Talk:Language committee/2017

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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Ingush

Please help Wp/inh! For a long time our project remained inactive. However, during more than a year, the project is actively developing. We have done a lot in that time. We have nearly 1,000 articles. Made categorization, develop templates, and more. Wikipedia Ingush was launched in test mode in 2007. Almost 10 years! Please pay attention to our section. Ingush Wikipedia has a right to be approved and have its own domain. We Hope for your help. Sincerely, Adam-Yourist (talk) 05:46, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I would like to request for status update for Language committee/Status/wp/shn. That page was last updated 04 September 2011. The shn test wiki is now ~3000 articles. NinjaStrikers «» 12:25, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@Satdeep Gill:, @Santhosh.thottingal: Please review the test wiki for the final approval. Thanks. NinjaStrikers «» 10:56, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Requests for new languages/Wikiversity Telugu

Hello, I would like wikiversity in Telugu because the state of Andhra Pradesh has less educated people. It is also not easy to access free content. So I request whoever is the manager to create it.Saikirantangirala (talk) 11:51, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

@Saikirantangirala: The Language Committee does not create the content of Wikiversities (or any other projects). Follow the instructions at Language committee/Handbook (requesters) to put in a formal request for this project, and then go to Beta Wikiversity to start creating content. Assign such pages to Category:TE. In fact, there appears to be one Telugu language page already there. StevenJ81 (talk) 00:40, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Please process my request, click here: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/brx to bodo Wikipedia test.


Bodo is a language of Northeastern India. The language is official in Bodoland and co-official in Assam state of India. on 25 January, 2017 the request has been verified as eligible.

  • Native Speakers: 1,500,000
  • Internet Users: 500,000
  • Wikipedia Users: 100,000

This is valid info of bodo language.

So, please accept my request for Bodo Wikipedia. please don't neglect, do reply Nijwmsa Boro 08:42, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Language and project marked as eligible. At this point, you have to continue to create content at the Incubator test project (Wp/brx). StevenJ81 (talk) 00:44, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

There are stalled requests at Proposals for closing projects, some of them open since some years already. Can the commitee please address all of them? Thanks, —MarcoAurelio 20:13, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Clerking comment/request

I have four test projects at Incubator using invalid language codes that I must nevertheless leave open by policy because there are still open RFLs here. I would like to request that Langcom close these requests so that I can move to close and delete the tests on Incubator.

  • Wikipedia Sichuanese Mandarin (Wp/scm). The RFL has mostly been dormant since 2012. The Incubator test project is empty; it was apparently moved to Wikia by the end of August 2011.
  • Wikipedia Prekmurian (Wp/pkm). This is described in the enwiki article as a "supradialectal regional variety of Slovene". A request at SIL for a language code was rejected in 2012. The last edit on this RFL happened in 2013. The Incubator test project is empty.
  • Wiktionary Lingwa de Planeta (Wt/lpl). There was a flurry of activity on this test in mid-2014, and since then almost no activity (except for a little recent clerking). There has been only one non-clerking edit to the RFL since 2015. SIL rejected the code request in 2014. There seems to be some active dictionary work going on elsewhere; see http://www.lingwadeplaneta.info/en/. Finally, for what it's worth, the principal contributor to the test, now writing under a different user name, gave permission to go ahead and close. See my talk page at Incubator.
  • Wikipedia Frainc-comtou (Wp/x-fc). Neither the test nor the RFL has been active since 2011, other than clerking. The edit history of the root page for the test suggests that an application was made for a language code, but I never found evidence that ever happened. I could potentially have seen this one as going "on hold" instead of being rejected, except that to the best of my knowledge it's considered a dialect of Francoprovençal (Arpitan), not a language in its own right.

Once Langcom closes these RFL pages, I will mark the two empty tests as closed-rejected on Incubator. I will list the two tests with content at Incubator's RFD page, and presumably after ten days will archive and delete those tests as well.

Thank you for your attention. StevenJ81 (talk) 23:23, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

One additional information: Do we still remember the Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Montenegrin 5? This is also a vandalized request: CasetteTapeMaster and a number of his IPs are assigning codes only based on their "brains", which @Jalexander-WMF: shouldn't them be officially global banned ? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:51, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Sir, I want to ask only Question. Is World's 4th largest spoken language not eligible. See Wikiversity Lithuanian, Wikiversity Tajik, Wikiversity Korean, Wikiversity Japanese 2, in recently Wikiversity Czech get final approval with 53 articles, categories, templates, and talk pages and 631 revisions (including 287 minor edits). And one and only [1]] which have only one editor. Hindi language have already his sister project hi.wikipedia.org, hi.wikibooks.org etc. Please summarize this and take action upon Wikiversity Hindi. Thank you --Jayprakash12345 (talk) 22:52, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The Language Committee does not create the content for new projects. If you want a Hindi Wikiversity, you need to start a test project at Beta Wikiversity. When there's enough content there, you can apply to have a full Hindi Wikiversity spun off. StevenJ81 (talk) 23:22, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Dear Stevan Sir, The Content on Hindi Wikiversity at Beta wikiversity is campartable to Czech wikiversity. But Czech have its sperate project now. The nominated hindi wikiversity have about 5 year ago. How much content required for sperate. And where we can apply for sperate project. Sir at least change his status discussion to eligible --Jayprakash12345 (talk) 09:19, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

There's no reason this shouldn't be eligible. Someone from the Language Committee needs to flip that switch, but I'll see if I can nudge them a little. They're catching up on a backlog of work right now. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:32, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
Marked eligible today by User:MF-Warburg of Langcom. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:15, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@StevenJ81 and MF-Warburg: Sir, Thank you very much. Sir I want to ask one question more. Please can you tell about where we can request for separate project when the test wiki crossed about 5000 edits and 400 pages.--Jayprakash12345 (talk) 18:30, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Number of pages matters more than number of edits, as long as the pages are good ones. When you think the project is big enough, make note of that on the same request page, and drop a note here to the talk page as well. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:34, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
What's most important is continuous activity by at least several users over at least several months. --MF-W 01:41, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Sir, please check the status of Language committee/Status/wp/khw and update the date and other sections by checking the requirements as we have already completed the all tasks which are required for approval of a new wiki--Rehmat Aziz Chitrali 07:41, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Raki: Langcom is becoming more active again after having been quiet for a while. I'll also try to nudge them along a little on this one, as you and your team have been working hard. But they may still need a little time to get to this, so please continue to be patient. Thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) 00:05, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
Status currently marked as "Approval ongoing". StevenJ81 (talk) 19:53, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81:Sir this status is out of date, please check and correct the data here [2] I am unable to edit the particulars as I have no rights of Admin--Mirajbibi (talk) 06:28, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
That status page is mostly unused. Khowar is currently in final stages of approval. Don't worry about what that page says. StevenJ81 (talk) 12:10, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Stuck in the Incubator

Please can someone explain why the Kabiye (kbp) Wikipedia is still in the incubator? This Wikipedia was initiated in June 2014, and since then has been steadily growing with daily contributions from a small group of dedicated volunteers. It now has over 850 articles, many of which have graphics, infoboxes categories and links. The 500 most used interface messages have been translated. The Kabiye Wikipedia has many more articles, and more depth than other minority African languages that have made it onto the real platform. Ghiutun made a Request for a new language in May 2016 which I seconded, but there's been no reply. Kabiye does not even appear on the scroll-down list on this page. What more do we need to do? We're feeling invisible and fed up. Gnangbade (talk) 20:25, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

(Note: I fixed some links above because they were broken.) I can't really speak for the Language Committee. But I know they've been working to catch up on things. I'll certainly try to move them along; you have a very valid request here. Meanwhile, I'll ask for your continued patience. As far as the drop-down list goes, that seems hard-coded somewhere; I'll try to find out. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:42, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, StevenJ81, anything you can do to make us more visible will be greatly appreciated. Gnangbade (talk) 21:18, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Marked as eligible on 8 February. More progress probably coming soon ... StevenJ81 (talk) 20:57, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
@Gnangblade: I looked further into the question about including Kabiye in the drop-down list, and in general including it in the interface. Apparently not only do the "most-used interface messages" have to be finished, but also the broader group "MediaWiki core messages" must be 13% translated in order for a language to be included. Right now kbp is at about 10%, so if you can get that up to 13%, that piece will start flowing automatically. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:29, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Sindhi Wikipedia in Devanagari script

Please add Sindhi language in devanagari script as in India Sindhi is written in devanagari script but existing Sindhi wikipedia is in Arabic script which is used in Pakistan. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gd hasani (talk) 17:46, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

You'll get farther if you don't vandalize pages while you make your requests.
If you're serious about this, your best option is to ask the community at Sindhi Wikipedia to allow for multiple writing systems. (See Kazakh Wikipedia and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia for examples.)
If you nevertheless want a separate project in Devanagari script, feel free to create a new RFL. However, because sd-arab and sd-deva have the same ISO 639–1 and –3 codes, that request is unlikely to succeed.
Finally, you can create a project at Incubator Plus on Wikia. The Kashmiri Wikipedia is in Arabic, but there is a parallel project on Wikia in Devanagari. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:01, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

request for update / Wikipedia Jazayri

Hi,

Kindly open this page check list Status, you can see that the project is already eligible since many years (2009) and are just waiting for final decision of the committee.

It's the best time to accept the request by the committee see this link for Generated statistics

If we want to encourage the development of this wikipedia and the future wiktionary . we need this acceptance, I advocate a positive response from the committee as soon as possible. - Mohammed Bachounda (talk) 09:43, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

[multiple votings of support removed --MF-W 16:07, 27 March 2017 (UTC)] and again StevenJ81 (talk) 13:05, 28 March 2017 (UTC) and again StevenJ81 (talk) 03:57, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Aux étudiants qui travaillent sur ce projet-ci: SVP ne !votez plus. Il ne fera pas de différence. Ce que vous devez faire est continuer vos travails sur le projet. (Voyez ci-dessous.) Merci. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:05, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
Je pense que tout le monde comprend le point. Permettez-moi de vous suggérer, cependant, que le Comité des langues cherche généralement à obtenir une participation soutenue d'une communauté active sur une certaine période - et le Comité définit généralement «une communauté active sur une période de temps» comme étant au moins trois utilisateurs, non-grisés, à moins trois mois. Donc, à ce stade, ce projet n'aurait que deux mois. En outre, bien qu'il y ait des exceptions, 400 pages sont un peu sur le côté léger pour l'approbation. Donc, je vais suggérer - et c'est ma propre suggestion, pas celle de LangCom - que tout le monde continue de travailler dessus pendant un mois et de voir où vous serez. À ce moment-là, vous pourriez avoir un bon dossier pour approbation. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:48, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
Merci StevenJ81 pour les conseilles, bien que c'est à la limite d'un vote de masse ,je voulait mesurer et la réactivité de la communauté et la réactivité du comité qui avec tous l'estime du travail qu'il fait dans ce domaine ,je fait passer le message aux etudiants du programme d’éducation qui ont participé au développement du projet dans l'incubateur. :) --Mohammed Bachounda (talk) 21:18, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Please do not vote any more. Your votes will not make a difference. The only thing that will make a difference is for volunteers to continue to work on the project. ... SVP ne votez plus. Il ne fera pas de différence. Ce que vous devez faire est continuer vos travails sur le projet. StevenJ81 (talk) 00:52, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

No active users

LangCom please see these 1. Kashmiri Wiki[3] both in dewnagri and kashmir scripts projects,there is no active 3 users available 2.Western Punjabi Wiki[4] 3.Pashto Wiki[5] 4.Sindhi Wiki[6] there is only one active user, there are no active 3 users available, please revert back these projects to incubator after checking check user --Rehmat Aziz Chitrali 07:18, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

@Rachitrali:
  1. Denigrating other projects will not help you make your case for your project.
  2. The rules for projects that already exist are not necessarily the same as the rules for projects looking to become approved. It is possible that some or all of the projects you cited above would not be approved if they came up for approval today. But since they do exist, they are subject only to the rules for existing projects.
  3. The only way to close a project that already exists and to move it back to Incubator is if it is closed consistent with Closing projects policy.
I suggest you focus on recruiting more contributors to your community and on continuing to grow the Khowar Wikipedia test. Don't worry about other tests and projects unless you see a lot of vandalism in them. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:38, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Le projet wikipédia Guyanais !

Bonjour, Oui enfaite il a de cela quelques mois que j'ai rajouter le créole guyanais comme candidat pour le projet de nouvelle langue sur Wikimedia et je n'ai toujours pas reçu de réponse, S'il vous plaît, j'ai vue sur votre page d'utilisateur que vous travaillez pour la Wikimedia fondation, faite que quelqu'un jette au moins un petit coup d'œil sur mon projet, même ne serai-ce que vous, car je parle Français (je suis français), Anglais (J'ai appris tout seul) et Créole Guyanais (Je suis plus précisément guyanais) et ça fait déjà 2 ans que je suis sur Wikipédia, surtout que ce projet me tient vraiment à cœur, SVP faite quelque chose pour Moi

I speack english Too ! LeGuyanaisPure (talk) 22:31, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

@LeGuyanaisPure:
C'est vrai que le Comité des langues doit decider si le Créole guyanais est éligible pour un projet. Même si le comité ferait ça, avant de créer un nouveau Wikipédia, le comité voudra voir qu'il y a une communauté qui contribuera sur le Wiki. Donc, vous (la communauté) devez commencer un test-wiki chez l'Incubateur pour montrer au comité que vous êtes sérieux. Tu peux commencer immédiatement ici: incubator:Wp/gcr. Bonne chance! StevenJ81 (talk) 20:51, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Request for launching Wikinews, Dutch version from the Dutch Wikinews Community

