User:Amire80/Wiki creation process

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THIS IS NOT A POLICY, AND THIS WILL NEVER BE A POLICY. THIS IS AN EARLY DRAFT OF A DESCRIPTION OF PRACTICES, NOT POLICIES.

The process of creating a new Wikimedia wiki is highly manual. It consists of many steps that must be done by multiple people. Some of them are very technical, and some are more social.

This document is based on several community-maintained wiki pages with guides and policies. Among them:

It is also based on the author’s personal experience with some less well-documented areas.

The extensive footnotes give some background information that may be useful for some people, but reading them is optional.

This document deals only with creation of wikis of an existing project family, for example, an edition of Wikipedia, Wikisource, or Wiktionary in a new language. Creation of a brand-new kind of project is more complicated and requires a Board decision. The only new kinds of projects that were created since 2010 are Wikivoyage,^[1] Wikidata, and Wikifunctions.

The sequence of the steps is only a recommendation, and is not strict. All the steps that require completion of other steps are explicitly marked as such. Many steps can be done in a different sequence, or in parallel, most notably the localization of the most important messages on translatewiki and the writing of the articles in the Incubator.

Mini-glossary for the table:

Language committee: A group of Wikimedia volunteers with a mandate from the WMF Board to approve the creation of a new wiki. See Language committee on Meta.
Language community: A group of people who know a language and want to write a wiki in it, as a whole or each of its members. It includes the Leader.
Leader: A member of a Language community, who is doing most of the work of communicating with the Language committee and the wider Wikimedia community, finding more community members, organizing events, creating first articles and policy pages, etc. This role is not defined formally or technically, but usually such a person emerges early in the process. Sometimes it’s more than one person, and the role may also move from one person to another over time. The distinction between the Leader and the Language community is not strict.
Importer: A Wikimedian who has the technical privileges and the tools to import numerous pages from one wiki to another.
Server maintainers: Wikimedia volunteers and WMF and WMDE staff people who have access to the shell and skills to perform technical actions to create and configure a domain and a MediaWiki instance.


