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Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Cree Wikipedia

< Proposals for closing projects

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 cr: is currently open for discussion by the community.

Proposal to close Wikipedia in Cree language

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In my opinion, the Cree Wikipedia should be closed.

This project was created back in 2004 along with many other projects with the ISO 639-1 code. Despite this fact, the project has never had proper popularity. In the entire history of the project, there was only one administrator present - https://cr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Amqui who has been completely inactive for 10 years, besides, he does not speak the Cree language.

For almost 20 years of existence, only about 10 real articles have appeared in the project, and then only a small size. Most of the content of the Cree Wikipedia was made up of one-line dictionary stubs or lists created by non-native speakers (example: https://cr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archives/ᒥᐦᑕᐊᐧᑲᕀ ).

The project is often attacked by vandals, whose edits often do not roll back for months: administrators are not active, there are almost no participants: the obscurity of Cree language and writing system gives scope for the imagination of vandals.

All the articles of the project are written in different dialects and writing systems, which, together with a tiny number of articles, turns the encyclopedia into a set of mismatched pages.

The project interface has not been translated, there are almost no pages with rules, manuals: and those that are are written in English. The templates are also not translated, and many articles have English text.

The project itself, in fact, does not exist - there is only a set of few pages written in several writing variants, dialects, languages at the same time without a clear structure, rules, templates, in the creation of which native speakers almost did not participate. It would be much better if the few useful contents were moved to an Incubator where they could at least be looked after. Таёжный лес (talk) 19:46, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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  • Comment. Since I have been named and pinged. The problem with the Cree Wikipedia (cr) is that it corresponds to a "macrolanguage" according to ISO 639 and it includes different languages (on top of dialects). Sometimes the lines between what constitutes a language and a dialect is very blurred, especially in the case of Cree where we can see it more like a language continuum. For what I understand from my discussions with some speakers, is that a given community will understand the communities closest to them even though they speak a different dialect, but the farther you go, they will not understand at all (i.e. with 1 - 2 - 3 - 5 - 6 communities, to make it simple, 1 may understand up to 3, but not 6 at all, but 6 will also understand 3). Some communities of the Cree family uses the Cree syllabics while others use the latin alphabet. When we started the project to create a Wikipedia in Atikamekw language (atj) which exists and is active now, we actually started it on the Cree Wikipedia (cr) instead of the Incubator because the Atikamekw language is technically part of the Cree macrolanguage according to ISO 639, but it was evident that the Atikamekw was different enough from Cree to justify having their own Wikipedia (which is now the case). Since I don't speak Cree, and Cree isn't a unique language, it will be difficult to identify which articles are part of which language of the Cree macrolanguage. Personally, I don't think there are enough justifications to close the project. When a project is developed with actual Cree speakers to create and develop a Wikipedia in their language(s), I think it should be up to them to make the decision to keep cr.wp or to divide it into specific Wikipedias (Plains Cree, Woods Cree, Swampy Cree, etc.) It should be up to them to decide if it makes more sense to have a unique Cree Wikipedia (cr.wp) or to have specific Wikipedias. It should be up to them to decide the fate of the existing Cree Wikipedia (cr.wp) since I don't see any real justifications for its closure at this point. Please don't hesitate if I can provide more details. Amqui (talk) 19:17, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • And about the creation of one-or-two words articles with a picture, I think, back in the days, the idea was to create pages to make it easier for speakers to augment them afterwards, instead of them arriving to a completely empty Wikipedia. With the recul (like we say in French), or in hindsight, I think it was a false good-idea (myself included). That's why many pages were archived (including some created by me). Amqui (talk) 19:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • INFO: I habe now protected all Articles in the crWiki --𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 👤💬 08:31, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • @WikiBayer: What for? What do we gain by that? What if this affair draws speakers to the Cree Wikipedia, who want to start editing in order to save it? They'll be baffled by the impossibility of doing that. In fact, you have already closed down the Cree Wikipedia, since nobody can edit it now. You made its closure a fait accompli while we are discussing it. Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 23:40, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have to agree with Steinbach: that action seems uncalled for and inappropriate. Even though it only affects a handful of pages, it seems like a decision that should have been made by an "uninvolved party", not someone who is deeply involved in this discussion. - dcljr (talk) 04:49, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      @Dcljr@Steinbach The protection is only for one month and has (nothing) to do with the discussion about closing. It is about preventing LTAs from destroying the pages, because since the beginning of this discussion the articles have been destroyed by goofballs. See for Example cr:Special:Diff/39414 𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 👤💬 07:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I just think you should be more careful in the future about taking administrative actions (as a steward global sysop) that have some bearing on a discussion that you are involved in (even though you reject that idea out of hand, clearly others disagree). In this particular case, I don't see why the standard revert-and-block strategy was so woefully inadequate. After all, at least three other users (besides you) have reverted bad edits there in the last two weeks, so it's not like the wiki was not being monitored. - dcljr (talk) 01:08, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      "revert-and-block strategy" This leads to endless edit wars with LTAs. Page protection is all about preventing damage. The advantages of page protection clearly outweigh the disadvantages in this case, especially as anyone with a 4-day old account can edit these pages. 𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐁𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 👤💬 12:32, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I couldn't disagree more with this proposal. Notwithstanding its obvious lack of success, it doesn't bother anybody either. All we can do is hope for the best, that is: wait for someone to pick it up and turn in into something substantial. It's true that no such person has turned up over the last 20 years. But if we close down this wiki, the chance will drop to zero for there will be no more project to breathe life into. Also, the number of articles will fall from 13 to zero. Is that what you call progress? Then, finally the point of two scripts and various dialects. Yes, that can be a problem. I speak from my own experience as an editor of the Limburgish Wikipedia. But I'd rather leave that point to the speakers. If the speakers say "I'd be willing to edit a Cree Wikipedia, but not one that admits all dialects", so be it. Then we close this one and create dialect wikis instead. But we can't decide for them that the Cree wiki must be closed because of its lack of unity. Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 15:02, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There should be 50+ articles in a page 146.95.26.106 18:05, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as not finding the closure arguments convincing. Restructuring the Cree site into sections for specific dialects could increase participation, in my view Atlantic306 (talk) 19:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This was already done by myself on the Main page and it's actually how we started the Atikamekw Wikipedia that is now active. Thanks. Amqui (talk) 19:25, 14 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral Macrolanguages are by themselves questions, potentially there should investigate that whether there's a standarded "Cree" writing language, if not, then I could however support its closure, just like what we did for Akan Wikipedia. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:35, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the wiki only has 14 articles, it has almost no activity and the only edits on the wiki are from cross~wiki vandals and spam bots, plus the Cree language has dialects that are different, so it must be divided into several wikis in different dialects and improved in the incubator.Wiki libre 1919 (talk) 01:03, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Please don't do copy-paste article moves like you did here: 1 2. This breaks the association between an article's content and its edit history, which is required by the licenses under which Wikimedia wikis operate. (Can an admin please fix this?) - dcljr (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Sigh… And now Таёжный лес has edited the page again, removing most of the content that was there. That doesn't fix the problem, you know… - dcljr (talk) 04:12, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    This content was not in the Cree language, but in English. Таёжный лес (talk) 14:32, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wouldn't like to place a support / oppose template here, for I'd like everyone see my detailed explanations rather than just see my vote before my statement - some would like to do so. Please note that this particular issue has been proposed back in 2020 (vide here), though under a different name but actually the same language. It was speedily closed, with the reason "vandalism by LTA". Despite this, the proposal itself seems more than reasonable. As we know, Cree Wikipedia was created back in 2004, even before Incubator went online - I didn't even find logs about its creation on Incubator. Actually, Inuktitut Wikipedia is almost in the same situation as that of Cree, which seems to be created in those years as well. Firstly, they're written in a special writing system that's obscure to users outside this community. This reason is significant. Why could many other seemingly not-very-widely-used language editions succeed in some extent? Take Turkmen Wikipedia for an instance: though Internet isn't popularized in Turkmenistan, the language itself is similar to other widely used languages (especially Turkish: they're Turkic languages), hence people who r/w Turkish can also contribute a lot there. This isn't applicable for Inuktitut and Cree. Some people has covered part of my second reason, but still I have additional reasons. Closure of Inuktitut Wikipedia had been proposed back in 2007, but was rejected later. @Steinbach: stated that we should "leave them a chance". This seems reasonable, but what if they aren't getting active in the past 15+ years? Time has proved that they cannot be active. Or, we've given them 15+ years, and they're still almost dead, how can we predict that they would get active in the foreseeable future? The only human sysop here is Amqui, a Canadian who speaks English & French, but not Cree. He made his statements above, but I reckon that there's no actual living user who really speaks Cree there, let alone making decisions! Then I looked into user creation logs (automatic creation is filtered out) there, and found few users actually edited. And...those who "made edits" are spambots, which almost only edit small wikis, not even registered on most large sites, and got locked later! I dare say that even some projects inside Incubator are more active