Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Nauruan Wikipedia

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This is a proposal for closing and/or deleting a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is subject to the current closing projects policy.

The proposal for closing na: is accepted and the proposed actions should be taken.

  • A Language Committee member provided the following comment:
    The content of this project is extremely limited. Hardly any pages has more than one sentence of content (that isn't a long quotation in a different language, e.g. of national anthem texts). This justifies saying "the project is inactive + there is an absence of content", so it could be closed. There are also concerns about the quality of the little content that does exist, as no native or non-self-taught speakers seem to ever have been involved. Content will be moved to Incubator, and then closure of the wiki will be requested. --MF-W 09:08, 27 April 2023 (UTC) Pages have been deleted on na.wikipedia, a sitenotice set up, and closure requested: phabricator:T335674. Import to incubator:Wp/na will follow the closure. --MF-W 09:53, 1 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal[edit]

I think that the Nauruan Wikipedia should be closed. Nauruan is a Micronesian language spoken by about 7000 people, mainly in Nauru.

Apparently this wiki was created by the request of Gertjan R., who isn't a native Nauruan speaker and wasn't active for a lot. Also no native Nauruan speaker has ever contributed to this wiki. Even through there are people who read Wikipedia from Nauru, seems like they don't want to contribute to Wikipedia and they don't need Nauruan Wikipedia, because all of them use the English edition.

Yes, it has over 1000 pages, but all of pages were created by non-native speakers. You can doubt their quality. All of pages are very short. Also most of the pages were created by the people who don't know even a few words in Nauruan, they just copy another pages and change a few words to fit with the topic.

I know many people will tell me "give it a chance" or "all languages deserve a Wikipedia" as they do always, but this wiki doesn't have much purpose. It doesn't seem that it's going to come back to life soon.

In my opinion, it is better if this wiki is sent to the Incubator. Россиянин123 (talk) 13:11, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A notification on the wiki is missing. --MF-W 22:13, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Done that. George Ho (talk) 23:52, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that, but I would love if the proposer could explain why he hasn't done it himself. --MF-W 01:16, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot to do it Россиянин123 (talk) 06:26, 4 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I completely agree. PointBlankAlpha (talk) 16:51, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

25 January 2021 edit[edit]

I did some research and it seems like Gertjan R. wasn't behind the creation of Wikipedia in Nauruan, he was just very active and was an administrator. This user has registered in 2004, meanwhile this Wikipedia exists since August 2003, according to this page.

Unfortunately, it's unknown why was Nauruan Wikipedia created, who has requested the creation and when was it created. It has been over 16 years since the creation of nawiki after all. But it's known that it was in something that is clearly not a Micronesian language, more like a Germanic or Romance language with intentionally very mispronounced words. Here is the link to the 30 October 2004 version from the Wayback Machine. As you can see, there were very few articles and it was very irrelevant (not so different from 2021), so nobody has noticed a Wikipedia like this. Also it could be that the people were fooled by somebody claiming to be a fluent or native Nauruan speaker, like George Psalmanazar claimed to be from Formosa. Nobody has noticed the forgery because of this language being practically completely unknown to the rest of the world. The only page with Nauruan language was Nauru Bwiema, the anthem of Nauru. The name of the Nauruan language in Wikipedia was "Nauruose", a word that doesn't exist anywhere else instead of "Ekakairu Naoero" or "Dorerin Naoero".

The only editors from these times that I found were Shushua and Nauru. Both of them were writing in this weird pseudo-Nauruan, both didn't appear anywhere after 2004.

It was a wonder for nawiki to get somebody who was ready to check Nauruan grammar books and dictionaries for many hours to save this Wiki. Apparently, this somebody was Gertjan R., known as "Belgian man" back then. If it wasn't for him, this Wiki could be closed like the Marshallese Wikipedia.

Also I found something weird.

  • Edit #2 - 04:55, 6 December 2003 (UTC)
  • Edit #7 - 05:07, 10 December 2003 (UTC)
  • Edit #19 - 22:37, 9 August 2003 (UTC)

These are the arguments for this Wiki being basically stillborn. This edition of Wikipedia needs a native Nauruan speaker who will be ready to make a lot of new pages, and they shouldn't be about populated places or people.

Россиянин123 (talk) 13:39, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]


holy crap dude, if people are doing gibberish germanic stuff this needs closed down immediately. it might be funny for a quick 5 minutes, but after 16 years it's not quite funny anymore. KikuJones (talk) 06:11, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This stuff was removed after somebody found it in late 2004, but nawiki still doesn't have any native speakers. Россиянин123 (talk) 12:22, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