Performer	Description
Leader	Begin the process only if you actually know the language in question. Stop here if you don’t. Starting a process of wiki creation is pointless unless people who know this language are directly involved from the start. People who don’t know the language can provide technical support, but the leadership should be in the hands of people who do know it.
Leader	Understand what the project is. This may sound too obvious or generic, but actually, it happens surprisingly often that people don’t completely understand what “a Wikipedia” or “a Wiktionary” is. For example, people sometimes think that “a Wikipedia” is one of the following things: a Wikipedia article a dictionary a website (that is something other than an encyclopedia or a wiki) It’s actually conceivable that Wikimedia will some day provide infrastructure for all kinds of other free knowledge websites that are not dictionaries and general encyclopedias, but this is not the situation now, so it is mentioned as an explicit step.
Leader	Check that such a wiki doesn’t already exist. Sometimes, a wiki already exists, but it’s hard to find.^[2] Whole lists of language editions can be found on the page Category:Lists of Wikimedia projects in Meta. If a wiki exists, skip most of this table, and actually write in the wiki! :)
Leader	Understand the central principles of Wikimedia and its wikis: Vision: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. What a wiki is: A website that anyone can edit. Read the article Wiki in the Wikipedia in English or in another language. Free licenses. Read the article Free-culture movement and the articles to which it links (free content, etc.) in Wikipedia in English or in another language. Read the Universal Code of Conduct.
Language community	Create a Meta account (if you don’t have one already).
Language community	Shouldn’t be necessary, but in practice, often is: Request Global IP block exemption for people who want to edit the Incubator.^[3]
Language community	Optional, but recommended: Gain some experience with editing a similar project in another language in which you can read and write. For example, if you want to start a new Wikipedia, try editing Wikipedia in English, Russian, French, Indonesian, or some other language: make a user page, create main namespaces pages, edit pages, use talk pages, upload photos, read policy pages, participate in community discussion about notability, deletion, policy, etc.^[4]
Language community	Optional, but recommended: Improve the Wikipedia article about the language in English and in other languages. As it usually is in Wikipedia, base all your edits on reliable sources: dictionary books, grammar books, history books, articles in sociolinguistics journals, etc.^[5]
Leader	Read the Language proposal policy and make sure that the language is eligible. Very briefly, the language must be living^[6] and unique,^[7] and it must have an ISO 639 code.
Leader	Find the language’s ISO 639 code.^[8] It is usually easy to find on the English Wikipedia, the ISO 639 website, or Ethnologue.^[9]
Leader	Collect more information about the language: The title of the English Wikipedia article about the language. The native name (“autonym”) of the language. (Preferably with a reliable source, such as a dictionary or a grammar book.) The language’s Wikidata item number (it’s supposed to be linked from the English Wikipedia article).
Leader	Decide in which writing system and orthographic standard the project will be written. For some languages it’s obvious, but some languages have multiple writing systems and orthographies.
Leader	Decide how to write the name of the project (“Wikipedia”, “Wiktionary”, “Wikisource”, etc.) in the language.
Language community	Decide how to write the tagline in the logo: “The Free Encyclopedia”, “The Free Dictionary”, “The Free Library”, etc. Note: The word “free” must refer to the freedom to share information and not to price (“zero dollars”). In English, it’s the same word, but in many other languages, the two words are different. This is supposed to be compatible with the ideas of the Free-culture movement (see above).
Leader	Decide what should be the default time zone for the project. If it’s spoken in many time zones, consider using the default (UTC). If it’s mostly spoken in one time zone, use that one.
Leader	Create a request for a new language according to the instructions at Language committee/Handbook (requesters). It must be on a separate wiki page in Meta, which has the title “Requests for new languages/Project Language”, e.g. “Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Tigre”.^[10] Use the information collected above to write this page.
Leader	Add an entry for the language to the table on the page Requests for new languages.
Language committee	Discuss whether the language is eligible. This is often obvious according to policy, but some cases require special consultation.
Language committee	If the language is eligible, mark the request page as such. If not, mark it as such, and notify the Leader.
Leader	At this point, the process splits into two main tracks: Work in the Incubator and work in translatewiki.net. They can and should be done in parallel and inform each other. Continue with the next steps in the Incubator, and while working in the Incubator, work also on localizing the software in translatewiki. Coördinate the language community members’ efforts accordingly.
Leader	On the Incubator, create the technical main page for the new wiki using the {{Test wiki}} template. Its title must have two parts separated by a slash: project code (wp, wt, wq, wb, wn, wy) and language code. For example, the Dagbani Wikipedia is “Wp/dag”. All the necessary information for filling the template parameters is supposed to be available from previous steps.
Language community	In the technical main page in the Incubator, the link to the main page will initially be red. Click it and create the actual main page for the project. The initial version can be a simple “Welcome” note and a description of the project. Main pages tend to be very complex; designing a complex main page is not a requirement for creating the wiki, so it’s OK to focus on function and content rather than advanced design.
Leader	Create a logo image for the project. The logo must be based on the common logo for the project, and it must include the name and the tagline (these were supposed to be decided earlier). The logo must be created in a way that it will be supported on various screens and resolutions.^[11] After creation, it must be uploaded to Commons, with a standardized filename, which includes the project name and the language code, and added to the appropriate category.
Language community	In the Incubator preferences, each participant must select Test wiki and Test wiki language.
Leader	Optional, but recommended: Make a list of suggested articles. If you are not sure what to write about, you can get ideas in various places: Consult with experienced Wikimedians who write in other languages. Read lists of suggested articles, such as List of articles every Wikipedia should have. Participate in an edit-a-thon (Program guides/Edit-a-thons) or organize one! Write about topics that are important to school students who speak that language (even if schools function in another language). Check which Wikipedia articles in other languages are popular in your country (this is not immediately available publicly, but you can request it from the Wikimedia Foundation). Consult with trusted people who know about your culture: teachers, academics, writers, linguists, historians, etc. All of the above are only suggestions, and the choice is yours.^[12]
Language community	Write pages in the Incubator. This is the biggest and most important step in the process. The style of pages is supposed to match the nature of the project; see the step “Understand what the project is” above. If you are creating a Wikipedia, write encyclopedic articles; if you are creating a Wiktionary, write pages with word definitions and translations; if you are creating a Wikivoyage, write travel guides about places; etc. While the style and structure are expected to conform to the project’s nature, the topics and words are up to you.For example, in Wikipedia, you can write about other countries and cultures, about your own country and culture, about important historical events or people, about music, about sports, and so on.