than this one. Therefore, it's time to close it and get contents back to Incubator. We've given it enough chances. -- U.T. 09:56, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Your arguments are as predictable as they're invalid. Time has proven ... absolutely nothing! The fact that something didn't happen in the past does not mean it won't happen in the future. Before 1903, no person succeeded in building a flying machine, which led people to say flight was impossible for humans. In 2016, people were certain that the US would never elect a far-right president, because they'd never done so before. We all know what happened next. Now you are saying the Cree Wikipedia will never be revived, because no competent speaker took the trouble to do so in the past. Whether or not a dead Wikipedia gets revived depends on sheer accident, as we have seen on so many occasions before. It depends on someone finding it, telling his/her friends, a case being mentioned in the media, organisations standing behind it etc. etc. And then again: is it bothering anyone in its current state? Steinbach (formerly Caesarion) 10:17, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    What you said make some sense, but do you think it has a large probability to take place? Those Cree people are some who have fallen behind the time, and what's worse, they're culturally crushed by stronger ethnic groups. Are there really any websites written in Cree besides Cree Wikipedia? At least I haven't seen one. Also, Wikimedia sites are not created for rescuing languages in danger. If the language itself is in danger, keeping that edition of Wikipedia isn't helpful, for few would really help it grow. It's other organizations that are in charge of preserving endangered languages, rather than Wikimedia. -- U.T. 11:55, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't understand what the US presidential election has anything to do with Wikimedia's projects. The viability of a Wikipedia is determined by how many native speakers there are, how many have access to the internet, and just plain how many are interested. To my understanding, Canadian indigenous languages suffered a lot of oppression decades ago, and those that speak it well are older and less tech literate, much less likely to edit Wikipedia, and this is a "macrolanguage" that isn't standardized. ManhattanChase (talk) 05:31, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • While rummaging through some Cree speaker categories, there is one speaker who claims advanced knowledge of Cree (ExplodingPoPUps), along with some more people with basic understanding, ExplodingPoPUps' enwiki user talk says they are semi-retired and their last edit was March 2023. 115.188.140.167 08:21, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Can you believe what he claimed? He claimed that he has advanced understanding of many minor languages, each of which are distantly related, even across several language families... U.T. 12:05, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    That user's English WP user page might reflect a less "aspirational" view of her abilities: advanced knowledge of English, less knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese, and little to no understanding of several other languages, none of which are Cree. (That said, claims about her language abilities vary quite a bit across the various WM wikis she has set up user pages on. So…) - dcljr (talk) 01:14, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Another one of Wikimedia's stroke of ego projects from the 2000s where any goofball could start their own wiki based on whichever language they had a strange fascination in. --ManhattanChase (talk) 05:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • What you say is true, but the cree language doesn't have a google traslator. Few pages are important for the conservation of the language. Is not important now have a wikipedia with good articles, but only something that can save it. The wikipedia was born for this reason and you want to end in one way it for a reason that wasn't the original one Enterosquet (talk) 21:59, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Enterosquet The problem is, that whethere there's a unifed "standard Cree"? If not, then I'd love to support this PCP like what we did for Akan. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:22, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Cree wikipedia is already divided into seperate dialects so a united standard Cree is irrelevant for this proposal, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 20:23, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose United project in standard Cree would be better.--Fenikals (talk) 14:14, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Fenikals Even though some of their dialects use different scripts? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:35, 20 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Steinbach and given the information that Amqui provided PersusjCP (talk) 03:29, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. This is Very Important Project for us!.... --Zemant (talk) 16:29, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Why? There can be created separate projects in Cree languages instead of the all-in-one project. The process is already started, as we see it in atj:. --Wolverène (talk) 08:23, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Unless a native speak can take over i support the closing. --Tobost06 (talk) 09:33, 13 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose deletion as the wiki contains what appears to be quality content, and I do not believe we should judge the value of a project by its size. Projects like this are important in raising awareness of endangered languages and giving the speakers of these languages a way to share knowledge in their language. The Wikipedia may have few articles now, but what if it was allowed to grow? It would only take one editor to grow the encyclopedia to something more substantial. Surely promoting projects is better than simply giving up on them and shutting them down. Redtree21 (talk) 06:20, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Weak oppose There seems to be valid content, regardless of which Cree dialect it is in, considering the Main Page acknowledges that there are different articles in different dialects. That might actually be what the problem really is. This project is basically an ungroomed macrolanguage mess, and that might be keeping it dead. The solution could possibly be to separate Cree Wikipedia as was the case with Atikamekw Wikipedia (atj), but it would require Cree speakers to decide whether or not to divide cr.wp. Inactivity by itself is not a reason for closure, but lack of content is. Pislikeller (talk) 19:21, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly Support 10 pages for 20 years and no admins is a parasite that can’t fix the project. 