I would also add that 90% of native Nauruan speakers do not even have access to electricity, let alone the Internet, and even more so about Wikipedia. Nevertheless, I will try to find some native Nauruan speakers who will edit Wikipedia. I also will try to revive Nauruan Wikipedia. Just give me some time ) -- 7elteven (talk) 12:12, 25 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to help nawiki so much, then you can do it in Incubator after the closure. Россиянин123 (talk) 13:39, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, you say that over 90% of Nauruan speakers don't have access to the internet, but then go to say you will find someone to add content to the wikipedia, I just wanted to ask what would be the point of finding someone native to add content to a Wikipedia which language only has 7000 native speakers? In fact, if what you're saying is correct (that 90% of Nauruan speakers don't have internet), that that would leave just a couple hundred of people who have internet, which just makes wanting to revive it more pointless. 2601:206:8200:1C60:F54A:7294:C637:A004 20:45, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Please log in SHB2000 (talk | contibs | en.wikivoyage | en.wikipedia) 07:48, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No need to, PCP allows anonymous users to support or against, just if they are not IP socks. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:38, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wasn't aware that anons were allowed to vote back when I was still new to meta in March, so I've now struck my comment. SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 06:04, 3 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Most of the articles are one sentence stubs or years, and only a few hundred people in Nauru have internet, as said by user 7elteven. There is no point in wasting our time for a few hundred people when we can be improving more important Wikipedias. Max20characters (talk) 19:24, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose There are 3,000+ articles which is enough (and it will be grow up If you allow them to edit on it and revive the wiki), Nauruans in foreign countries exists and If you delete the wiki, there will be no encyclopedia for them (since there aren't alot of Nauruans websites).