Leader	Create a translatewiki.net account and notify a translatewiki.net administrator directly to get an account approved.^[13]
Leader	Ask to add the language to translatewiki.net: Go to the translatewiki.net Support page, click “Start a new discussion”, and write a request. It must include the ISO 639 code.
translatewiki.net administrator	Check whether the language is eligible according to the translatewiki.net languages policy.^[14] If it’s eligible, add it to the translatewiki.net configuration, according to the instructions on the page Manual:Adding and removing languages.
Language community	Optional at the moment, but recommended: Translate the Basic MediaWiki Glossary.^[15] If the terminology is known, it takes about two days.
Language community	Translate the Most important MediaWiki messages on translatewiki.net. There are about 500 of them. If the terminology is known, and the volunteers work efficiently, it can be done in just a few days, but sometimes it takes several months. This can be done in parallel to the next steps (Incubator, etc.), but must be completed before moving out of the Incubator. Some useful links with guides: https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Localisation_guidelines https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:MediaWiki https://aharoni.wordpress.com/2020/10/23/amir-aharonis-quasi-pro-tips-for-translating-the-software-that-powers-wikipedia-2020-edition/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Translatewiki_for_beginners_-_Make_Wikipedia_fully_usable_in_your_language!.webm https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joy_and_Amir_discuss_translating_the_software_that_powers_Wikipedia.webm
Language community	Optional, but recommended: Translate the Wikimedia Incubator extension on translatewiki.
translatewiki.net administrator	When enough messages are translated, and the translatewiki scripts start importing the language to Gerrit, add it to Core MediaWiki (Names.php) according to the instructions on the page Manual:Adding and removing languages. The language will become available as an interface language on the next deployment after the patches are merged. Actual deployment time may vary, but as of September 2022, the deployment schedule for relevant websites is: translatewiki.net itself: Wednesday afternoon European time. Incubator, Meta, Wikidata, Commons: Wednesday late evening European time.
Language community	Optional, but recommended: Once the language is available for selection as an interface language, select it as the language on translatewiki, Incubator, Meta, Wikidata, Commons. To select, go to Special:Preferences, to the “Internationalisation” section, select your language, and click the Save button at the bottom. Use these sites in your language, notice whether it makes sense, and make corrections on translatewiki as needed.

Footnotes

↑ Partly adapted from the external Wikitravel website.
↑ Product improvement opportunity: Make projects in other languages more discoverable. Several things could be done for that, but they are beyond the scope of this document.
↑ Many of the new languages are spoken in African countries and in India. Many ISPs in these countries use IP addresses that Wikimedia stewards identify as open proxies, and block them, even though the people who connect from them are not necessarily vandals. See Talk:No open proxies/Unfair blocking for details.
↑ While this step is optional, it is, in fact, one of the most useful and important ones in practice. In the 2000s, people who were starting a Wikipedia in a new language often had editing experience from another major language, as well as understanding of content policies, free licenses, “What Wikipedia is Not”, etc. This is no longer true in the 2020s—most people are familiar with Wikipedia as readers, but not necessarily as editors.
↑ This helps Language committee members and translatewiki.net administrators make informed decisions. Particularly helpful sections to improve: Orthography; History; Usage (Literature, Education, Media, etc.); Bibliography.
↑ This means “not extinct”. Wikis in some ancient languages, like Latin and Ancient English, were created in the past, and they still exist, but creating new ones is no longer allowed.
↑ This means “not a variety of another language”. Examples of languages that were rejected because they are essentially identical to another language are Dari (a variant of Persian) and Montenegrin (a variant of Serbo-Croatian). Serbo-Croatian and Bosnian wikis are essentially identical to Croatian, but they were created before the policy was enacted, and they still exist.
↑ If the language doesn’t have a code, it is not eligible for a wiki and the Language committee will reject it. It’s a strict rule to prevent hoaxes and political controversies, and these actually happened. Several people who wanted to create a Wikipedia in their language succesfully convinced ISO to assign a code for their language, for example Western Armenian, Latgalian, and Pannonian Rusyn. The process may take several months or several years.
↑ Much of Ethnologue is paywalled, but the codes are visible to all.
↑ Product improvement opportunity: This page is created by filling a wikitext template with many parameters. This could be converted into a form.
↑ There are no complete and clear instructions for doing this, and this requires the use of graphics software and skills that not everyone has. There are volunteers who are good at this, but this should be documented better so that it won’t depend on particular people. Product improvement opportunity: Perhaps it can even be automated by making a web-based tool that creates a logo based on entering the name and the tagline.
↑ Product improvement opportunity: While it is good to let people be flexible, a smarter suggestion system could be developed. See https://aharoni.wordpress.com/2022/06/01/what-is-wikipedia-and-in-which-way-should-it-be-less-free/ for some ideas about it.
↑ This is an anti-spam measure. For languages that are already supported on translatewiki.net, the approval can be obtained by submitting several test translations, but for brand new languages, a direct notification is usually necessary.
↑ It’s distinct, but similar in spirit to the Language committee’s policy for new wikis.
↑ This is especially useful for languages that aren’t used much in software and don’t have stable terminology. It may become a requirement in the future, pending a Language committee decision.

