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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 kl: is currently open for discussion by the community.

I wrote an article about this topic some months ago in the German Kurier, which you can find here. I am the only active admin in the Greenlandic Wikipedia. When I became admin, there were around 1500 articles, most of them consisting only of a few words or completely unintelligible. I deleted most of them some years ago, so now there are only around 250 articles left, which more or less consist of some sentences, which seem to be written by Greenlanders. In the last 20 years there have only been one or two Greenlandic users in the project, even though the language has around 60,000 speakers and is the official language in Greenland. There are almost no articles written in the last five years.

I learned Greenlandic as a foreign language, I am an academic in this field and have previously worked at the Greenlandic language secretary. There they are working with language technology and machine translation, and they made the first Greenlandic machine translator, which though produces a lot of mistakes. But they are very vigilant about correct language and that there aren't produced any machine translated Greenlandic texts, which could influence and harm the Greenlandic language as an indigenous language with few speakers. With nearly no possibilities to write Greenlandic without actually learning the language, Greenlandic and the Greenlandic Wikipedia only had few problems with wrong and bad language on Wikipedia, but absolutely no growth either, since there haven't been any users in the last decade whatsoever. When the language secretary launched the first machine translator, some people began spamming the Greenlandic Wikipedia with machine translated articles, which where absolutely rubbish, making no sense at all, but since the translator translates every word it doesn't know from the lexicon, to "+???", uses of the translator have been quite obvious. Then Wikimedia launched its own AI translator, which was even worse, and this one produced completely random letter sequences, that often didn't even looked like Greenlandic. Some months ago Google Translate launched a Greenlandic AI translator and this one is quite impressive since it is able to construct complex Greenlandic sentences, which seem intelligible. Nonetheless it often makes mistakes and actually it is quite bad at semantics. In the start "I am a Greenlander" was translated to "I am a fish" and "reindeer" becomes "parrot".

Now every few days some people around the world write articles in Greenlandic using Google Translate and they seem fine, but are insufficient nonetheless. I just deleted five articles from the last few days: (1) a country named "Ælbani", which should have been "Albania", I don't know, where this meaningless spelling comes from, (2) about Romania, stating that the country lies in the south of the European Arctic, using "background" as word for "flag", (3) about a Russian town, most people never have heard of, using some sentences, which ignore Greenlandic grammar and using foreign words, making it unintelligible for native speakers, (4) about "winter", but the sentences were missing half of it, (5) about Canada, stating the country has 41 inhabitants instead of 41 million.

In bigger projects there are many users, that can spot those articles and they get deleted, but in the Greenlandic Wikipedia I am the only user, who is checking, what is written and edited, and none of the users, who "write" these "articles", cannot even comprehend, what they produce. I have connections to the Greenlandic government, and they would actually see Wikipedia as a threat for the Greenlandic language, directly counteracting official Greenlandic language policies.

This is really bad for Wikipedia's reputation and it's a problem, that I am the only person in the Wikimedia Community, who is able to check at least to some extent, if the articles are intelligible or have factual or grammatical mistakes. That said, Greenlandic actually is one of the bigger small languages, and my guess is, that there are dozens of Wikimedia projects, that haven't seen a single user, that speaks the language, for years.

In my opinion this project is an absolute fiasco: Without any users you would think, that a dead project maybe does not do anything useful, but either it would harm, but actually it corrupts the Greenlandic language and the societal and political wish for language preserving. I would actually recommend to close the project (and many others), but I know, that project closure proposals almost never get accepted, so at least I want to discuss the problem and get some comments from the global community, especially other users, that have to do with indigenous languages. --Kenneth Wehr (talk) 11:29, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion: Closure of Greenlandic Wikipedia