During the last months, there has been a lot of activity on the Dutch Wikinews. The project is currently active with an average of 4 to 10 new articles each day. It's the intention to build a coherent relationship with the news sections of Wikipedia in Dutch. There are also some ideas to work together with journalism schools in collaboration with 'Wikimedia the Netherlands', but those have not yet been made concrete. To keep the project growing, it's designated to launch the Wikinews officially with an own wiki. (An additional request is to rename Wikinews in Dutch to 'Wikinieuws', the Dutch translation of the name and to purchase the domains wikinieuws.nl and wikinieuws.be redirecting to this Wiki). --Livenws (talk) 09:50, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Support- this request is in my name as well, as I am currently an active contributor to nl-wikinews too. It's been here for almost one day and a half now, it would be nice if it could be handled soon. De Wikischim (talk) 13:38, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I've been watching you two, and others, work hard at this over the last several months. So I support. But do understand that these things take time. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:59, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply, but I was afraid that none of the Language committee members had read this message. Meanwhile we continue to work on the project in the Incubator. --LIVE NIEUWS (talk) 21:47, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
@LIVE NIEUWS: That said: this is really still a three-person operation (mainly). That's technically enough, but see if you can recruit a few more contributors. That will help your cause. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:33, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
We are very busy with that, but it isn't easy. Many contributors do not want to cooperate until it's out of the incubator. --Livenws (talk) 21:47, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
Support - I'm actually a Wikipedian, but I will try to donate an article so once and a while. As long as it is in the incubator, it doesn't motivate to do so though. So I very much support the idea to launch Wikinieuws again. In that case, recruitment of new volunteers will be easier too. Ymnes (talk) 09:43, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Support --Huhbakker (talk) 14:00, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Support- As for the reasons said above JBergsma1 (talk) 18:41, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I have a special request. I have seen that it is possible to import articles from other projects. This is functioning on the German Wikipedia for instance. This would be a great asset when the Dutch Wikinieuws is revived, thinking of two categories: 1) articles on Dutch Wikipedia that are nominated for deletion because they are merely news pages and not so much encyclopedia pages; and 2) contributions in other Wikinews languages (especially original interviews/news). Is it possible to have this option operational as well, when Wikinieuws has restarted? Ymnes (talk) 18:56, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I endorse the first part of Ymnes' suggestion which is about importing articles from NL-WP the subjects of which are more appropriate for Wikinews (a template for this was already created earlier, see [7]), but the idea of importing texts from other language versions of Wikinews seems rather discussable. And why in particular original news/interviews? De Wikischim (talk) 19:46, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Only to be translated right away next, to have the original journalist in the history page. Ymnes (talk) 16:00, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
Oppose the Dutch Wikinews is a failed project. No real community and the content was crap. When I look on incubator I see a hand full of users just copy and pasting stuff from online news sources. This project doesn't have any potential. This is just a spike in activity that doesn't even come near to being a viable project. Multichill (talk) 21:55, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Obviously you don't know anything about the current status of nl-Wikinews. My suggestion: read yourself up on that first, and then give your opinion here. De Wikischim (talk) 15:22, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Multichill, you've not informed yourself. Your post is not what the current status is. Please argue in the Redactieruimte, in stead of just saying something here. Ymnes (talk) 20:24, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, let's attack the person who doesn't like your pet project. I looked into it before I commented here. De Wikischim is a very problematic member of the Dutch community with an impressive blocklog on the Dutch Wikipedia and and on the Dutch Wikiquote. Having a problematic user like this as the main driver of the project will make sure that a lot of members from the Dutch community don't want anything to do with it. It will just become a project for for a few outcasts. And no, I won't comment in your "Redactieruimte", because the language committee reads this page and I don't want them to make the mistake of re-opening this project. Multichill (talk) 19:50, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
Dear Multichill, I can confirm you that there is an excellent co-operation on Wikinews with all of the contributing members. Also, there is no "main driver", everyone has the same right to speak and all decisions are made with the approval of the others. Please take a look in the discussion room to convince yourself. --Livenws (talk) 10:41, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
Support Activity past months looks good enough.TheDragonhunter (talk) 14:08, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
Support A few colleagues worked hard on the resurrection of a once failed project. They should be rewarded for this work. Wikipedia has been "abused" a few years with all kinds of news articles that have a short life and can be written from now on in the renewed Wikinews in the Dutch language. Klaas `Z4␟` V08:49, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Neutral - On one hand, Dutch Wikinews can balance Dutch Wikipedia. On the other hand, is this necessary? The Norwegian Wikinews is close to closing, and I wonder whether Dutch people are interested in original reporting for Wikinews. --George Ho (talk) 11:40, 8 May 2017 (UTC); new comment below. 11:53, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Hmm... change to support. Let's give Dutch Wikinews a few years. I hope we can bring in more original Dutch reporters to compete existing Dutch outlets. --George Ho (talk) 11:53, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Let me add some important facts/differences here: Norwegian is spoken by circa 4.6 million people and they have two forms of writing: Bokmål and Nynorsk. So on an average 2.3 million people per language. Dutch is spoken in 3 countries: the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname. There are 24 million people around the world that speak this language. I have respect for what the Norwegians do on the projects, but the comparison is not very equal. Ymnes (talk) 15:56, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for the statistical facts, Ymnes. According to my research, the Netherlands and Belgium are highly dense countries. BTW, I previewed the incubated Dutch Wikinews, and my conclusion for the high activity is the lack of protection of the articles, especially when created. Articles at English Wikinews currently need an approval of an admin or an editor with reviewer right, but the amount of active admins and reviewers is very low, resulting in very little number of articles published. If Dutch Wikinews is officially resurrected, how would the articles be approved and managed there? --George Ho (talk) 16:52, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
The current editors are very active and I'm quite sure three are very determined to stay (two are editing/reviewing work of others as well - not even counting me in here, and I do it as well where I can). Others will come by so now and than and there are plans to attract new users. So don't worry about that. Dutch Wiki projects are quite reliable in general terms. When I compare it between Dutch and English Wikipedia (and a lot of users on nl.Wikipedia share this view), Dutch Wikipedia may be smaller but is much more reliable than English Wikipedia. Next to that everything on nl.Wikinews is sourced, so readers can check en correct themselves as well, just how Wiki's work. Ymnes (talk) 17:05, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
(...) (and a lot of users on nl.Wikipedia share this view) (...) Based on what? The Banner (talk) 19:49, 13 May 2017 (UTC)
Oppose Just a very tiny group is people WikiNews. There is no guarantee about continuity with such a tiny group. The Banner (talk) 19:45, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Let not feelings matter please, especially when one is accustomed to Wikipedia figures. Look at for instance German Wikinews (quite a good comparison, although much more active on Wikipedia than the Dutch version): on Wikinews it has 1,67 news items per day in april. The current Dutch version in the incubator has 6,67 new news items per day (203 in april). Please let the facts count. The platform of Wikinews is a very different thing than Wikipedia, and when there is momentum under a small group to restart it, than we should restart it now. What I mentioned above here, is what I really expect: three people are at least there to stay, so I expect very much that the momentum will stay as well. An so will be the numbers than: far much more than German Wikinews. Ymnes (talk) 04:56, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
By now they are active, but what will happen when the Wikipedia Community refuses to allocate space on the opening page? That scenario is not unlikely! The Banner (talk) 15:06, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
"What if ... happens" questions aren't very useful. Ymnes (talk) 17:38, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
@The Banner: that's completely beside the point. This here is nothing but a simple request to put Wikinews-nl back into the main space. How the community on Wikipedia-nl will react to that afterwards, is a completely different chapter which is not at all important here on Meta. You can discuss it further on Wikipedia-nl if you want. De Wikischim (talk) 19:56, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Actually, I think User:The Banner is making a different point. He's suggesting that the Netherlands Wikipedia community will refuse to link to Wikinews-nl at the Actueel and Zusterprojecten sections of the Main Page. And if that happens, Wikinews will remain relatively unknown and isolated in the Dutch-speaking community. I suspect that WMF does not want warring Dutch-language news efforts going on. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:45, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
Please don't feed negative feelings, but support facts. The facts I gave are very convincing: 300+ articles month after month is different from the end of Dutch Wikinews when just 2 articles in one month were written. There's a quite high rate of quality in Dutch Wikinews now as well: it's all sourced now and the quality is better than many other versions. Compare it here to en.wikinews: nl.wikinews has more activity, more maintenance, less vandalism (and that will be noticed and dealt with faster). When looking at the real facts on Dutch Wikipedia, there is still an English language link to Wikinews under Zusterprojecten: this one will certainly be in Dutch, when a Dutch version has been relaunched again (especially when quality and new work are shown, as it does). Then the section of Aktueel is there and will remain there, so there is a wish for news on the front page of nl.Wikipedia. There have always been links from there to the past version of nl.Wikinews and there are no arguments why this should be different after a relaunch. The current movement is very different from than. Among the current users on Wikinews, it has been talked over yet that we will not rush in at Dutch Wikipedia, but let the community slowly accustom to the fact that Wikinieuws has been restarted again. In fact there aren't loud negative voices there at the moment. One is only worrying, that users will step over (so there will be less Wikipedians), but they don't fear this project there. Ymnes (talk) 05:30, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: as such, this has nothing to do with the question whether Wikinews-nl should be relaunched. At the moment, the degree of activity on Wikinews-nl is even higher than on other language versions of the project. After the project will have been relaunched, it's up to the community on Wikipedia-nl whether or not they want to treat it just like every other sister project. But as I already noticed, that's an issue which must be discussed on Wikipedia-nl itself. De Wikischim (talk) 09:28, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
What you see here are mainly the Wikinews-editors pleading for approval. I have checked 30 articles, only to see 6 editors. 4 content creators and 2 fly-by's. That is an unsound base for a whole separate project. And as I have stated before: there is no approval yet that they/this project will gets space on the main page.
What I suggest is to do it differently: Step 1: request access to the main page as an incubator project (as far as I know the di9fference is not visible to the outside world). Step 2: Widen that article-creator group (real content creators, no fly-by's). Step 3: Prove that the project is sound by delivering a steady stream of news-articles for a period of at least a year. Step 4: ask WMF approval for recognition as separate project.
Nobody has any use of a project just hanging into thin air when the the Dutch community refuses the access. Nobody has any use for a project that collapses within the year because their are not enough content-creators to handle people leaving. The Banner (talk) 12:25, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
Nobody has any use of a project just hanging into thin are when the the Dutch community refuses the access The possible launch was announced in the village pump of nl.wikipedia. There were a few reactions and 0 objections. Only two users came here to object. So that statement seems wrong. I actually believe that most users here don't care about Wikinews. In comparison to the other Dutch sister projects is the current Wikinews a lot more active. LIVE NIEUWS also claimed that he had other people that want to write on Wikinews, but not as long as it stays in the incubator. So I don't mind giving it a chance.TheDragonhunter (talk) 14:57, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
The voice of The Banner against the relaunch of nl.Wikinews is a lonely one. The success of the relaunch activities it is yet enormous. Consider how dearly a group of volunteers want to restart this thing, when they are feeding it with 200+ articles per month and that yet a very long time (more than 4 months). One can imagine that widening this group even more is not feasible in an incubator. On the other hand (unlikely to happen, but:) even if we lose 85% of the flow of new articles, there will still be 1 article per day. One can just admit: it's a huge success! In fact, one has to learn to see the advantages of Wikinews. In the short period that I am involved now, I have yet written 2 Wikipedia articles, solely because of the fact that I was searching for information that I needed to write a news article here. And consider too, in a time of fake news, Wikinews is a very good development, and the Dutch language should be a participant of this path. And if you don't like it, there is just no need to join it, you can always have your thing at Wikipedia. Ymnes (talk) 17:01, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
No, Ymnes, I am not the only one objecting. But the situation is now that not-involved editors object and that most of the editors in favour of approval are involved editors. The Banner (talk) 20:24, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikinews in Dutch language (i.e. for NL, BE, SUR, 3 more little countries in the Caribbean and 3 Caribbean areas as a part of NL) is active in the incubator since the beginning of January (nearly 5 months of real activity). I consider it a very long time yet in which many hundreds of articles were written, file categories were filled, and maintenance was done. But if you think we should stay there longer, please tell us how long the term should be. If the amount of work should have been more, please tell us what is needed more to succeed in the launch. If more information is needed, please tell us so and if this page is the right place to write it to the decision makers. If there is still anything needed, before it can be launched, please tell us what it is.
It has been so quiet from the official side, that we really don't understand what we should/can do more. When responsible for the decision, and in case you don't know, pleas ask other Wikinewsers of other languages how we are doing - since this is not a Wikipedia thing.
The best would be to launch it as soon as possible, since at this very moment there is still the momentum and the drive to make it a success. Keeping up the motivation is a human thing, and please support us in keeping it high. Ymnes (talk) 18:22, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

We would like to have an interim report from the Language committée with some information and the state of affairs. Thanks, --Livenws (talk) 12:04, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
If there is 'news' from the LangCom, a member can post it here. Thanks for cooperation. --Livenws (talk) 21:52, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