MrLune (talk) 18:32, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • There are 3000+ spam articles which is enough to be useful for vandalisms, vandalers in the entire earth always exit, so we should allow them to revive spams and grow up terrorisms, if we delete the wiki, then no one will ever need to patroll, since there are no longer having any wikis to allow spams. --117.136.1.97 00:04, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • I oppose this, on the basis of Wikimedia's stated commitment to «grow community around the world» and «make our projects more inclusive». Closing small projects just because they are small and have few speakers, without more pressing problems in the wiki being present, sends a chilling effect to minority language communities across Wikimedia. If the articles on the Nauruan Wikipedia are of an unacceptably low quality, it would be helpful to have a proficient speaker corroborate that - and even then, the correct solution is targeted deletion rather than outright closure. Aŭdrea (talk) 19:28, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support There are only 700 600 (10% of 6000 - see wikipedia:Nauruan language) people who could be editing, and frankly, almost no people will read the Wikipedia, let alone edit it. AnotherEditor144 t - c 21:44, 1 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    "Only 600" people? Seriously? On simplewiki, which I like to call home, there are ~30 regular editors (and when I say regular editors here, I mean people who I see regularly on noticeboards and in recent changes).
    There are about 30 wikis who have over 600 "active editors" (people who have made 1 edit) which leaves about 300 wikis which don't have enough active editors for you, and that includes the Cantonese, Malay, Esperanto, Tamil and Croatian Wikipedias. --Ferien (talk) 15:10, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I said could. I would estimate, probably 1-2% would care to edit instead of viewing anonymously or doing something else. That leaves only a few native speakers. There were a few Nauruan IPs editing. That corroborates with my estimate, Ferien! Double that for the non-natives, and that increases to only 6. Also, there is a misunderstanding: 'not enough' means under about 75 active editors. - AnotherEditor144 t - c 15:54, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @AnotherEditor144: 75 active editors is still quite a lot in terms of the scale. At least there are some active editors and there is a small community. There are hundreds of wikis where a community is non-existent, and over 50% of Wikipedias have less than 75 active editors. Your definition of 'not enough' is still a bar that is unreachable for a majority of wikis.
    Also, to address your point of almost no people reading the Wikipedia, on most days there are over 1,000 pageviews on the site per day. This is not "almost no-one" and the Nauruan Wikipedia is clearly benefitting quite a few people. --Ferien (talk) 19:50, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    They probably go there to do something with their Nauruan skills, then leave for en:. There are people who learn it as a second language primarily, but really, they prefer en:, Ferien. - AnotherEditor144 t - c 06:42, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    AnotherEditor144, you don't know that they prefer enwiki, you're just assuming that. It's clear a reasonable amount of people are finding this project useful in some way or another, and therefore it should remain open. --Ferien (talk) 12:46, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    AE144, You do also realise that if you're going that way, it means closing every single language Wikipedia that is not one of the main regional languages. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 11:31, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh! Now I see, but still, they also speak English, and en: clearly serves them better. AnotherEditor144 t - c 18:16, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Edit made at 07:39, 4 March 2021 (UTC): I noticed that the Main Page* hasn't been updated in 3 weeks (see na:Special:Diff/82372/82371. Moreover, the revision numbers were consecutive. Also, between those edits to the Main Page* (this and na:Special:Diff/82371/82277 - I will skip 82371 as it is minor) there were only 96 revisions (of the whole wiki - don't forget) in the space of 2 months. The place where they actually put the content * is not protected, and any vandal could just go and vandalise it, or, in the worse case, blank it. There really is no case for na: staying here.
    (Asterisk) Little technical note: These are diffs for na:Template:Content, because na:'s editors put their Main Page content there.
To be fair, I don't even care what's happening on that wiki, so I'm now neutral. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 11:51, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose: same as SHB2000.--Eru Rōraito (talk) 11:18, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I recognize the concern that these projects provide truly global information, but considering most Nauruan speakers also speak English, they're clearly better served by enwiki than this. These microprojects provide no value and serve only as timesinks for people who could be improving viable projects. Sending the project to the Incubator, which would happen if it closes, still allows the people who insist they've come to save the project to demonstrate the willingness to work on it. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 12:12, 13 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Wikipedia is a valuable resource for helping revive and encourage the use of endangered languages. The Nauruan Wikipedia is no exception and removing the page would a major loss. Pladica (talk) 06:06, 24 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@7elteven, Atlantic306, SHB2000, and Eru Rōraito: I know it can be very inappropriate for Wikimedia projects, but I want you to rethink your opinions. Why does everyone think that the main point is inactivity or low number of articles, and not total lack of native (or at least fluent) Nauruan speakers? Creating more one line pages with content from other pages won't help the cause. That's how you'll create something like Chechen (90% of articles were made by a bot) or Cebuano Wikipedia (almost 100% of articles were made by a bot), but with much less articles, no people who speak this language, made manually and not with bots. We need native Nauruan speakers who can confirm it. There are some occasional anonymous edits on English Wikipedia from Nauruan IP addresses, like from en:Special:Contributions/103.49.173.97 and en:Special:Contributions/103.49.175.26, but you can't find an edit from Nauru on Nauruan Wikipedia. I can also mention Nauruans being fluent in English. Seems like Nauruans themselves don't care about it. Of course, all Udmurt speakers can also speak Russian and all Breton speakers can also speak French meanwhile Udmurt and Breton Wikipedias exist and aren't really read, but there are multiple native