2601:441:8284:1CC0:885:FF15:1C54:FB16 19:35, 27 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I frequently visit the Inupiaq Wikipedia, although I do not speak Inupiaq at all. From what I can tell based on the few words and suffixes which I've actually come to understand in Inupiaq, I've found that the Inupiaq Wikipedia, which has nearly six hundred pages, has a very similar problem to the Cree one. A good amount of the pages are just an image or two with less than a single line of text. Perhaps every single page on the Inupiaq Wikipedia (other than the main page, perhaps), seems to have been made by dictionary-wielders, dabblers, first-year learners, people who know nothing at all about the language, or bots. The Wikipedia in the related Greenlandic language has far more proficient speakers, and its pages are larger but fewer. If an enthusiastic native or fluent Inupiaq speaker were to come along and fix at least some of these pages up, we would have a wiki to serve as material for language learners and as resources for those who already speak the language. You probably wouldn't hurt anyone if you closed either wiki [i.e. moved it to the incubator], let's be honest here. POSSUM chowg (talk) 21:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as the wiki should not be shutdown because it a part of Wikipedia history. Almost all countries have their own Wikipedia site and we should support them, not shut them down. This site needs a new admin and more people to work with it and add pages. The Cree people have a wide history and lots of friendly people. In the 2021 census, 223,745 people identified as having Cree ancestry. That is almost 230K people that know something about Cree history. At least 100K people will talk about that to Wikipedians who want to create pages. This site should be more popular and electing a new admin could only change it so i support a new election for the Cree Wikipedia admin. Markoozdero (talk) 09:32, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That doesn’t explain how this Wikipedia is useful Dronebogus (talk) 21:30, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Disagree, who are the people were getting here? you can’t just make a new admin and people who know just 1 dialect alone of cree to work on this wikipedia, ancestry doesn’t mean they also know the cree language or it’s history, either.
    you can’t just “make” a wikipedia popular.. and again where is this new admin coming from? a cree? Where is said cree? cree is a super diverse language with a dozen dialects and communities and is extremely rural too.
    tbh, my criticism here can also be targeted towards the entire opposed argument but that’s elsewise.
    and yeah? how is this wiki useful? it has 13 pages left after being archive bombed and all are seemingly stubs or low quality.. Kaedyn20 (talk) 11:08, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment it’s worth nothing that Cree is the smallest currently active Wikipedia. I don’t know if this affects anyone’s vote but just want to put that out there. Dronebogus (talk) 16:11, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This is because most of the articles were moved out of the article namespace into subpages of "Wikipedia:Archives" during this proposal. Kk.urban (talk) 17:27, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No, it’s been the smallest for a long time. The change in article count just makes the comparison more dramatic. I should know, I’ve been keeping track. Dronebogus (talk) 21:33, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral As I see, a lot of articles were written in Nehiyawin (Plains Cree) and Innu-Ayimuwin (James Bay Cree) languages. I propose to create Nehiyawin Wikipedia and Innu-Ayimuwin Wikipedia and move these articles to them. Another variant is moving the content to Incubator as Cree Wikipedia or Nehiyawin Wikipedia and Innu-Ayimuwin Wikipedia. Пан Хаунд (talk) 18:01, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What is the extent of difference between cree “dialects”? Are they mutually intelligible or are they separate languages in all but name? Dronebogus (talk) 14:19, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I propose to ask the linguist to look at the Wikipedia. And the linguist would tell us which variety of Cree was most used in the Wikipedia and if the varieties are mutually intelligible or not. Пан Хаунд (talk) 07:59, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Support your opinion. I'm not a professional linguist, but, using dictionaries and other materials, I found out that 19 of the 22 existing articles were written in Plains Cree, two more in Eastern Cree (ᐊᑎᒽ and ᐯᔭᒄ), and one is a mixture of English with all varieties. Таёжный лес (talk) 13:00, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I don’t support vanity wikis for languages no-one uses as a primary communication and learning method. Nobody actively maintains this wiki so there’s no demand for it. Dronebogus (talk) 16:56, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Cree Wikipedia, even if it is not read, and not visited much, is still a hub of languages that are at risk of extinction. Eliminating this Wikipedia means completely eliminating the texts In cree. Delete it just because it is not visited and its original purpose has been mocked? There is something bigger behind it. Enterosquet (talk) 19:42, 3 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Comment Maybe we should ask language expert to look at the Wikipedia and group the articles by varieties of Cree. And one or two the biggest groups would become Wikipedias. Пан Хаунд (talk) 08:04, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    ᑕᓂᓯ ᑭᔨᐚᐤ,
    ᐘᐦᐚ!
