Archives/2007-03-05

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Archived discussion
This was a March 2007 email discussion about localization. No consensus was reached.


1.

Gerard Meijssen
05 March 2007 08:36


<this user has not agreed to public archival.>

2.

Berto 'd Sera
05 March 2007 08:56


Hoi!

<this text is quoted from a user who has not agreed to public archival.>

I support this. One question, are the people aware of the need for localization? Maybe we should add it in the request template? We are close to a 100% of negative cases; maybe we have a communication problem.

Bèrto

3.

Gerard Meijssen
05 March 2007 09:19


<this user has not agreed to public archival.>

4.

Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
05 March 2007 12:59


Hello,

I strongly disagree. Localization is best done by the communities that would benefit from it. If technically necessary, the community can start with an English interface and translate it live; these translations can then be added to the localization files for future projects. It is easy to localize live with Special:Allmessages. If we must have a fully localized interface before starting, we can make a wiki page like Special:Allmessages on the incubator that users can translate.

Denying requests on such a minor technicality will be extremely aggravating for users who have already been waiting nearly half a year for the subcommittee to make minor changes to the existing policy. Further, this will significantly slow localization efforts, since there will be no community benefiting from it and no easy method to do so.

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

5.

GerardM
05 March 2007 13:04


<this user has not agreed to public archival.>

6.

Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
05 March 2007 13:38


Hello GerardM,

Sorry if I misunderstood. In that case we don't want to *reject* requests without localization, we want to *conditionally approve* them until they localize. I'll discuss with the incubator community to find a way to simplify this until the betawiki functionality is available.

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

7.

Gerard Meijssen
05 March 2007 14:04


<this user has not agreed to public archival.>

8.

Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
05 March 2007 14:13


Hello,

I think you might be misunderstanding what I mean by 'conditionally approve'. As described by the language proposal policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP#Conditional_approval>, this allows us to decide that an edition in that language is feasible, while refusing to approve the project until other criteria are met. In most cases, we would conditionally approve until a viable test project is formed with sufficient localization.

Conditional approval means a test project on incubator, not the approval of a new wiki. Once the missing criteria have been met, they can submit it to our attention for approval.

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

9.

Gerard Meijssen
05 March 2007 14:38


<this user has not agreed to public archival.>

10.

Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
05 March 2007 14:44


Hello,

If you have no better name for it, the 'stinky' terminology will have to suffice. I disagree that any language with a code can be conditionally approved; for example, I will never agree to a United States English Wikipedia, despite it having the standard RFC 4646 code 'en-US'.

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

11.

GerardM
05 March 2007 14:48


<this user has not agreed to public archival.>

12.

Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
05 March 2007 14:53


Hello,

A 'go ahead to the Incubator phase' would be misleading; we invite users to create a test project at any time before or after conditional approval. Conditional approval is, indeed, conditional approval; we are essentially saying "This proposal looks good, and we'll approve it if you can just meet this missing criteria." If we are not going to approve them after they meet those criteria, we should obviously not conditionally approve them.

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

13.

GerardM
05 March 2007 15:00


<this user has not agreed to public archival.>

14.

GerardM
06 March 2007 11:28


<this user has not agreed to public archival.>

15.

Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
06 March 2007 14:14


Hello,

Have you read the policy at all in the last six months? I don't think the policy can be any clearer about the relevance of voting: "*However, this is not a vote.* The project will be assessed on its linguistic merits and chances of flourishing. Even if there is strong support, the proposal may be denied if there are strong arguments against its creation and insufficiently strong arguments in support as judged by the language subcommittee."

I don't understand what your concern is. If a language itself is suitable but the content is not, conditional approval is given, and the request is only given final approval when the content and community are suitable. If the language itself is not suitable, it is not conditionally approved in the first place.

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

16.

Gerard Meijssen
06 March 2007 17:23


<this user has not agreed to public archival.>

17.

Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
07 March 2007 12:36


Hello GerardM,

In that case I misunderstood; I assumed you were criticizing voting in the current process: "<this text is quoted from a user who has not agreed to public archival.>"

The linguistic merits, in my opinion, are inherent in the language itself. Even without being presented any content, it is easy to ascertain from information available that French, Spanish, or Kabyle are suitable languages. In this case, we can immediately approve the language itself, but not create a wiki until the rest of the criteria are met (localization, community, test project, et cetera). The awkward alternative is to force users to hold a new discussion later about the language's suitability if the content is rejected.

Conditionally approving a language does not imply any promise to approve the content in the future. Although the content and community criteria are fluid, the *language* criteria are relatively stable. If a request took a very long time after conditional approval, the language criteria *might* change and we would reject the proposal despite past conditional approval, since the conditions changed. This could be explicitly noted in the policy, if preferable.

If you're entirely against the wording of "conditional approval", perhaps it could be renamed to "language approval" or some such?

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

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