The month of May 2017 yielded 295 news threads (Category:Wn/nl/Mei 2017). Please get us out of the incubator. We want full operation, like the other languages. Ymnes (talk) 08:35, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Additionally, I for my part want to remind that the renewed activity on Wikinews-nl began in mid-January and did not decline anymore afterwards. So there has been continuous activity for almost five months now, during which many hundreds (rather, more than thousand) of new pages were created. (Only today, again some new pages were added.) De Wikischim (talk) 12:51, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Is there already any proof that the Dutch Community will grant you space on the main page? I have not seen anything. The Banner (talk) 15:43, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
Does not matter here, is not necessary at this moment. --Livenws (talk) 16:25, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
@The Banner: please see again my remark with time stamp 19:56, 9 May 2017 . Whether the Dutch Wikipedia community wants to link to nl-Wikinews or not is completely irrelevant for this request, given that the two projects each stand on their own individually. You are invited to discuss that issue further on Wikipedia-nl. De Wikischim (talk) 17:07, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Multichill's argument on copy and paste (or close paraphrasing) is an important one which needs to be assessed. Can someone please provide more details on how many articles are deleted on the Dutch Wikipedia for being recentist/news articles? If it's even just one per day, it would be valuable to have a place where to put them (it would also make such cleanup on Wikipedia less traumatic). Nemo 21:12, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
    • There are no pages copy pasted from Wikipedia on incubator Dutch Wikinews, as far as I have seen, and I have seen a lot. Also there is no copvio or whatsoever going on. He has no argument at all. Ymnes (talk) 22:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
    • @User:Nemo_bis: such cases do exist indeed, but they are actually very rare (contrarily to what you're suggesting). For the moment, there is only one obvious example, see Incubator:Wn/nl/Aanval op trein in Würzburg. As you can see there, a separate template has been created to indicate that a text put on Wikinews was originally on Wikipedia-nl. In the future, the same procedure can be followed with other topics put on Wikipedia-nl which are more suitable for Wikinews-nl. De Wikischim (talk) 10:34, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
Do we have a 'go', langcom? :) --Livenws (talk) 13:17, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose Oppose (for now) THanks Livenws for starting the discussion, it's a good discussiont o have. I do fear though that I have to agree with Multichills assessment above. The number of contributors is too small to be a viable project, I fear. This aside from the more general doubts whether Wikinews as a concept is viable at all. The project was active for quite some years and never took off, always lingering. I'm not confident this will be any different. From a random sample from the articles on incubatorwiki it's either very old content, or semi-automated reports on statistics, or copy-and-paste of (PD) press releases. But perhaps you could give your top-100 articles from the past month, that you think represent what the current community can produce? Effeietsanders (talk) 09:58, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
    • This is really mean and hypocrite, Effeietsanders. As as matter of fact, there are press releases on Dutch Wikinew in the incubator, but the real press publishes them as well. In fact they were keeping the project running for a certain amount of time when it was abandoned by Wikipedians that voted away a sister project where they didn't even work on!!! But the activity was necessary in the end to to get a glimpse of hope in order to restart this thing that is mix of news messages of all kind now. It is mean and hypocrite, because 46 of the last 100 articles Effeietsanders wrote on Dutch Wikipeda lately, were copy-paste articles of Parlement.nl, the website of Dutch parliament. 2% of his last 100 articles were deleted and about 15-20% were disambiguation pages. Effeietsanders copy-pastes more than 50% of what he writes on Dutch Wikipedia, look at it yourself:[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] (now we know how he works himself, we know know what his message is worth) Ymnes (talk) 15:54, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
@Ymnes: Just to set the record straight: I don't "hate" wikinews, but do have my doubts it can be successful in Dutch after seeing it struggle so many years. Also, your qualification of my writing is not accurate at all (I use sources, but a simple copy & paste wouldn't even be possible), and very besides the point. I'm glad you do respond to my question though, that is what matters really. Effeietsanders (talk) 14:53, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
When using that template, you indicate that you have been copy-pasting parts of that government website, otherwise you didn't need to use the template you use, but you could have easily used the common way of referencing. In either way, you used the government as a source and you're blaming us of something, that you are doing on a large scale on Wikipedia yourself.
By the way, the way we (you and nl.WikiNews) use it, is all right with me. As long as one indicates clearly that he has used the sources in this way. That is what we do, because we clearly state that it's a press release and who the writer is. These articles are sometimes véry informative. So, not a bad story at all! Since news items are usually covered several times (because of different moments in time / different types of news, like press releases, own articles, and hopefully in the future columns, opinion pieces, etc.). We are making dossiers of them.
Please, appreciate our efforts and believe in us. I know that Huhbakker has been participating in the incubator for a very long time, not only in 2017. He will stay in the future, we it has been relaunched. I know of LIVE NIEUWS that he is seriously willing to go on with this project. Look at his name: 'LIVE NEWS' (that is the name he chose to work with on Wikipedia, but his real place is here on WikiNews, anyone can understand that. I now De Wikischim quite well meanwhile, and - also in the future - we will find him on a regular base on this project. He is active on more projects of the Foundation, beyond Wikipedia, and even an administrator (WikiBooks I believe). He certainly will stay and come to the project on a regular basis. Just a couple of days ago I said to him: "I notice that this is very much your thing: you do maintenance work, language corrections and write articles. Also your work is very much respected here, while on Wikipedia you are in trouble once and a while because you meet people that can't stand it when you edit 'their' articles." (The context was that I needed to motivate him [with these true facts], because its demotivating all of us that the Language Committee hasn't replied one single time since nearly 7 weeks) In my case I like to write an news article once and a while, and I think I have an average of one article per day. I yet joked: "One article a day, keeps the doctor away".
Dear Effeietsanders, if you had really informed yourself, your answer had been much more balanced and your faith in the project would have been very much higher. You'd better cheer up and don't be so negative about a team that is functioning so well, collaborating in a very friendly way, keeping up quality very high and is producing many news articles. I guess we must be anywhere in the Top 10 or maybe Top 5 of WikiNews languages. Ymnes (talk) 18:49, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi Ymnes,
First of all: I split up your text to do justice to your list that is still below. I did not want to distort that work you did by responsing to your personal attacks after your list. No need to shout in capitals (people reading along: that's only visible in edit mode).
Second, I won't distract this discussion with how I use and declare my sources on Wikipedia, I don't think it is particularly relevant. But even if only a single sentence is reused, the copyright requires that it is declared and sourced (even though it was released under a free license).
Before making my initial comment, I did take a look into the project, and opened some random articles. Those were either very old, or 100% copies of a press release. Based on the sample I took, I got that impression, and I wanted to offer you the opportunity to correct that impression by providing a better sample. I'm glad you took that opportunity. It does sooth my concerns a little bit. I like the fact that you seem to have found a niche (news from the Dutch Antilles/Suriname) to focus on a bit more than most news outlets. The list is insightful, and the best argument I have seen so far, in favor of reopening the project.
However, I still don't feel comfortable this community is large enough. For an encyclopedia, articles remain valid even if you don't edit for a while - but for a news source, it is crucial that you remain up to date and keep the stories coming. Those are all no new arguments. I'm glad you have the trust in the small group - but I feel the need to be honest here: I don't have that trust still. The agressive tone you use in response to criticism doesn't help in that, I fear that kind of behavior will only make it harder to get new people on board. You can appreciate my opinion or not - but in discussions it is not only agreement you'll find. You mention my answer was not balanced, but I hope that you see now that even though I still don't agree with your conclusion, I did want to give you the opportunity to better make your argument. Effeietsanders (talk) 22:42, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
I know that you split up my text. Therefore I asked in my last reply not to do that. It's nothing personal, but a precaution that my text stays together and ends with a signature.
I won't go further in the discussion whether you use copy paste in your articles. I e-mailed with you and we agree to disagree.
I can only speak for our project and there we do it in the next way: when a press release is concerned, than we make that visible with a banner and we put them in a certain category. We make the difference with own written news articles visible. They are also a part of dossiers, so that a reader can read more on that subjects from all kinds of angles. An example of such a dossier is the Dossier:Greek debt crisis: there you find press releases and own articles in one category. I hope it makes visible why we accept press releases. Therefore I don't accept an inferior term as 'copy paste', since that is beyond the real value press releases have. Nevertheless, we have a lot of own news articles (around 7 per day) and news updates (difficult to say how much, but also several per day).
It's good that you have meanwhile had a better look to our project. Dutch is spoken in Suriname and on the the Antiles as well. So in those parts of the world they can read an updated WikiNews as well (see Suriname, Caribisch Nederland).
A good view on our high productivity and high quality can be seen when you search through the last months, like June 2017 for instance.
So please cheer up. This project is running well. And maybe merely a project for just certain users and readers. Have a nice Sunday! Ymnes (talk) 13:15, 11 June 2017 (UTC)


Sample list of recent nl wikinews articles in incubator

(the text below was originally part of the larger message by Ymnes above) Well when you are fair and look at all the articles that are written on WikiNews now, there is a complete different view than some Wikipedia users want to smear on the restart of WikiNews. Here is an overview of articles I could find so quickly. All these articles are written less than a month ago:

Unnecessarily personal comments
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
        • And it are just negative remarks like your own words that spell doom for this project. For the spread of Dutch, see [Dutch language what gives a bit more restrained view on the case. The Banner (talk) 02:40, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
          • The Banner, you're one of the most blocked persons on Dutch Wikipedia and you're even multi blocked on English Wikipedia. You have never contributed to WikiNews and write Wikipedia articles on the basis of the commercial magazine Misset Horeca. Please stop your negative feedback, that you are dropping for the 3rd time. Why is it so necessary for you to allways feed any discussion with your negativity? If you don't like WikiNews, than just look to other Wikimedia projects or ask Jimbo Wales to just dismantle them all. But stop teasing users that are willing to restart this project and have shown their possitive good will for 5 consecutive months yet. Those are the real facts. In the list above I haven't even mentioned the news threads: many articles have 2, 3 or 4 updates in it, which should be counted as well. And yes, when I am in Luxemburg, a lot o people understand me while I'm speaking Dutch. Even people in the Ruhrgebiet in Germany do so. And without no doubt in the rest of the areas I mentioned. Negativity does not help Wikimedia. Please Language Committee, release us from these negative attacks and reopen this project. We haven't deserved being teased by people who aren't willing to contribute to the project anyway. Ymnes (talk) 05:29, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Day after day new news articles...

These are the new news articles on Dutch WikiNews in the incubator since I gave my overview yesterday... Dutch WikiNews is ready! Please give us a GO. Ymnes (talk) 18:33, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Just to show whats going on (day after day), and this day another day and 7 more news articles are there on Dutch Wikinews in the incubator. We have waited so long yet and and are functioning as a full family member yet. Please give us a GO. Ymnes (talk) 18:59, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I felt guilty, because I didn't write an article today. But why worry when I know that this train is running anyway... (I should have been confident, since I'm not an opposer without knowledge) Tommorow I'll be there again as well, and in the future, as will be my colleagues since the beginning of this year. These are the results of new news articles since I reported this here yesterday. Ymnes (talk) 21:03, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

These are the new news articles on Dutch WikiNews in the incubator since yesterday! (article sometimes build up in course of time, with updates, so one should count a few extra, see here). Please give us a GO.

etc.
etc.
etc...
I think I made my point clear, I don't think it's necessary to keep on updating this hereYmnes (talk) 18:56, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Administrator's request

I think we have a pretty good idea for now of the points of view of both User:Ymnes and User:The Banner. Why don't the two of you stop at this point, and let's see whether anyone else has a point of view here. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:02, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Please don't let us be victim of these scenes in the first place. The application lays here yet a very long time. There has been shown enough to make a decision now. Ymnes (talk) 04:48, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: if Wikinews-nl is, according to you, still not viable enough in its current status, then not any language version of the project is actually viable since the current activity in other language versions, including the bigger ones, is even lower. So it would be a very typical example of having double standards. The deliberation about this is endlessly expanded in an negative way especially by The Banner, I'd prefer if you'd not along with that. De Wikischim (talk) 08:26, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
No need to accuse people of double standards. Those who oppose reopening nl.wikinews are often consistent in also asking closure for all the other Wikinews subdomains. (Not that I agree with the idea.) --Nemo 09:27, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Often? It's only Effeietanders who states this. TheBanner and Multichill are just opposing the reopening of Wikinews-nl, for reasons which are still unclear since they are no active contributors to the project at all. Then how can they have such a pronounced opinion on it? De Wikischim (talk) 09:42, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Then you should read my statements:
  1. not enough active people to guarantee a long standing project.
  2. No evidence that the project will not left hanging in the air. (No evidence that they will gain access to the main page of the Dutch Wikipedia, leaving the project invisible.)
The Banner (talk) 11:58, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Of course The Banner, you can establish and predict the activity with exactitude, even without having done just one edit on the project itself or being involved in it in any other way... @Language Committee members: please do not pay any attention to this senseless negative feedback from just one WP user since it isn't worth it at all. Instead, just give Wikinews-nl finally new access to the main space. De Wikischim (talk) 12:04, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
The amount of active people is growing, not fast (personaly I think that this related to the fact this project is still in the incubator) but steady. The contribution and the amount of the members at this moment should be enough to release this project form the incubator. The point about the mainpage on nl.wikipedia, I don't see this as a requirement to release this project from incubator, if I take a look at en.wikipedia there are no links to articles on the en.wikinews. Personaly I should only link in newsitems pages on the Dutch wikipedia to the Dutch wikinews but that is something the community on nl.wikipedia should decide. Huhbakker (talk) 15:05, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Support Support Mere good intentions aren't good enough. But this group has shown determination. I feel that we should give them the chance to prove that they can maintain the nl.wikinews as well as attract new editors to it. The dutch language may not be the biggest language in the world, but it reaches worldwide from Canada to Australia from Scandinavia to South Africa. The Dutch language is spoken in communities all over the world.
I believe that Wikinews in the Dutch Language will be a great addition to the Wikimedia-family and therefore I speak out my support for this project. Kind regards,  Rodejong  💬 ✉️  12:59, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

I have directly asked LangCom (of which I am not a member) to come to a decision. I did not advise LangCom one way or the other what to decide, as that is not my role here. However, I did request that if the decision is a "no", LangCom should make very transparent what else may need to be done. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:52, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your effort, it should be nice to get a respons from the LangCom. Huhbakker (talk) 15:08, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
I suppose you mean would instead of should? De Wikischim (talk) 15:52, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

News articles Dutch Wikipedia

Speaking about the news articles on the frontpage of the Dutch Wikipedia. The current members that are working on the reactivation of Dutch Wikinews have no intentions to replace the existing news articles on Wikipedia. This is now something the users of the Dutch Wikipedia organize and of course they can link of reuse data that is present on the Dutch Wikinews. The only link to the Dutch Wikinews (when it is released from the incubator) we want to have changed is the link in the "Zusterprojecten" area that currently is linked to the English Wikinews. Huhbakker (talk) 09:51, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

The rule for major changes on the front page of Wikipedia is that a discussion or a poll should be held first. There is no need to worry that we will rush in with Wikinews links. In case we expect discussion elsewhere, we will seek a solution in polls or consensus as well. Ymnes (talk) 18:01, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
There is also no proof that your project will get access to the main page... The Banner (talk) 16:05, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
You talk as if there is a great opposition against a good functioning WikiNews, and there isn't. At this very moment there is even yet a link from the Dutch Wikipedia main page to English WikiNews. Among the contributors of WikiNews in the incubator it has been talked about yet, that only changing the link from English to Dutch would be acceptable, if the Wikipedia community would decide so. If Dutch Wikipedia wants more, we can deliver that too. It's up to the community there. Ymnes (talk) 16:47, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
You talk as if there is great approval for WikiNews but there isn't The Banner (talk) 18:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Among the stewards here on Meta, there is surely a great majority which supports approval. I guess you mean that there's no consensus among on the WP-NL-community about the added value of Wikinews-nl. I and others have told you several times now that that's a completely different issue which should not be discussed further at this place. De Wikischim (talk) 19:29, 15 June 2017 (UTC)
Do you have proof of that? The Banner (talk) 13:08, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Can a decision please be made now?

Please make a decision, or any other feedback. This way, no new projects can be opened anymore, which impedes the expansion of Wikimedia and global knowledge. --Livenws (talk) 12:01, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

New update, please!

Can the Language Committee please give asap a new update on the progression of this request? The degree of activity on Wikinews-nl has surely not diminished since last week, and for now it is even far higher than for example on the French version (which is not in the Incubator). De Wikischim (talk) 12:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Why such a hurry? The Banner (talk) 13:07, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
Well, to be fair, this request has been ongoing since April. I would no longer characterize it as a hurry. Effeietsanders (talk) 12:36, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Approved. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:21, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

@StevenJ81: Wow, that is a bit of an anticlimax :) For archive happyness, could you clarify the reasoning of the committee? I'm confident it was discussed in detail given the time it took, but it would be nice to see that reflected here. Thanks! Effeietsanders (talk) 16:56, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
@Effeietsanders: LangCom officially makes its decisions in its email list, not on-wiki. So I would encourage you to read the thread starting here. The policy that governs these decisions can be found at LPP. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:15, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: I don't see any conclusion there - rather a few individual opinions. I don't see any decision made there, to be honest - let alone one where the reasoning is explained. I could deduce a reasoning myself, of course. But for a committee decision, I would expect some level of committee opinion to be formulated. I hope the committee will do that (and I don't mind too much whether that is made on the list, and then copied here, or just put here immediately). Effeietsanders (talk) 18:49, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
@Effeietsanders: I doubt LangCom will have any further comment, so I will take a swing, and invite a correction if necessary:
  • All of the requirements for a new project have been met. There is sufficient content, it is legitimate, and there has been a large enough community working on the test for a sufficiently long period of time.
  • Prima facie, there is reason to believe the community that formed for the Incubator test will remain interested and engaged.
  • This is a separate project from Dutch Wikipedia, so while the objections from some in that wiki's community were noted, there is no reason per Wikimedia policy for the new project not to be approved.
Beyond that, I cannot say. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:11, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
OK, tried to send a suggestion to the Committee for process improvement (even though your summary is appreciated - i think a general improvement of the process would be good). Seems it'll be in moderation though - still didn'tget through. Effeietsanders (talk) 11:41, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Note that the thread continued in June. At mailarchive:langcom/2017-June/001482.html there is the formal proposal (by me) which was accepted as no objections were raised. Of course we approved the project because it met the requirements. We didn't care for the non-related opposition discussed on this page. --MF-W 23:05, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
@MF-Warburg: Thanks for the addition. I indeed did not see that. Which only strengthens my case that a summary would be a helpful practice, especially where there was a lot of discussion :). From the discussions however, it seems that not everybody (even in your committee) agrees that the arguments were irrelevant. If you still decide to go the other way, that is fine - as you have to weigh the different arguments - but to simply dismiss them the way you do here, is unfair. Effeietsanders (talk) 09:37, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Well yes, some arguments were considered as visible on the list. With the non-related opposition I meant arguments like "nl.wikipedia won't link to nl.wikinews on the main page". --MF-W 15:56, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
OK, it seemed you were referring to all arguments made on this page. Thanks for the clarification. Effeietsanders (talk) 19:31, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, sorry, that was unclear of me. --MF-W 23:33, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I have been working closely with Benoit Rochon, president of Wikimedia Canada, to try to get the Wikipedia Test project in Atikamekw ready for approval. Benoit has now reported the following on my Incubator talk page, which I have confirmed independently:
Start copy

Bonjour Steven. Thank you for your advice. Blog post has been published by WMF. Also Radio-Canada did an interview about Atikamekw project. It's really cool how things are going well. Now I want to give you a clear overview where we are, since they announced at Radio-Canada that Wikipetia Atikamekw will be launch on 21 June... so I really wish we/they can do it.
  • Three participants with at least ten edits each Done
  • Translatewiki Most important messages (100%) Done
  • Translatewiki MediaWiki core messages (17%) Done
  • Messages transferred from translatewiki.net over to the Wikimedia wikis Done
  • Fallback language is French Done
  • 100-150 real articles with content. to be done
  • Translate as far as possible the MediaWiki messages group. to be done
Now, to who (or where) WMCA & partners make commitments? And to who (or where) the techno-linguists certify to LangCom that this language is correct, accurate, etc.

