Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Miscellaneous/Enable wiki URL changes
Enable wiki URL changes
- Problem: From no later than year 2006, a number of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects have been trying to change their language code. However, even after more than 1.5 decades, due to a number of technical roadblocks, this is not currently possible, and the only site that have gone through such process, from be-x-old to be-tarask, is under a perpetual state of technical failures, for example Content Translation tool still fail to function properly for the wiki due to the change in code from a decade ago.
In order to fix the editing environment of such the renamed wiki, and to correct the name and language codes of all the wikis that are currently having various problems with their current name/url/language code, it is necessary to clear those long-standing technical roadblocks, and also to prevent new ones from being created.
It might be a bit too large of a project for the Community Tech team to clear all of the blockers, but there should be a number of those blockers that the Community Tech team should be able to help clear, thus making the goal of changing the name, language code, and URL of different Wikipedia or other Wikimedia projects much easier.
Examples of affected site (While most of the following used Wikipedia URL as example, other non-Wikipedia sites for these languages are also being affected, and in some cases are also blocking the creation of new projects for these languages due to intention to avoid related technical troubles):
- be-x-old.wikipedia.org was renamed be-tarask.wikipedia.org
- There are petitions to rename no.wikipedia.org into nb.wikipedia.org, so as to reflect the site's language being Norway's Bokmål
- simple.wikipedia.org should be changed to en-simple.wikipedia.org, in order to reflect it is a Wikipedia for Simple English, and comply with the language tagging standard
- Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia sh.wikipedia.org currently use a language code sh. But the language code have been invalid since year 2000. The language code for the language is now hbs and proposal have been made to move the wiki to hbs.wikipedia.org accordingly.
- Classical Chinese Wikipedia, currently located at zh-classical.wikipedia.org, have its own language code lzh, so it have been suggested to move to lzh.wikipedia.org.
- Cantonese Wikipedia, zh-yue.wikipedia.org, being described as Wikipedia for a variant of Chinese speaking in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau, and in diaspora around the world, is usually considered a language, and have its ISO language code "yue". Thus proposals have been made to remove the "zh-" and just use the standard language code for the Wikipedia's URL, turning it into yue.wikipedia.org.
- Min Nan Wikipedia, aka the Wikipedia for Minnanese and Taiwanese, is now located at zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org, due to the way some classify the language. However, the language have an official language code "nan", and proposal have been made to move the site to nan.wikipedia.org, accordingly.
- Swiss German Wikipedia, which have been placed under als.wikipedia.org, have since year 2005 received official language code "gsw", and is thus desirable to change the wiki's link to gsw.wikipedia.org
- Syriac Wikipedia, is now currently working under another name of Aramaic Wikipedia, at arc.wikipedia.org, which is an historical language which have disappeared long ago, and is not the language of the project. It would be favorable to change its name to Syriac Wikipedia and change its link to syc.wikipedia.org, to properly reflect the language used in the Wikipedia.
- Norman language from Normandy is now having a Wikipedia at nrm.wikipedia.org. Yet "nrm" is actually a language code for Narom language from Malaysia. Hence it have been proposed to change the wiki's URL from nrm.wikipedia.org to nrf.wikipedia.org to reflect the correct language code for the Norman language.
- The Wikipedia for Emilian language from Italy, currently located at eml.wikipedia.org, is actually using the old language code for the combined "Emilian-Romagnol language". As the language code have been separated and Emilian language is encoded as "egl", it have been proposed to change the link to egl.wikipedia.org, although there are also opinion against such change
- Võro language from Estonia, as part of the Finno-Ugrian languages, now have their Wikipedia at fiu-vro.wikipedia.org. Since the language received its own language code in 2009 as "vro", it have been desired to move the site to vro.wikipedia.org
- Currently, bh.wikipedia.org is used by Wikipedia of Bhojpuri language in the Bihari languages group from India. Yet the language code "bh" have been deprecated, separating into individual language codes for each language, with Bhojpuri having the code "bho", and thus proposal have been made to move the wiki to bho.wikipedia.org, to avoid confusion with other Bihari languages.
- cbk-zam.wikipedia.org is the URL for Wikipedia in Zamboangueño dialect of Chavacano language. As the dialect have been said as the only living version of the language from the Philippines, proposal have been made to move it directly to cbk.wikipedia.org representing the language.
- The Wikipedia for the Eastern Baltic language of Samogitian, have received its own language code "sgs", and thus proposal have been made to move the wiki's location from the current location of bat-smg.wikipedia.org to sgs.wikipedia.org.
- Aromanian Wikipedia, is currently located at roa-rup.wikipedia.org, with rup representing Aromanian language roa supposedly mean "Other romance languages", which is meaningless, and thus should be moved to simply rup.wikipedia.org.
- Currently, there is an "Old Wikisource" located at www.wikisource.org. It have been proposed to rename it as Multilingual Wikisource and be moved to mul.wikisource.org, to better reflect its nature of collecting text in multiple languages that don't have their own Wikisource projects.
- Proposed solution: Resolve as much bugs in phab:T172035 as possible, in accordance with the Community Tech team's capability.
- Who would benefit: All readers and editors of affected wiki, all future developers of tools for the MediaWiki software, and all users of affected languages across the globe (Since Wikipedia language codes are sometimes being taken as de facto standard for languages by others far beyond just the Wikipedia itself, instead of the base BCP-47 standard, fixing these language codes will also promote fixing them everywhere else across the internet or even off the internet)
- More comments: This is a resubmission of wish from 2019 Community Wishlist and based on a proposal written in the sandbox.
