Talk:Language committee/Archives/Policy

SabineCretella draft

The following discussion was moved from "Talk:Creation of new languages for existing projects" after the draft was merged into the archives. —{admin} Pathoschild 08:47:08, 09 January 2008 (UTC)

More points

Yes, what you say makes sense. I would add points for:

1. managing political conflict
   1. No matter which side one is on, political conflict always turns out to be a powerful source of energy loss. People start endless edit wars instead of writing meaningful content.
   2. Politically neutral terminology is always able to cut this things from the very roots (for examples, we may say idioms and forget forever about languages and dialects.
   3. A no-POV terminology comittee is needed for this. When words are a source of trouble, they may be chosen carefully, and this may be a general policy for all wikis. It's thousands of people spending more time to edit a term they find unpleasant (to actually end up saying the very same thing), than the time they spend to produce valuable material, even in big wikis.
2. supporting educational value
   1. make sure people find a user interface in their own idiom when using common "containers".
   2. find a way for an idiom to build a "relational map" of its neighbours, so that closely related material (in terms of mutual understanding) will pop-up from the general mass
   3. let user add "customised" individual relational maps, based on babel info, for them to retrieve all the information they can read/use.
3. If such "general" containers may be made, then I would not see any reason for ANY separate edition to remain alive. Just think of the amount of work we need to keep some minimal interwiki data current. The WiktionaryZ format looks much more interesting and less time/resource consuming.
   1. Commons might have been an answer for a common image/sound repository, but it lacks a multi-idiom interface and I cannot see how it could get one.
   2. DefinedMeaning is a crucial issue. I suppose that WiktionaryZ will set the general standard for it.
   3. I am not sure that admin work will be reduced, given the quantity of DefinedMeaning work included, yet it will make sense to have these resources used, since the outcome will be a reliable tool for all editions.

Point 2.2 is strategical to those who wish to save endangered idioms. The only way a proper "idiom ecology" may be saved is to balance the imports from all related neighbours. The mechanichs of extinction work by enclosing an idiom into another, so that it becomes a subset of it, instead of being part of a continuum of speech. If this dependance can be broken, this is an added value that will help endangered idioms to survive, and it will be a plus for them into being part of a multi-idiom environment, instead of being a declaration of "low vitality". We must be aware that unless we give such pluses many an idiom will try to go its own way and "show its muscles". It will often end up in aborting the project, but humans are humans, and many people will want to show that "their idiom is a big one". So we really must find a way to make the distinction between "big" and "small" totally void. Wiki is about putting people toghether and allowing as much communication as possible, not about building walls.

In the end, my opinion is that we can think of it in terms of a general shift from indipendent wikimedia-based editions to a common wiktionaryZ-technology based edition. Not a quick/easy move, but the only move that makes sense. Otherwise we shall be ethernally exposed to the "you guys had your wiki, why can't we have ours?" objection. And it will be very hard to prove that there is something wrong with it. To many it will simply look as a deadline in time, from which all of a sudden more restrictive criteria killed freedom of expression. At that point it we will not be able to keep people from asking that a number of low content wiki should be deleted altoghether, which in turn will start an endless war about who is big and who is not. Clever people will have bots loading tons of almost empty stubs, less computer literated people will have real articles killed. It's a risky move, unless it's taken on global scale.

But if such a move could be made by absorbing all editions, then (just to name one) all the conflict around BE would immediately end. People would simply choose whatever interface they prefer... BTW, it's also potentially going to add lock time and to slow down the database... it's a number of technical issues involved here... But I do not know the software involved enough for me to judge --Bertodsera 12:58, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Committee/Subcommittee

Hi, is this the planning page of the New languages subcommittee? If not, can someone create one on Meta (or, at least, an information page about the subcommittee) and link it from the Special projects committee page? Thanks. Cormaggio ^@ 12:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Concerns

I think you're still misguided here. Number of speakers/supporters or Ethnologue status isn't the issue. The Norman Wikipedia is a case in point.

Norman (or any of its dialects) have no ISO code. Some people erroneously call it a dialect of French (including Ethnologue). However, Jèrriais and Guernesiais (Jersey and Guernsey Norman) are both recognized as regional languages by the British-Irish Council, and are politically recognized as being distinct from French in the Channel Islands. Continental Norman (another collection of dialects) has no such recognition from France. So, by this reasoning (no ISO code, no Ethnologue status), no Norman Wikipedia should be created.

As far as users go, the Norman Wikipedia started out with, I believe 1 native speaker and one other person willing to contribute in the language, for a total of 2. By that account, no Norman Wikipedia should also have been created, right?

So you must assume, then, that the Norman Wikipedia has done horribly since its creation, right? On the contrary, the Norman Wikipedia, created in March, now has 1,027 articles. That averages out to be over 250 articles a month. Many of the articles are of a very high quality, and the Norman article on Catalan Literature happens to be more extensive than the same article in English, Spanish, or Catalan! Almost all articles of any reasonable size also include images or illustrations.

How could you have known this from the guidelines you propose? I don't think you could.

How could you have known it would do this well at all? Quite easily—the Test-Wikipedia. The Norman Test-Wikipedia flourished, having somewhere between 100 and 200 articles developed in a few short months (mostly at the beginning) while it was waiting being given approval and being made into a full Wikipedia. Test-Wikipedias are a better indicator than anything else of whether or not a Wikipedia will succeed.

So I think that should be the primary determining factor of whether or not a Wikipedia should be created. The Jade Knight 22:13, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

New Proposal for Language Creation

A rather more precise proposal can be found at User:Dbmag9/New language policy. Please comment on it there - I intend to use this essay as part of a base for it. Daniel (‽) Check out Wikiscope! 11:08, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

What I wrote on this page is no policy, but basics for us to start to create a policy on - and the policy must be clear without voting and other stuff - simply "clear" if requirements are met than the wiki is created, if not: they can go on working on their test wikipedia until they meet the requirements. In order to understand more about the problematics on the incubator wiki User:Timichal was invited to join us so that we can step by step create a policy. What is here is what I learnt out of the projects where I am involved it - other people have other experiences - so these need to be considered as well. We will of course consider your page - sorry if I cannot do this now: have to finish some work and I will be around for work tomorrow and on Tuesday.--Sabine 11:21, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the need for a simple process, and I'm glad that you will consider 'my' (I think of it as the Incubator's) page. It's very good that Timichal has been accepted into the subcommittee; he helped design most of the policy on that page, and we chat on IRC regularly. Hopefully you will be at the open meeting today, and we can discuss the matter further. Daniel (‽) Check out Wikiscope! 13:04, 3 September 2006 (UTC)