Meta talk:Language proposal policy/Archives/2006

Implementation

• When and how did this become an official policy?--Hillgentleman 13:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

  It was announced on Talk:Requests for new languages for somewhat over a week, which should have notified most editors currently participating in a proposal. It was further discussed in #wikimedia (Wikimedia Foundation main IRC channel), where a member of the Special projects language subcommittee generally supported the policy. The circumstances that urged the implementation were grave; there was serious consideration of abolishing the process entirely because it was not working. The former unregulated system stretched proposals over several months and rarely lead to new language creation even in the cases of approved proposals.

  In contrast, the policy provides a streamlined, efficient process which minimizes time and effort for all users, and ensure that the proposals are rapidly processed and (if feasible) created. —{admin} Pathoschild 04:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

• I understand. Are there records of the discussions?- I can only find Special projects subcommittees/Languages/Proposal to spc. Where is the record of the decision? ---Hillgentleman 05:26, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

  Unfortunately, the most meaningful discussion took place on IRC where it is not viewable for users who were not present. There is no problem tweaking the policy as new ideas arise; do you have any particular concerns with it? —{admin} Pathoschild 05:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

  About the change: For the record, Pathoschild, would you, or anybody, write a summary of the discussions? --Hillgentleman 08:04, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

  The policy is essentially the summary of the discussion, since it is the result of the consensus achieved. Several possible objections were raised and addressed, and some points tweaked. The main such points raised are listed below, with the counterpoints in parentheses.

  • Some users will be frustrated that requests predating the policy are closed. (However, they will be pleased that all new requests, including re-opened requests, will be processed much more quickly.)
  • The Special projects language subcommittee is considering closing the process. (However, they may change their mind if it starts working.)
  • The Special projects language subcommittee may be more efficient and impartial at judging requests than Meta administrators. (This can be integrated into the policy if the Subcommittee chooses to take up the burden.)

  —{admin} Pathoschild 19:40, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

• About the policy itself: I think it is reasonable. I can see how it would work, but Discussion and Conditional approval are black boxes. Does the administrator-moderator need to know (or at least know about) the language? ---Hillgentleman 06:19, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

  The administrators will mostly judge from discussion among users that (presumably) know about the language, and will probably read the relevant Wikipedia article, but I don't think they'll need any particular awareness of the language. —{admin} Pathoschild 06:30, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

  A lot of users like to discuss in their own languages. Does this policy imply that the discussion must take place in a language that the administrator can understand?--Hillgentleman 07:03, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

  This could limit many users to participate in discussion if it is limited to English language --Ego and his own 07:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

  Meta is multilingual. Translations of non-English comments would help greatly, but there's no need for discussions to be English only. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:40, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

• It sounds quite good to me. —Nightstallion (?) 14:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

If the only significant use of a language in a standradized written form is going to be on Wikimedia (i.e. if there is no significant corpus in that dialect or language), then it is probably too early for that language to have an encyclopedia here, in my opinion. This shouldn't be the place to experiment with standardizing a language or a method of writing in that language, or a place to promote a language's use in any way. -- ar::user:Slacker

Question

What's about approved requests, firstly i'm interested in belarusian one. Will results of it get annuled, even when it had got enough voices more than 20 days before you started this new policy? Should our team start a new request? Thank you -- 82.209.236.238 20:53, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Requests that were approved by the board are still approved. However, most requests will need to be re-opened. We can judge the Wikipedia current Belarusian proposal under the new policy (as we did with Wikipedia Montenegrin), or you can open a new request (for example, see the re-opened requests Wikiquote French 2, Wikisource Min Dong 2, and Wikiversity Turkish 2). —{admin} Pathoschild 21:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

First, i speak about proposal called "Belarusian (Orth. Revision of 1959)" (August-November`2006), which can be found here. Second thing, i need clear answer on the subject: will we get wikipedia with only that approved proposal, without starting new one? Thank you one more time. -- 82.209.236.238 22:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll discuss it with the language subcommittee; old requests were submitted by the users who proposed them, and it's possible some were never submitted to developers, or were submitted but got ignored. Each request approved before the policy may need to be carefully investigated to find out what happened after approval. The process was a mess before the policy, unfortunately. —{admin} Pathoschild 05:23, 1 December 2006 (UTC)