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Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Pali 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 pi: is currently open for discussion by the community.

  • Type: 1 (routine proposal)
  • Proposed outcome: closure
  • Proposed action regarding the content: move to incubator
  • Notice on the project: [1]
  • Informed Group(s):

Proposal

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I propose to close the Pali Wikipedia. For context: Pali is a language which is no longer spoken as an everyday language, but is mainly used as a classical and liturgical language of Theravāda Buddhism.

The issue is that this particular Wikimedia project has not developed into a functioning encyclopedia after more than twenty years. The Pali Wikipedia was created in 2004, but it still contains only about 300 content pages according to pi:Special:Statistics, and 12,817 words in all content pages combined (as of 7 June 2026). A review of pi:Special:AllPages and pi:Special:LongPages shows that most pages are extremely short, often only a few dozen or a few hundred bytes. Many pages are stubs, empty or almost empty pages, lists, source-text material, or pages with mixed and partially untranslated content rather than developed encyclopedia articles. The total amount of prose is also extremely small. This is a project that has existed for more than two decades without developing a meaningful body of encyclopedic articles. Many articles are only a few dozen bytes long. Examples include numerous pages about U.S. state capitals and Hindu-related topics that are around 50 bytes, as well as many medical-topic pages around 190–200 bytes. Some pages are essentially empty or consist mainly of templates, images, navigation boxes, or external links. For example, pi:अंग प्रत्यारोपण, pi:जेफर्सन सिटी or pi:कर्म (हिन्दू धम्म) currently appear to contain almost no article text and have been tagged for speedy deletion as "empty". Btw the most of the pages in this wiki are tagged for speedy deletion at the moment.

Even core topics for a Pali-language encyclopedia are only minimally developed. Even the central article on Pali itself (pi:पालि Pāli) is not a developed language article, but mostly a very short introduction followed by external links to dictionaries, texts, learning materials and discussion forums. pi:तिपितक consists essentially of a one-sentence definition and a list of the three piṭakas and their subdivisions. Similarly pi:बुद्धो is still marked as a stub and consists only of a short explanation with little article structure and no developed encyclopedic treatment.

The largest pages do not show sustained encyclopedic development either. The longest page, pi:Bhikkhunipatimokkha, appears to consist mainly of a Pali religious/canonical text rather than an encyclopedia article. Such material may be valuable, but it is closer to source-text material suitable for Wikisource than to Wikipedia. The second-longest page, pi:स्पेनस्य: प्रकाश स्तंभ, is a large list of lighthouses in Spain. It has been marked as unsourced since 2014 and contains many empty fields, untranslated English column headings such as "Water body" and "Port authority", and English remnants such as "Tallest प्रकाश स्तंभ in Spain." This looks like imported or partially translated list material, not maintained Pali prose. The third-longest page, pi:सुत्तपिटक, is essentially a structured directory of the Suttapiṭaka rather than an explanatory encyclopedia article. The fourth-longest page, pi:जगद्गुरुरामभद्राचार्यः Jagadgururāmabhadrācāryaḥ, is one of the few longer biographical pages, but it also illustrates the project’s inconsistent language and script practice, with Devanagari and Latin transliteration mixed throughout the page.

Pali can be written in several scripts, so the use of different scripts is not in itself a problem. However, this project shows no clear convention for handling script, transliteration, and article language. Some pages are in Devanagari, some in Latin script, and some mix Devanagari, Latin transliteration and English. Examples: pi:Radio Garden, pi:मकाजी मेघपर, pi:पालि Pāli, and pi:जगद्गुरुरामभद्राचार्यः Jagadgururāmabhadrācāryaḥ. This suggests the absence of an active community applying stable editorial standards.

There is no visible sustainable community maintaining the project. Recent changes mostly consist of global maintenance, MassMessage posts, account renames, user or sandbox pages, occasional small edits, and isolated page creations. The project also has no visible local governance structure capable of maintaining a standalone Wikipedia. The only administrator listed at pi:Special:ListAdmins is the system account Abuse filter.

Even the project logo/localization has had basic language problems: 2022 someone noted that the Pali Wikipedia logo (existing since 2011) translated “the free encyclopedia” as “a free dictionary” and even rendered “Wikipedia” incorrectly, see pi:Wikipedia:मन्तन ठान Mantana ṭhāna#Logo change. This should show that there is no sufficient local review by users with Pali knowledge.

I do not propose deleting all content without review. Pages that are genuinely useful, written in correct Pali, and suitable for a future encyclopedia may be imported to the Wikimedia Incubator. Pages that are primarily source texts may be more appropriate for Wikisource. However, only 18 content pages contain over 2000 bytes of content.

tl;dr: After more than twenty years, this project has not developed into a functioning encyclopedia. The article count is extremely low, the total amount of prose is tiny, most pages appear to be short stubs or non-encyclopedic pages, and there is no evidence of a sustainable community of users able and willing to write encyclopedic content in Pali. Therefore, I propose that the Pali Wikipedia should be closed, with any useful content reviewed for possible transfer to the Wikimedia Incubator or, where appropriate, to Wikisource. --Icodense (talk) 00:34, 7 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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