This proposal has been approved. The Board of Trustees and language committee have deemed that there is sufficient grounds and community to create the new language project.
The closing committee member provided the following comment:
There are c. 500.000 Maris living in Russian Federation. They have own autonomic area called Mari El (Марий Эл), capital-city is Joshkar-Ola (map). It is one of the Finno-Ugric languages.
Arguments in favour
The Mari language has official status in Mari El. If a languages has a such status it is worth of own Wikipedia. There are a lot of potential users of Mari Wikipedia, but now all Mari speaking Wikipedists are using Russian Wikipedia. Own Wikipedia will help to develop this language. – Artomo 09:31, 15 March 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support. The number of speakers and status of language is comparable with Erzya (another Finno-Ugric language of Russia), which is considered successfull and is approved. A.M.D.F. 18:28, 19 March 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support. The Mari language is a language which, while spoken by quite a large number of people, suffers from a lack of presence on the net. A Mari Wikipedia would be a huge step in the right direction here. 62.47.128.63 23:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Native speakers of Mari are willing to contribute to this project in the long-term, hence this project has the potential to flourish like the other Finno-Ugric language Wikipedia editions such as Finnish, Estonian, Võro, Moksha etc. Therefore the Mari language ought to be given the opportunity and priviledge to have its own language edition of Wikipedia. --Jose77 22:16, 6 May 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I want to have Wikipedia on my native language. And I can improve it, but in incubator it is a little bit uncomfartable. I'm waiting for Mari Wikipedia. Я хочу Википедию на моем родном языке. И я могу её уличшать, но в инкубаторе это делать не совсем удобно. Жду Марийской Википедии.
Support. I am an administrator Russian section of Wikipedia. Mari language is the language of the peoples of Russia, so I support the emergence of the language section.--Torin 07:52, 19 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
SupportYufereff I'm an User in Russian and administrator in Komi (also one of the Finno-Ugric people in Russia) Wikipedias. National minorities need to support their languages and cultures.--Yufereff 07:52, 31 January 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Arguments against
none
Other discussion
Mari is according to SIL a macro language. It is actually two languages. One of the requirements is that the language needs to be unambiguous. GerardM 22:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, it is two languages. This proposal is about Meadow Mari (mhr ISO 639-3). Hill Mari (mrj) should be in a separate project. A.M.D.F. 17:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
When you are proposing this project, please change the request accordingly. Please GerardM 11:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Currently 59.67% of the most used MediaWiki messages have been localised. Localisation of these messages is a requirement before your request is finally assessed. This is the recent localisation activity for your language. Thanks, GerardM 12:16, 12 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]
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