End copy
The one real task left to finish is to get more articles up from stub-level to a point of real content. I gave them the advice of 100–150 articles, because (a) that's about half their current article total for now, and (b) I believe there is commitment from both the authorities of the Atikamekw Nehirowisiw Nation and from Wikimedia Canada to actively support the project further. (Benoit can elaborate further.) Accordingly, I'd like to suggest that the wheels start turning on approving this project, with the understanding that the test community will work to continue on the very enthusiastic and aggressive path they have been taking. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:21, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Hello, as you saw grant request and blog post, we are a team : people from Wikimedia Canada, Leipzig University (de), Outaouais University (ca), working with Atikamekw Nation and this collaboration will continue over years. I am (we are) available to help the LangCom in any way, and bring this test project to the next level! Contact me, techno-linguists or teachers for further information. Thank you for your time. Best regards, Benoit Rochon (talk) 13:55, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
Good day, I am the VP of Wikimedia Canada and I developed the Strategic Plan for the next 5 years for our chapter, and as Benoit already said, I can confirm that supporting the Wikipetia Atikamekw Nehiromowin is at the center of our efforts, even after the completion of the current project grant. It is one of three programs that I planned for our requested APG that is suppose to start in July. The project will also be presented at Wikimania, as Benoit said. The wheels are turning and they are not stopping after it is out the Incubator, all the reverse. It is our intent to use this project to develop a toolkit to emulate for other First Nations in Canada (and perhaps worldwide), and for that we are supported by university teachers in Quebec and a linguist from Germany. As Benoit said, the project is supported by "tehcno-linguists" of the Atikamekw language from the Institut Linguistique Atikamekw (ILA), which the organization responsible to standardize the language, and they can provide the confirmation you require to confirm that the language in the project is accurate. Thank you for spending time to streamline the process of approval. Amqui (talk) 22:38, 23 May 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia Atikamekw logo
Press review
English
Français

This project is on track for the past 4 years. Why is it still under review? StevenJ81, MF-Warburg, Amqui, make this happen. Best regards, Benoit Rochon (talk)

Because this is the first month in those 4 years where the there is a 3rd continuous month of activity (as defined). -- 08:50, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Ho I see. In fact 6 months, considering February where User:Kinew1975 did 10 edits, but still grey out Lol. Thank you MF-W, we hope wp-atj will be considered soon. Best regards, Benoit Rochon (talk) 02:41, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
And, for what it's worth, excluding one month where the #3 contributor had 9 edits (which isn't 10, I'll grant), it goes all the way back to October. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:42, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikimania 2017 Montreal, submission accepted:‎ Indigenous Knowledge on Wikipedia: Lessons Learned from the Project Wikipetia Atikamekw Nehiromowin. Benoit Rochon (talk) 14:35, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Amazing work. Would be great to see the Jun 21st deadline meet. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:39, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I think all requirements are met, so what are the next steps? Thank you, Amqui (talk) 15:34, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

LangCom is doing final verifications now. StevenJ81 (talk) 22:24, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
Thank you Amqui (talk) 13:53, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Approved. Congratulations! See phabricator:T167714 for details on the move from Incubator to its own subdomain. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:45, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Done You can find the new Wikipedia at atj:. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:08, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Hindi project requests

Two projects listed below are both looking for approvals now. LangCom did have a question about whether translation of the interface into Hindi at translatewiki.net is proceeding, so in order to keep this moving along I strongly encourage both projects' communities to keep working on translations of messages in the MediaWiki message group at translatewiki.net. StevenJ81 (talk) 22:32, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Request for launching Hindi Wikivoyage

This project has seen very good activity during the last six months and more than 3 users have been continuously active during this period. We have focused ourselves at improving quality of articles and now all of them appear to be in good conditions. Looking at the recent activity increase we believe this project can be launched and a domain can be allotted to it. Thus, hereby, I request Language committee to take decision regarding its launch. Thanks. --SM7 --talk-- 11:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't have enough experience to know whether the number of pages in this test is good or bad for a new Wikivoyage project. However, I have looked at the activity statistics and can affirm what User:SM7 says above. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:25, 28 April 2017 (UTC)
User:StevenJ81, Can you please tell us, what else we have to do? All active users are either admin or one step bellow sysop on hiwiki.☆★Sanjeev Kumar (talk) 06:19, 20 May 2017 (UTC)
@संजीव कुमार: The most important thing you need to do now is to continue (a) creating content, and especially (b) continuing to translate MediaWiki messages at translatewiki.net. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:42, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Request for Approval Hindi Wikiversity

Dear @ZaDiak, Santhosh.thottingal, Baba Tabita, Millosh, Evertype, MF-Warburg, Antony D. Green, Amire80, and StevenJ81: And Others Language committee Members, In Last few Months the Hindi Wikiversity Worked Well in Field of Computer Science And Coding Related Topic. And Made over 300+ articles and 7000+ edits in last few Month (This Month statistics not show due to technical problems in Tools server). I want to Lang-com have a look on Hindi Wikiversity. Wikiversity have Different project Compare to Wikipedia like project. They not need to Thousands of Articles. If you look at Other Wikiversity. You find that they approved without much Content. Our main problem is that the redirection of hi.wikiversity.org not made on Beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Category:HI. So here I am Requesting to Lang-com. Please have a look on Content. We made Content from English Wikiversity With Best Quality. Two Lang-com Member are Know Hindi Language. So They Can Help to Verify Hindi Wikiversity's Content. I believe that Lang-com Change Status Eligible to Approval Ongoing. Thank you -Jayprakash12345 (talk) 14:13, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Comment. I consider this to be borderline approvable now. I'd like to see a little more content from anyone who is not User:Jayprakash12345, only in order to establish the idea that this is a community project, not a one- or two-person project. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:52, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: Thank you very Much Sir Can you Solve our Redirection Problem Because Content is not being used by anyone. You can Understand this Problem, @J ansari, Suyash.dwivedi, Swapnil.Karambelkar, and Shivamsaini360: Can you Contribute more in wikiversity project?-Jayprakash12345 (talk) 05:48, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
certainly ,i would be adding more content in near future.Swapnil.Karambelkar (talk) 08:27, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
@Jayprakash12345: Now My Examination are going to End. After that I will Put Enough Article.-Shivamsaini360 (talk) 13:33, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
@Jayprakash12345: You'd have to put in a bug/task at phabricator to fix that. @MF-Warburg: Is it better to fix that redirect problem, or simply to go ahead and get this project out into the subdomain? StevenJ81 (talk) 13:49, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
@MF-Warburg and StevenJ81: I am fasting in this project. Because I talked with some College which connect us without any grants. So Project approval or Redirection Help us to Connect various College. I can take responsibility of Activity on Hindi WIkiversity. -Jayprakash12345 (talk) 14:18, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
@Jayprakash12345: Could you please say that a different way? The only use of "fast" as a verb in English is to refrain from eating for a period of time. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:39, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: So Sorry Sir, But my means that Quickness. I am en-1 User. I know that My English is Very Bad. So once again sorry.-Jayprakash12345 (talk)
@Jayprakash12345: Since I am hi-(-4), I have no room to complain. But tell me what you are trying to say. Are you telling me that you are in a hurry to get this done, because you are trying to connect it with some colleges/universities in India? StevenJ81 (talk) 14:58, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: Right guess sir. I am trying to connect it with some colleges/universities in India. If Langcom feared that the community will reduce its activity after approval. Dont worry about that. If langcom or meta want my national data or something. I can provide them. We made Hindi Wikiversity channel Here. And aware peoples about Wikiversity and Wikimedia. Introduction to Hindi Wikiversity and Wikimedia in English for this purposes-Jayprakash12345 (talk) 15:36, 2 May 2017 (UTC)
@MF-Warburg and StevenJ81: Sir, Am I authorized user who can put a task at phabricator? Now Hindi Wikiversity got rank 3rd on beta Wikiversity with Having about 400 content. -Jayprakash12345 (talk) 12:40, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@Jayprakash12345: You can put a task at phabricator; anyone can (if not blocked). However, no task to create a wiki (which is what I assume you want to do) will be considered a valid task unless the Language Committee approves your project. So if I were you, I would not open a task at phabricator. Wait until the Language Committee acts. StevenJ81 (talk) 12:43, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
@MF-Warburg and StevenJ81: Sir, Now HIndi WIkiversity Have 400+ and 10000+ Edits. And Got 2nd Rank on Beta Wikiversity. Please Consider Hindi Wikiversity. We are facing Problems on Beta about Redirection. -Jayprakash12345 (talk) 06:06, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Request for launching Wikivoyage Tamil

Tamil wikivoyage has grown big with 232 articles. Please considering launching of Tamil wikivoyage. -- Balajijagadesh (talk) 16:49, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

@Balajijagadesh: In order for a project to be approved, there needs to be a community there that is regularly active and continuing to create new content. See LPP. An "active test project" usually means that a minimum there are at least three editors making at least ten edits per month for at least three months, and continuing onward from those three months until the project is approved and crated. incubator:Wy/ta does not meet those requirements yet. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:26, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: Hi.. Thanks for the detailed information. -- Balajijagadesh (talk) 04:51, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Flower of the month

Flower of the month

Dear members of WMF Language Committee (Amire80, N-true, Antony D. Green, Bèrto 'd Sèra, Maor X, GerardM, Jon Harald Søby, Klbroome, Arria Belli, MF-Warburg, Evertype, Millosh, Baba Tabita, SPQRobin, Santhosh Thottingal, Satdeep Gill, ZaDiak).

For your huge efforts on language diversity and especially on small language projects I want to present you the Flower of the month.

Best regards, --Holder (talk) 20:01, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! --MF-W 03:34, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Request for Status page

So, I've been working on incubator:Wt/sco, and I was wondering if the status page (Language committee/Status/wt/sco) could be re-activated with new stats. --AmaryllisGardener talk 23:18, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

@MF-Warburg: Would you know how to get this done? (I see you deleted the page) Thanks, --AmaryllisGardener talk 01:01, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
@AmaryllisGardener: Hi. LangCom isn't using those old status pages any more. If a test project seems on its face to meet approval criteria LangCom does a deeper-dive investigation and then makes a decision. As someone who is effectively a clerk for LangCom, I would share the following:
  • Your test project is probably large enough to meet the size criterion for approval, though adding additional content will always help.
  • Both incubator:Wt/sco and Requests for new languages/Wiktionary Scots have links to both an activity tool and a localization statistics tool. Check both of those.
  • In order for a project to be approvable, it must have an active test community. Generally, this means that there must be at least three active editors—"active" defined as having at least ten edits in a month—for at least three consecutive months, and then continuing on until the project is approved and exported. So far, this project has only you, and only for one month. (My edits last month were in the nature of housekeeping and don't count, and there were only six.)
  • For second and subsequent projects in a language, further work must be done on translating the interface at translatewiki.net. Certainly all messages in the "core MediaWiki messages" group must be translated, and notable additional progress beyond that must happen.
  • Once the rest of this has resolved, LangCom may still wish to ask what the relationship of this project would be to the Scots language category within English Wiktionary. Do the projects include duplicate information? Do they both need to exist? I don't know that LangCom will give you any trouble about this, but you may wish to consider in advance what your plans might be.
Since you're a very experienced Wikipedian with mop experience, I'd encourage you to apply for test administrator status at incubator:I:RFTA. That gives you a partial administrator toolkit that you'd probably find helpful.
Any questions, please let me know. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:12, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: Thanks, I'll follow some of your advice, and will try to recruit more editors to work on the wiki. --AmaryllisGardener talk 18:29, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Ilocano Wikipedia

Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Ilocano Wikipedia has been closed by me as obviously invalid. I'd appreciate if a LangCom member could review my closure and confirm it or revert it. Thanks, —MarcoAurelio 11:07, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

(not LangCom member) I concur with MarcoAurelio's assessment. StevenJ81 (talk) 12:47, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Very good. --MF-W 11:32, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
@MarcoAurelio: Technically you can just close it without invoking IAR per the phrase "Any other responsible WMF user, not affiliated with the wiki proposed for closure, may also close a discussion considered disruptive, for stated cause, pending review, and it should not be re-opened except by a LangCom member." on CPP. --Rschen7754 06:25, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Indeed, that's why I wrote "very good". --MF-W 23:07, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Closing projects policy under discussion

The discussion about the Closing projects policy is discussed at Talk:Closing projects policy#This is not working. --George Ho (talk) 02:43, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Ingush

I would like to point out that the Ingush Wikipedia (incubator:Wp/inh) might be ready ([53]). It's been active for a long time and considering its size it is outgrowing the incubator :) --OosWesThoesBes (talk) 16:26, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. We wanted to approve it already half a year ago but found nobody to verify the content. We'll start a new attempt. --MF-W 23:01, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Common problems with newly created wikis

I'd like to bring up some common problems (of varying levels of severity) I have seen in newly created wikis, from my perspective as a regular (non-admin) user. This is all based on impressions I've developed since I started paying closer attention to new wikis, back when the Maithili Wikipedia was created in Nov 2014. (Although, in that time I haven't actually looked through every newly created wiki.) I am hoping that problems such as these can somehow be identified and addressed earlier in the process of wiki creation (say, while requests for new languages are being processed — at the very least, interested users looking at such requests could be advised to look out for these issues).