- Phabricator tickets: phab:T172035
- Proposer: C933103 (talk) 12:10, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Discussion
- Have you ever read Limits_to_configuration_changes#Changes_that_are_likely_to_be_stalled,_though_not_declined? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 01:30, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
- Please be noted that I mentioned "It might be a bit too large of a project for the Community Tech team to clear all of the blockers, but there should be a number of those blockers that the Community Tech team should be able to help clear" so I do not expect the Community Tech Team to totally resolve the issue, but rather help resolve as much parts of it as possible, in accordance with their capability. C933103 (talk) 03:12, 17 January 2022 (UTC) Edit: highlight added: 04:30, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
- @C933103 If so then your proposal is OOS for CWS, move to Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Archive or not? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:20, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
- @MusikAnimal: In the current form, isn't this "On roadmap of another team"? This looks like something that server admins should focus on, instead of Community Wishlist team. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 05:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
- Is it on the roadmap of another team? If it is, then yes we can archive it as there's no reason to vote on this wish. Otherwise, as the proposer states, we might be able to help with some of the subtasks, but certainly not the whole wish. It is rather odd for our team, though, since we generally build new products or have some sort user-facing deliverable. Here we'd just be assisting with some busy work that may actually result in the wish being resolved at some later time in the future. Peculiar for us, but not necessarily out of scope in my opinion. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
- So far as I know, this one is not on anyone's roadmap to actually do anything about. Izno (talk) 22:27, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
- @Izno phab:T30443 told me that @Vladimir Alexiev: is probably handling this one subtask, as they re-triaged the priority of it from Lowest to High. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
- I don't think so, there has not been change on that task for some time. Izno (talk) 04:42, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
- @Izno phab:T30443 told me that @Vladimir Alexiev: is probably handling this one subtask, as they re-triaged the priority of it from Lowest to High. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 02:23, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
- So far as I know, this one is not on anyone's roadmap to actually do anything about. Izno (talk) 22:27, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
- Is it on the roadmap of another team? If it is, then yes we can archive it as there's no reason to vote on this wish. Otherwise, as the proposer states, we might be able to help with some of the subtasks, but certainly not the whole wish. It is rather odd for our team, though, since we generally build new products or have some sort user-facing deliverable. Here we'd just be assisting with some busy work that may actually result in the wish being resolved at some later time in the future. Peculiar for us, but not necessarily out of scope in my opinion. MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
- This is an unacceptable state of affairs that has gone on for far too long. In particular, the situation where a Wikipedia language edition (be-tarask) is experiencing ongoing technical failures, rendering parts of the software unusable, is entirely unacceptable. The Community Tech team could play a valuable role as "shepherds", taking ownership of the issue and making sure that the different WMF teams come together to get it resolved. IThis, that and the other (talk) 13:00, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
- @This, that and the other: Would you like to take over this wish? As I have exceeded the number of permittable proposal. You can take over the wish by changing the proposer name to your's. C933103 (talk) 13:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
- @C933103 It's alright, we up'd the limit to 10! That rule only ever existed to ensure proposers are responsive. You are being responsive, so there's no problem :) MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 20:20, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
- @This, that and the other: Would you like to take over this wish? As I have exceeded the number of permittable proposal. You can take over the wish by changing the proposer name to your's. C933103 (talk) 13:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Voting
- Support * Pppery * it has begun 18:43, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Majavah (talk!) 18:51, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support BrandonXLF (talk) 19:36, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
- Strong support --Kusurija (talk) 22:15, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Izno (talk) 23:27, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Lt2818 (talk) 06:44, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- since there are not only something need #operations' focus. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 08:06, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support I doubt this will be a popular wish - these wikis are are, after all, small communities that sometimes lack technical capital, and are thus unlikely to vote here in droves - but I do hope it gets some attention from Community Tech nonetheless. This, that and the other (talk) 08:29, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Jon Harald Søby (talk) 10:56, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Arado Ar 196 (talk) 11:09, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support — putnik 11:11, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support CptViraj (talk) 11:21, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Aca (talk) 13:30, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support BSMIsEditing (talk) 15:09, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support //Lollipoplollipoplollipop::talk 18:16, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Wostr (talk) 19:46, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support OwenBlacker (Talk) 22:59, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support → «« Man77 »» [de] 13:24, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support KevinL (aka L235 · t) 20:56, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support The right language code is important Thingofme (talk) 01:34, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Sannita - not just another it.wiki sysop 12:12, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Ruthven (msg) 12:18, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support the wub "?!" 14:24, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Novak Watchmen (talk) 17:52, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Xavier Dengra (MESSAGES) 19:00, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support JAn Dudík (talk) 20:48, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
- Support Trey314159 (talk) 00:05, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support Uanfala (talk) 21:52, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support WikiAviator (talk) 15:41, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support Pi.1415926535 (talk) 21:42, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support - Darwin Ahoy! 02:01, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support —— Eric Liu(Talk) 05:41, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support – KPFC 💬 11:30, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support —Thanks for the fish! talk•contrib (he/him) 21:42, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support Waldyrious (talk) 00:17, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support--Vulp❯❯❯here! 04:23, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support (I was alerted to this) Regardless of the merits of individual cases, this should in principle be technically possible. I'm actually surprised it apparently isn't. Seb az86556 (talk) 04:58, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support Ayumu Ozaki (talk) 06:31, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support — DaxServer (t · c) 21:15, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support Lectrician1 (talk) 05:26, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support paul2520 (talk) 15:36, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support lots of technical debt to cleanup —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:25, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support ~Cybularny Speak? 20:54, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 22:07, 8 February 2022 (UTC) - Support ✍️ Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support 4nn1l2 (talk) 01:25, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support Gaurav (talk) 06:36, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
- Support stjn[ru] 16:53, 11 February 2022 (UTC)