    Tansi kiyawaw.
    I am a Cree language learner connected to a larger network of people learning ᓀᐦᐃᔨᐍᐏᐣ᙮
    Tbh I don’t think anyone knows this wiki exists. I’m happy to have found it though and will pass it along through our discord groups etc.
    a couple of comments:
    Cree is usually divided into 5 main dialects, which have further regional and community differences. Largely there are sound changes that determine the dialect, with some regional vocabulary. It’s common for language learners to learn th/y somewhat interchangeably. I don’t think these four need to be separate portals. I think having a way of subtitling or tagging articles by th/y/l/n is enough.
    From my understanding, East Cree has more significant differences than the other four.
    y dialect - Plains Cree. This has a Northern variation where the long Ī and E vowels are merged.
    th dialect - Northern / Woodland - one community prefers the term Rock Cree.
    n dialect - Swampy Cree
    l dialect - Moose Cree
    Eastern Cree
    secondly, there kinda is google translate Cree now. At least for Y and northern Y dialect there is Itwewina and connected language projects through the Alberta Language Lab project.
    also, Nēhiyawēwin is a polysynthetic language. So a two word sentence can mean something really quite complex for example:
    kêtaskisinêpahtâw maskêkohk
    ᑫᑕᐢᑭᓯᓀᐸᐦᑖᐤ ᒥᐣᑫᑯᕽ᙮
    means she drops her moccasins as she is running in the muskeg.
    there are a couple syllabics converters that exist in the web now, and articles could be toggled between SRO and syllabics. This would also help. There is still not a lot of support to type in syllabics and although people can read it, typing is still less accessible.
    if anyone wanted to be helpful:
    1. Algonquian dictionaries project has a syllabics converter. Articles could be in both transcribed in both orthographies. (See: Okimāsis and Wolvengray: How to Spell it in Cree for SRO). Same for toggling between macron and circumflex style long vowels eg. ē, ê.
    2. Alberta Language labs has a GitHub with a lot of resources.
    anyways, I hope I can pass this māsinahikan along to other nēhiyawak language speakers & learners and see if there is interest in developing it.
    Ēkosi.
    -Piyêsis Piyêsis (talk) 09:58, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Piyêsis, thank you that you have told us important information about Cree language. So, what do you think we should do with Cree Wikipedia? Пан Хаунд (talk) 09:51, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the closure following the example of Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Akan Wikipedia 2. 20 years was more than enough time either to make the project developed by attracting native speakers, or at least, to make it visible for the ethnic commutity and language activists. And both these possibilities were definitely failed. --Wolverène (talk) 08:23, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That wiki was closed not because it didn't go anywhere but because it was determined that Akan is not actually a distinct language. That's really the only aspect of that example that is at all relevant here. - dcljr (talk) 14:11, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I did not really say that the akWP was unable to get a (native) community, so the example of the akWP related exactly to the nature of languages. Cree is not just a non-distinct language (same to Akan). Another issue is that there were also no one really tried to build a stable Cree-language community regardless some efforts by enthusiasts with a near-minimum knowledge of any of the Cree languages. Those efforts can be respected -- Amqui and others actually tried to do what they could but still not enough. Do I express it clearer now? :-) --Wolverène (talk) 10:37, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I see. So everything after your first sentence was not your explanation of why the Akan example was relevant here? That indeed was not clear. Thank you for clarifying. - dcljr (talk) 00:20, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The "stub" pages you put up have been regular pages for a while. How it happened this? There were over a hundred pages that needed to become stubs? I remember an archive. Enterosquet (talk) 13:48, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Which user are you addressing here? Here are the pages that were "archived": cr:Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Archives. - dcljr (talk) 02:56, 19 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Strongly oppose closing Cree Wikipedia. I would like to add that I am a long time user and "micro-stubs" is how a lot of entries were initially created in "popular" languages, sometimes including English itself. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 2.34.25.53 (talk)