Lack of local admins
Of the 15 most recently created content wikis, 2 currently have no local admins at all: kbpwiki (created 23 June 2017) and dinwiki (created 12 July 2017). This may just reflect normal "lag", since local admins are promoted only after gaining local consensus, but it would be nice to have at least 1 active admin (who knows the language) right off the bat, to deal with any issues that arise once the wiki opens for editing.
Non-localized namespaces
Again, of the 15 most recent wikis, 2 seem to still have English (canonical, non-localized) prefixes on most of their namespaces: adywiki (11 February 2016) and jamwiki (2 May 2016). This makes it highly likely that in the future, Phabricator tasks will be required to localize these namespaces (and then pages may need to be moved, maintenance scripts run, etc.). This can be avoided by just requiring that all namespace names be localized before a wiki is created. (I thought that was the policy, but apparently not?)
Incorrect initial article counts
Many, if not most, new wikis show initial article counts that are too high (sometimes impossibly so) right after importing is finished. This gets fixed when the wiki is recounted for the first time by the updateArticleCount.php maintenance script (which gets run on all Wikimedia content wikis except Wikibooks on the 21st of each month), but it seems obvious that there is still at least one bug remaining in the MediaWiki software related to article counting and wiki creation / importing. Fortunately, it doesn't appear to be as bad as the old bug that increased the count by 1 for every individual revision of each page imported (rather than for each page), but it's still annoying. This problem can easily be "corrected" (that is, worked around) by simply requesting the running of updateArticleCount.php (or initSiteStats.php?) on new wikis as a matter of course after importing is finished.
Misunderstandings about article counting
A separate article-count issue: Many new wiki communities report "wrong" or "broken" article counts even after the wiki has been recounted for the first time, because no one understands that, by default, only pages (non-redirects) in content namespaces (usually just the main namespace) that contain at least one [[wikilink]] to a page title on the same wiki (whether the target page exists or not) get counted as articles (AKA "content pages"). (Clearly part of the problem is the subtlety of the "link" method of article counting!) Part of the process of getting approval for a new wiki should be an explicit choice of which article counting method the wiki wants and, when appropriate, which namespaces are "content namespaces" — hopefully with a good understanding of the implications of these choices.
Suboptimal wikicoding
When the contents of new wikis get imported from the Incubator (or Wikiversity Beta, or Multilingual Wikisource), internal-style wikilinks are (mercifully) converted from forms that work at those multilingual wikis (say, [[Wp/din/Foo|foo]]) to forms that work on the new standalone wiki (in this case [[Foo|foo]]), but this conversion is essentially ad-hoc and not automatic — and, as I've discussed elsewhere, it doesn't always give the best results (in this case [[foo]] would be best, assuming initial-case-insensitivity). I don't know if any other conversions are attempted, but some other examples of widespread poor wikicoding practices I've seen in newly-imported wikis include:
  • external-style links that should be normal internal wikilinks or interlanguage/interwiki links;
  • level-one =Section headings= in article content;
  • other kinds of improper section nesting (e.g., using level-3 headings without level-2, etc.);
  • article text beginning with a section heading (or un-marked-up isolated line of text) that duplicates the article title (I can see why people might want to do that while the content is still in the Incubator, but it's not appropriate once it's at the standalone wiki);
  • extra whitespace that makes no difference when page is rendered (e.g., whitespace at the end of lines [except inside templates, of course!], multiple spaces or tabs between words or sentences [sometimes dozens of them!], etc.);
  • [[File:]] links that specify both "thumb" and "right" ("thumb" implies "right", so the latter parameter is redundant);
  • [[File:]] links that hardcode the sizes of thumbnails in pixels, sometimes at ridiculously large sizes (since hardcoding thumbnail sizes circumvents user preferences, it's usually better to use the default size [by not specifying one], or to use the "upright" parameter to rescale the thumbnail relative to the default size);
  • (Etc.)
My point is, it would be great if some basic wikicode cleanup (or at least the creation of some list[s] of detected problems) were incorporated into the importing process somehow.

I know these items are all over the map in terms of who could actually address them (in particular, the last point about wikicoding should probably [start to] be addressed at the Incubator itself, before the content gets imported), but I just wanted to lay this all out in one place. Perhaps some additional instructions are needed at pages like Language committee/Handbook (requesters) (and maybe Template:New wiki request) and/or incubator:Help:Manual (and equivalents at Wikiversity Beta and "Old Wikisource")?

Any thoughts from users who regularly are involved with new wiki requests and/or creation? - dcljr (talk) 09:30, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Notification about proposed approvals

Hello dear community!

Already some time ago, the Board decided that it does not need to be informed anymore by the language committee for a possible veto when a new language version should be approved. It was then decided that “the community“ will be informed before an approval and be given one week to raise objections, if there is something serious Langcom didn't see. So far, we always forgot to do this. However now we remembered and inform you that we want to approve

If you have objections, please use this page and base your argumentation on the language proposal policy. --MF-W 15:31, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

This is nice news for us. We have quite active users and we are ready to work as an independent project.--ZUFAr (talk) 17:46, 28 July 2017 (UTC)
The creation of these wikis will now be requested. --MF-W 16:01, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
Done. See phabricator tasks as above. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:02, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Notification about proposed approval of hif.wiktionary

Cf. #Notification about proposed approvals

Hello. The Langcom intends to approve Fiji Hindi Wiktionary. If you have objections to that based on the language proposal policy, please say so on this page. --MF-W 19:15, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Hindi Wikisource

Requests for new languages/Wikisource Hindi has been in limbo since 2008, while many other Indic languages now have their own Wikisource... we need a Hindi Wikisource for the hundreds of texts in s:mul:Category:Hindi and s:mul:Category:हिन्दी. Aryamanarora (talk) 15:56, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

@Aryamanarora: I'd urge you to combine those categories into s:mul:Category:Hindi so that LangCom members can get a better sense of the overall picture of this test.
Additionally, for projects to be exported from their incubators (whether from Incubator, or from Multilingual Wikisource or from Beta Wikiversity), there needs to be a regularly active community. That means that every month (for a minimum of three months) there are at least three editors who make at least ten edits each in the test project. Since Hindi Wikisource is divided into two categories, it's not clear to me whether you actually reach that level now, but it doesn't really look like it to me. So please try to pull together a community to contribute regularly, and then LangCom can look into approving the project. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:55, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: Let me say it again: since 2008. 9 years. Nevertheless, I'll see what I can do once I'm on my computer. Aryamanarora (talk) 16:00, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
@Aryamanarora: Sorry, but I'm afraid that mostly doesn't matter. The concern of WMF and LangCom is that when it approves a project, the project will continue to have active participation. And it judges that by whether the test project is currently active, not that it's been out there for 9 years. (Note, also, that WMF and LangCom do not want to approve a project which is primarily the work of a single individual. That, too, helps explain this "community" requirement.)
My guess is that because Hindi Wikisource test has been out there 9 years, LangCom will give you every benefit of the doubt. But there still needs to be an active community involved. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:05, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: Thanks for the help, I'm just a bit frustrated with how long it's been. It'll be easy to get 3 contributors I'm sure. Aryamanarora (talk) 16:17, 21 August 2017 (UTC)
@Aryamanarora: Thanks for your understanding.
To some extent, LangCom went quiet for a while. I (and some others) have started pushing them along, so I think things are getting better. (Counting the projects that are approved and awaiting creation, we have more approvals this year than in 2015 and 2016 combined.) I don't really work on Old Wikisource or Beta, though, so people like you have to bring them to my attention (or to LangCom's attention, really). So thanks for doing that. If you can work on 3 contributors, then when the time comes I will help you get out of Old Wikisource. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:25, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Board liaison

Hey All Have taken on the position of board liaison for the language committee. Just stopping by to let people know I am avaliable to discuss concerns. Do realize that your group functions well and fairly autonomously. No intention of changing that. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:56, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Good to know. Thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) (administrator at Incubator, and frequently clerking at LangCom pages) 18:46, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Consider merging Palembang request to Musi request?

As per SIL change request 2007-182, the code for Palembang (plm) was merged to Musi (mui) for 10 years, but idk why there's two requests that still make both as "different"? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:11, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Also, I'm confused because Palembang request is "verified as eligible"?! --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:13, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
I am confused as to why you are confused. But I merged both pages on the older one. --MF-W 14:20, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Future of Wiktionary

I understand that one problem for the Wiktionary future plans is the difficulty (some would say the impossibility) of converting from free-form (including templated) definitions into a proper database, while still respecting the attribution requirements of CC-BY-SA. With that in mind, perhaps the language committee should consider, as a temporary measure, not approving any additional languages for Wiktionaries, or only approving them under the same license as Wikidata (which is CC-0). I understand that this would greatly facilitate the conversion from the old free-form wikitext system into a structured database. (Please ping me if you need a reply; this page is not on my watchlist.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

  • Oppose Oppose placing arbitrary restrictions based on hypotheticals. Wiktionary is a successful projects which should be allowed to thrive. Nemo 17:48, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment Regarding licencing. I am not sure that the Language committee can change it. It is up to the board to decide. Ruslik (talk) 20:09, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment. I try to stay neutral on issues like this, though I'm inclined to agree with @Nemo. At the same time, I will mention that aside from Fiji Hindi Wiktionary, which was just approved and is awaiting creation of its wiki, there are not other Wiktionary test projects that are extremely close to approval. So if there is a reason that WMF needs to stop and take a look at the issue, we don't have to go out of our way to push along Wiktionary tests in the Incubator, either. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:02, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
  • My understanding is that there are no such plans. Structured data will supplement the existing Wiktionaries, not replace them. Much as Wikipedia is not having all of its content moved to Wikidata, Wiktionary will similarly only move structured data to a database. Definitions are unstructured free-form text, and would not be moved even if it were legally possible. There is no reason to refrain from approving Wiktionaries in new languages. --Yair rand (talk) 18:53, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Minor Support Support, I don't know why we can't change Wiktionary's license only because of "hypotheticals". --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 07:14, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

When we will have Wikipedia in Montenegro language. That differs from Serbian. 'Gorski Vijenac' is written by Njegos. Language has 2 more letters. Language is spoken by 232.000 people. For thr formation 3 people voted in favor, while 2 were against. I would ask some of Wikimedia team to create Montenegro Wikipedia. Sonioa (talk) 00:17, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

@Sonioa: If you really want to "ask" someone, ask langcom@lists.wikimedia.org, but you're unlikely to be able to complete your answer. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:20, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
Anyway @Amire80, GerardM, Jon Harald Søby, SPQRobin, and Satdeep Gill:@Millosh and MF-Warburg: I don't know how to judge if this user is asking the actual "Wikimedia team" or not, or just, is this request likely to be rejected or verified? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:05, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
I don't understand your question. --MF-W 17:19, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
@Sonioa: See Talk:Language proposal policy#Why ISO discrimination?
Let's be really clear. At the present time, Montenegrin does not have a language code; it's considered a variation or dialect of Serbian. Now, that may or may not be accurate, or what you want to hear. But for right now it's reality.
The first thing that the Montenegrin community needs to do if it really wants its own Wikipedia is to apply to SIL for an ISO 639–3 language code. So far I have not seen any evidence that there has ever been such an application—not by the community here, not by the Montenegrin government, not anyone. If you apply for such a code you might or might not get it. But if you don't apply for a code you'll never get it. So go apply for a code.
  • If you get a code, then you can start working on a Montenegrin Wikipedia test at Incubator.
  • If you apply for a code at SIL, you can temporarily start working on a Montenegrin Wikipedia test at Incubator; we'll give you a temporary code then. But we won't do so if there isn't even an application pending at SIL.
  • If you apply for a code and the application is denied, there may be a small possibility that LangCom will allow this anyway. But as I am not a member of LangCom, I can't guarantee they will do that. But I can pretty surely guarantee that if you don't even try to get a language code, there is no chance LangCom will allow a Montenegrin wiki. Is that clear enough? StevenJ81 (talk) 13:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
I see that SIL feels this would fall to an ISO 639–2 code. Not sure why that should be. You'll have to wait until there is a formal answer from the Library of Congress. StevenJ81 (talk) 03:31, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
Why wait? The last modification of 639-2 from LoC is adding Standard Morocco Tamazight (zgh) which is happened 5 years ago, and maybe somewhat dead. I don't think we really should open this request for more than a decade. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:47, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
I also suggest to decline this request as nothing happened in LoC, not surprise, the LoC is a lazybone of America. --111.30.229.38 02:22, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
Good point, ah I'm not possible to send email to langcom mailing list as my E-mail provider don't allow such sending. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:57, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
I still can't see any emails in langcom mailing list regarding this... --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:40, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

nl.wikinews.org

Rather recent is the project nl.wikinews.org re-approved. They claim to be a free news source where everybody can write. Unfortunately, one of the administrators has a strange view on this freedom. In a few solo-actions he made clear that that freedom is depending on his personal approval and grudges. To mention a few things procedureel: "Behandelde verzoeken worden standaard verwijderd van deze pagina." Verder wil ik niet langer tegen die ruziezoekende Banner aankijken die het project kapot wilde maken op Meta (English: procedural: "Processed requests will be removed by default on this page." Furthermore, I no longer want to look at that quarrelling Banner that wanted to break the project on Meta.). And another with as text (translated by Google): Own direction means playing in court and does not concern me. You have told Meta to know nothing about Wikinieuws. I therefore like to block and quickly. You have been warned, because this project is intended for people who want to build it. There is no doubt about that.

This type of behaviour flies in the face of everything Wikimedia is standing for.

