Requests for comment/Start allowing ancient languages/Appendix II: Prior policy documents and decisions

This page does not form part of the proposal, but details particular background material

2007 Language Policy decisions

Previous decisions on Ancient Languages policy

Date	Name and link	Policy position
2006-09-16	Subcommittee given Charter	LangCom tasked with producing a Language policy Policy to be "A clear and objective (based on quantitative indicators) step-by-step policy for evaluating the feasibility of new language wikies, that is a clear and automated procedure for projects to be released"
2007-01	Draft of Language Policy, as accepted: Language Committee Archive, 2007	Ancient languages permitted, process introduced
2007-04	Unclear if further Language Policy changes are put to the Board, and in what form.	Further amendments applied, Ancient languages permitted.
2007-10	Language proposal policy changed, minutes available. Rationale said via email as being "to explicitly invalidate any and all arguments that were used before".	Ancient languages limited to Wikisource-only: "Only Wikisource wikis in ancient or historical languages are accepted, because there is [are] no living native communities to use other resources. Where possible, such languages should be bundled with the modern equivalent (such as Old English with English), though that is not required."

Former relevant RFCs

Previous RFCs on Ancient Languages policy

Years	Names and links	Results
2014	Language proposal policy	Closed for lack of input
2019	2019-04 proposed revision	approved with rare word changes related to ancient languages, that looks still negative for those the proposer was aimed to implement a rule for ancient languages, but cancelled this idea for some private reasons, and stated that a separate proposal would made in later, but didn't happen till now
2021	Policy on creating new Wikiprojects language versions	opening Referred discussion on ancient languages to this RFC

Discussion

Does anyone know of any other RFCs on this topic? --JimKillock (talk) 19:13, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

You may want to ask this user for why the first discussion was closed. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:59, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: I don't wish to investigate or triage previous decisions; I am content with the documentation as it stands. That should be enough for people to see what questions have been previously raised and discussed. But we do need a complete list, and we seem to be missing the reasoning and consultation done for the initial decisions. Perhaps this was something the Committee did on email, for instance, but there seems to be no record of it on Meta; at least I cannot find it. --JimKillock (talk) 07:23, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

For the 2007 change by Pathoschild, I asked that user via their talk page, but remember that the reason may not be public known, and any reveal attempts of them have to obey the Access to nonpublic personal data policy , otherwise there's nothing else to explain. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 23:50, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

In other words, the discussions surroundng the change probably happened on a private email list, so it cannot be wholly disclosed. So even if we get some reasons, they won't be fully developed, and they won't have involved public consultation. --JimKillock (talk) 01:54, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I think, if that user replied me correctly, the reason of 2007-10 change may be found at Language_committee/Archives/2007-10#Policy_change. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:31, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

@Liuxinyu970226: Thank you, that was very useful information. I have detailed the contents of that brief discussion in another Appendix. --JimKillock (talk) 19:41, 13 September 2021 (UTC)