speakers who somewhat care about these projects. As far as I know, even Kirundi and Dzonghka Wikipedias had some native speakers, althrough it seems like they didn't put in a lot of effort, since they have not a lot of articles and almost all of them don't have much encyclopedic value. But there is not a single native Nauruan speaker who edits Nauruan Wikipedia. Россиянин123 (talk) 08:08, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Россиянин123: Yes. I have acknowledged that in my vote. @7elteven, Atlantic306, SHB2000, and Eru Rōraito: Why? There is nobody to edit na:! AnotherEditor144 t - c 16:42, 24 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Weak oppose Most Nauruan speakers might not know Wikipedia. I might try to find another website that has preserved this small language. But then again there are other small language wikis. Darubrub (Inform me) 15:22, 28 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Vaticidalprophet. If they also speak language that is more widely spoken (English), they can contribute in that language. If the project kept open, it won't grow. Not all language can be given a wiki. Enjoyer of World (talk) 09:52, 7 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    But, Enjoyer of World, there are many other smaller languages that have wikis. Just because people speak English is absolutely not, or should not be, a reason to close a Wikipedia. Let's say Nauruan was the most popular language in the world and English was a tiny language, just as an example to try and convey this in an interesting way. In this I am assuming you are a native English speaker as that is the language you've decided to use to contribute to this discussion. The language you speak has only a few thousand native speakers. And you can speak Nauruan but you prefer to speak and read English because, you know, it's your native language! The English Wikipedia is going to be closed and you're going to have to find all your information in Nauruan. How would you feel if the tables turned, and the English Wikipedia was getting closed?
    And "If the project is kept open, it won't grow" is not a reason for closure in my opinion. If it's closed then it absolutely won't grow. If it's open, it has more of a chance of being edited because it's actually editable.--Ferien (talk) 10:36, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Not much activity there (unlike others), Ferien. Why let it stagnate? - AnotherEditor144 t - c 13:40, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    AnotherEditor144, Not much activity there is simply not true. Just look at recent changes. There may not be hundreds of edits per day, but truth is hundreds of Wikipedia projects don't get to that amount, and nawiki is more active than a lot of wikis. --Ferien (talk) 14:56, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Only today. Not yesterday, or other days in the past 7 days, Ferien. - AnotherEditor144 t - c 15:05, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Um. You do realise that there's three active editors, with about 150 edits? Yes, it may be a target for LTA Jurisdrew, but I've put a filter against him, leaving him to resort to the Korean and Yoruba Wikipedias. (no activity from him for one month now) SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 01:55, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    AnotherEditor144, there are quite a lot of wikis that haven't had edits for months. (I'm excluding renames as edits, they don't really count) Having 500 edits in the last 6 days is much more than many wikis. But also, a wiki does not require tons of activity to stay open. --Ferien (talk) 18:45, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Even the French Wikivoyage gets less edits that nawiki at times. Now French is spoken by about 274 million people (including myself) SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 23:35, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose While there are few potential Nauruan contributors to the project, that means keeping it also aids in preserving their language. Even a couple native speakers will aid in this preservation. Suggesting that just because most Nauruans speak English means they should just use the English wikipedia is a pretty damning precedent. Languages should have the right to be used regardless of how bilingual the users of that language is. Yes, the potential of this wiki is small, but why should that prompt deletion? It also shouldn't matter whether the users are native speakers, or just fluent speakers. The stats of Nauruans not having internet access will change, they'll come to the internet, and a resource will be available for them. Native speakers are valuable, and it will be important for the wikipedia to get their validation when they come along, but it shouldn't be deleted in the meantime.
Deletion should be considered if spam/vandalism is to such an extent that it becomes far too much effort to keep in check. Deletion should also be considered if the translations on the wiki are so poor that the website actually becomes misleading and damaging to the preservation of such a small language (Here's where I'd want native speakers to confirm the translations). Neither of these is systemic enough to warrant deletion.
The wiki is doing no harm, and has the potential to do some good, however small. I cannot see a good reason for its deletion. Supertrinko (talk) 22:21, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose Please give people a chance to revive the language. It has 1,601 articles, which is a lot since there are only 7,000 speakers. It is nothing like the Marshallese Wikipedia or the Hiri Motu Wikipedia. And at least it isn't 90% bots like the Cebuano Wikipedia or the Waray Wikipedia. I have also started to work on it, such as my article about Port Macquarie. 2001:8003:C829:E400:B15F:6F33:F9E6:9113 08:02, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I think the "they speak English" point bought up by Vaticidalprophet is not a reasonable reason for closing a Wikipedia. I live next to Wales and if you speak to anyone in Wales, they will most likely speak English, shall we close the Welsh Wikipedia? In terms of languages, I think we should give people as many options as possible. We shouldn't be pushing everyone over to the English Wikipedia just because they do speak English. I would not be happy if the English Wikipedia closed and I had to read everything in French. Also, regarding the opposes for size: There are many Wikipedias that are smaller than the Nauruan Wikipedia. Ferien (talk) 19:39, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Supertrinko, 2001:8003:C829:E400:B15F:6F33:F9E6:9113, and Ferien: Don't miss the main point: there are no editors who speak fluent Nauruan. The foreign enthusiasts with limited dictionaries don't qualify as Nauruan speakers. All Nauruan speakers are either living in Nauru or from Nauru, but living abroad. This language is practically impossible to learn because there isn't much material for this language. And why would anybody want to learn this language? It's only useful if you live in