I like advice what to do know! The Banner (talk) 19:31, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

It's starting to look like cross wiki vandalism today. He is blocked on Dutch Wikinieuws because of non-constructive behaviour, importing it to Dutch Wikipedia by attacking my talk page there and he is trying his luck here now. He is not a contributor to Dutch Wikinews by the way. Please neglect him or block him (and view his blocking list on several projects). Ymnes (talk) 19:42, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
You blocked me because I was critical about your behaviour. And you judged me on critical remarks outside Wikinieuws. An administrator blocking someone to solve a conflict in which he is involved, is a complete nono and behaviour not befitting an administrator. The Banner (talk) 19:53, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Wrong. You reverted my clean up of a page according to local regulation. After I undid that and gave you a warning with explanation on your talk page, you reverted me again. You were warned, now you are blocked, and now you are crying out loud overhere. In fact importing a wiki coflict to this project. Ymnes (talk) 20:00, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
And you are confirming taht you acted out of revenge: Ik weet niet wat je van hem houdt, maar hij heeft tig malen aangegeven dit project de nek om te willen draaien. Vandaag was hij hier, op Wikipedia en op Meta wederom niet constructief. Je mag in zijn vrijheid geloven. Maar de feiten liggen bij The Banner anders. Hij laat eerst maar eens een héle lange tijd zien dat hij constructief wil zijn. Anders blijven de deuren hier voor hem dicht. We weten inmiddels wat hij heeft gedaan. En niet gedaan, want hij heeft op geen enkele manier aangetoond dat dit in de toekomst anders zal zijn. Daarbij kreeg hij deze blokkade hier regulier. Maar niettemin mooi dat je denkt dat het ooit nog goed komt met hem. Zo niet, dan loert er een blokverdubbeling, en ik ben ook bereid die tot o.t. door te voeren. Het is zijn gedrag, het is zijn keuze. and as you stated when clearing the page Verder wil ik niet langer tegen die ruziezoekende Banner aankijken die het project kapot wilde maken op Meta. The Banner (talk) 20:14, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Enfin, back to the beginning: to my opinion this behaviour is a threat to the sheer existence of the Dutch Wikinews. And it makes a joke out of the concept "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" The Banner (talk) 20:23, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
The concept of Wikinews is not to be an encyclopedia. Stop this discussion, and let everybody work what he/she/x likes to do. If it's on Wikinews, Wikipedia or another project.Livenws (talk) 21:24, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
I tried to do something useful on Wikinews but some out of order administrator decided that he did not like me, imported a non-Wikinews problem, censored me because of that and now blocked me over that with a threat to block me permanently. An absolute abuse of admin-rights. The Banner (talk) 00:50, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Regardless of who has done what where, this is not the place to have this discussion. The Language Committee exists mainly to open and close projects (wikis), not weigh in on disputes between users. I suggest you try bringing this to Requests for comment. - dcljr (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Okay, by now you know my concerns. I was told to go elsewhere to relieve Ymnes of his duties and status, so I have taken that road. The Banner (talk) 07:28, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

nl.wikinews.org

Rather recent is the project nl.wikinews.org re-approved. They claim to be a free news source where everybody can write. Unfortunately, one of the administrators has a strange view on this freedom. In a few solo-actions he made clear that that freedom is depending on his personal approval and grudges. To mention a few things procedureel: "Behandelde verzoeken worden standaard verwijderd van deze pagina." Verder wil ik niet langer tegen die ruziezoekende Banner aankijken die het project kapot wilde maken op Meta (English: procedural: "Processed requests will be removed by default on this page." Furthermore, I no longer want to look at that quarrelling Banner that wanted to break the project on Meta.). And another with as text (translated by Google): Own direction means playing in court and does not concern me. You have told Meta to know nothing about Wikinieuws. I therefore like to block and quickly. You have been warned, because this project is intended for people who want to build it. There is no doubt about that.

This type of behaviour flies in the face of everything Wikimedia is standing for.

I like advice what to do know! The Banner (talk) 19:31, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

It's starting to look like cross wiki vandalism today. He is blocked on Dutch Wikinieuws because of non-constructive behaviour, importing it to Dutch Wikipedia by attacking my talk page there and he is trying his luck here now. He is not a contributor to Dutch Wikinews by the way. Please neglect him or block him (and view his blocking list on several projects). Ymnes (talk) 19:42, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
You blocked me because I was critical about your behaviour. And you judged me on critical remarks outside Wikinieuws. An administrator blocking someone to solve a conflict in which he is involved, is a complete nono and behaviour not befitting an administrator. The Banner (talk) 19:53, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Wrong. You reverted my clean up of a page according to local regulation. After I undid that and gave you a warning with explanation on your talk page, you reverted me again. You were warned, now you are blocked, and now you are crying out loud overhere. In fact importing a wiki coflict to this project. Ymnes (talk) 20:00, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
And you are confirming taht you acted out of revenge: Ik weet niet wat je van hem houdt, maar hij heeft tig malen aangegeven dit project de nek om te willen draaien. Vandaag was hij hier, op Wikipedia en op Meta wederom niet constructief. Je mag in zijn vrijheid geloven. Maar de feiten liggen bij The Banner anders. Hij laat eerst maar eens een héle lange tijd zien dat hij constructief wil zijn. Anders blijven de deuren hier voor hem dicht. We weten inmiddels wat hij heeft gedaan. En niet gedaan, want hij heeft op geen enkele manier aangetoond dat dit in de toekomst anders zal zijn. Daarbij kreeg hij deze blokkade hier regulier. Maar niettemin mooi dat je denkt dat het ooit nog goed komt met hem. Zo niet, dan loert er een blokverdubbeling, en ik ben ook bereid die tot o.t. door te voeren. Het is zijn gedrag, het is zijn keuze. and as you stated when clearing the page Verder wil ik niet langer tegen die ruziezoekende Banner aankijken die het project kapot wilde maken op Meta. The Banner (talk) 20:14, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Enfin, back to the beginning: to my opinion this behaviour is a threat to the sheer existence of the Dutch Wikinews. And it makes a joke out of the concept "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" The Banner (talk) 20:23, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
The concept of Wikinews is not to be an encyclopedia. Stop this discussion, and let everybody work what he/she/x likes to do. If it's on Wikinews, Wikipedia or another project.Livenws (talk) 21:24, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
I tried to do something useful on Wikinews but some out of order administrator decided that he did not like me, imported a non-Wikinews problem, censored me because of that and now blocked me over that with a threat to block me permanently. An absolute abuse of admin-rights. The Banner (talk) 00:50, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Regardless of who has done what where, this is not the place to have this discussion. The Language Committee exists mainly to open and close projects (wikis), not weigh in on disputes between users. I suggest you try bringing this to Requests for comment. - dcljr (talk) 04:15, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
Okay, by now you know my concerns. I was told to go elsewhere to relieve Ymnes of his duties and status, so I have taken that road. The Banner (talk) 07:28, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Wikinews Scots

This could be updated alongside Scots Wikipedia based on its news article, and expanded using Scots Wiktionary. BrendonTheWizard (talk) 17:47, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

First message was originally posted to the 2016 archive page. Moved here. StevenJ81 (talk)
I Support Support creation for the Seraiki language Wikipedia. Most work on localization has been done. so the Wikipedia be verified. Sraiki 12:05, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Your test project at incubator:Wp/skr is coming along nicely. Keep up the good work.
  • Aim for 500 article pages, at least half of which are not stubs (and preferably no more than 25% are stubs).
  • Try to find more contributors. We need to see evidence of community participation. Every month there should be at least three editors with at least ten edits each. And this has to be continuous. So far, your project has never had three active editors in the same month.
  • I could not find much evidence of localization at translatewiki.net. Please continue to translate this group of messages.

Good luck. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:03, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

  • Work on this wiki is done. This wiki be created so that many other people may get benefits of this wiki.Sraiki 12:55, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
    • You need one more month (November) with at least three editors before you will have reached the activity requirement.
    • I'm still wondering whether the content is substantial enough. You may need to defend this when Language Committee gets an expert in your language to review the wiki for approval. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:46, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Wiktionary Saraiki

Work on incubator:Wt/skr is in progress.

  • More than 500 pages are created.
  • Translations in Translate wiki are done in Saraiki language
  • Saraiki is an important language in respect of population and is Educational language. https://www.ethnologue.com/language/skr .This shows the need of Saraiki language work.
  • So Saraiki Wiktionary be approved--Sraiki 14:29, 8 September 2017 (UTC)
Clerking notes:
  • At minimum the project needs to stay active through October (meaning three editors, with at least ten edits each).
  • If someone who is more of a Wiktionary expert (or an expert in languages of that part of the world) than I am can weigh in: The 500 pages of content basically contain basic bullet point definitions. The mainspace pages are not as developed as one typically sees in more mature Wiktionaries. I can really use someone with more experience to weigh in on that question.
StevenJ81 (talk) 13:26, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Work on incubator:Wt/skr is in progress. Wiktionary be created so that many other people can get benefits of this Wiktionary.Sraiki 12:53, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to alter requisite for eligibility #4

(if this is not the proper place to post this, let me know)

The first 3 prerequisites for eligibility are reasonable, and I think the ISO rule in particular should stay. However, I take issue with #4. It states that a proposed language must have a pool of L1 speakers, with an exception for artificial languages, which are judged by the different standard of a "reasonable degree of recognition". This is problematic for a number of reasons. If artificial languages can have the L1 requirement waived, why not historical languages which have L2 speakers and an active community? The "reasonable degree of recognition" metric (or some variant thereof) should be applied to any language that does not fulfill the L1 requirement -- to not do so is inconsistent. Not only that, but we have approved Wikis in historical/classical languages such as Sanskrit, Classical Chinese, Old Church Slavonic, Old English Gothic, and notably Latin. My understanding is that these were 'grandfathered in' due to being approved before the eligibility requirements were changed. But this leads to the arbitrary situation in which a classical language is allowed depending on whether it was submitted before or after a certain date. What we need is a consistent rule that applies to all Wikis. I'm not saying we should delete active and successful projects, that would be a far worse alternative. I am advocating for a more consistent and sensible requirement that would support the existing classical language wikis, and allow for any new project that is viable.

Given that some languages can have the L1 requirement waived, but not others; and given that some historical languages are allowed, but not others; I think this proves that the current rule is arbitrary and inconsistent in nature. Therefore, I propose that the fourth requirement be replaced with an alternative, such as the one on the community draft:

The proposal has a sufficient worldwide number of people able to express themselves at a fluent level, in the written, spoken or signed form, to form a viable community and audience. If the proposal is for a language without native speakers, it will need to be demonstrated that it is well attested in written texts, and is in current use as a special, auxiliary, engineered, classical or learned language.

Note that I only advocate replacing the fourth requisite for eligibility, with either the alternative I quoted, or some other variant that accomplishes the same purpose: a consistent rule that judges Wikis based on overall viability, rather than an L1 requirement that is inconsistently applied.

I hope that the language committee will take my words into consideration. Xcalibur (talk) 09:17, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Clerk's note for Xcalibur: This is the right place to post. LangCom may (not will, but may) be amenable to this for the purpose of Wikipedias. It's unlikely they will be as amenable for other projects. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:30, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your response. To clarify, I do have Wikipedias in mind. Other projects (Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, et al) are built around different ideas, thus they must be governed by different standards, i.e. what is good for one project may not be right for another. I make no demands, this is meant as a reasoned suggestion. I'm willing to discuss this with anyone who is interested. Xcalibur (talk) 09:44, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
Xcalibur, let me add one other thing; consider how this might change your wording. Even if LangCom is otherwise amenable to this idea, I don't think LangCom or WMF has an interest in hosting projects in historical languages that don't have well-attested written forms. From their perspective, it's one thing to host projects in living (even near-extinct) languages that don't really have a written form, but where a project could help preserve a living language. It's another thing to host projects in long-extinct spoken languages without a written form. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:12, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
Of course, historical languages must have established written forms. There must be something to work with -- if not L1 speakers, then L2 speakers and an established literature/orthography/etc. This is reflected in the alternate requirement I quoted from the community draft. That draft was vetoed, probably because they tried to nix the ISO rule, which I think should remain as a bright line rule. My proposal is only to fix the fourth prerequisite, so that viable historical languages (with L2 speakers, literature, ISO code, and community support) are not rejected due to a technicality. Xcalibur (talk) 22:46, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Phabricator

Hi, can you respond on phabricator tickets: [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62].. I uploaded a patch on gerrit for this tasks: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/374052/ Zoranzoki21 (talk) 09:51, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not a LangCom member, but I wonder: what exactly do you need people to "respond" to? I don't see a request for outside opinions about anything on any of those tasks. (If it's a request to approve your patch, this is not the place to request that; Phabricator itself would be the place for that.) Perhaps it will be obvious to anyone who can "respond" in the way you need, but it's probably a good idea to be explicit here about what you are requesting. - dcljr (talk) 20:09, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
Any from LangCom need to respond, to patch be deployed. See comment in patch on gerrit. Zoranzoki21 (talk) 21:07, 25 September 2017 (UTC)
I see: "Because there's no langcom approval yet for thse codes". - dcljr (talk) 03:10, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
I have stopped approving because there was no response to the reason why language codes are added.. It gives the impression of a stamp collection and no longer a real use case. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 14:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia Sakizaya

