Language committee/Archives/2007-02

For a summary of discussions, see the archives index.

Spanned discussions

The following discussions span multiple months and are archived in the first applicable archive:

"Policy" (January 2007)

Wikipedia Kabyle, Wikipedia Set English, Wikibooks Sindhi

This is an email discussion proposing decisions for the Wikipedia Kabyle, Wikipedia Set English, and Wikibooks Sindhi proposals. Wikipedia Kabyle and Wikibooks Sindhi were conditionally approved, while Wikipedia Set English was rejected.

see also "Kabyle Wikipedia and localization" (March–April 2007).

Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
26 February 2007 19:39

The language proposal policy has been officially implemented at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP>. Since we've been unable to arrange scheduled meetings, I'll propose closures with the reasoning by email. I've listed a few of the more obvious cases below; if there is no disagreement in a few days, I'll close the discussions as proposed.
===Wikipedia Set English===
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Set_English>
Reject. This language was invented by the proposer; it has no standard code, community, or audience, and is not established. There are no native speakers.
===Wikipedia Kabyle===
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Kabyle>
Approve and wait for a flourishing test community; they recently created a test project, but it mostly edited by one user. This language is well-established, has a very wide audience, a large interested community, a unanimous discussion on Meta, a standard code, and an extensive test project.
===Wikibooks Sindhi===
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Sindhi>
Approve and wait for a flourishing test community. It has a large audience, a standard code, and a strong cultural heritage. There are Sindhi editions of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikinews. However, there is virtually no interested community to match the proposal, and they will need to work out a solution for the multiple standard scripts. Conditional approval is essentially a green flag for the language itself, while waiting for a sufficient test project on the Incubator.

Roll call

This is an email discussion concerning participation of the subcommittee members. The discussion confirmed that all members were active.

Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
28 February 2007 21:07

Hello,
Before proceeding further, I'm wondering how many subcommittee members are still active and participating. Only three of the eight members have been active in discussion over the last few months.
Please respond to confirm that you are receiving these messages and specify whether you are interested in maintenance of the process after policy development.
Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
01 March 2007 01:45

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Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
01 March 2007 01:58

Hello,
I meant discussion with the subcommittee. If any of the other five members have been contributing outside policy development, I'm not aware of it; I joined the committee during policy development.
My last email to Berto d'Sera bounced with an 'account terminated' error; do you know if he changed email address?
Jon Harald Søby
01 March 2007 09:23

I'm still here, but I haven't been very active in matters, because I think what everyone else is doing is very good, and don't often have much to add, unfortunately. But I do follow the discussions & talks and stay updated.
—
01 March 2007 12:55

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Sabine Cretella
02 March 2007 05:56

Jesse, this sometimes happesn with his normal account - now he also has a gmail account, but I don't remeber right now where I find it - I'll do this during the next days as soon as I am back home.
Greetings from Pisa.
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
02 March 2007 14:25

Hello,
All subcommittee members have answered except Sabine Cretella, Ascander, and Timichal. Does anyone know if they have changed email address? I'll try to contact them on-wiki.
Bèrto 'd Sèra
02 March 2007 14:30

Hoi!
Hmm... what's the call about, exactly? :) Sabine is likely to be busy (she's got lots of work lately) but maybe you'll find her on IRC, chances are Timichal should be there, too.
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
02 March 2007 14:36

Hello,
Sorry, Sabine Cretella has answered; we're just missing Ascander and Timichal. You did not receive the message because it was sent to your old email account; I updated some email addresses from the message you sent. The original message follows:
"Before proceeding further, I'm wondering how many subcommittee members are still active and participating. Only three of the eight members have been active in discussion over the last few months.
"Please respond to confirm that you are receiving these messages and specify whether you are interested in maintenance of the process after policy development."
Bèrto 'd Sèra
02 March 2007 14:45

Hi!
Yes I'm active and interested :) My older accounts have a number of problems related to uktainian providers being blacklisted by many western providers. This one should be safe, since it's gmail :)
I haven't heard from Timichal in a while, either. AFAIK Ascander hasn't been active since almost one year ago because of personal problems.
Sabine Cretella
03 March 2007 06:37

There are people who work outside their home every now and then and: I answered to your e-mail telling you that Berto's e-mail sometimes did not work well, maybe you missed it.
I just came home after a 12 hour drive, had some hours of sleep and now check my e-mail of the last days.
And please remeber one thing: we are all volunteers, we are not paid to do a certain job in a certain time, but when we have time.
Thanks for consideration.
Sabine Cretella
03 March 2007 06:47

Ah ok, you received the mail - ... like you can see: just reading my mail bit by bit ...
Ascander is sometimes very busy and sometimes has time - so if he can, he will be there. Timichal: normally you can find him online on IRC, but also he has periods when he simply cannot be around. If I have IRC on I am normally always in our chat - so pinging me makes sense there (it could also happen that sometimes my computer is online and I am not there).
If somebody is not active or does not respond: normally he/she agrees to what is said. At least that is how it was until we had hour last meeting.
Now: having meetings and talk about thousands of things without not getting even a very old request on the way (at least a yes/no/we are working on it) does not make sense - I prefer to create facts instead of making hundreds of proposals. If one proposal does not go through, why should the others be worked out in hours of work time (that also have an economical value for freelancers like me) and then be put aside? I don't see a sense in this. As long as we do not have at least one decision based on what we proposed only talk does not take us anywhere. So I prefer to edit on free projects until there is some kind of feed-back.
Sorry, I am tired, did sleep approx. 11 hours in three days and should care about things that are obviously not considered by who asked us to consider them? I know that this sounds harsh: but also my free time has a high value: I have two kids with 5 years of age and a husband - so when I work on these things it means not having time for them or not having time for work. I find it fun to work on language issues as long as it makes sense and we get results out of it.
Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
03 March 2007 13:16

Hello Sabine,
Yes, I can understand the value you place on free time. Now that policy development is over, there will probably not be as much discussion. Most requests are fairly obvious; I or another member can propose a decision, and everyone else usually just needs to agree or not respond. This is can be done much more quickly if we can discuss on IRC, but it is possible through email as well.
Ascánder
03 March 2007 18:49

Hi, I've only been reading this list for the last months. However, I try to follow the discussions that are going on here.
Michal Zlatkovský (Timichal)
04 March 2007 03:23

As I already told Pathoschild - my Internet connection is a bit unstable these weeks (should get better this month) - however, I try to read langcom-related discussions here, like Ascander. I'm definitely interested in further work of the committee and I hope I'll be able to be more active soon.
Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
19 April 2007 17:29

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