Talk:Language committee

Language committee (contact page about requests)

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Discussions

Rejecting Wikinews language proposals by non Lancom members

Hi, could you please clarify whether non Language Committee members may mark Wikinews language proposals as rejected? A user (User:DraconicDark) has been doing so using templates stating that the decision is made by a Language Committee member. Thank you.--ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ (talk) 22:32, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

As I had previously stated: the language committee was directed by the WMF Board of Trustees to not accept any new Wikinews requests (see this email from the public Langcom mailing list). All open Wikinews requests at the time therefore had no chance of succeeding, and were in effect rejected. Therefore, marking open Wikinews requests at the time as rejected was an uncontroversial, procedural action. At the time I marked the requests as rejected, the date of the closure of Wikinews was approaching and the requests had still not been marked as rejected yet, even though they functionally were due to the closure of Wikinews. Therefore, focusing on the fact that they were marked as rejected is unnecessarily bureaucratic. If the reason you keep bringing this up is that you still want to work on Wikinews despite its abandonment by the WMF, see Migration of Wikinews and future hosts. DraconicDark (talk) 23:03, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Linking to WMF or Language Committee discussions does not make you a Language Committee member. If you believe LangCom members cannot handle these tasks, you can apply to join. Until then, please do not pretend to be a LangCom member or use templates that falsely imply a Language Committee member made the decision.-- ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ (talk) 23:55, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

I never claimed to be a language committee member. The wording on the language request header template is standard and cannot be changed simply by changing parameters on the template. The complete closure of all language editions of Wikinews was an unusual situation which led to unusual action in this case. Marking the requests as rejected simply reflected the reality of the situation. Be bold applies. Unless you object to the idea of the Wikinews requests being rejected, which because of the Board of Trustees' decision would have been done anyway regardless of whether or not I did anything, I don't see why you are continuing to push this issue. DraconicDark (talk) 00:50, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

These edits created a mess across Wikinews request pages that now requires cleanup. If necessary, LangCom should comment on those requests and formally close them.--ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ (talk) 01:28, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

@DraconicDark: The language committee should be expected to take responsibility for the decisions they make. If they choose to follow the directions of the Board, that is their prerogative, but those proposals deserve a response from someone actually empowered to make a decision on the proposal. Your edit adds text that is not accurate, and, whether you intended for it to do so or not, misleads those who support and those who oppose the request, into thinking that what you placed into the reasoning is the final answer from the Language Committee. As you are not a member of the Language Committee, it seems inappropriate for you to be doing this, since you would not be able to point to discussions within the committee regarding each individual project proposal to justify your denial of the proposals.

I acknowledge completely, of course, that you are doing something which, to you, is uncontroversial. But it does not appear to be as uncontroversial as you thought to others. Would you be fine with reverting, and letting a Language Committee member handle these instead? I don't think there's any need for anyone to be pointing fingers here, there's a simple way out, which is just to revert back and let LangComm take it from there. EggRoll97 (talk) 05:03, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

I am a Language committee member, and I need to take responsibility for this.

In a private conversation with me, @DraconicDark asked whether he can help with cleaning up Wikinews requests, after it was already known that Wikinews is being closed. I was busy in real life and, knowing that DraconicDark, I said "Be bold" and didn't pay too much attention to it. I shouldn't have done that. While I don't think that real damage was made, it didn't entirely respect the process, and I apologize for this. It's not DraconicDark's fault.

I'll discuss it with the rest of the committee, and I'll try to clean it up properly.

@ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ, you are saying that These edits created a mess across Wikinews request pages that now requires cleanup. What are you referring to exactly? Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 06:34, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

By “mess” I mean the disruptive, inappropriate, and inaccurate edits made across multiple Wikinews request pages that now need cleanup. The user was not authorized to approve or reject those requests, and the templates falsely indicated a Language Committee decision. Some requests had even been approved by LangCom before the WMF later decided to discontinue Wikinews.--ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ ^{/hasɔn raza/} (talk) 06:55, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

As far as I can see, none of them were approved. Some of them were marked as "open", and many of them were marked as "eligible", but it's not the same thing as "approved". The "eligible" status refers only to the eligibility of the language (new project in a unique living language with an ISO 639 code), and not to the full approval of the project or to graduating from the Incubator (assessment that it has good content and activity in the Incubator). Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:17, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

You’re right, some of those edits, including the “eligible” projects, may not have been ones that were formally approved. My concern is that they were still marked as "rejected" by someone who was not authorized to make LangCom decisions. I appreciate that this is now being reviewed and cleaned up properly.

--ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ ^{/hasɔn raza/} (talk) 07:43, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for understanding.

(A little clarification: in an earlier message, I somehow forgot to type a few words, so I'll repeat it here: I was busy in real life and, knowing that DraconicDark understands the policies around these matters fairly well, I said "Be bold" and didn't pay too much attention to it.) Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:09, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi, just following up on this. Has there been any further discussion or decision regarding the cleanup?-- ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ ^{/hasɔn raza/} (talk) 09:40, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

All Wikinews proposals are moot, it doesn't matter who updates the pages to reflect that. --MF-W 16:49, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

For example, if you visit Requests for new languages/Wikinews Sylheti, it says: “A committee member provided the following comment: Procedurally rejected because the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees approved closure of all editions of Wikinews.” Was this actually a comment made by a LangCom member? If not, then the page contains false information by attributing a decision to the Language Committee that was not made by a committee member. A later explanation cannot retroactively make an inaccurate statement correct.--ꠢꠣꠍꠘ ꠞꠣꠎꠣ ^{/hasɔn raza/} (talk) 20:44, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Redirecting fil.wikipedia.org to tl.wikipedia.org

Hello, members of the Language committee.