I would like to point out that the recent activity of Wikipedia Sakizaya (incubator:Wp/ais) is really good, while it is still waiting to be verified as eligible. It's been active for a long time and there are at least 7 users for daily contributing. The quality and quantity of articles are also comming to a certain level. Furthermore, there are some contributors engaging in the interface translation. We would like to know how can we push it to the next step. :) Corainn (talk) 05:51, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Clerking notes:
  • Sakizaya is apparently considered a variety of Nataoran. The code technically belongs to Nataoran, but also incorporates Sakizaya. Questions about that:
  • For the project community: does the project incorporate Nataoran, or is it purely Sakizaya?
  • For LangCom: If purely Sakizaya, what are your thoughts on that?
@StevenJ81: It is purely Sakizaya. Thanks for your questions, we have found that the en-Wiki page of Sakizaya language is to some degree incorrect, while the zh-Wiki page is quite clear. We would like to clarify:
  • There are five dialects in Amis. One of them is Nataoran language(Nanshi Amis).
  • Sakizaya is a different ethnic group from Amis. During "Takobowan Incident 加禮宛事件" (also known as "Galeewan Incident" or "Kalyawan Battle") in 1876, there were many Sakizaya people be killed, the rest of them hided in Nataoran Amis and were ruled by Nataoran. For this reason, Sakizaya gruop and Sakizaya language were wrongly categorized as Amis and one of its dialects by Japanese scholars during Taiwan under Japanese rule.
  • In 2007, with some Sakizaya elders' efforts in Sakizaya Name Correction Movement, Taiwanese government officially identified Sakizaya as an independent ethnic group.
  • It could be said, Sakizaya uses "ais" as the code in Wikimedia Incubator, since now Sakizaya is classified as Nataoran language unter ISO 639 scale. In the project of Amis Wikipedia you can see the real Nataoran.
We're now trying to translate some reports as reference to correct the English Wiki. It's a good chance for us to tell the story and there could be more people knowing our history. Corainn (talk) 07:33, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
Wow, what awesome informations @Corainn: that you provided, wondering if there's plan to request SIL to change their ais name? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 05:13, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Please keep working on the interface translation. It is not yet complete enough to start considering approving the project. (In this I mean completely approving it, not marking it "eligible".
StevenJ81 (talk) 13:21, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: Thanks a lot! It's very good to know. Corainn (talk) 07:33, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
@Corainn: The ais interface support seems stalled, see phab:T174601. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:08, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
@Liuxinyu970226: Thanks for your Message! We'll also answer the question on that Website. For the localisation requirements of Sakizaya's project, there are over 4200 messages been done. In the group MediaWiki(most important messages), the translations are also 85% finished. We're keeping working and trying our best on interface translation. :) Corainn (talk) 07:57, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
@Corainn and others: I think the Language Committee is going to need to think about how exactly to handle this, and probably bring in some outside expertise—which is standard for the first approval of a project in a new language, anyway.
I follow your explanation of the differences between Central Amis, Nanshi Amis and Sakizaya. And I am not going to start arguing about who is the same ethnic group, who is a different ethnic group, and so on. All I can go on here is what SIL and its Ethnologue say, as they are the standards organization managing ISO 639–3. What they say is this:
  • Amis proper (langcode ami) includes within it Nataoran language. But it also includes other dialects (e.g., Fatang and Fata'an).
  • Nataoran language (langcode ais) includes within it Sukizaya.
  • At the moment, SIL characterizes Sukizaya as a highly divergent dialect of Nataoran. It does not have its own language code. On the other hand, SIL acknowledges that Sukizaya is divergent, too.
There's no doubt that Sukizaya can be an important piece of a project with language code ais. But as things stand now, the Language Committee might prefer that a project with that code be more inclusive.
You may consider asking SIL to create a language code for Sukizaya. (Or maybe the RoC government, or a regional group in Taiwan, would want to do that.) If you really want a Sukizaya-only project, having your own language code would be the best way to accomplish that. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:17, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81 Thanks. Now we're also discussing how to deal with this complex situation. But first of all we would like to know: Approximately it might be a long process trying to request SIL for a new code, so if we stay with "ais", what would you suggest possible solutions to make this project more inclusive with the same code? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Corainn (talk) 17:19, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
@Corainn: I have absolutely no idea how things work at SIL. I believe User:Baba Tabita, who is a LangCom member, is more familiar with how SIL works. I would contact him by e-mail to ask. (This is not strictly speaking wiki business, so better to discuss it off-wiki.) You'll want to ask him both about creating new codes outright and about the idea of reassigning ais to Sukizaya, especially if that approach actually has the support of the authorities in Taiwan.
  • If you seriously think you're going to try to get a new language code (or to get SIL to assign ais to Sukizaya), I'd probably hold off on trying to get a final approval from LangCom. Instead, just keep working on your project at Incubator. Getting wikis reassigned to a different code after they are already created is practically impossible, while moving pages to a different code within Incubator is easy. So you may as well let the process play out with SIL first. Once it does, if you end up with a unique code for Sukizaya—either a new code or ais—you'll be in great shape to apply for a project approval.
If SIL wants to keep things as they are, then you can consider creating a more inclusive project. An example of a successful wiki with this "problem" is the project "als" Wikipedia. Nominally, this is the Alemannic Wikipedia. But Alemannic German is really a dialect continuum, and as you can see from the front page of the project, they explicitly support at minimum four dialects within the continuum (Swiss German, Swabian German, Alsatian, and Badisch German, a Low Alemannic dialect). I know nothing of the history of the project, so I don't know how they got to this point. You'd have to inquire there about that. But the project seems to work well. The model I would consider is that at least the Nataoran community would be welcome to start a "section" of your project along those lines—and ideally you could find some people willing to contribute. (And, of course, it's always good to recruit new contributors!)
Good luck. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:48, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
Fascinating! At this stage, just two brief reactions:
  1. Without an ISO 639-3 code, a language does not have a good chance of being approved by LangCom. And if [ais] really is Nataoran, then Nataoran will have to be included in a wiki project registered under that code.
  2. It is possible to apply for a new ISO code here. Please get advice from someone who has successfully submitted change requests before.
Best wishes,--Baba Tabita (talk) 05:13, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: and @Baba Tabita: Thanks for your informations! After discussing with User:Lithoiyen(Tai-yuan Li, an expert in indigenous language in Taiwan who works in National Academy for Educational Research) and with some Amis friends this weekend, we have found that there seems to have some problems with the code ais and the code seems to be only for Sakizaya. I would like to write and discuss here as well:
  • There is no Nataoran language. Nataoran is only a name of an Amis community. According to the page of SIL/Ethnologue for Amis language, the five dialects of Amis are Haian Amis(Central Amis), Tavalong-Vataan, Southern Amis, Chengkung-Kwanschan and Northern Amis(Nanshi Amis). (I’m sorry for the confusing information in the beginning below, I’d like to say is actually ”Nanshi Amis”.)
  • And in the page of SIL/Ethnologue for Nataoran, its dialects include: Nataoran, Sakizaya, Kaliyawan, Natawran, Cikosowan, Pokpok, Ridaw. But except Sakizaya, the others are also only names of Amis communities: Nataoran(Natawran community: 那荳蘭部落), Kaliyawan(Kaliyawan community: 嘉里部落), Natawran(also Natawran Community: 那荳蘭部落), Cikosowan(Cikasuwan Community: 七腳川部落), Pokpok(Pukpuk Community: 簿簿部落), Ridaw(Lidaw Community: 里漏部落). Please see here in CIP for informations of Amis communities.
  • The Amis people in those communities, they speak all Northern Amis(Nanshi Amis). So now the code ais is only directed to Sakizaya.
In this situation, now we prefer not to apply for a new code. And I think ais could be only for Sakizaya in Wikipedia project. But we’re still not sure, we should request SIL for a change of that informations, or if LangCom could accept ais in this shape now, since it’s strange to cooperate with Nataoran community who speaks Nanshi Amis in the project. Corainn (talk) 17:36, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
I suppose you can ask SIL to change their definition regarding ais, if you don't want to ask for a new code. Again, Baba Tabira is the one to ask. If you come to LangCom now, they will want "Nataoran", whatever that might be (Nanshi Amis?) to be included in your project. StevenJ81 (talk) 12:39, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
If you want someone to talk to about how Alemannic Wikipedia works these things out, contact User:Holder. StevenJ81 (talk) 12:42, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: Thank you all for telling and helping. After discussing now we would like to submit a Change Request on SIL first. We'll also keep working on the project at Incubator. Furthermore, I think Atayal Wikipedia(incubator:Wp/tay) is noteworthy as well. Tayal language has been verified as eligible and they do quite well in the interface translation. :) Maybe @Yihsiangyang: would like to know about the progress. Corainn (talk) 06:12, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
@Liuxinyu970226: Sorry for the late reply. Yes, we'll try to request SIL for a change. :) Corainn (talk) 07:20, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
Hi all, I've just send a message to SIL. And I found a paper that discuss the question about Sakiraya and Amis in English. Maybe it's a helpful reference to let LangCom understand why we say "Sakizaya Language" instead of "Nataoran Language". Please read it. Thank you.--Reke (talk) 08:53, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
It's an interesting article, to be sure.
I think the proponents here need to understand that we're not really questioning "Sakizaya language" per se. The problem here is more the following:
  • Right now, SIL/Ethnologue assigns the code ais to "Nataoran". Right now, the government of Taiwan apparently uses the code ais for "Sakizaya". At Wikimedia, policy is to follow SIL/Ethnologue.
  • Under that policy, there is no reason a "Nataoran Wikipedia" couldn't include Sakizaya within it, as long as it also incorporates the rest of "Nataoran" (whatever that is, see below). This approach is used very effectively in the Alemannic Wikipedia (als:); see above.
  • There seems to be resistance to that approach for a couple of reasons, including:
(a) SIL is wrong, Taiwan government is right, ais is Sakizaya.
(b) A past history of discrimination and conflict
(c) A claim that there is no real "Nataoran" — that the Nataoran people (and perhaps others whose dialects are listed in Glottolong under "Nataoran") are really speaking "Northern Amis"
Do I have that right?
Point (a) doesn't matter. As long as SIL says that ais is Nataoran, then it's Nataoran. Understand, also, that language names are to a great extent managed by CLDR, a project of the Unicode Consortium. They are not managed by WMF at all. So, again, if the CLDR database says that ais is "Nataoran", then it's Nataoran, at least for now. We can't change that, and CLDR won't change it until SIL does.
It seems to me that if there is truth to point (c) here, then the government of Taiwan would support this approach to SIL, SIL would agree, and you'd have a language code. Once that happens (and a few other things move through the system of the NGOs involved—see below), then ais would be "Sakizaya language", and we'd be done.
It's outstanding that there are a lot of enthusiastic contributors supporting this community. It gives me confidence that when the project is eventually created, it will remain strong. That said, every possibility I can think of going forward is going to require either patience, or tolerance, or both, from this community:
  • Wait for a resolution from SIL (either that ais is really Sakizaya or that SIL will assign a different code to Sakizaya)
  • Be willing to create a "Nataoran Wikipedia" under ais that will welcome contributions from the rest of the dialect cluster within that language code
  • Ask the Language Committee for an exception to the policy requiring an ISO 639–3 code. Let me tell you that LangCom is considering allowing exceptions under extremely specific, narrow circumstances. They have not done it yet. They will almost certainly ask you to try to get a language code from SIL before they will even begin to entertain the idea. They will probably also ask you to create a broad "Nataoran" Wikipedia first. And you may not qualify for an exception.
I would request that we stop arguing here about (a) the nature of the Sakizaya language, (b) the nature of the Nataoran language and (c) the ownership of language code ais. Right now, the facts are what they are, and your choices are the ones I outlined above. The community should decide which way it wants to go. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:20, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
Hey, I understand that LangCom prefer to follow the data on SIL, which is the reason why I send a message to SIL before talk to you.
As a long time staff in our chapter and a community member of Wikimedia Movement, I am totally agree with the logic of yours. It makes total sense to me. However, I am worrying that if the cold hard response may also hurt their passion and trust to Wikipedia.
Wikimedia Taiwan has invested time and human resources into the Sakizaya project, and so as these Sakizaya Wikipedians. It is a new experiment for us as an affiliate because we were used to work on languages which is already with large native speakers and we do not want to hurry things. But Sakizaya people, as some other people with a few native speakers, they always need to get hurry up to find some ways that can keep their language alive.
Due to the above concerns, may I ask Wikimedians to be more empathetic towards the case, and explain to these lovely newbies in a gentler way? Maybe something like "We are sorry for that we can't give ais.wikipedia.org for Sakizaya people now, but we know it's a language different from Amis. Before SIL fix the problem, we can help you to do something else that helpful for incubating your own Wikipedia."
In my humble opinion, just change the tone of the response will help greatly in building the environment of more understanding (as the tea house project) and that may help a lot for a new and small community. Thank you for taking your volunteer time to help the open knowledge to grow in a more diverse and accessible for every single human being.--Reke (talk) 13:25, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
I hear you. I thought that I tried to do that. I'll try harder.
I can only speak for myself, but I'd be very happy to see a Sakizaya Wikipedia project get approved. The community is very welcome to continue working on the project at Incubator. And, frankly, while I'd want to see a few more of the existing pages fleshed out, the project is in pretty good shape toward a future approval. I'm always happy to help with projects in Incubator; people can contact me on my talk page there.
Let me add one more thing: In some ways it's better for the project to stay in Incubator as long as the language code issue is still not settled. If this became ais.wikipedia.org, and then SIL gave Sakizaya a different code in the future, it would be difficult to move the project from als.wikipedia.org to newcode.wikipedia.org. But if this happens while project is in Incubator, it's very easy to move the project from Wp/ais/ to Wp/newcode/, and then to export it one time to newcode.wikipedia.org. So I'm happy to encourage the community, but I must still urge patience. Fair enough? StevenJ81 (talk) 13:49, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for your explanation. That's another good reason. :)
Maybe the only thing we can do now is waititng how SIL reply. Waiting is a long process, and hope it is worth.--Reke (talk) 06:28, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
It seems to me that if Wikimedia in Taiwan, and even better the RoC government, would intervene with SIL, your chances for success with them will probably improve. StevenJ81 (talk) 12:44, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
Wondering if the request is really submitted or not, as of now I can't see anything about ais. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:55, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
@Liuxinyu970226: Hey, thanks for attentions. We're still gathering and preparing the materials at present, since the translation may cost some time. We plan to submit our change request in the 2018 series requests. Corainn (talk) 21:38, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Atayal Wikipedia

hello, I'd like to inform you that Atayal Wikipedia(incubator:Wp/tay) has already translated over 4000 articles, among them, MediaWiki(most important messages) is over 84% translated. Is there any possible that Atayal can be verified as approved?-- Yihsiangyang (talk) 08:42, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi. Your activity looks good. However it is first necessary to complete the translation of the most-used messages. --MF-W 23:41, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
@Yihsiangyang: I left a note at incubator:Talk:Wp/tay/Main page. On my review too many of the article pages are really stubs. I would encourage this community to stop focusing on creating new pages and start focusing on building out pages that are already there. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:08, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
Finish the most wanted messages.. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 11:10, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
@GerardM: Hello, the most wanted messages has already translated 100%, thanks. Yihsiangyang (talk) 03:00, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Hungarian and Japanese Wikivoyages

Having the Hungarian and Japanese Wikivoyages marked as "approved" in the table at Requests for new languages#Wikivoyage and yet having them just "sumbitted" (i.e., status = open) on the individual request subpages is a bit confusing. Should the table entries and subpages be changed to waiting, instead (with a comment= by a langcom member explaining the situation)? - dcljr (talk) 00:48, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

@Dcljr: Note: Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Innu-aimun, Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Khowar and Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Tabasaran are likely (marked as Verified as eligible on RFL list but still submitted on their subpages). --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:18, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
@Dcljr, Liuxinyu970226, and MF-Warburg: I can't speak to those Wikivoyages, which fall under a special transitional rule that I don't completely understand. As for the three that Liuxinyu970226 mentioned:
  • I boldly went ahead and edited Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Innu-aimun to read "eligible", based on the fact that MF-Warburg actually wrote a comment to that effect on the page.
  • With respect to Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Tabasaran: Liuxinyu, you added that entry yourself, with a status of "eligible", at this diff: Special:Diff/16256268. Unless you actually saw this discussed in the LangCom discussion group around that time, you should have inserted it with a status of "open". I'll let you decide what the right thing to do there is.
  • As far as Wikipedia Khowar goes, I'm not going to rehash the whole situation there. I suspect that MF-Warburg didn't really intend to change the status all the way back to "discussion". At the same time, the general frustration level at the time was such that when a different user edited that page to status "eligible", MF-W reverted him, because he didn't want to risk an edit war. So that's where it stands now. I suspect that the status should really be "eligible"—it's a real language, with a language code, and a reasonable population of speakers. But to avoid stirring up old problems, I'm going to let MF-W decide for himself how he wants to handle it. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:10, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
I've reset the Tabasaran one, no idea why I made such mistake when digging unlisted requests in that time. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:54, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
A user has just boldly tried to "rationalize" the Wikivoyage-requests table and was reverted. Presumably, explaining the situation in a comment= on the request subpages (as I suggested in the first post in this thread) would reduce the probability of this happening again. MF-Warburg, would you like to do that, since you seem to know what the situation is with these wikis? - dcljr (talk) 05:45, 2 October 2017 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and marked the Hungarian Wikivoyage and Japanese Wikivoyage request subpages "approved" (to match their status at Requests for new languages#Wikivoyage) and added a brief explanations that actual creation of the wikis is on hold, AFAIK because of some technical issue about importing the olf Wikitravel content. Someone who knows better can provide a better explanation. - dcljr (talk) 03:02, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
There have been problems getting the actual material to import in a form that can be imported. See incubator:Incubator:Wikivoyage import. --Rschen7754 04:59, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
That's fine. Do remember that there is material for both of these projects in their "normal" places on Incubator,incubator:Wy/hu and incubator:Wy/ja. Is the material in Incubator the same as what was in archive.org? Different? In any event, once those projects are created don't forget to incorporate whatever is in Incubator, too.
For the moment, I'm going to leave those projects marked as "open" rather than "approved, awaiting creation" in Incubator. Given that there isn't a time definite for project creation, I think that will be less confusing to potential contributors. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:33, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81, MF-Warburg, and GerardM: Given the explanations above, it looks like the most appropriate status would actually be "status = eligible". Once again, I am being bold and making the changes. A LangCom member should probably edit the subpages again, so the claim that "A committee member provided the following comment:" is actually somewhat true. [grin] Whatever other changes are made, please make sure that Requests for new languages#Wikivoyage and the two subpages are not left in contradictory states. - dcljr (talk) 19:36, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
Contradictory states don't bother me so much, but ok. The only potential "problem" here is that I don't think these two project formally need an "approval" from LangCom; it's more a matter of overcoming technical hurdles, right? StevenJ81 (talk) 17:09, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
@StevenJ81: I chose "eligible" because the message it gives (on each subpage) says, "the subdomain can be created once there is an active community and a localized interface", whereas "approved" says, "there is sufficient grounds and community to create the new language project", and "open" talks of users giving "arguments or reasons" for why the project should be created and claims that LangCom "needs to verify the language is eligible to be approved". The "eligible" message is the most accurate of the three, no? We don't need to argue over whether the projects are eligible for standalone wikis (so, not "open"), but since their creation has been put off for so long, neither test wiki has sufficient activity (if they ever did) to become a standalone wiki at this point (so, not "approved"). Any misgivings you have about the impression "eligible" gives users can be explained in the "comment = ". - dcljr (talk) 20:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
I don't know if these two projects formally require an activity check, because they may come under a grandfathered rule. On the other hand, I don't know that they don't require an activity check, either. Leave it the way you left it, and if a LangCom member has an issue then the LangCom member can change it. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:44, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
I think by now it is reasonable to say that neither of these two projects will be approved without meeting the usual criteria. The momentum after the Wikivoyage takeover is long gone and still no interested group has formed around these pages. --MF-W 00:39, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

