Requests for new languages/Wikisource Old Saxon

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submitted verification final decision

This proposal has been rejected.
This decision was taken by the language committee in accordance with the Language proposal policy based on the discussion on this page.

A committee member provided the following comment:

Per the discussion below, Old Saxon content is fine for the time being at Multilingual Wikisource. At the same time, the people working on Low Saxon Wikisource have structured their project to include Old Saxon if and when they get to a point of approval. So one way or the other, the ultimate disposition of Old Saxon Wikisource content will not be a completely separate Old Saxon Wikisource project. For LangCom: StevenJ81 (talk) 17:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • The community needs to develop an active test project; it must remain active until approval (automated statistics). It is generally considered active if the analysis lists at least three active, not-grayed-out editors listed in the sections for the previous few months.
  • The community needs to complete required MediaWiki interface translations in that language (about localization, translatewiki, check completion).
  • The community needs to discuss and complete the settings table below:
What Value Example / Explanation
Proposal
Language code osx (SIL, Glottolog) A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ...
Language name Old Saxon Language name in English
Language name Sahsisk Language name in your language. This will appear in the language list on Special:Preferences, in the interwiki sidebar on other wikis, ...
Language Wikidata item Q35219 - item has currently the following values: Item about the language at Wikidata. It would normally include the Wikimedia language code, name of the language, etc. Please complete at Wikidata if needed.
Directionality no indication Is the language written from left to right (LTR) or from right to left (RTL)?
Links Links to previous requests, or references to external websites or documents.
Site URL osx.wikisource.org langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
Project name Wikiborn "Wikisource" in your language
Project namespace usually the same as the project name
Project talk namespace "Wikisource talk" (the discussion namespace of the project namespace)
Enable uploads yes Default is "no". Preferably, files should be uploaded to Commons.
If you want, you can enable local file uploading, either by any user ("yes") or by administrators only ("admin").
Notes: (1) This setting can be changed afterwards. The setting can only be "yes" or "admin" at approval if the test creates an Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) first. (2) Files on Commons can be used on all Wikis. (3) Uploading fair-use images is not allowed on Commons (more info). (4) Localisation to your language may be insufficient on Commons.
Optional settings
Project logo This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation).
Default project timezone Europe/Groningen "Continent/City", e.g. "Europe/Brussels" or "America/Mexico City" (see list of valid timezones)
Additional namespaces For example, a Wikisource would need "Page", "Page talk", "Index", "Index talk", "Author", "Author talk".
Additional settings Anything else that should be set
submit Phabricator task. It will include everything automatically, except additional namespaces/settings. After creating the task, add a link to the comment.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Proposal[edit]

  • Support - Since old languages are denied the right to have a little of honour and have their own wikipedia, I think it would be the least to grant Old saxon having its own wikisource. I know some would say that Old saxon texts should be hosted by a Low Saxon wikisource, but which one?? Plattdeutsch wikisource? Plautdietsch wikisource? Nedersaksies wikisource? I think Old Saxon has the ability to stand tall and have its own subdomain. This wiki will be limited, we don't want and we can't have something gigantic, just a wiki in our ancestral language with texts in this language. This Old Saxon wikisource could also host Middle Low German texts if no Middle Low German wikisource already exists, because this latter language has the same problem as its ancestor Old Saxon: No wiki to be. What would also be interesting is the fact that the creation of this wiki in Old Saxon would considerably improve people's knowledge of Old Saxon, which still remains a rather unknown language, shadowed behind Old English. --Stardsen (talk) 12:25, 2 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
但任幾乎何古語言都有多個後代，照這個邏輯全都改立項了。除非你認為有必要改變古語不立項的規定。--Bobo alcazar (talk) 05:23, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

That's much less of a point for Wikisources, as collections of old work, than it is for other projects. If we had a large collection of Ancient Egyptian writing, it would be most reasonable to put it in a Wikisource Ancient Egyptian, and not try and shoehorn it into some other project.
  • It seems sort of moot, given that it's been open for so long with no action. Old Saxon documents should be kept somewhere, and not on Multilingual Wikisource if there's enough of them; however, a glance at w:Old Saxon#Literature would imply that there simply aren't enough documents for its own Wikisource. It also seems that the German Wikisource hosts some of these documents, as a modern "successor". If there were a Low Saxon Wikisource, that might be a good fit. I know there's political issues here about who should host Old Saxon, but it seems unnecessary to create a separate wiki for them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:51, 7 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Question and Comment from LangCom[edit]

@Slomox: You're one of the two people who have provided the most content, and the other is not really active any more. Let me ask you: What do you think about this?