[edit]
Support Closure Part of me is thinking back to the Scots Wikipedia page and how it affected the Scots language as a whole. It's mistakes affected even official documents. I think this project is too small and unnotable, especially since Greenlandic is a first language for so few people. Sangsangaplaz (talk) 03:29, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure it is correct to say mistakes on Scots wiki have affected official documents. Do you have examples? Battleofalma (talk) 10:27, 30 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you expand a bit on why it’s not possible for those people in Greenlandic government to get involved in building upon Greenlandic Wikipedia instead of closing it down? Especially if you are quoting some ‘connections’ you have there. I get that low-quality material is a problem, but it doesn’t seem like a huge problem given that the entire wiki is only 243 articles. Those can be checked and copy-edited in a week at most, and maintenance of such small quantity of pages does not require a lot. stjn[ru] 15:20, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi User:stjn: Greenland is a Western country, but with so few people, they neither have the ressources or interest in contributing for free, since many people have to earn money in order to pay their bills and food, and they use their spare time for other purposes. I have tried for years to find people in Greenland, who want to contribute to Wikipedia, and have found none. There are many Greenlanders, who aren't good at Danish, and those don't know English at all, but those have the least capabilities to contribute to Wikipedia, and those, who can read Danish and English, would use other language versions. I believe, that 99 % of the Greenlandic population doesn't even know, that there is a Greenlandic Wikipedia. The government doesn't have any money to invest in such things, since they already lack money for many standard welfare purposes.
I can read and write Greenlandic, but not on a native level, and it's hard for me to evaluate, if an article is sufficient Greenlandic, even if it seems okay at first glance. With no native speaker user at all, the project is hopeless.
That said, I would say, that there is an even bigger problem with to other wikis: Greenlandic is an official language and it has ca. 60,000 speakers. It is related to Inuktitut and Iñupiatun, which are spoken in Canada and Alaska. While Greenlandic often is the only language, people speak sufficiently, all speakers of Inuktitut and Iñupiatun also speak French or English, and they have even fewer speakers (ca. 40,000 and ca. 10,000), making it even harder to find a Wikipedia community there. Even though I didn't learn those languages, I can understand enough for being able to evaluate, that around 80 % of the articles in these language versions are completely insufficient, too. Many don't contain any text at all, only the page title and an image, others seem like fake language with strange spellings for countries you cannot find anywhere else on the internet. They seem to have been written by a user stating he has Portuguese as his native language with no or nearly no knowledge of Iñupiatun. If the Greenlandic Wikipedia, no Greenlander ever has asked for, is closed, those other two (iu: and ik:) also should be. --Kenneth Wehr (talk) 10:35, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Amqui:, as the only admin for iu.wiki (and active in other Indigenous wikiprojects), should probably be looped into this. ik.wiki has no admins. Safrolic (talk) 02:41, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the ping. Amqui (talk) 00:38, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support Closure per above. As of posting this comment, there are insufficient people who could contribute to the project. I hope small wikis should be closely monitored for AI generated text. --Ahri Boy (talk) 01:20, 28 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Closure. As long as we have motivated Wikipedians looking after a project, the Wikipedias of small languages in particular should run. With Kenneth we have an active maintainer. We should not hinder him in his commitment, but rather ask how we can continue to support him. --J. Patrick Fischer (talk) 13:59, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure There is no point in having a Wikipedia with almost no content when no one with sufficient command of the language ever writes new content. It is pointless to demand or expect Kenneth to continue to clean up machine-translated contributions with language errors in a dead Wikipedia. If some Greenlandic speakers want to contribute at a later time, they can propose a reopening at that time. --Dipsacus fullonum (talk) 14:17, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose closure. As was discussed yome years ago somewhere within this multiple wikinews clusure diskussion inactivity is no reason for closing a wikimedia projekt. Also the project has an active admin who can be helped by global admins and other involved in the small Wiki surveiling project (or however its proper name is). Also I think that WMF should reach out to the greenland government. It is their language to preserve which also is what a government should do and a Wikipedia language version is undoubtly helping preserve that language alive. So a functional Wikipedia in greenlandic should be an observe their geoverment should be interested in. --Matthiasb (talk) 16:08, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am about to contact some people in Greenland in order to collect some official statements, because I don't really want to talk on behalf of Greenland, when nobody actually is aware of this. So I will come with more information in maybe a week or two. @Matthiasb: As Dipsacus fullonum writes, I don't know, why I have to maintain the project nobody actually is interested in. And even though I maybe can use my spare time on this, global admins aren't any help at all, since they cannot read anything in this project and can't recognize vandalism or spam or fake language, as it is the case for many other wikis with zero active native speaker users. --Kenneth Wehr (talk) 18:53, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(not logged in since I'm on the phone rn) It's my understanding that the foundation has a multi million budget for diversity and inclusion etc. Earmark some money to get at least a small Greenlandic school project going? I suppose as usually you don't get money if you don't ask for it.