Nauru. Since the real Nauruans have no interest in contributing to this wiki or even reading it, then what's the point of it? If some Nauruan will join Wikipedia, then there will be a controversy comparable to the one with Scots Wikipedia. Many of examples of broken grammar will be found. And creating more 1 line articles about places or people won't help. Pages out of the list of articles every Wikipedia should have? No, clearly, na:Manana Shalikashvili is a more useful page! Россиянин123 (talk) 10:29, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Россиянин123: It is on a bit of a different scale, and it's a bit of a different issue though. The Scots Wikipedia had several thousand articles that weren't written in Scots; the Nauruan Wikipedia has over 1,000 articles, some of which may have broken grammar. It doesn't mean we should ignore that issue but it's just not the same as the Scots Wikipedia. Regarding the list of articles every Wikipedia should have, there are loads of Wikipedias that don't have these pages, e.g. tumwiki with only a few hundred articles, >99% are on geographical locations.--Ferien (talk) 06:16, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In saying that, this is the only remaining source that can keep Nauruan alive. na.wikt isn't the best so it's best for na.wiki to remain open in my opinion. SHB2000 (talk | contibs | en.wikivoyage | en.wikipedia) 04:18, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I wouldn't think of closing projects just because they're not of the best quality right now. There's always room for improvement on any wiki, even the big ones; enwiki is not perfect in any way. --Ferien (talk) 10:52, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there's probably plenty of expansion that can be made about the Australian detention centre there. SHB2000 (talk | contibs | en.wikivoyage | en.wikipedia) 13:17, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, similarly. There's no speakers to the Old English Wikipedia as well SHB2000 (talk | contibs | en.wikivoyage | en.wikipedia) 04:23, 20 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I will add Church Slavonic Wikipedia and Latin Wikipedia. --7elteven (talk) 15:25, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
But isn't Latin the official language for the Vatican? SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 11:57, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SHB2000: Correct. - AnotherEditor144 t - c 12:16, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
but yet still people unofficially speak Italian there. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 01:56, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SHB2000: Yes, because the Vatican is inside Italy! and is subject to Italian influence. - AnotherEditor144 t - c 07:26, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's obvious, and I already knew that. But yet why do we keep lawiki open? If we're going on you're reasoning, all the lawiki editors would have to flock over to itwiki. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 07:29, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose if it wasn't obvious from my comments already. Lack of native speakers or short articles are absolutely not reasons to close a project. If there aren't many native speakers, then you can always find some more. But there are literally dozens of wikis that don't have native speakers actively contributing and we should not be closing all of them. I'm also concerned by the amount of people who think that Nauruan speakers should just move to the English Wikipedia. We should be looking to improve Wikipedias in other languages, not trying to close them to make everyone flock over to en. --Ferien (talk) 14:34, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Who's 'them'? Only a few hundred. What's the point of keeping na: open? - AnotherEditor144 t - c 12:20, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I meant 'everyone' (when I said 'them'). AnotherEditor144 t - c 12:20, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    AnotherEditor144, the whole idea with Wikimedia projects is to be as diverse as possible with our choice of languages. By closing down a project where the language is threatened, we are making the situation worse. --Ferien (talk) 14:49, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Again, only a few hundred speak Nauru and also use the Internet, making it pointless. Also, they also know English, so why shouldn't they use en:, Ferien, which has the most articles, instead of na: (with a few thousand)? - AnotherEditor144 t - c 15:10, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    A few hundred people is enough.
    We shouldn't discourage the readers from using the Wikipedia in their native language, we shouldn't force them to go over to enwiki. It's not our choice to decide which language the reader wants to read in. --Ferien (talk) 20:15, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    AnotherEditor144, the language is threatened! If it does die, Wikimedia can be blamed for this. If the English and Simple English Wikipedia closed, I'd not want to go to the German Wikipedia, I'd want to read the English Wikipedia. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 01:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Since many recently-edited users are either sockpuppets or meatpuppets. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:28, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
If you think that me and User:SHB2000 are sockpuppets or meatpuppets - that is NOT true. --7elteven (talk) 11:47, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think Liuxinyu970226 means that you and with your former CU confirmed account, and not me and you since that'll instantly fail the duck test. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 11:56, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I just mean 7elteven, not SHB2000. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:39, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