  • In general, policy would suggest that Old Saxon content ought to be incorporated into either Plattdütsch Wikisource or German Wikisource (or both).
    As an analogue, see Category:Old English works and Category:Middle English works on English Wikisource.
  • I see you as the person most likely to lead the effort to get Plattdütsch Wikisource ready for approval as an independent project. (That discussion belongs in a different place; ping me here or on Multilingual Wikisource.) If that happens, do you have a problem bringing the Old Saxon and Middle Low German content with you? Or would you prefer them to stay at Multilingual Wikisource?

In all likelihood, this will be not be considered eligible as an independent project. (That said, as long as the content stays on Multilingual [Old] Wikisource, there is no reason it can't remain in a separate category, rather than as a subcategory of Category:Nds.) (Slomox: But why wouldn't one merge Category:Ooldsassisch and Category:Sahsisk?) StevenJ81 (talk) 16:09, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I collected Low Saxon texts at oldwikisource and I did so from all time periods (Old Saxon, Hanseatic Low Saxon and modern Low Saxon). I see absolutely no reason for a separate project. Old Saxon is the predecessor of modern Low Saxon, so the Low Saxon Wikisource is the most natural place to host the content.
German Wikisource has always had a habit of saying "we are better at the job, we should host Old Saxon content". And I was always opposed to this. Metaphorically spoken modern Low Saxon is the only grandson of Old Saxon while German is just one of several grandnephews.
When you look at my contributions on oldwikisource I was always a supporter of a Low Saxon Wikisource that is multilingual. The content of course is Low Saxon (from any time period) but I support that templates etc. are multilingual so people speaking different Low Saxon varieties and people speaking German, Dutch or English (Dutch and English being the other grandnephews besides German) can access content and contribute to the content.
So I see no reason to support the cultural appropriation the German Wikisource is trying to do. --::Slomox:: >< 15:47, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Slomox: The question of "who hosts content" for Wikisources in cases like this is sometimes a little unclear. And there are at least some cases where content is duplicated in more than one Wikisource, for various reasons. (See, for example, s:en:Bible (Mechon Mamre) and s:pt:Tanakh/Torah/Bereshit/I, which are bilingual pages that include Hebrew text available at s:he:מקרא.)
In my view, German Wikisource is welcome to duplicate any Old Saxon content it likes, from here or from any future Low Saxon Wikisource, provided that the duplication includes attribution of the original source. It would be more of a problem in my view if the German Wikisource community removed content from Multilingual Wikisource (or future Low Saxon Wikisource), since such content also belongs to the body of work that you and other Low Saxon speakers have done.
As far as this request goes:
  • I think I will reject the request to make an independent Old Saxon Wikisource eligible for future approval. I don't see it likely ever to get big enough and active enough to get its own subdomain. So either the content will remain on Multilingual Wikisource (which is fine), or it will move to a future Low Saxon Wikisource if that should become approvable in the future (which is also fine).
  • In the near future, I will contact you at Multilingual Wikisource to see if there is something we can do to get Low Saxon Wikisource moving toward an independent subdomain (if that's what you and its community want).
  • If we get a Low Saxon Wikisource to the point of a possible approval, we will consult with the German Wikisource community. (Really, I probably have to.) We will invite them to incorporate any Old Saxon content they want into German Wikisource (in parallel), or will ask them if they prefer to see Old Saxon content left at Multilingual Wikisource. And then we'll see what consensus, if any, develops.
Does that work for you? StevenJ81 (talk) 17:54, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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