In any case, a Wikipedia that doesn't have a single native speaker seems to be somewhere between pointless and patronizing. --2A02:8071:B685:2C00:C93:B80:CD6B:AFC0 06:56, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure per Dipsacus' statement. --Achim55 (talk) 20:20, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure. If the only user of kl: concludes after several years that maintaining it is pointless, it cannot be a solution to ask him to continue and make abstract demands. This rather shows disrespect for Kenneth's diligence. Users who react here with “oppose” may want to save other questionable projects with those abstract demands. However, this discussion should not be superimposed on the problem with kl:. --2003:F1:C700:7501:300C:A5D4:BBBE:FC35|Aalfons 22:25, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure It's clearly unsustainable. I reject the silly notion that if literally the only person taking care of it doesn't want to do so anymore, we should find ways to make it better rather than just let him off the hook. Kenneth has clearly done as well as any of us could, but the project is hopeless and it seems the native-speaking population do not value it, so I see no harm in closing it, and I could see active harm in forcing it to stay open with a single caretaker who is clearly at the end of their rope. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:26, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Closure It is important to have Wikipedias of small languages. I'm speaking Danish, but it is completely different in Greenlandic and I can't help. Perhaps a few people can collaborate, but there won't be that many native speakers. "Klein aber fein" is said in German. Preferably fewer articles but in good quality. I think that we should support Kenneth as an active maintainer and it is the wrong way to close the project. --Fyrtaarn (talk) 14:30, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure Kenneth, the administrator of the project has tried very hard to make this project work and if he doesn't see a way to make it work then I seriously doubt anyone can. Many of these "oppose closure" votes do not fundamentally address Kenneth's substantial rationale for closure and in my opinion are disrespectful of Kenneth and the effort he has put into the project. It's easy to "oppose closure" when you just expect someone else to keep maintaining a project without having to put in any effort yourself. I think the risk of the Greenlandic Wikipedia being overrun with poor quality AI-translated slop (which as Kenneth has written, he is the only thing really stopping at the moment, and is a realistic outcome if the wiki is kept and Kenneth stops actively maintaining the project) seriously outweighs any potential benefits of keeping the wiki open. Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:53, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose closure Would it be possible to contact Greenlandic/Danish media to write about the issue? Maybe new volunteers might join the project. (Also, some of those problems you listed, like Canada having 41 inhabitants, were easily fixable - I don't really understand the need to delete the article just because it had one mistake in it, assuming it only had that one.) --Krmarci (talk) 16:10, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have tried this since 2018. I had a Facebook group and tried with a workshop with advertisement, but no one showed up. There were two or three national news articles about me in Greenland, where I asked, if there were any interested volunteers. I have not found a single soul, wo is interested in contributing to a Greenlandic Wikipedia. The only people who have the time and financial ressources to do voluntary work, use to read the Danish or English language version, and it seems to me there are other possibilities for helping each other in such small communities than writing an encyclopedia from scratch. For your second question: I can find the obvious mistakes. If there are obvious ones, the less obvious ones also have to be there. I showed some articles to a friend and she said they sounded strange and clearly written by a non-Greenlander. That's also the reason why I – even though I can write Greenlandic – don't contribute by myself, because I might not write a more natural Greenlandic than AI does, even though I don't use to write wrong words or wrong facts like AI does. --Kenneth Wehr (talk) 16:55, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure. Would have never been moved out of Incubator because of a lack of participation. Everything is said about the current status of klwiki. It's about time to either go to read-only or move it to Incubator where it could have a chance for a restart although I believe Kenneth that this will likely not happen. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 18:08, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure I find it strange, to leave this project open, if no one of the active writer supports the position, to leave the Greenlandic Wikipedia open. And as Kenneth has reported, there is so much "vandalism" with fake Translation. From my point of view, this fake Translation is even worse than "vandalism", as nobody from outside can detect it, and it might have bad influence on the Greenlandic language.
