Language committee/Archives/2008-02

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January 2008 Language committee (Archives for February 2008) March 2008

For a summary of discussions, see the archives index.

Spanned discussions[edit]

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

Wikipedia Algero-Moroccan Arabic[edit]

No decision was taken on the request for a Algero-moroccan arabic Wikipedia.

  1. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    07 February 2008 07:21

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>


  2. 07 February 2008 12:33

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  3. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    07 February 2008 17:00

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>


  4. 11 February 2008 13:59

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  5. Sabine Cretella
    09 February 2008 02:17

    It is quite simple - even if it is sometimes problematic we base decisions on ISO 639-3. When I look at the page for ary it does exist, is living ... so: there's no two ways about it: we must grant them the wiki (well when all prerequisites are fulfilled).

    Remember: the first exception we make will put us into the situation that we become a "language police" and that is definitely not what we want. Nobody of us has such a high linguistic degree to be able to define all languages of the world. So where would our basis be to decide if something is a language or not?

    I have some languages that don't have an ISO 639-3 code (one of them is Griko Salentino which definitely is an own language), but they don't have a chance to get their wiki because they don't care to apply for a language code - and that's easy enough. They would not have problems to get one because all requests by ISO could be fulfilled. Be sure: I am not going to make the request for them - sorry, but that is community stuff.

    So we will always have to deal with particular cases, but the community can do something about this. If people feel that ary is not a language they have to go to SIL and complain there and ask for deletion of code, but it is useless to come to us, because we cannot determine this.


  6. 11 February 2008 16:11

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  7. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    12 February 2008 02:36

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>


  8. 12 February 2008 13:36

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  9. Sabine Cretella
    CC ISO 639-3/RA
    11 February 2008 16:31

    To whom it may concern:

    My name is Sabine Cretella and I am the chair of the Language Commission of the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimedia.org). Our commission decides about the elegibility of a new project request in any language. Now when the commission was created we agreed to base any decision on the presence of an ISO 639-3 code. Actually we have a request for Moroccan Arabic (ari) which is considered to be a member of the macro language Arabic (ara). Now on the SIL entry itself

    http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=ary

    There is no mention of it being a written only language. But on Ethnologue it is and we have a member in our commission that states that Moroccan Arabic is not elegible since it is considered to be written only by ISO 639-3.

    I know that SIL and Ethnologue are closely connected, but: the maintainer of the code IMHO is SIL and what is on Ethnologue has nothing to do with the actual attribution of the ISO 639-3 code. Or am I wrong there?

    I mean: what does SIL consider as "law" - the description on the SIL website or the one on Ethnologue where much additional info is given?

    Could you please help me by stating which code information is the one to follow? The one on SIL (which is also the only one where one can make change requests to get an ISO 639-3 code updated etc.) or the information o Ethnologue? IMHO SIL is the source that should be followed at 100% and not Ethnologue, but well: that is up to you to decide.

    This problematic will also extend to other foundations which deal with languages, such as Vox Humanitatis (http://voxhumanitatis.org) where I am a founding member and Open Progress (http://openprogress.org) which with OmegaWiki (http://omegawiki.org) is developing a multilingual dictionary. All projects base their decisions on ISO 639-3.

    So please help me with an official statement which we can then forward also to other interested parties.

    Thank you so much for your time and have a great day!

    Sabine Cretella
    Chair of the Language Commission (Volunteer)

  10. Sabine Cretella
    12 February 2008 02:57

    FYI - this is still in moderation queue as much as I understand. I wrote SIL since I want a statement what is binding: SIL or Ethnologue. More and more projects will use ISO 639-3, so they better specify clearly.

  11. Joan Spanne ISO 639-3/RA
    12 February 2008 15:01

    Dear Sabine and Language Commission members,

    The ISO 639-3 site is the authoritative site regarding the standard. Information given about a particular language on the Ethnologue site is separate from, and subsidiary to the standard and should not be considered authoritative. (The Ethnologue website is now, in fact, out of date with regard to all specific code elements that have undergone changes since the creation of the ISO/DIS 639-3 of 2004.) In the particular case in question, the language code element [ary] denotes "Moroccan Arabic" without any reference to its being only spoken/signed, or only written. Indeed, the ISO 639-3 standard does not make such a distinction for any language in its inventory. In the cases of the varieties of Arabic that had, in the Ethnologue (15th ed.) and the early ISO/DIS 639-3 tables, employed the word "spoken" as a part of their names, that word was dropped from the names in the Final Draft International Standard, for the very reason that it was determined that the standard in this part (Part 3) should not make any reference to such distinctions.

