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Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Pitkern & Norfuk Wikipedia 3

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This is a proposal for closing and/or deleting a wiki hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is subject to the current closing projects policy.

The proposal for closing pih: is currently open for discussion by the community.

Proposal edit

The Norfuk / Norfolk / Pitkern Wikipedia has been proposed for closing twice before, at Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Pitkern & Norfuk Wikipedia and Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Pitkern & Norfuk Wikipedia 2. It survived each of those attempts, but it shouldn't have, nor should it have been approved originally in 2005. Let's correct that error in a third attempt.

As a summary: the Norfuk Wikipedia is not thriving. That itself is not a reason to close, as we have other low-activity Wikipedia editions. The problem is that it will never thrive; it is not a viable project. In 2008, there were only ~400 speakers of Norfuk in the world (see en:Pitkern language). That number is surely lower now. Additionally, there is (almost) no base of written literature in Norfuk to use; the vast majority of Norfuk speakers use more standardized English for the purpose of writing (Norfuk is an English Creole language). And to my knowledge there is no organization dedicated to preserving and standardizing the language to my knowledge, unlike for some of the other rarely-spoken languages and the like. The project has only ever attracted a single user who claimed to be fluent in Norfuk; he or she didn't add much content, and has not edited since 2012. As a result, with neither fluent speakers nor written literature to "sanity check" the project, we have no idea whether this project is even in Norfuk at all, or would be useful to the very rare Norfuk speaker who'd rather use a tiny Norfuk edition of Wikipedia rather than English Wikipedia. As it stands, this project is an active risk to the language: we may be unknowingly filling tagged examples of Norfuk to random machine learning bots with our own idiosyncratic idea of what the language should be, as the Pitkern / Norfuk Wikipedia is one of the major sources of text classified as being in that language on the Internet. It's like the Scots Wikipedia incident, except if there were no Scots speakers capable of even noticing or knowing there was a problem. We have a responsibility to make sure the encyclopedia is in correct Pitkern, not in some unknown guess by non-speakers.

Extended content:

  • In the event that a genuine Norfuk / Pitkern speaker wants to create some freely-licensed work in the Pitkern language, writing an encyclopedia is probably not the priority. Rather, a book on Wikibooks would be a far better use of time.
  • I don't want to sidetrack this as this is not the base of my argument (as it applies to many low-user count wikis), but as usual, an abandoned Wiki also tends to attract people looking for a free webhost. See pih:Zbigniew Symonowicz for an example - basically written in normal English, sourced to a user-created microblogging site. This is the kind of page that is getting created in 2024 on Norfuk Wikipedia in the absence of actual Norfuk content.
  • I posted on the main page talk (the closest to a community discussion hub the site has) an inquiry on this issue back in 2020 ( pih:Talk:Mien_Paij#Future_of_this_wiki ). There never was a response. None of the content on pih:Talk:Mien Paij appears to be in Pitkern aside from one comment in 2005. The sole semi-active administrator, User:Coconutic, agrees that the project is likely doing more harm than good, and also supports closing the project.

SnowFire (talk) 01:07, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion edit

Support edit

  1. Support - the wiki has been affected by AmaryllisGardener whose editing has already had incredibly destructive effects on the Scots Wikipedia and the Scots language. It also qualifies for closure in the same fashion as the Nauruan wiki - the articles are mostly short, single-sentence stubs, and the language is incredibly dubious due to the above-mentioned incident. --176.104.110.11 08:36, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Nobody has edited it for years. I don't know whether anybody that speaks the language will come and edit it and it could have the same abovementioned issue. --Jon Gua (talk) 07:09, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support per above --87.116.164.24 22:09, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support – Not a sustainable project. —ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ (talk) 11:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support I find the arguments brought forward for closure convincing, especially the lack of written Norfuk sources and "we have no idea whether this project is even in Norfuk at all". Gestumblindi (talk) 20:22, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support similar case to the Nauruan Wikipedia, just with even less speakers of the language. --Icodense (talk) 14:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose edit

Comment edit

Previous users who against: @JBW, Lutheraner, Xania, and Josep Maria Roca Peña: (only those who are having edits in this or last year are pinged) Do you still against the 3rd PCP? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:38, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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