Last argument: Many Oppose closure voters arguing, there is an active admin (Kenneth Wehr). So he can continue with housekeeping at this project. But if he is silently leaving? Who will then take care? Who will then close the Greenlandic Wikipedia?
And some words about AI translator: I am using AI translators from German language to others in WikiData for translating Label & Description. And I use AI translators for translation from other languages to German. The translation is OK, but not good. I expect it is increasing over time. BUT: German is a big language, with roughly 100 Mio. speakers or more, with lot of written text (books, newspapers, even Wikipedia) to train the AI and there is a big Business behind. All this I don't see at the Greenlandic language. So, there will be no reliable translators in the next ten to twenty years; So no big improvement expected from my side for AI translators translating to Greenlandic language.
As Kenneth Wehr mentioned, he like to get some feedback from Greenlandic officials. This is good. I would change my mind, if the Government gets in or more native speaker get more aktive. --GodeNehler (talk) 18:21, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose closure. Unless we have heard from Wikimedia Danmark that they have tried and failed to revitalize Greenlandic Wikipedia, we haven't tried every reasonable approach and shouldn't be so hasty in nominating a project for closure. OhanaUnitedTalk page 18:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kenneth Wehr Has there been any attempted at contact? If so, has there been a response? All Tomorrows No Yesterdays (talk) 14:07, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Steenth Have you ever discussed this topic at WMDK? --Kenneth Wehr (talk) 14:11, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm currently composing an email to the board but that works too. All Tomorrows No Yesterdays (talk) 14:13, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose closure - We are on the doorstep of an age when machine translation is capable of fully populating content of something like Greenlandic-WP. While it might be necessary to temporarily lock down new additions, I suppose, it strikes me as extremely short-sighted to shut down this project completely. Carrite (talk) 01:05, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure - To all the editors voting to oppose this , will you work with the OP to help clean up greenlandic Wikipedia? If not then please dont make it harder for them. Wikipedia holds a tremendous power to completely reshape a language or even destroy it. We are all aware of what happened at scots Wikipedia. This seems like a similar situation. I doubt there is anything to be gained by having it other than the damage it is causing to the greenlandic language. Ratnahastin (talk) 03:04, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose closure - this is something, only the active Community of this language Wikipedia has to decide. -- Marcus Cyron (talk) 22:46, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But it appears that the problem that this language wikipedia has no community, as the people that speak the language have largely not been contributing Cmrc23 (talk) 23:32, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, this oppose seems to completely have missed the point that a lack of a local community that actively edits this project is exactly the problem. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:35, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support Closure — Given the number of active users of klwiki who speak Greenlandic as the mother tongue is zero, and the sole caretaker of this wiki is not even a native speaker of Greenlandic, I doubt whether it is a really good idea to leave this dead project to a single user. Some oppose !votes say that we should invite Wikimedia Danmark/Greenlandic media/Government of Greenland to try to revitalize klwiki, but I think doing so as an Incubator wiki is much better than as an established wiki. --Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 06:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure with managed retention: Since the 2020 Scots Wikipedia RfC (where I - a native speaker - favoured deletion as the least-bad outcome), the scavenging of online texts by LLM firms has increased the threat to small languages: that a circular consumption, ill-digestion and pushing out new texts will rapidly replace real with synthetic languages. (This is already why I am reluctant to contribute to Wikipedias in languages where I have some knowledge, but where there is a dearth of other eyes who might correct my errors.) In this case, it seems to me that the safest option for preserving the work already done by Kenneth Wehr and conserving the text integrity would be to switch the existing Wiki to read-only with a Banner or to copy it to an incubation space. AllyD (talk) 09:00, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Let me start by claiming that we'd all love to have a thriving Greenlandic Wikipedia with an active community of natives and non-natives and high-quality content. Unfortunately, as elaborated by Kenneth, that's not the way things stand as of today. The question, how the issues around this project should be dealt with, is a delicate one, which is why I don't want to argue for or against its closure prematurely.