OK, so LangCom member MF-W has now addressed the issue on both subpages, so I guess that's the end of the matter (for now). - dcljr (talk) 03:18, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. I am also going to edit the page at incubator:I:Wikivoyage import to reflect this. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:56, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikivoyage Arabic

I am convinced that the Arabic Wikivoyage project is ready now and should be released. [63] It has substantial article to most important places. --78.55.108.83 20:13, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

  • There has not been enough activity recently for approval. There must be ongoing editing by at least three active editors (meaning editors with at least ten edits during the month) for at least three months and ongoing until approval.
  • I just did a random check of ten pages in the test project and all ten were stubs (or blank outlines). Pages must be more developed than that for this project to be approved. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:54, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Requirement for localized interface in proposal for wikisource proposal on languages that are not really alive?

In the Wikisource Manchu proposal, I saw the description on top say "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.". Is the condition that require "localized interface" still needed if the language itself is not alive? C933103 (talk) 22:15, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

In theory, yes, as we can translate messages to that language. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:22, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
It's a good question. (Of course, technically, the language is not extinct, so that may play into this a bit.)
There are a few different issues in play here:
  • There are several Manchu project tests underway in Incubator. If Wikipedia or Wiktionary comes up for approval first, then per LPP the rules certainly say we would need the interface translated first.
  • Even though in principle Wikisource projects are allowed in extinct languages, no such independent project actually exists now. Right now, all such projects either (a) remain in Multilingual Wikisource (see s:mul:Category:Classical and historical languages), or (b) where appropriate, are part of a project in the modern version of the language. (At this point, for example, English Wikisource has a category for Old English works and a category for Middle English works.) If and when Wikisource Manchu comes up for approval, LangCom will probably want to know why it would be better served as an independent project than within Multilingual Wikisource. And maybe it would be, given some of the unique characteristics of the writing system used in Manchu. But you'll need to make that argument at that point.
  • Wikisource Manchu has not met the activity requirement described in LPP#Requisites for final approval. In particular, "an active community" means that for a minimum of three months, and then running until approval, the test project must have three named editors each month having at least ten edits in the month. They don't have to be the same three every month, but there must be ongoing contribution to the test. Wikisource Manchu has never had even one month with three such active editors.
  • Wikisource Manchu is a little on the small size (in content) for a project approval.
Taking all of the above together, your question becomes moot until and unless (a) Wikisource Manchu comes up for approval before any other Manchu test project, and (b) you have met all other approval requirements except for interface translation. I suspect if that all really happened, there might be a way to work this out. But we're not even close yet, so nobody has to decide about that at present. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:15, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Because the ISO 639-3 for Ahe, just "ahe", is retired, merged into Kendayan (knx) in 14 Aug 2008. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:10, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm focused on trying to wrap up requests that are much older than this one. I'll get to this eventually, but I'm just not worried about it for right now. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:06, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Basque Wikisource

Hello, Basque Wikisource is growing and we have some cool projects to add more texts in the next months. Having our own subdomain and exiting from Multilanguage Wikisource could be great to gain visibility, project access and Wikidata links. Would it be possible to review the proposal made some years ago? -Theklan (talk) 14:08, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

@Theklan: The project is already marked "eligible". For the project to be approved and moved into a subdomain, there needs to be a community regularly contributing to the project. In practice, this means that each calendar month, there must be at least three contributors (with user accounts) having at least ten edits during the month. The three contributors do not have to be the same each month, but there must be three each month. That level of contribution must continue for a minimum of three months, and from then until the project is approved.
  • For the time being, Basque Wikisource does not meet that level of activity. See data at Catanalysis. You may wish to involve some other contributors to your "cool projects to add more texts" in order to reach that level of activity.
Additionally, continued progress on translating the interface into Basque is necessary. For the most part, that's not a big issue with Basque, as only 28 messages within the All core MediaWiki messages group are not translated. (There is also one "outdated" translation in that group.)
Any other questions, just ask. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:52, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks StevenJ81! -Theklan (talk) 17:12, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Noongar Wikipedia

Kaya, as discussed with the committee in Berlin we have completed the 762 most important messages and continue to work on the other translations. Full details of the projects status is at Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Nyungar, after 2 years of work 492 articles we think we are ready to make the leap to nys.wikipedia.org Gnangarra (talk) 12:47, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

@Gnangarra: I think you're getting pretty close. Just a couple of other things you need to do:
  • You need one more month (December) where you have at least three named editors having at least ten edits each. You need this to establish firmly that there is a community (rather than one or two individuals) contributing to the project.
  • I did a random page search on the test project. I checked 20 pages, and 15 of them were essentially stubs (no more than two paragraphs of 2-3 sentences each). I would encourage you and your community to stop creating new pages right now and to try to fill out more of the pages you already have. You should have no more than half the pages as stubs, and better if even fewer. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:07, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Lingua Franca Nova (lfn)

My name is George Boeree. I am the original creator of Lingua Franca Nova (LFN), and wish to assure you that the articles in the Wikipedia Incubator is indeed in LFN. I will make efforts to correct any problems in the articles, but many of the articles have already gone through review in the Wikia website. Thank you for your attention and consideration. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 2601:980:c002:c680:bdb8:f4aa:92f9:21c4 (talk) 11:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, Prof. Boeree. Your comment, along with some others inside Language Committee, are sufficient. We're marking this as approved. SJ81 (talk) 01:12, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

When we will have Wikipedia in Montenegro language. That differs from Serbian. 'Gorski Vijenac' is written by Njegos. Language has 2 more letters. Language is spoken by 232.000 people. For thr formation 3 people voted in favor, while 2 were against. I would ask some of Wikimedia team to create Montenegro Wikipedia. Sonioa (talk) 00:17, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

@Sonioa: If you really want to "ask" someone, ask langcom@lists.wikimedia.org, but you're unlikely to be able to complete your answer. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:20, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
Anyway @Amire80, GerardM, Jon Harald Søby, SPQRobin, and Satdeep Gill:@Millosh and MF-Warburg: I don't know how to judge if this user is asking the actual "Wikimedia team" or not, or just, is this request likely to be rejected or verified? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:05, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
I don't understand your question. --MF-W 17:19, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
@Sonioa: See Talk:Language proposal policy#Why ISO discrimination?
Let's be really clear. At the present time, Montenegrin does not have a language code; it's considered a variation or dialect of Serbian. Now, that may or may not be accurate, or what you want to hear. But for right now it's reality.
The first thing that the Montenegrin community needs to do if it really wants its own Wikipedia is to apply to SIL for an ISO 639–3 language code. So far I have not seen any evidence that there has ever been such an application—not by the community here, not by the Montenegrin government, not anyone. If you apply for such a code you might or might not get it. But if you don't apply for a code you'll never get it. So go apply for a code.
  • If you get a code, then you can start working on a Montenegrin Wikipedia test at Incubator.
  • If you apply for a code at SIL, you can temporarily start working on a Montenegrin Wikipedia test at Incubator; we'll give you a temporary code then. But we won't do so if there isn't even an application pending at SIL.
  • If you apply for a code and the application is denied, there may be a small possibility that LangCom will allow this anyway. But as I am not a member of LangCom, I can't guarantee they will do that. But I can pretty surely guarantee that if you don't even try to get a language code, there is no chance LangCom will allow a Montenegrin wiki. Is that clear enough? StevenJ81 (talk) 13:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
I see that SIL feels this would fall to an ISO 639–2 code. Not sure why that should be. You'll have to wait until there is a formal answer from the Library of Congress. StevenJ81 (talk) 03:31, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
Why wait? The last modification of 639-2 from LoC is adding Standard Morocco Tamazight (zgh) which is happened 5 years ago, and maybe somewhat dead. I don't think we really should open this request for more than a decade. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:47, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
I also suggest to decline this request as nothing happened in LoC, not surprise, the LoC is a lazybone of America. --111.30.229.38 02:22, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
Good point, ah I'm not possible to send email to langcom mailing list as my E-mail provider don't allow such sending. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:57, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
I still can't see any emails in langcom mailing list regarding this... --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:40, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Update December 2017

There is some coverage in the Montenegrin press that some sort of approval is in the works for this, langcode cnr. Understand, please:

  • I haven't seen any coverage from outside Montenegro (and one article that might have been from the Republic of Macedonia, but a copy of a Montenegrin one, I think).
  • As far as I can tell, the most that happened was that an advisory committee recommended approval.
  • No official ISO 639 website lists this code as approved. And ISO 639–3, the real go-to list for most purposes, normally updates approvals in January. So right now, notwithstanding peoples' hopes, beliefs and dreams, this code does not officially exist.

Under the circumstances:

  • I'm changing the status of this from "open" to "on hold", pending a code approval.
  • I'm permitting the opening of a test wiki at incubator:Wp/cnr. It has a main page now, I think.

If this code is not approved in the January 2018 approval cycle, then unless someone can provide a reliable source from outside Montenegro supporting (a) this advisory committee approval, and/or (b) a formal submission to SIL for the 2018 cycle, I will probably close the test project at Incubator and mark this as "rejected". StevenJ81 (talk) 15:35, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

How do we think about it? That user is requesting to change or.wikipedia.org to od.wikipedia.org, which will probably break our rules that about valid ISO code or IETF language tag. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:03, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

It's not the right code. We can't do that. SJ81 (talk) 01:08, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
Hi! I am the user who posted that on phabricator and I really don't want to change anything. I just wanted some insights. Thanks. --Jnanaranjan sahu (talk) 18:57, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Monolingual language codes on Wikidata

A discussion on this subject is currently underway at :d:Wikidata:Project chat#Monolingual language code creation process. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:52, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

This was archived to d:Wikidata:Project chat/Archive/2017/12#Monolingual language code creation process without closure. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:48, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Notification about proposed approval of lfn.wikipedia

Cf. Notification about proposed approvals

Hello. The LangCom intends to approve Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia. If you have objections to that based on the language proposal policy, please say so on this page in the next seven days (ending 15:00, 22 December 2017 (UTC)).

For LangCom: StevenJ81 (talk) 14:56, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Notification about proposed approval of ps.wikivoyage

Cf. Notification about proposed approvals

Hello. The LangCom intends to approve Pashto Wikivoyage. If you have objections to that based on the language proposal policy, please say so on this page in the next seven days (ending 23:30, 26 December 2017 (UTC)).

For LangCom: StevenJ81 (talk) 23:22, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Should we drop "enable_upload=yes/no" field?

With my investigations in the past (a hole) year, enabling upload function on a new created wiki isn't likely to be handled soon, when they wanna that, their community members must discuss the benefits very carefully, and must formulate both Fair use and Image using criteria policies very earnestly, thus I'd love to say, that such field in our request template isn't useful anymore IMHO. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 11:02, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

No, I find it very useful. --MF-W 14:34, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
I agree with MF-W. But we might want to change the default to "no", and modify the notes there some to make it clear that it can't be "yes" (or "admin only") unless the test community establishes an EDP. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:00, 24 December 2017 (UTC)
I agree that this is useful information, and that "no" is a more sensible default. --Nemo 13:44, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
I made changes consistent with the above. You can all have a look. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:51, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
I guess it makes sense to not advertise the option too much. Unless the users involved really know what they are doing, it's probably better for most wikis to enable uploads only after the wiki has been created and established a somewhat stable community which adopts and cares for an EDP. --MF-W 23:17, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

According to description on the page, "The request is on hold until software starts to support it.", however, according to Requests for new languages/Wikipedia American Sign Language 2, "the reason it wasn’t were the technical issues with using SignWriting, but that doesn’t really affect the eligibility status", so it seems like "Mediawiki able to support the script" is not a requirement to make the request become eligible. Thus, can the request's status get updated accordingly? C933103 (talk) 09:58, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

@Millosh: ^^ --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 10:36, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
It's been on hold a long while; that's not new.
FWIW, I'm working my way through still-open requests from 2010. This one, and a couple of others, relate to the broader question of when it is appropriate to use script converters and when it is preferable to have parallel projects. There are a couple of other things I am working to clear up first, and then I will get to that one. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:08, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Good point. I've made the project eligible now. --Millosh (talk) 21:50, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

  • Now that the project is eligible, would it be possible to adopt wiki.uhaan.com as a Wikipedia project? Although it is not necessary to be desirable due to situation of wikipedia accessibility in china. C933103 (talk) 23:15, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
    @C933103: In principle, if that wiki was created under similar (or more lenient) access/licensing rules than we have here, then it could be imported to Incubator. That said, think long and hard about whether or not it wouldn't be better off staying in a domain that won't be blocked. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:16, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
    Additionally, @C933103: what's the copyright status of uhaan site that you pointed? If not under public domain/CC BY(-SA)/GFDL/GPL/MIT/BSD... then I don't think we have opinion to reuse them. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:12, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
    • Humm the site claims they're free and open but no particular license have been claimed. When user edit articles there are also no info on copyright status that I can see. Although it seems like many of the site's content were translated from Mongolian Wikipedia that the share alike clause might help? C933103 (talk) 02:44, 30 December 2017 (UTC)