although that's just one, not many ;) SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 01:03, 12 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Liuxinyu970226, I suggest you actually focus on the wiki and what is actually being said in these oppose sections instead of supporting just because one person in the oppose section was socking on another wiki, which is completely unrelated to this closure request. Ferien (talk) 14:11, 13 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Moreover to add onto Ferien, the block on the incubator was mistaken, because apparently 7elteven added some Russian words onto the Kamissian and MF-Warburg suspected they were contributing in languages they don't know. It's different if it were copyvios like on the Finnish Wikivoyage, but if the articles here were long enough in the first place. (minimum 10 lines) SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 13:14, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • strong oppose There are active users on that wiki, so there is no reason to close it. --Zabe (talk) 15:06, 14 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Zabe: Only two. That isn't enough. AnotherEditor144 t - c 12:16, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    AE144. You need to stop criticising the wikipedia. Finnish Wikivoyage has zero active editors, and yet it's still going. More, there's a third IP that has also been doing some work. Please stop. There's actually a community there. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 13:11, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Some wikis have more than 8 edits in the past 7 days. AnotherEditor144 t - c 13:37, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Who? All I see is that 144. IP and 7elteven. (Mostly.) - AnotherEditor144 t - c 13:47, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Some wikis have more than 8 edits in the past 7 days and dozens of wikis don't! If you see the list of Wikipedias, this is a medium-small sized wiki. The Nauruan Wikipedia is 251st out of 322 in terms of size. Dozens of wikis are much smaller than nawiki, and compared to tumwiki, this is incredible. There's two edits (both were deleted) on tumwiki in the last 30 days. Should we close the wiki down? Absolutely not for that reason. There's over a million speakers of that language.
    AnotherEditor144, you're focusing on current issues that can be resolved relatively easily. A small editing community can grow into a larger one over time, and content can improve. --Ferien (talk) 14:38, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    What community, Ferien? There are only a few thousand speakers of Nauru, and only a few hundred can use the Internet. I doubt many of them would be interested (because of en:). Additionally, the two most active editors are not native (probably not fluent either). - AnotherEditor144 t - c 15:03, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    AnotherEditor144, the community that clearly has at least three editors? That is a community, and there are so many wikis that don't even have a tiny community. And I just want to point out that since 2015 the average views per day has been 2,731. You don't get that from just a few visits and you don't get that from a few editors. There are quite clearly many people interested in using nawiki.
    Part of the Wikimedia Foundation's aim is to have wikis in as many languages as possible. We can't just close projects because most people could just use the English version. --Ferien (talk) 20:03, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Even though many of them are sockpuppets? We aime socks to have spam wikis in as many languages as possible? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:47, 21 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    To Liuxinyu, 7elteven has not been socking on nawiki. Liuxinyu, this is a problem on ltwiki that you have rather imported to nawiki. It is not some, it is rather just one with Mikaliov ~ltwiki (aka 7elteven)
    To AnotherEditor144, I'll bring up an example on the Samoan Wikipedia. Has much more speakers, albeit most of them speak English due to the Kiwi history and the fact that it was once a Kiwi island. Does it mean we close the Samoan Wikipedia?
    Another example is the Cree and Māori Wikipedias. There are less native speakers than Nauruan for either of those languages. Do we close them. Absolutely not. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 00:19, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    You don't need to input many words, since both 7elteven and Mikaliov~ltwiki are  Confirmed on one wiki, they ARE, A-R-E, socks, and while they "claim another set of  Confirmed group isn't their sockpuppets", they are meatpuppets, just see some zhwiki examples: HMGY and QCHM (both are happy to run sock+meatpuppets, and used many technical ways to let stewards check them as "Unrelated Unrelated", but Checkusers at least know that their edit histories are fake), etc. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:59, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    That is a problem with ltwiki, not nawiki. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 07:31, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    On cr: - Not many 'real' edits, and loads of spam.
    (16:39 - Hasley deleted page Halal
    06:09 - DARIO SEVERI deleted page -Infinity (Mass deletion of pages added by TheQooqolMaker))
    mi: is okay, but sm: has had a lot of activity on user pages lately, and not much on real articles. But I seem to be digressing into cr:...
    Therefore, two out of three are not good. Someone just forgot. (:P) - AnotherEditor144 t - c 06:37, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    cr would not ever be closed as part of the Canadian First Nations Project. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 07:52, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    We could probably consider it, providing evidences that currently crwiki is a lot of mess, which we didn't completed those evidences. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 09:51, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Liuxinyu970226 We can discuss this somewhere else. AnotherEditor144 t - c 16:18, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    AnotherEditor144, spam and vandalism are not valid reasons to shut a project down. Members of the Small Wiki Monitoring Team deal with spam and vandalism on small wikis quite quickly. --Ferien (talk) 12:56, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Liuxinyu970226, what? I'm talking about readers, not editors. And 7elteven was not socking on nawiki – socking on another wiki (ltwiki) is seriously not a reason to shut a whole wiki down. The socking is completely unrelated to this discussion to close a Wikimedia project. --Ferien (talk) 12:51, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Ferien: apparantly Liuxinyu thinks that he's an x-wiki LTA, although I'm still confused on the messages they left me on their talk page. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 13:34, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Excuse me! You do realise that I'm active there too. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 00:12, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh! I see, SHB2000. But not as much as that 144 IP. The majority of edits have been coming from him! - AnotherEditor144 t - c 06:15, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    And? Some people don't edit as much as others? What point are you trying to make here? --Ferien (talk) 12:52, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    To AE144, you do realise that I'm the only admin there. I've been less active this week due to numerous reasons, but still, three active editors. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 13:33, 22 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Ferien: SHB2000 has been less active in that week, although I acknowledge he is still active.
    @SHB2000:: "You do realise that I'm the only admin there." But the number of admins is 2! (See na:Special:Statistics.)