  • Oppose I believe it needs time to develop, and we simply aren't giving enough of that time. Let Cree Wikipedia get more popular, every language deserves a Wikipedia, No matter how many speakers. Wheatley2 15:45, 14 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Wheatley2 But Is Cree Really "One Single Language"? There are doubts that Cree's situation is a consortium of several different languages. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:56, 25 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    A wikipedia can have many dialect. It doesn't need only a language 109.52.178.227 18:00, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @109.52.178.227 That the "doesn't need only a language" is simply a violation of LPP, please, don't be a jerk. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:25, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Wow, was pointing to Don't be a jerk really necessary here?? Perhaps you should remove that part of your comment. - dcljr (talk) 03:25, 27 August 2024 (UTC) — OBTW, you can't ping IP editors. - dcljr (talk) 03:29, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Changed to Strong Support and move to Incubator - Oppose votes are misinformed. I read further into it (like the Oppose votes should), and it turns out, Cree has many dialects, and the Cree Wikipedia is split into those different dialects. It should be moved to Incubator in case oneday it can expand. Wheatley2 (talk) 06:10, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Oppose votes are misinformed? A wikipedia with many dialect exists, as sardinian wikipedia for example. Just say which dialect is at the top of the page. It doesn't need a unified language, right. The Neapolitan language does not exist and in fact They are just some dialects of southern Italy put together. But there is a Wikipedia on that "language". In Cree the same thing can happen, and, if you don't want, you can do like Wikipedia in Sardinian Ammatte (talk) 12:22, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It's just the thought those dialects may be mutually unintelligable. Wheatley2 (talk) 18:19, 17 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If the dialects aren't mutually intelligable, we need to find a common solution. For example we can say what is the name of the dialect at the top of the page. But anyway, if wikipedia formed a wikipedia in Cree I think it knew that could keep it. If Wikipedia accepted the formation of Wikipedia in Cree it means that it could be kept. So whatever it is, in any case, it is a Wikipedia that can exist In all respects, otherwise Wikipedia would not have supported its birth and would have rejected the proposal.
    You can then put the name of the dialect at the top of the page, as a common solution. Dantelma (talk) 14:34, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Anyway, I went and looked up some random words on Google to have a comparison, and I think they are quite intelligible. For example, cīkahikan is said the same in three dialects. In other words change some letters, but overall I think they are intelligible. Dantelma (talk) 14:49, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair point. Wheatley2 (talk) 17:14, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The wikipedia can stays. The many dialect can make a wikipedia diversified. The sardinian wikipedia too has many dialect, but the wikipedia stays. We can remain the wikipedia and don't close it. The low number of pages is not a problem, for the about 2000 stubs, that can be helpful to make other pages Ammatte
    As far as I understand the problem is Cree is actually a group of several non-mutually-intelligible or barely mutually intelligible languages that are split apart by English/French speakers for hundreds of kilometers. Very different situation compared to Sardinian where the geographic distance of speakers is much smaller, plus there is also geographic continuity, unlike for Cree.--176.104.110.11 23:53, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Comment The best approach would probably be to approach Cree-speaking communities on a language-by-language basis, starting with the languages that already have some sort of actual article representation. That would be James Bay and Naskapi. However, this would have to be a very expansive project similar in scope to what was done for Atikamekw - i.e. actually approaching the First Nation communities who could contribute. Atikamekw also had the advantage of being closer to Montreal/the Laurentian region, where good Internet infrastructure exists... don't think that's the case for upper Quebec/Labrador. Not impossible, but definitely a challenge. Once we have all the Cree wikis up and running at least in Incubator form, then, and only then, can we shut down the Cree Wikipedia for good.--176.104.110.11 23:53, 5 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Are you saying that we need to make an incubator for each Cree language? It's hard work, as you said, but useless. If you want to take down Wikipedia you can do it now, since there are all the reasons to do it. Don't do these long and useless works, which, for what you want to do, are useless. I don't want to tear down Wikipedia, but if you have to do it, at least do it like this, without all this work. 79.42.78.6 13:46, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    In fact, the project uses only two Cree languages, and content in one of them is ten times larger than the other. Таёжный лес (talk) 13:08, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not necessarily. Much as some of the other editors mentioned above it could be done through the Wikipedia instead. And a reader/editor base is there, which the Atikamekw Wikipedia (also a Cree-group language) proves pretty well. Seriously, look up the Atikamekw Wikipedia project, it's pretty (positively) surprising what a small community can do, and it would be an absolute shame not to capitalize on this with some of the other Cree languages, some of which have a higher speaker count than Atikamekw does. --176.104.110.11 17:00, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean wait, I don't understand. There is a Wikipedia in Cree and then a Wikipedia in a language that is part of the Cree language? It doesn't make sense. I mean that potentially all the pages on Wikipedia in Cree can be written in that language. So, if this is the situation, the Cree language, we could say, is like "Latin" for the romance language.It's like a Wikipedia that in itself, doesn't need a community. So, if this Wikipedia doesn't need a community, it's better that we leave it like this and don't do anything to it. In our era there are no registrations, we can use a more innovative method. 