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Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Pitkern & Norfuk Wikipedia 3

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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 pih: is currently open for discussion by the community.

Proposal

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The Norfuk / Norfolk / Pitkern Wikipedia has been proposed for closing twice before, at Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Pitkern & Norfuk Wikipedia and Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Pitkern & Norfuk Wikipedia 2. It survived each of those attempts, but it shouldn't have, nor should it have been approved originally in 2005. Let's correct that error in a third attempt.

As a summary: the Norfuk Wikipedia is not thriving. That itself is not a reason to close, as we have other low-activity Wikipedia editions. The problem is that it will never thrive; it is not a viable project. In 2008, there were only ~400 speakers of Norfuk in the world (see en:Pitkern language). That number is surely lower now. Additionally, there is (almost) no base of written literature in Norfuk to use; the vast majority of Norfuk speakers use more standardized English for the purpose of writing (Norfuk is an English Creole language). And to my knowledge there is no organization dedicated to preserving and standardizing the language to my knowledge, unlike for some of the other rarely-spoken languages and the like. The project has only ever attracted a single user who claimed to be fluent in Norfuk; he or she didn't add much content, and has not edited since 2012. As a result, with neither fluent speakers nor written literature to "sanity check" the project, we have no idea whether this project is even in Norfuk at all, or would be useful to the very rare Norfuk speaker who'd rather use a tiny Norfuk edition of Wikipedia rather than English Wikipedia. As it stands, this project is an active risk to the language: we may be unknowingly filling tagged examples of Norfuk to random machine learning bots with our own idiosyncratic idea of what the language should be, as the Pitkern / Norfuk Wikipedia is one of the major sources of text classified as being in that language on the Internet. It's like the Scots Wikipedia incident, except if there were no Scots speakers capable of even noticing or knowing there was a problem. We have a responsibility to make sure the encyclopedia is in correct Pitkern, not in some unknown guess by non-speakers.

Extended content:

  • In the event that a genuine Norfuk / Pitkern speaker wants to create some freely-licensed work in the Pitkern language, writing an encyclopedia is probably not the priority. Rather, a book on Wikibooks would be a far better use of time.
  • I don't want to sidetrack this as this is not the base of my argument (as it applies to many low-user count wikis), but as usual, an abandoned Wiki also tends to attract people looking for a free webhost. See pih:Zbigniew Symonowicz for an example - basically written in normal English, sourced to a user-created microblogging site. This is the kind of page that is getting created in 2024 on Norfuk Wikipedia in the absence of actual Norfuk content.
  • I posted on the main page talk (the closest to a community discussion hub the site has) an inquiry on this issue back in 2020 ( pih:Talk:Mien_Paij#Future_of_this_wiki ). There never was a response. None of the content on pih:Talk:Mien Paij appears to be in Pitkern aside from one comment in 2005. The sole semi-active administrator, User:Coconutic, agrees that the project is likely doing more harm than good, and also supports closing the project.

SnowFire (talk) 01:07, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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Support

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  1. Support - the wiki has been affected by AmaryllisGardener whose editing has already had incredibly destructive effects on the Scots Wikipedia and the Scots language. It also qualifies for closure in the same fashion as the Nauruan wiki - the articles are mostly short, single-sentence stubs, and the language is incredibly dubious due to the above-mentioned incident. --176.104.110.11 08:36, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Nobody has edited it for years. I don't know whether anybody that speaks the language will come and edit it and it could have the same abovementioned issue. --Jon Gua (talk) 07:09, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I have seen the history and it's starting to become more lively. ( The Norfuk Wikipedia ) कङञ
  3. Support per above --87.116.164.24 22:09, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support – Not a sustainable project. —ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ (talk) 11:39, 18 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support I find the arguments brought forward for closure convincing, especially the lack of written Norfuk sources and "we have no idea whether this project is even in Norfuk at all". Gestumblindi (talk) 20:22, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support similar case to the Nauruan Wikipedia, just with even less speakers of the language. --Icodense (talk) 14:29, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support useless vanity wiki for a language no-one uses as a formal communication method. Dronebogus (talk) 21:29, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support It would find much better use as a Wikisource or Wiktionary, at least were the language to be preserved. --SHB2000 (t • c) 01:17, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It’s extremely hard to preserve a language with no formalized orthography Dronebogus (talk) 03:35, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That's true. I guess that's a job that should be left to the Norfolk/Australian + Pitcairn linguists. --SHB2000 (t • c) 03:38, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support Move to Incubator. Пан Хаунд 2 (talk) 10:52, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Is there even enough content here to make such a move worthwhile? And is the concept of a Norfuk wiki even viable when it’s a language with very few speakers, who pretty much all speak English, and no standardized orthography or body of written material to work off of? Dronebogus (talk) 11:58, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I believe it's convention to move the content to the incubator once a project is closed. I could be wrong, though. --SHB2000 (t • c) 12:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It is, but in this case it strikes me as pointless Dronebogus (talk) 16:12, 18 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It looks like the project has some Norfuk-language content, created by Pall Mall. Таёжный лес (talk) 11:56, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support The project clearly won't be sustainable. AlphaBetaGamma (talk) 00:44, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support – to get that straight: no admins, only activities are vandalism/spam cleanup, user rename activity, an ip copying templates from enwiki's, and users creating stubs, including the newest article, Avril Lavigne. The random dice returned stubs, and a few more ultra stubs. Feels that the language isn't fit enough to have its own Wikipedia. ToadetteEdit (talk) 10:34, 23 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support Dead wiki, nothing but both and time wasting. * Pppery * it has begun 18:35, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support Per everything said above. --Goodlucksil (talk) 14:18, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support per all above --2A02:587:1814:3900:F925:85DC:82E9:BCD4 18:23, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support and Nuke How can a language with 400 speakers get a Wikipedia? That means there are around only 400 people who could edit Pitkern Wikipedia with native knowledge of it. This Wikipedia was preposterous to approve in the first place. Wheatley2 (talk) 00:41, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Wheatley2: 400 speakers is not the problem. The problem is people who fake knowing the language (or think they actually do know it) and create a mess like with the Scots Wikipedia incident and others. Inari Saami has approximately the same amount of speakers and the Inari Saami Wikipedia is active, thriving, and has become an integral part of the community. - Yupik (talk) 16:32, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree either way. Wheatley2 (talk) 17:27, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Nuking the projects is not technically possible nor would be permissible in this case. A09|(pogovor) 21:39, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support Nuke and do *not* move to the incubator since it will still be polluting machine learning and corpora there as well. -Yupik (talk) 16:24, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support Despite the fact that work is underway on the islands to standardize the language and issue manuals, the existing content is mostly written in the phonetic script of the English language. Таёжный лес (talk) 11:35, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

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  1. Oppose in principle. Correcting is more constructive than closure, as has been demonstrated in other small language wikis. Scottius11 (talk) 06:15, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment

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Previous users who against: @JBW, Lutheraner, Xania, and Josep Maria Roca Peña: (only those who are having edits in this or last year are pinged) Do you still against the 3rd PCP? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:38, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a langcom member, I agree that this project should be closed and make the steps to close this proposal accordingly. In order to see how many pages are salvageable for Incubator, I started to delete one- and two-sentence "X is a country. It's capital is Y" or similar articles. --MF-W 20:51, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I propose it gets nuked, not moved to the incubator. We have no way of verifying that any of it is actually in the language, but the likelihood it isn't based on other similar projects is great. - Yupik (talk) 16:25, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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