After having had a boom in the early days, we as Wikipedians/Wikimedians at large now need to understand that the development of any given Wikipedia project is neither necessarily unlimited exponential growth, nor necessarily any kind of growth at all. There are good reasons why new projects don't get approved easily today. We could also have an argument, whether getting a new project out of Incubator has become too difficult. Long story short, there are Wikipedias that lack severily in terms of activity, size, growth, userbase, quality control etc. If such projects were still in Incubator, they would (at best) stay there.

I have no idea if the Greenlandic Wikipedia has or has had a realistic chance to solve its issues, but I trust Kenneth's words that he did the humanly possible. I do also believe his words that with the current situation there is a tangible risk to rather endanger the language than to protect/document/advance it.

I'd be curious to read statements by the Wikimedia Language committee, the Greenlandic authorities, by Wikimedia Danmark, by the Nordic academia beside Kenneth Wehr, etc. However, the future of the Greenlandic Wikipedia is not to be decided by external voices. On the other hand, the independence of Wikimedia does not mean that we should do the opposite of what external stakeholders agree upon just for the sake of showing off.

Acknowledging what was decided for the Nauruan Wikipedia (whether this is comparable or not I do not know) the most reasonable thing might be to put the Greenlandic Wikipedia into Incubator. If one day in future there is a thriving community, I am sure that everybody will welcome its return to being an official Wikipedia project. Up until then the existing content (that is not out of scope) should be kept with the chance to be improved further and without the issues that come with the Wikipedia label.

Best regards, → «« Man77 »» [de] 13:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I don't think that a small number of native speakers and articles is the reason to close the Wikipedia. There are Wikipedias in languages of Taiwan with a small number of native speakers.

I propose only to delete all non-Greenlandic articles. Пан Хаунд 2 (talk) 16:46, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There appear to be no native Greenlandic speakers editing this project at all. "None" is different than a "small number". Beeblebrox (talk) 22:37, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Closure No valid reason for closure of total project. If a user writes problematic articles block the user and delete the articles. --Holder (talk) 17:41, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If a user writes problematic articles block the user and delete the articles.

The problem is not just with problematic articles, but with the lack of active users, excluding Kenneth. Wikimedia projects (not just Wikipedias in different languages) are not supposed to be one-man armies but collaborative spaces. There's no "boss" in Wikimedia, just volunteers with different user rights. If a Wikimedia project has a lack of volunteers for >5 years and if there's no way to bring more volunteers through national authorities or Wikimedia chapters, it is better to close that project. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 18:44, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From what I can tell there is one 4 or higher editor regularly working on the project and they are the one proposing it be closed. If there are no editors proficient in the language knowing which articles are problematic becomes difficult and reliant on machine translation, which seems insufficient to the task in the instance. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:11, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Inactivity is no valid reason for closure of a project. --Holder (talk) 17:52, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Holder: I have said that both problematic articles and inactivity have plagued this Wikipedia. If there are problematic articles in an active wiki, the users would be responsible for this, and they would take efforts to clean up. But if the project is inactive for years but there are a lot of non-stub non-problematic articles, the project would be "soft closed", that is the project would become read-only with no users at all. However, Greenlandic Wikipedia:
  • Is largely inactive with only one user.
  • Has several problematic articles.
  • Does not have non-stub articles that are not problematic.
This is why I think moving the project to Incubator is the best way forward. However, if there are still objections, I think the project should be "soft closed", as keeping it open will exacerbate the existing issues. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 18:08, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just to build on what Sbb has said the problem for me is actually "activity" not inactivity. If there is activity where the Greenlandic language is use/abused on the project without correction that could be quite troubling given the way AIs use Wikipedias. We could be looking at Scotch Wikipedia issue only worse. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:28, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure. I find Kenneth's arguments convincing. In addition: If machine translation for Greenlandic really improves in the coming years, users will be able to use it themselves to translate foreign-language articles in their browsers. Leaving AI slop online doesn't help them (and also becomes a risk for the language, especially if it is then used to train the next generation of AI translation tools). Polibil (talk) 18:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure. The one speaker and the wiki's lone admin is requesting closure. I do not see any indication that from those voting to retain the wiki that they have plans and intentions to step up there and maintain it somehow. I do not see any indication that those voting to retain can read, write, or speak the language. The theoretical path forward to keeping the Scots Wikipedia was to attract, recruit, and onboard native speakers.[1] Where are the native speakers this time? If an LLM or machine translator gets to the point where a page can be auto-translated from English Wikipedia or one of the other major language Wikpedias: then people can read the up-to-date articles translated with a browser extension or web app. The hypothetical possibility of hosting an unmaintained catalog of machine-translation snapshots of out-of-date Wikipedia pages for native speakers who may never arrive, does not seem like a good plan, Rjjiii (talk) 23:42, 1 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, exactly.

If an LLM or machine translator gets to the point where a page can be auto-translated from English Wikipedia or one of the other major language Wikpedias: then people can read the up-to-date articles translated with a browser extension or web app.

