Jump to content

Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Dolgan

Add links
From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
​
submitted verification final decision

This language has been verified as eligible.
The language is eligible for a project, which means that the subdomain can be created once there is an active community and a localized interface, as described in the language proposal policy. You can discuss the creation of this language project on this page.

Once the criteria are met, the language committee can proceed with the approval and will verify the test project content with a reliable neutral source, such as a professor or expert.

If you think the criteria are met, but the project is still waiting for approval, feel free to notify the committee and ask them to consider its approval.

  • The community needs to develop an active test project; it must remain active until approval (automated statistics, recent changes). 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 dlg (SIL, Glottolog) A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ...
Language name Dolgan Language name in English
Language name долган тыла 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 Q32878 - 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 LTR 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 dlg.wikipedia.org langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
Project name Бикипиэдийэ "Wikipedia" in your language
Project namespace Бикипиэдийэ usually the same as the project name
Project talk namespace Бикипиэдийэ ырытыыта "Wikipedia talk" (the discussion namespace of the project namespace)
Enable uploads no 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 File:Wikipedia-logo-v2-dlg.svg This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation).
Default project timezone Asia/Krasnoyarsk UTC+7:00 "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
Once settings are finalized, a committee member will submit a Phabricator task requesting creation of the wiki. (This will include everything automatically, except the additional namespaces/settings.) After the task is created, it should be linked to in a comment under "final decision" above.

Proposal

[edit]
  • The Dolgan language is a severely endangered Turkic language with 4836 speakers, spoken in the Taymyr Peninsula in Russia. We would like to develop an encyclopedia in it in order to help both preserve and develop knowledge in this endangered language. --Jon Gua (talk) 06:10, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

[edit]
  • it would be good for language -- Dliavib (talk) 04:13, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It could be, yes, as long as the project is for the language community itself and it also works on the project. I have lots of questions, most of which stem from my own experience with similar languages here:
    • Are any of you (@Dliavib, @Nilahkas)? According to their babel box, @Sauit is not, but has a high degree of proficiency in the language (and is a native speaker of the closely related Sakha). Of the remaining users listed here, 2 are native speakers of Spanish and one of Turkish, none with any proficiency in Dolgan.
    • If none of you are native speakers, do you have native speakers who can check the texts?
    • If you are not part of the language community on a daily basis, how will you let the community know that the project exists?
    • Do you have any plans as to how to activate the language community itself to participate? It's not as easy as it might seem at first and you definitely need the community on your side to succeed.
    • What kind of resources will you be using to create pages?
    • What will you do about words and terminology that don't exist in the existing dictionaries? Are there more recent dictionaries than the ones from the 1990s? For example, it appears that the Russian versions of placenames are being used, yet Sakha has their own versions. Why not use the Sakha ones?
    • How will you futureproof the Wikipedia? It takes a lot of time and effort just to update articles once they are written (presidents change, etc.)
    • How much Sakha can Dolgan speakers understand, if they don't understand Russian or English? Also a question about them not knowing Russian: how is that possible considering afaik they have to go to school in Russian and there are mixed marriages?
    • Are there possibilities to work together with the Sakha Wikipedia to conserve resources?
    My apologies that these questions may seem harsh, but I would like to see the Dolgan Wikipedia succeed in the long run. - Yupik (talk) 08:32, 26 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Im native speaker of the Dolgan language Dliavib (talk) 08:52, 26 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • If you are not part of the language community on a daily basis, how will you let the community know that the project exists?
    — We have a dolgan (and Even, Evenk, Yukagir, Chukci) online-portal, and i have already approached the editorial board with the idea of posting news about the Dolgan Wikipedia. Also we have 2 dolgan newspaper (Taymyr and Anabaar Uottara [and Ilken online-portal also have a journal]), and i also wrote to them, but I haven't received any answers yet
    • Do you have any plans as to how to activate the language community itself to participate? It's not as easy as it might seem at first and you definitely need the community on your side to succeed.
    — I plan to continue writing for newspapers and portals, and i have already contacted with Yakut Wikipedian, HalanTul, on Telegram and we will try to find native speakers and popularize the Dolgan test Wikipedia
    • What kind of resources will you be using to create pages?
    — Some materials have already been written in the Dolgan language, mainly on the topics of Dolgan folklore.
    • How much Sakha can Dolgan speakers understand, if they don't understand Russian or English? Also a question about them not knowing Russian: how is that possible considering afaik they have to go to school in Russian and there are mixed marriages?
    — It is quite possible, but you need to discuss it with others, i'll start the discussion in the main page talk
    • How will you futureproof the Wikipedia? It takes a lot of time and effort just to update articles once they are written (presidents change, etc.)
    — I didn't understand the question
    • How much Sakha can Dolgan speakers understand, if they don't understand Russian or English? Also a question about them not knowing Russian: how is that possible considering afaik they have to go to school in Russian and there are mixed marriages?
    — I have been interested in Dolgan culture and language for half a year. The older generation speaks only Dolgan, because the Dolgans are a nomadic people and they did not have the opportunity to study outside the home, schools for the peoples of the north began to appear in Yakutia and in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in the 1970-80s, and now in the era of urbanization and globalization, such people find themselves in the Internet world, where there is almost no material in Dolgan and Wikipedia can help them
    • Are there possibilities to work together with the Sakha Wikipedia to conserve resources?
    — In one site - no, because Dolgan is already quite different from Sakha, in general, the only similarities left are in the logic of the language and in the grammar Sauit (talk) 10:09, 26 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you both for your answers, @Sauit and @Dliavib! It is easy to see that you have put a lot of thought into getting this project up and running.

    By futureproofing, I mean that the articles you write today will have to be kept up-to-date somehow. Doing it manually takes a lot of time and trusting that someone will do it (or keep doing it) in the future is risky. One of the Wikipedias I work on is extremely out-of-date, because one person is not enough to keep it up-to-date and it leaves no time for writing anything new. And yet that language is spoken by tens of thousands of people. I also work on the Inari Saami Wikipedia, which is trying to automate ways of updating articles, but we still need to think of more ways of doing this. (This language is only spoken by about 450 people!)

    By the way, the Inari Saami online newspaper Anarâš aavis has articles about the Inari Saami Wikipedia, so it is possible if you find the right person who is willing to publish them :) There have been articles about it in offline publications as well.

    I could have provided more information in my question about working together with the Sakha Wikipedia, sorry. The reason I asked is that if the Dolgan and Sakha Wikipedias work together to write certain articles together, it should use less resources if each one were to write articles on their own. So if I write an article in Northern Saami, I try to write the same article in Inari Saami. Sometimes people then come along and use that article and its sources to translate or rewrite the same article in Norwegian or Finnish. Less time is used than would be if an article has been written in each language from scratch :) - Yupik (talk) 22:48, 26 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the explanation, it would be possible to create a wiki project by actualisation (?), personally I have never seen this in any Wikipedia, but I think it would work Sauit (talk) 01:41, 27 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It is possible Sauit (talk) 01:42, 27 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support btw. I should clearly state that since I have been against so many new language versions in the past. -Yupik (talk) 22:50, 26 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support --Andrijko Z. (talk) 02:20, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Dolgan&oldid=29178626"