[Wikipedia-l] Status of Wikimedia

Tue Nov 8 02:20:46 UTC 2005

Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I do think we need some serious reform of our
> language policy to end what I see as an ongoing
drive 
> to reclassify every dialect in the world into a 
> standalone language.

In my opinion the most important point would be having
an official policy on this issue at all. Currently,
there is a big vacuum only partly filled by some
nonofficial guidelines. This naturally causes
expectations that can't really be fulfilled as well as
a disproportionate amount of discussion. Both of which
is not constructive with regard to our primary aims.

As pointed out already, various users have put quite a
bit of effort into developing a proposal for a
workable policy regarding new languages for Wikimedia
projects. However, at the same time most people have
been aware that turning this proposal into "something
official" would be the harder part (or, in other
words, more or less impossible). As far as I recall,
even a board member was asked in September I think if
the Board could decide some general guidelines here
(only general guidelines, no decisions on individual
cases) because it looks like this issue is not really
solvable within the community.  However, as far as I
remember, the notion back then was that this is up to
the community.

However, my impression is that we don't have any real
mechanisms here for implementing such fundamental
decisions within any reasonable span of time. Thus, a
board decision based upon the community's input
concerning the issue would probably mean a real step
forward.

Arbeo

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