    - AnotherEditor144 t - c 07:23, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, the third admin (7elteven) who was meant to be promoted had their request declined by stewards for sockpuppetry on other wikis. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 07:26, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    and the second admin is the Abuse Filter, hence why every wiki has at least one admin (which is the abuse filter) SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 07:27, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    or really, the first admin ;) SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 12:42, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh. ;) AnotherEditor144 t - c 19:37, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Comment I don't love to vote, but as Liu pointed, since the socks exit, this wiki should be highly vanished rather than technically closed. --117.136.1.97 00:10, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    As Ferien mentioned above, please give your reasoning based on content, not editors. Moreover 7elteven has been socking on ltwiki, not nawiki. They're still trusted on ruwiki, and that shouldn't be a reason to shut a whole WMF project down when there are other editors there as well. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 01:50, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose closure. Even if all Nauruan speakers with internet access use the English Wikipedia preferably or exclusively, we should still retain the Nauruan Wikipedia for reasons of language preservations. There are many small Wikipedias in languages where virtually all speakers are proficient in a larger language, and primarily use the larger language for obtaining information. There is a cultural value in preserving small languages, and having a Wikipedia in that language can be a major resources for language preservation or revival. --Gerrit (talk) 09:35, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    I wonder, is this voter even having a good username? gerrit: is one of our maintenance tool, so how could a user represent the tool, and even make a vote here? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:37, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Support This appears to be some weird hobby for a bunch of non-native speakers with dictionaries. As long as there are no native editors, a Wiki shouldn't exist. I would say that it's even insulting that foreigners with little real knowledge of the language think they can make something useful for natives. Furthermore, I suspect some of the IP votes in here are sockpuppets. Ido66667 (talk) 13:35, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    @Ido66667 So you think that a) trying to revive a wiki is a "weird hobby" by 7elteven and myself b) by basically your reasoning of As long as there are no native editors, a Wiki shouldn't exist, that would mean the Latin Wikipedia shouldn't exist, and c) your reasoning of insulting that foreigners with little real knowledge of the language think they can make something useful for natives is totally not what the wiki serves for, in which it's meant to preserve the Nauruan language. And read Ferien's comment above "Lack of native speakers or short articles are absolutely not reasons to close a project". A lot of Wikipedias are smaller than the Nauruan as well. SHB2000 (talk | contibs) 10:55, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    SHB2000 (talk) The nauran languagd can be preserved, but only with the participation of its ethnic community, i.e. Naurans. At the very least I think it's proper that you and your friends demonstrate that you have a good command of the language so that it won't devolve to a wiki that's nigh unreadable for actual speakers. Speaking of Latin, it's a kind of a relic, since the modern policy on language does not allow dead languages. That's why the Ancient Greek proposal is DOA. In fact, I have spoken with Latinists and they confirm the Latin wiki isn't a viable source for good Latin, since you have a huge pool of semi-proficient speakers that outsizes the pool of actually-fluent speakers by a mile. You can have a competent edit be overriden by a grammatically wrong one because there are no natives to assure the quality of the Latin. And as someone who studies Ancient Greek, I can assure you an Ancient Greek wiki would be far worse. It would be perfect if you had a native speaker to assure that you are writing proper Nauran, but as far as I understand, you don't. I wouldn't have the guts to churn out an encyclopedic Ancient Greek text since nobody will tell me if I'm horribly butchering the language or not. I have too much respect for the language. Please don't fall into Dunning-Kruger trap. Ido66667 (talk) 19:48, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    user:SHB2000 I decided to check up on this vote after a while, and I can see you are still trying to justify keeping the wiki up. It's really sad because from reading this you are the "7elteven" person are wasting your time on this useless wiki when it's obvious nobody in nauru would care to read it, as brought up by many others. It's been months man, just accept that this wiki will be a waste of time for you and others, because there are barely even any nauruans to read it in the first place. Of course you could probably tell that, but still insist on working on that dump. max20characters🇺🇸 18:43, 31 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed, based on your comment, I would assume that SHB2000 is having at least "meatpuppet" relation with "7elteven", isn't that? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:27, 1 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    To all three of you, what makes you think any of these are my "friends"? Making such comments is a serious accusation. So, okay, fair enough, I only found about this wiki when I stumbled across this page, but what makes you think that I'm a sock or meatpuppet? Both of us clearly edit different wikis, and have different language abilities and it seems all three of you are only focusing on events on this page, not throughout Wikimedia. Under your so called "evidence", on that same basis, I'd have every reason to suspect all three of you are socks or meats of each other. But I don't, because all three of you do have different language abilities and edit on different projects and on that basis, making such accusations are more than ridiculous. SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 07:25, 2 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    First, only ONE person in this thread have accused you of being a meat/sock, so don't say "all three of you" with that question. Second, I have no reason to edit anything else on Wikimedia, or what I was active on, wikipedia. I only come here to check the results because sometimes I will randomly remember this exists.
    Why don't you actually respond to our arguments instead of focusing on little things someone said to you. Maybe a challenge, because that's all you do in this thread. max20characters🇺🇸