78.208.93.55 13:11, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Cree is actually a group of several languages that the ISO classifies as separate languages, but the distinction was not fully decided until well after the wiki was made. Also, the Wikipedia was created before the current standards for new Wikipedias (i.e. only one language per wiki) were created. It's a grandfathered-in project from those early days. When it comes to it being used as a springboard for new Cree language projects, do please look up the Atikamekw project and read all about it. --176.104.110.11 00:12, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To all anonymous comments above: Umm, I've checked iso639-3:cre, Atikamekw isn't a member "Individual Language" of Cree Macrolanguage, its members are, instead and however:
  1. Southern East Cree (crj) (incubator:Wp/crj says that contents are available at ᑳ ᐋᐸᐦᐄᔥᑌᒡ:ᐃᔨᔨᐤ ᐊᔨᒧᐧᐃᓐ)
  2. Plains Cree (crk) (incubator:Wp/crk is created, currently has only two articles and no main page)
  3. Northern East Cree (crl)
  4. Moose Cree (crm)
  5. Swampy Cree (csw)
  6. Woods Cree (cwd)
Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:19, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
incubator:Wp/moe also open. Таёжный лес (talk) 20:49, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
half of said is in french to be fair. Kaedyn20 (talk) 10:30, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support The Wikipedia itself is seemingly low quality, harassed by vandals, has a lack of active administrators and has almost no actual cree speakers, i think cree is too diverse, rural and small (12 Articles…) to gain traction, especially with what Piyêsis said as an example, it seems little cree/those learning cree actually know of this wikipedia, I see from the opposing side alot of wishful thinking but in my opinion it’s been 20 or so years, it’s had time to grow for 2 decades and really hasn’t outside of the smallest/one of the smallest wikipedias, I say we move it to the Wikimedia Incubator, honestly. Kaedyn20 (talk) 11:18, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Adding onto this, the cree dialects vary.. alot. like, the easternmost cree dialects from what I’ve seen speak purely Latin script, whilst more western and central dialects speak Latin and cree syllabics, and so fourth. it’s quite questionable for these to be on one wikipedia alone and not seperate wikipedias (if they’d even be active is another topic). in my opinion I believe crees dialect continuum is too severe to be one wikipedia, even if there has been some work done to try and have unity.
alongside this even the syllabics vary, ie, eastern syllabics vs western syllabics, what one do we use then? there is no standardised cree language, it’s a melting pot of far away from eachother dialects which don’t work for a Wikipedia.
Cree itself again is a dialect continuum of a native language which stretches from Alberta to Labrador, and many that still know the language are either old and tech illiterate, don’t know of the wikipedia or don’t have the motivation/don’t know the history to do so, I don’t think I’ve seen any cree person here (besides one) and some peoples claims of knowing rhe cree language are dubious at best (ExplodingPoPUps, as mentioned not long ago as an example)
alongside this, the wikipedia only has 24 active users, 200 or articles (almost all are archived now) and 1 administrator, who isn’t even cree himself or knows the language.
the wikipedia itself is also quite inactive and it’s article are microstubs with little detail or quality in them, many of the language lists on the main page are flat out empty, or no articles with them..
an example of lack of quality is https://cr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid which at random points randomly goes from plains cree to english, before reverting back..??
yet another example is https://cr.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81nat%C4%81 where almost all cree territory, language and people reside only has a few sentences or so and some images, which also links to archived pages which are dubious at best in quality.
tldr; cree is too diverse and dialect continuum to have one wikipedia, and there’s too little people to man the project for it to be useful currently. Kaedyn20 (talk) 13:01, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, there are more active users on the Cree Wikipedia than on other Algic Wikipedias. Таёжный лес (talk) 18:22, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fair, as they’re also quite small (kalaallisut with 14, inuktitut with 19, Inupiaq with 14 and so fourth (as an example of wikipedias with a small community and such)
After digging, I think we should close/move this wikipedia to the incubator like what was done with the Muskogee wikipedia in 2007, Cree is a large, dialect continuum with varying scripts in some areas, has a extremely small community and pretty much no articles with detail. having varying articles in different dialects and so fourth isn’t helpful to anyone..
and it’s been 20 years and no actual cree has picked up this Wikipedia from what I’ve saw, and said active users aren’t seemingly cree at all (or languages related to cree, for that matter), infact the only active user with any mention of cree on their (page, wiki? idk) is Pathoschild and Wolverène who have pretty much no knowledge of cree..