As per Amire80's advice I was advised to let the committee know that I'm hoping to initiate a process to redirect the domain for a Filipino Wikipedia (fil.wikipedia.org) to the Tagalog Wikipedia (tl.wikipedia.org).

Since the existing consensus on the Tagalog Wikipedia is that Tagalog and Filipino are the same language, and the Language committee is unlikely to recognize a separate Filipino Wikipedia owing to the similarity between the two languages, I think this redirect is overdue and cements the existing consensus that both our community and the Language committee share.

I will also let the Tagalog Wikipedia know of this proposal and the relevant Phabricator ticket as a courtesy, but I'm hoping this change is uncontroversial enough that it could be implemented in short order. Thank you. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 09:37, 23 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the request. I notified the Language committee on the mailing list. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 14:50, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

Request for approval of Wt/pcm, Naija Pidgin Wiktionary

Hello language committee i would like to request that you approve pcm.wiktionary.org just as it sister was approved at pcm.wikipedia.org. Pcm.Wiktionary.org has been here for over 15 years Wmbata (talk) 11:27, 25 July 2026 (UTC)

It does not fulfill the activity requirements. --MF-W 20:49, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Requesting for Wali Wikipedia, Wp/wlx Approval

We have been requesting for the approval Wali Wikipedia which has been requested here since 11-Nov-2024. We have been active since that time till now, check our activity here. We submitted languages our language experts severally to admins on the language committee. Please let us know what we should do now for the approval process. @Jon Harald Søby, @Amire80 and @others Zakaria Tunsung (talk) 21:03, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Wali Language now has a standard autography proposed by the Wali language committee, the language is wealth approving. Vision L1 (talk) 06:44, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Request to approve Tumbuka Wiktionary (tum.wiktionary.org)

Greetings Language Committee, I am requesting for the approval of Tumbuka Wiktionary. I am one of the native contributors on the project. The request was made here almost 3 years ago, with nothing happening to it. The language is spoken in three countries, used in national media such as television, e-hail websites and regular websites, radio and newspapers, etc., and it was added on Google Translate in 2024. Moreover, there is a willing community that is ready to contribute to the project. The language also has its own Wikipedia with active solid community. The other challenge is that most natives do not know how to edit the wiki while still in incubator. So, if the wiki is approved and created, it will attract more natives. It will also act as a must-go-to when one stumbles a difficult word in its sister project (Wikipedia) to look it up. In incubator, the page is here.

Again, not important to this request but worth a mention, I and other interested native speakers, including those interested in our languages, are on our way to create a recognized Wikimedia Community User Group for our Wikimedia projects, see. Currently, we are busy spreading awareness in our countries about Wikipedia in our local languages (as well as enwiki) which includes this Wiktionary that we are requesting to be approved. Once approved, we would have alot of newbies to edit there, thereby giving free knowledge.

Thanks.--- Tumbuka Arch (talk) 11:03, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

It does not fulfill the activity requirements. --MF-W 20:48, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Requesting approval of Nias Wikibooks

Dear Language committee,

We renew our approval request for Nias Wikibooks. We first sent our request a few years back, but was deemed not enough. Considering how critical the Wikibooks as the first learning step for users before writing on Wikipedia, which is in this regard a unique context for Nias, here we submit again our request for approval.

Best regards,

Slaia (talk) 08:56, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

I had a look at 10 random pages from Nias Wikibooks, of which only 2 were not a Bible chapter. Can you explain how Nias Wikibooks is helping users to write in Wikipedia? And why doesn't Wikipedia itself host pages about how to edit it? --MF-W 14:01, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. I am sorry if I am not good enough in explaining the rationale in the proposal.

First of all Nias language is mainly an oral language. There is no written text (except the bible as explained below), no magazines, no radio or tv programs in this language. To make matter worse, the country Indonesia makes it obligatory to use only the national language in education, institution, ceremonies. The result: majority of young generation don't actually know how to write (and to speak) in Nias language. Even academics have difficulty to write properly in the language. They need to exercise a lot, before writing good enough in Nias language. Writing directly on Wikipedia, with a lot of technical terms (science, biology, history, etc.) even more challenging. In Wikibooks they can write more freely and about topics that would not fit on Wikipedia (explaining the meaning of certain proverbs which are very popular among Niassan for example). And when the time comes they write on Wikipedia.

Why so many bible texts? Five years ago we started with the bible texts, because they are the only written text we have and function as the basis of vocabulary and sentence building/examples. There are 1,185+ pages of them and therefore they pop up often in the random page search. What many Niassan do when they look for a word and the example how that word is used in a sentence, is, they start with that word in Indonesian. Look up that word in a Indonesian bible text, open the corresponding Nias bible text to find what that word is in Nias language and how it is written in context. People are so educated in Indonesian that they forgot even the basic words in Nias!

Four years ago we finished with the bible text on the Wikibooks and then we continued with other topics. Recently for example we concentrated on writing stories for children, as the early gateway to Nias language. One cannot find them through random pages, because there are only around 70 pages at the moment. Last year we were writing about some historical places in Nias.

Thank you again for looking into this. I apologise if my English is not well written. Slaia (talk) 07:48, 14 August 2026 (UTC)