    The next edition of the Ethnologue, currently in editorial review, will incorporate updates that have been adopted by the ISO 639-3 standard as of the end of February 2008. Please note that the Ethnologue does maintain a degree of editorial freedom such that, for example, for a given code element it may use a primary name that differs from the ISO 639-3 Reference Name (though the Ethnologue primary name will nearly always be one of the names associated with the code element in the ISO 639-3 standard). However, where there is a difference between information in the ISO 639 standard (any part) and the Ethnologue (in print or on the web), the ISO 639 Registration Authority website (that of either the Library of Congress or SIL International, depending on the specific code element) is authoritative.

    Thank you for writing to me to give me this opportunity to clarify this situation. We welcome input to improve and correct the ISO 639-3 standard from member of the Language Commission and other knowledgeable users of the standard.

    Best regards,

    Joan Spanne
    ISO 639-3/RA
    SIL International


  12. 13 February 2008 14:00

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>


  13. 13 February 2008 14:11

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  14. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    13 February 2008 14:38

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>


  15. 13 February 2008 21:28

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  16. Sabine Cretella
    12 February 2008 15:41

    Thank you so much Joan! This really helps a lot.

    Cheers, Sabine

    Am Dienstag, den 12.02.2008, 14:01 -0600 schrieb:
    >
    > Dear Sabine and Language Commission members,
    >
    > The ISO 639-3 site is the authoritative site regarding the standard.
    > Information given about a particular language on the Ethnologue site
    > is separate from, and subsidiary to the standard and should not be
    > considered authoritative. (The Ethnologue website is now, in fact, out
    > of date with regard to all specific code elements that have
    > undergone .....

  17. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    22 February 2008 15:30

    Dear Joan Spanne,

    I am the archivist for the Wikimedia Foundation language subcommittee. You sent a message to the language subcommittee on February 12th 2007 quoted below. Discussion with the subcommittee is regularly copied to a public archive for transparency, but this is opt-in only. Since you have not agreed to archival, your messages are currently replaced with the note "<this user has not agreed to public archival>".

    Do you agree to the public archival of your emails? Even if you do agree, you can mark any email or comment as private and the message will be replaced by an appropriate note to that effect. The archives can be edited at any time to remove a message you forgot to mark as private.

  18. Joan Spanne ISO 639-3/RA
    25 February 2008 12:03

    Dear Jesse,

    Yes, I agree to the public archival of this message and other messages that I send, except as may be marked private, in the future.

    I noted, but did not directly comment then, that the subject line on the initial message sent to me had the identifier [ari] rather than the correct identifier [ary] for Moroccan Arabic. I stated the correct one in my response. I make typos often enough, and hope I catch the significant ones myself, so I did not think it worth pointing out at the time. I am asking now only because I hope that it was clarified at some point during the discussion thread, that the discussion arose from a question on the [ary] Moroccan Arabic code element (and not [ari] Arikara).

    Best regards,

    Joan Spanne
    ISO 639-3/RA
    SIL International

Wikipedia Norn[edit]

The request for a Norn Wikipedia was rejected.

  1. Shanel Kalicharan (Shanel)
    08 February 2008 16:53

    Hello,

    I propose we reject this request. Apparently the language has been extinct since the 18th or 19th century, and a Norn wikisource seems out of the question as almost no written Norn survives.

  2. Jon Harald Søby
    09 February 2008 03:28

    I concur.

  3. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    09 February 2008 03:30

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

Wikipedia Erzya[edit]

The third request for an Erzya Wikipedia was approved.

  1. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    06 February 2008 15:15

    Hello,

    I propose the final approval of the Wikipedia Erzya. If there is no objection within 48 hours, I'll forward it to the board with the rest of the langcom-approved requests.

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Status/wp/myv

  2. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    06 February 2008 17:44

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  3. Jon Harald Søby
    19 February 2008 08:56

    Jesse, did you forget to forward it? Just asking because of [1]. Anyways, I'll mark the wiki as approved now.