I think this is what Abstract Wikipedia is aiming for, where "people can create and maintain Wikipedia articles in a language-independent way" and "[a] particular language Wikipedia can translate this language-independent article into its language". Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 02:40, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure - if you want to support Kenneth, close the project. He has done his best and explained how the project with no active speakers can do more harm than good. We’re not at the stage where AI can translate the articles properly. starship.paint (exalt) 08:35, 3 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure. A Wikipedia that threatens a small language is no good. Perrak (talk) 22:16, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support closure. Scandinavia is an example how a small language Wikipedia can thrive (Inari Sami). That being said, bogus content that isn't in the language proper can be absolutely disastrous if not purged (Scots Wikipedia). In the case the allegations are true I don't see how the Wikipedia can survive in it's current form. --176.104.110.11 12:50, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure as I believe it to be counterproductive to keep it open. Ktkvtsh (talk) 02:51, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support closure (with regret). I do think that such a Wikipedia could exist if there were sufficient interest among Greenlanders/Greenland's provincial government to make sure that the Greenlandic being written is genuine and/or point out where machine translation is destructively wrong. But, if we have a problem with the content being generally incomprehensible to Greenlanders/not in Greenlandic, and we don't have the volunteers to remediate this issue, then we've probably got to stop the bleeding. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 02:57, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure; the time has come and it is plainly clear that only Kenneth has come to actively contribute to this wiki. This is a disappointing moment but nothing can really be done here, it's just not possible to exist right now. Kline • talk • contribs 03:01, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As far as I understood Kenneth, he doesn't even actively contribute to klwiki because he doesn't want to influence the language as a non-native speaker. Looking at his new articles there, this seems to be correct. Best, —DerHexer (Talk) 08:43, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure These pseudotranslations are doing much more harm than good for this one man wiki. If and when the Greenlandic community are willing to contribute to a Greenlandic Wikipedia, it should be reopened. 115.188.138.105 09:44, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral By 20 January, Donald Trump will be back to White House by his second POTUS presidency, and during these days, Trump always claim by his Truth Social "e-trumpet" that Greenland shall be a part of US, besides, there are indeed several Greenland peoples who against to continue as a Danish realm, and support Trump's claim. Due to recent political matters, I don't know if moving this project into Incubator is a good idea or not, although Incubator has more administrators than klwiki, edit wars on certain one test project, however, can't be handled easily by them easily. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:56, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Let's not to dwell on hypothetical situations like this, as Trump's claims should be taken with a grain of salt. Also, even if Greenland were independent and/or a part of the US, there will be non-native Danish and English speakers in Greenland, like how there are non-native English speakers in former British colonies whose official language is not English. I still support closing klwiki in favour of dawiki and enwiki. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 02:48, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have contacted a former chief of department, who has good relations to the Greenlandic government. He said that there obviously is no interest in a Greenlandic Wikipedia among the Greenlandic population and that the government should not be bothered with engaging in this. He also said that reading articles in other languages with automatic translations would be the better idea than creating translated copies from other languages that become outdated very fast. I also wrote to the media, but they showed no interest in publishing a newspaper article about this proposal. --Kenneth Wehr (talk) 14:47, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's a bleak picture of Greenland's so-called "national language", and it seems like no one in Greenland is interested to the idea of reading encyclopedia (or similar) in their native language, instead preferring foreign-language encyclopedias. I would expect people to prefer reading content in their native language(s), but the case is opposite in Greenland. Probably the very complex grammar of Greenlandic is distracting the native speakers from using their native language, while Danish and English grammars are cinches to them. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 14:56, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The well-educated part is fluent in Danish and English. The less well-educated part of the population doesn’t read encyclopedias, is my guess. --Kenneth Wehr (talk) 15:01, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure; Any open wikipedia requires active editors who are in a position to tell correct use of the respective language from mistakes and gibberish. Else else it will fail because over time other actors will contribute and inadvertently introduce mistakes with no one to correct. If this situation persists, the errors will be used by other actors to further their language skills, thus poisoning the well. Sadly, klwiki lacks native speakers in their roster of active editors and even more sadly, it does not look like this will change anytime soon. -<(kmk)>- (talk) 00:29, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • If the administration of the wiki wants it closed then there's no good reason to deny them their wish. * Pppery * it has begun 05:35, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support closure. I, the other administrator of the Greenlandic Wikipedia, regretfully also support closing it or moving it to the Incubator. To my knowledge, at most only a handful of native speakers were ever active, and the last one was years ago. The last user unsuccesfully tried to recruit family and friends to contribute. - Kaare (talk) 19:14, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support closure - Actually I don't think it should matter what people from outside KLWIKI like me say on this topic: the only people active on KLWIKI have told us what they wish to do, and without them there is no project in any event. If they need our support in putting that in to effect, then I am happy to lend that support. Hopefully the Wiki itself can be archived in some form (e.g., by moving to the incubator), if in the future anyone wishes to resurrect it, it can be resurrected. FOARP (talk) 15:55, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support closure. After this was posted on the German Wikipedia, I looked at the recent changes a few times and got to see some edits before they were reverted. Even as a complete non-speaker it was obvious 100% of those contributions have been invalid. Small sample, but that supports the request. Windharp (talk) 07:07, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure, sadly and reluctantly. I would be delighted if native Greenlandic speakers came along and took charge but, per Kenneth's statement and subsequent replies, he's been trying to drum up interest for years with no luck. When the constant vigilance of one non-native speaker is the only thing preventing this from turning into Scots Wikipedia, this just isn't a sustainable situation. Botterweg (talk) 01:03, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support closure - with literally no native speaker contributors, and the only active admin considering project unsustainable and potentially even harmful through language corruption, closure is the most sensible choice.--Staberinde (talk) 20:36, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly support closure. The primary contributor to the project no longer believes in it and is worried about ongoing societal harm should the project continue. Asking that person to either keep maintaining the project or risk consequences for society strikes me as a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and I see no reason why Mr. Wehr deserves such a thing. Richard Yin (talk) 10:06, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It could be changed back to read/write once a user makes a request in Greenlandic and English accompanied by a short new article and three stubs. e 10:47, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Closing" a wiki is setting it to read-only. * Pppery * it has begun 19:14, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Pppery: I thought that "closing" a wiki would move it to Incubator, and Incubator wikis are open to contributions. On the other hand, "soft closure" would set it to read-only. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 19:18, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it would do that. And the site at kl.wikipedia.org would still exist, and be read only. "soft closure" usually means editing the main page or sitenotice to state the project is inactive without technically changing anything. * Pppery * it has begun 19:19, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose closure -- Although I think I understand @Kenneth Wehr's pain and frustration, I think something could still be done rather than taking the Wikipedia entirely away from the mainspace to the Incubator. Probably, there can be programs created within the year with edit-a-thons and incentives to keep the editors active with Rapid grant support. Maybe getting university students studying Greenlandic to become Wikimedians by taking a campaign to them could help. You may have done your best, but you may need support from at least one person from the language-speaking community to help grow the project's community. There could be support from other language-centred groups from North America and around the world to help out in creating satellite Greenlandic Wikimedia communities to promote Wikimedia activities in the language. Out of 20 people, perhaps, at least one or two serious editors may arise. Kambai Akau (talk) 00:45, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[2] "I wrote two substubs with Google Translate. As I know you want them to be in genuine Greenlandic, so do translate them now!" That sums it up quite well. Others leave rubbish there and expect me to do the work (even though Greenlandic still isn't my native language). I don't even understand what one of the articles is about, since its only content is: "Stephen Harper, from 2004 to 2015 as chairman being the party's very first one." I'm tired of this... --Kenneth Wehr (talk) 11:27, 31 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The point of closure

