- Under certain circumstances, Wikipedia wikis in historical languages will be considered on a case-by-case basis. The following minimum requirements must be met:
- There must be an extensive body of surviving written works in the historical version of the language.
- Related, the language must have a reasonably attested written standard. There can be more than one standard, and there can be legitimate, existing differences of opinion as to what the standard is/should be, or how it is displayed. However, Wikimedia will not support creating new writing standards for ancient, historical and extinct languages—especially ones that were mostly not written languages when active.
- The historical version of the language must be widely studied.
- Where the language is an ancient language (like Ancient Greek), it must be studied broadly outside what might be thought of as its "natural constituency" (in this case, speakers of modern Greek, or the Orthodox church world). LangCom will look more favorably on languages that are known to have contributed significantly to modern languages that are not its immediate, direct descendents.
- Where the language represents a revival of a fairly-recently-extinct language (like Livonian), there must be evidence that the revival is solid and robust—and doesn't depend on Wikimedia projects as the core of the revival.
- LangCom explicitly notes: That a language may meet these requirements—and some of the requirements are subjective—does not guarantee that the Language Committee will decide that a project is eligible for approval, only that the Committee will consider the question.
- Stand-alone Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikiversity and Wikivoyage projects are not permitted in ancient, historical or extinct languages.
PENDING
- In rare cases, Wikipedia projects in ancient or historical languages may be allowed. See rules above.
- André Muller (User:N-true): No Meta contributions since 2009. Fewer than 20 across the projects in last twelve months.
- Antony D. Green (also his user name): Spurt of activity on-wiki over about seven weeks in spring 2017. No other activity on-wiki.
- Maor Malul (User:Maor X): Active on Affiliations Committee. Active at Meta, though not in RFL space, over last year. Active at Commons; some activity at enwiki, eswiki, ladwiki (disclaimer)
- Gerard Meijssen (GerardM): Four edits on Meta in last year (3 at LangCom). At least answers requests in mail list. Very active cross-wiki until 2010. Since then some spurts of activity, mainly around something called "Global Youth Academy". (And if he's created the User accounts "Global Youth Academy" without disclosing, he's in violation of (a) multiple accounts and (b) accounts for groups, unless he has specific dispensation for it.
- Jon Harald Søby: Active on Meta, mainly around WMF and Norse issues. Active at oldwikisource and on some Scandinavian projects. Responds to questions periodically.
- Karen Broome (User:Klbroome): Exactly four edits across all projects. Ever. If User:Karen was her (see LangCom page), another handful in 2006.
- Michael Everson (Evertype): One Meta edit (other than his talk page) in last twelve months. Does respond sometimes/usually.
- Milos Rancic (Millosh): Three edits on Meta in one RFL discussion, and decision against the recent practice of rejecting requests where nothing was started as stale.
- Robin Pepermans (SPQRobin): Mostly retired at this point. Seems most current activity such as it is around WD.
- Santhosh Thottingal (Santhosh.thottingal): Maybe ten edits on Meta, none in RFL space since '15.
- Satdeep: Active at Meta and presumably elsewhere. No RFL edits. Hasn't answered long-standing question in group about ____ projects.
A good reason should be given why it should be closed/deleted.
- Inactivity in itself is no valid reason; additional problems are.
When the Wikimedia Incubator is at a stage where it is usable to a certain extent like a real wiki[1], inactivity may become a valid reason.
- Absence of content since the wiki's creation is a valid reason (usually for type 1).
- Not meeting the current Language proposal policy requirements is not a valid reason.
- Keep in mind that Wikimedia/LangCom does not define what is a language and what is a dialect. We follow international ISO standards which may sometimes have a broad interpretation of language. One should generally not propose a project for closure because it is allegedly written in a "dialect" rather than a "language."
References
- ↑ In the future, the Wikimedia Incubator is intended to function as a place for normal wikis that are not large enough to justify their own wiki (so we don't have a large number of small wikis but instead a normal Incubator wiki with "virtual wikis").
- Remove the struck out portion, including footnote. I don't see that Incubator is really going there. It functionally serves that purpose now sometimes, but really only for projects that are not going to be approved as standalones (like historical language projects).
- Add sub-bullet to what's left:
- Inactivity of a Wikinews project is a little different, because a front page of a "news" project with only old and/or obsolete news stories can be embarrassing. See /Soft closure of Wikinews projects.