The most active person on this wikipedia is the one who proposed closing it.. so.. Kaedyn20 (talk) 23:42, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Algic Wikipedias is the atj: an chy:. What you have listed are the Eskaleut languages. Таёжный лес (talk) 04:25, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[Kaedyn20] "at random points randomly goes from plains cree to english, before reverting back" — This is a very deceptive description of that article. The use of English there is clearly not "random", as two of the instances are parenthetical translations of what appear to be Cree approximants of technical terms ["kinētiskāk enerģīja (kinetic energy)" and "kemikawīyikan (chemical composition)"], and the remaining bit is a lengthy phrase containing such terms ["struktural rigidity (as in stiff bodies) and resistance to a force applied onto the surface"]. Presumably, the person writing the article was unsure of the proper Cree rendition of certain phrases, and so left those bits in English. This doesn't make the entire ~220-word article unfit for a Cree Wikipedia; it just makes it unfinished, like most articles in most Wikipedias. - dcljr (talk) 00:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fair point, but it does represent some lack of quality in my opinion (like I’ve highlighted before) and in my opinion i don’t think articles should go from cree to english back to cree like that in a quality article but i can see why it was done so.
Id like to mention almost every article has also been archived.. from around ~100 articles to 13 pages, with said solid article infact being archived not long ago seemingly.
also another thing to highlight about articles, there is an article which the leading line is in syllabic, before switching to the latin script, infact it’s the same for other plains cree articles, some use syllabics whilst others use latin (ie, this latin article vs this article in syllabics, another one in syllabics and another in latin), james bay cree also has the same issue from its 2 listed articles, ie: a latin script article vs an article in syllabics, any other dialects just don’t have pages (that I’m assuming haven’t been archived).
of course, from digging, the plains cree do use latin and syllabics, but in my opinion it should be one style of script per page (ie, latin for 1 page, syllabics another) but in my opinion this conflicts with the MoS and consistency within articles but again, my opinion.
to sum this up, this wikipedia is seemingly stillborn/unfinished, has questionable quality and is one wikipedia for a dozen dialects (woods cree, james bay cree, plains cree and etc), I do think crees themselves deciding if the wikipedia should continue is a okay idea in theory, but it’s been 20 years and they haven’t really shown up, so until it can be reopened/decided upon, I say we move it to the incubator. Kaedyn20 (talk) 01:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Manual of Style of the English Wikipedia is not applicable to the Cree Wikipedia unless there is consensus to adopt the same conventions there. - dcljr (talk) 06:58, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, I'd love to try understanding that whether @SHB2000: will oppose this PCP, as that user said two sentences at previous Nauruan PCP (though, however, approved and nawiki closed):

Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 22:57, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Maori Wikipedia is not the same as the cree one, maori has little dialect differences and one, largely standardised language and one script between its iwi/hapu (tribes and subtribes if I recall) and has a major effort by the new zealand government to revitalise the language, it is not like cree where it’s a dialect continuum with 2 main scripts used by most dialects and isn’t standardised.
maori has 180k+ speakers with some knowledge of the language, cree has 80 thousand, many who live in quite rural areas (ie, northern ontario) versus the more urbanised and smaller New Zealand, where even the rural areas are more easy to access and have better infrastructure then rural canada, Cree has around 150 (99% are archived) pages versus the maori wikipedias 7 thousand pages, and has a (arguably) stronger revitalisation project on wikipedia.
and also, nauruan has 9-7 thousand speakers versus the maori language which is way larger then nauruan, same with cree even if it is quite rural, in my opinion these are not at all comparable. Kaedyn20 (talk) 23:50, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And also, the Nauruan wikipedia seemingly has the same issues as the cree one, tiny community, questionable quality, little pages and inactive administration, which raises the question;
nauruan was closed for similar reasons to the cree one, so why close only one if they have the same issues? Kaedyn20 (talk) 23:55, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keeping this language will be important if this language goes extinct. 108.5.216.21 22:07, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Despite the fact that there’s very little pages and dubious quality? Cree itself is also the largest spoken native language (if I’m correct) in all of canada.. it’s vulnerable sure, but not on the verge of a total collapse. Kaedyn20 (talk) 06:03, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If it is the largest spoken native language in all of Canada that is another very good reason to keep it's wikipedia project and improve it, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 21:39, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Atlantic306 I think many supporters of this PCP request focus on a main problem: Is Cree really a language or not? Some users who oppose claim "Hey it's our proud language in Canada", but some supporters object it that "No, there are several Cree languages, which exactly one are you pointing to?" Realllll...(65535*l)ly, I wanna see inputs from a real Canadian linguist for such a brief answer. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 07:16, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree to what Liuxinyu said too, any comment from a linguist or native would be helpful. Kaedyn20 (talk) 06:17, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
?? It has a dozen dialects, and again where is this “improval” coming from? Kaedyn20 (talk) 10:46, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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