Support strongly This Wiki is not really needed, we can make it read-only or move it to an incubator. In the incubator, people may take action. 02:59, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

  • Reading through this discussion, if I'm not mistaken, there have been no native Nauruan speakers participating in the whole thread, right? If we get even a single native Nauruan speaker to confirm that Nauruan Wikipedia is, in fact, written in proper Nauruan and a useful project from their view, I oppose closure. However, if no such confirmation is possible, I support closure, as this then could become another "Northern Luri" or "Scots" case where people write stuff in their personal half-invented languages... (Scots Wikipeda was not closed, but drastic measures were required). By the way, in the case of Northern Luri, there were suddenly accounts popping up here and on social media claiming "I'm a Northern Luri speaker and this is fine!", probably all the same person, so even such claims should be seen with caution... Gestumblindi (talk) 19:22, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • support closure. The discussion about number of active editors is moot here. Northern Luri had lots of active editors (possibly socks but still had decent activity). The problem is the same category of N. Luri and Scots wiki. While I understand the good intention, I find this wiki a culturally imperalistic act. Non-natives with little knowledge of the language should not be the main authors Wikipedia of an endangered language. Amir (talk) 18:56, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • support closure obviously; mostly, per Ladsgroup. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:42, 11 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose closure scowiki had the same exact problem, and it's still kicking last I checked? Casualdejekyll (talk) 00:55, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Last I checked, the Scots Wikipedia had some native Scots speakers who were helping to clean it up. To my knowledge there are no native (or even fluent) Nauruan speakers active on the Nauruan Wikipedia. Mx. Granger (talk) 00:58, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, this case is more like Northern Luri Wikipedia, which was closed. Gestumblindi (talk) 09:51, 6 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure unless we can find fluent Nauruan speakers who want to help clean up and build the encyclopedia. Mx. Granger (talk) 00:58, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure Because it hasn't active users, last 2 users are retired from this wiki, on incubator is better. AlPaD (talk) 14:41, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suport closure after browsing through everything written on this proposal. --Vortex3427 (talk) 10:23, 12 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, I really tried to revive this wiki, but it was a failure and I'm no longer active on wiki, so now I support closure too. --7elteven (talk) 19:51, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose 62.4% of Nauruans have internet, it's not prone to vandalism and seems pretty understandable. I know a few Nauruans who have edited there before. The wiki has thousands of articles, even if they're mostly stubs and/or about places, living things or people, it would be bad to close it. What other articles are needed? Nauruans would find the wiki useful if it was more well known. I think the Marshallese Wikipedia needs to be reopened too, it has now got over 100 articles in the Incubator. Close the Cree Wikipedia if you want to close wikis, it's full of vandalism. Footybloke2 (talk) 07:07, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Footybloke2 I would consider submitting another PCP to close crwiki when I have time, sure. But why do you think this isn't a "prone to vandalism"? If the founder of a wiki is already decide to design this wiki as their playground of vandalism then how do we, even you, to still trust such a playground? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:28, 30 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Read through this and I personally don't know how I align either way. On one end, the wiki seems to be accurate, without any significant linguistic errors, there doesn't appear to be much vandalism, and it is within its relative scope (rather than have a bunch of strange articles that a Nauruan wouldn't find very useful). On the other hand, there don't appear to be any native speakers involved in this, this wiki at one point was the original Scots Wikipedia in the sense that it was a "fake language", this Wiki doesn't serve a huge purpose relative to other minor language wikis, and to be frank, this is the result of ego-driven Wiki creations back in the day, when any ISO-coded language could get a Wiki as long as a number of goofballs backed it. I'm on the fence. It's not really Wikimedia's job to preserve languages. Additionally, Nauruan is really restricted to a certain space and isn't in any apparent danger of dying off, and unlike most other minority language projects, Nauruans do have the option of using the much larger English Wikipedia. --ManhattanChase (talk) 04:39, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @ManhattanChase: How did you determine that the wiki seems to be "without any significant linguistic errors"? Mx. Granger (talk) 08:36, 2 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It was a passing guess, I didn't determine anything. We would need a native speaker (or a Polynesian linguist at least) to definitively answer that. The latter might be easier to get ahold of. If the wiki still has significant errors (like it apparently had in 2004, when it was in a pseudo language), then yeah this absolutely should be closed. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by ManhattanChase (talk)
  • Support closure. Sorry, we're here to build an encyclopedia; we're not the Language Saving Agency. If you're actually interested in preserving the language, Wiktionary would be the better option anyway. VersaceSpace (talk) 05:17, 4 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure. Sorry, this was over two years after this discussion is started in 2020. That the discussion is almost discussed entirely in 2021 (all of the twelve months in this year). Alverado (talk) 13:47, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very very strong support. This is a good Wikipedia to close since, unfortunately, it lacks attention for speakers of the language.SpyridisioAnnis (talk) 07:29, 24 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure I've sadly figured that this project is prone to vandalism and spam. Deleted a few pages on 20 Nov, only to come back a week later and find more nonsense. ~StyyxTalk? ^-^ 00:15, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support no native speaker has ever edited this. Most Nauruans speak English. It’s not even good enough to keep as a novelty like Latin Wikipedia. Dronebogus (talk) 12:59, 21 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "no native speaker has ever edited this" - same to, seems to me, pih:, chy:, ch:. I agree it may be a big issue but it's not necessary the main reason for closing. "Most Nauruans speak English." - with a such a sort of argumentation we could've close most of Wikipedia projects. --Wolverène (talk) 06:51, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree we don’t need 90% of Wikipedias. Like, seriously, Pennsylvania German? Volapuk? Dronebogus (talk) 14:54, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support na.wikipedia is simply unviable as is. As much as I hate to say it, the wiki has no potential. No native Nauruan speaker has access to the internet. Zero activity and the articles are nothing more than a single sentence stub. Had it not been for the number of articles, this wiki would've been closed ages ago. --178.237.222.85 16:03, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    "No native Nauruan speaker has access to the internet." - sorry but how do you know? I hope you unwittingly exaggerate it, the Internet exists everywhere. As a last resort, Nauruan-speaking diaspora somewhere in NZ or Australia might use Internet to reach and read/edit the Nauruan Wikipedia. "The articles are nothing more than a single sentence stub" - there are also some two-sentence stubs, so?.. Many articles in the smaller wikis are of a similar sort of quality. It's (normally) not encouraged but it's not a shame. --Wolverène (talk) 06:51, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I agree that it may be a great idea to move the naWP to the WM Incubator until we find an expert studying the Nauruan language, who can at least check up the current content. The users who created the pages surely used the free dictionary from the Internet without a trying to study deeply the syntax rules, morphology rules (which AFAIK are complicated in Nauruan), or modern vocabulary of native speakers. But I strongly disagree with many here who believe that lack of editors among native speakers and the locally leading role of English are crucial/valid reasons for closure. Sad that so many people are going to bet more on popularity than on quality. There are many WP's run mostly by fluent but non-native speakers, and there are many WP's in languages without any official status. Just a reminder that these wikis are mostly OK. --Wolverène (talk) 08:01, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for soft close In the end I believe that soft close is the best solution. Instead of closing the wiki it is better to mark it as inactive, Because it has several pages and was active and may be again in the future. AlPaD (talk) 13:18, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Let's move it to the Incubator!--Пан Хаунд (talk) 07:39, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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