[1] Partly adapted from the external Wikitravel website.

[2] Product improvement opportunity: Make projects in other languages more discoverable. Several things could be done for that, but they are beyond the scope of this document.

[3] Many of the new languages are spoken in African countries and in India. Many ISPs in these countries use IP addresses that Wikimedia stewards identify as open proxies, and block them, even though the people who connect from them are not necessarily vandals. See Talk:No open proxies/Unfair blocking for details.

[4] While this step is optional, it is, in fact, one of the most useful and important ones in practice. In the 2000s, people who were starting a Wikipedia in a new language often had editing experience from another major language, as well as understanding of content policies, free licenses, “What Wikipedia is Not”, etc. This is no longer true in the 2020s—most people are familiar with Wikipedia as readers, but not necessarily as editors.

[5] This helps Language committee members and translatewiki.net administrators make informed decisions. Particularly helpful sections to improve: Orthography; History; Usage (Literature, Education, Media, etc.); Bibliography.

[6] This means “not extinct”. Wikis in some ancient languages, like Latin and Ancient English, were created in the past, and they still exist, but creating new ones is no longer allowed.

[7] This means “not a variety of another language”. Examples of languages that were rejected because they are essentially identical to another language are Dari (a variant of Persian) and Montenegrin (a variant of Serbo-Croatian). Serbo-Croatian and Bosnian wikis are essentially identical to Croatian, but they were created before the policy was enacted, and they still exist.

[8] If the language doesn’t have a code, it is not eligible for a wiki and the Language committee will reject it. It’s a strict rule to prevent hoaxes and political controversies, and these actually happened. Several people who wanted to create a Wikipedia in their language succesfully convinced ISO to assign a code for their language, for example Western Armenian, Latgalian, and Pannonian Rusyn. The process may take several months or several years.

[9] Much of Ethnologue is paywalled, but the codes are visible to all.

[10] Product improvement opportunity: This page is created by filling a wikitext template with many parameters. This could be converted into a form.

[11] There are no complete and clear instructions for doing this, and this requires the use of graphics software and skills that not everyone has. There are volunteers who are good at this, but this should be documented better so that it won’t depend on particular people. Product improvement opportunity: Perhaps it can even be automated by making a web-based tool that creates a logo based on entering the name and the tagline.

[12] Product improvement opportunity: While it is good to let people be flexible, a smarter suggestion system could be developed. See https://aharoni.wordpress.com/2022/06/01/what-is-wikipedia-and-in-which-way-should-it-be-less-free/ for some ideas about it.

[13] This is an anti-spam measure. For languages that are already supported on translatewiki.net, the approval can be obtained by submitting several test translations, but for brand new languages, a direct notification is usually necessary.

[14] It’s distinct, but similar in spirit to the Language committee’s policy for new wikis.

[15] This is especially useful for languages that aren’t used much in software and don’t have stable terminology. It may become a requirement in the future, pending a Language committee decision.

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