  4. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    19 February 2008 12:51

    Hello,

    This one got lost in the backlog of unarchived langcom discussions. I've written a much better archival script that processes entire gmail threads at a time, and I'm implementing decisions as I archive the relevant discussions (28 threads left out of 67).

Wikipedia Gan[edit]

The request for a Gan Wikipedia was approved.

  1. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    20 February 2008 13:53

    Hello,

    I propose the final approval of the Gan Wikipedia. If there are no objections within 48 hours, I'll include it in the batch recommendation to the board this week.

    < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Status/wp-gan >

  2. Jon Harald Søby
    20 February 2008 14:04

    I concur.

Wikipedia Sranan Tongo[edit]

No decision was taken on the second request for a Sranan Tongo Wikipedia.

  1. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    20 February 2008 14:47

    Hello,

    I propose the final approval of the Sranan Tongo Wikipedia. If there's no objections within 48 hours, I'll include it in the batch recommendation to the board this week.

    < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Status/wp/srn >

  2. Jon Harald Søby
    20 February 2008 15:03

    I concur.

  3. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    21 February 2008 14:49

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  4. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    08 March 2008 14:33

    Hello Gerard,

    Please take another look at the test project, where they've been working to expand their existing articles. If all goes well, I'd like to include it in this batch of approvals or the next one.

  5. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    08 March 2008 16:06

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  6. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    08 March 2008 17:22

    There is one: can anyone ceritify that this really is written in Sranan Tongo?

  7. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    08 March 2008 18:12

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  8. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    09 March 2008 14:32

    I'm positive you are right, but we would NEVER have accepted such an answer for the languages we previously checked. Walter is not someone who is competent to identify a language (nothing personal, but if we accept Walter we can pretty much accept self-certification from just anyone). I still think we should check it properly.

  9. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    09 March 2008 15:25

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  10. Bèrto 'd Sèra
    09 March 2008 16:24

    Yes, if he lived there then it's okay. We would accept a say from a member of LangCom, and basically none of us is any better qualified than he is.

Japanese Wikiversity[edit]

The second request for a Japanese Wikiversity was approved.

  1. Gerard Meijssen (GerardM)
    21 February 2008 18:54

    <this user has not agreed to public archival.>

  2. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    21 February 2008 20:04

    Hello,

    Agreed. The test project is active, and I have little fear it will become inactive given the size of the Japanese community.

    < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Status/wv/ja >

Summary of recent closures[edit]

A summary of recent closures that were discussed some time ago or not at all.

  1. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    22 February 2008 14:57

    Hello,

    This is just a routine notification of recent rejections that were discussed some time ago or not at all.


    ==Wikinews simple English==

    ==Wikipedia Jeju==

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2007-11#Wikipedia_British_English_.26_Hanja_.26_Jeju_.26_pre-reform_Russian_.26_Hantec.2C_Wikispecies_simple_English

    • discussion 2:

    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-01#Wikipedia_Jeju

    • closed by: Pathoschild

    ==Wikipedia Norn==

    ==Wikipedia simple French==

    ==Wikipedia Tuscan==

    ==Wikiversity Classical Japanese==

    ==Wiktionary Värmlandic==

  2. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    23 February 2008 01:27

    A minor correction: The discussion for the Wikipedia Norn request is at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee/Archives/2008-02#Wikipedia_Norn

Language subcommittee approvals[edit]

The requests for an Erzya Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Gan Wikipedia, and Japanese Wikiversity were approved.

  1. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    CC Florence Nibart-Devouard (Board Chairperson), Cary Bass (Volunteer Coordinator)
    23 February 2008 05:13

    Hello,

    The language subcommittee recommends the approval of the following wikis. You can find more information about each request by following the links to the status pages, which collect the relevant information and links. As we've previously agreed with the board, these recommendations will be implemented if there are no objections within four days.

  2. Jesse Plamondon-Willard (Pathoschild)
    CC Florence Nibart-Devouard (Board Chairperson), Cary Bass (Volunteer Coordinator)
    23 February 2008 05:18

    (The last link should be labeled as the Japanese Wikiversity*.)
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