[edit]

I think what stops me from voting in support of this is that currently, Language Committee is experimenting with allowing a number of smaller languages to pre-open Wikipedias outside of Wikimedia Incubator (I think currently they’ve opened 5 of these) so it’s easier for them to kickstart a new project. So even if everyone votes to close the project, it might be re-opened a few years down the line if that experiment proves better for how new wikis get to be opened. So while I think I agree that keeping a project that no one contributes constructively to is not very useful, that consideration is what stops me from agreeing entirely with the proposal. Can we get some feedback from Langcom on how those plans might affect proposals such as this one first? stjn[ru] 18:07, 7 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think what stops me from voting in support of this is that currently, Language Committee is experimenting with allowing a number of smaller languages to pre-open Wikipedias outside of Wikimedia Incubator (I think currently they’ve opened 5 of these) so it’s easier for them to kickstart a new project.

@Stjn: Are you talking about Incubator Plus 2.0 (previously hosted in Wikia, now in Miraheze)? But that wiki is for those Wikimedia-like projects that are not eligible for Incubator. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 02:30, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Sbb1413: please do not ping me in this discussion any further. Especially since if I was talking about Incubator Plus, I would mention it explicitly. And Greenlandic is by definition eligible for Incubator, so me talking about it here would be doubly irrelevant. Since you made me look, I am talking about phab:T376772 / Proposal to try a new approach to onboarding a language wiki. stjn[ru] 02:44, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for any inconvenience. I usually ping users for comments, but if it hurts you, I'm sorry for this. Thank you for the link, though. Sbb1413 (he) (talk • contribs) 02:51, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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