Talk:Language committee

Language committee (contact page about requests)

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Discussions

Notifying people via language categories

Commenting as I don't want to step on anyone's toes (bit late I guess). I've now done all the Wikipedia proposals by pinging active editors of the test wikis and letting them know of other active editors that speak the relevant language and appear unaware of the proposal. For when the test wikis were inactive, I notified active editors personally, which has been very appreciated so far, tbh I'll probably revisit this soon and do that for proposals where I didn't get a response. Will probably also do this all for Wiktionary proposals that don't have their own Wikipedia/test wiki, as well as for very small wikis, if I need more distractions from content work. If there are other ways I can help out do let me know. Thanks, Kowal2701 (talk) 19:46, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

User:Kowal2701: have you had any reactions? --MF-W 15:06, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

All positive so far! I guess people who didn't appreciate just ignored it. I made it look hand-written rather than a template, I think that probably helps a lot Kowal2701 (talk) 15:10, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Approval request for Hiligaynon Wikipedia

Dear Language Committee,

The Hiligaynon Wikipedia project is currently active for 9 months since October 2025. Multiple Wiki communities from the Philippines are actively editing in Hiligaynon Wikipedia - including the PPC through our WikiProyekto Hiligaynon initiative. Currently, the aforementioned project has 2 native Hiligaynon speakers (who are also active Wiki editors) and 3 active editors with limited proficiency in Hiligaynon (spent few years in Western Visayas region). We are also actively looking for editors in Hiligaynon Wikipedia who are both active Wiki editors and native Hiligaynon speakers. Our community would like the project to be approved. The request for the approval has been made here.

Thank you very much!

Best regards,

Ralffralff (talk) 08:32, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

Proposed closure process being misused for speculation, personal attacks, and ethnic stereotyping

Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Navajo Wikipedia has been open for a year and four days. It should not have been open for more than a day, because as its proposer acknowledges, they have no actual evidence that anything is wrong on the wiki: They do not speak the language, they have not spoken to anyone who speaks the language, and they do not have any evidence of any errors in the wiki. On most wikis, this would be a speedy closure, the standard response to a proposal that cites no evidence. Indeed, the only evidence cited in the proposal was the nominator's disdain for the wiki's most active contributor (for, among other things, refusing to speak English on a non-English wiki) and a single Wiktionary comment where an IP said that some nvwiki article titles are novel coinages. I don't mean to accuse the nominator of bad faith. I think they may have gotten carried away after looking at some other small wikis, and I suspect they conflated coinages (which may be a mild issue with respect to No original research but are far from wiki-killing) with mistakes of language (the scowiki scenario).

What concerns me much more is how the discussion has progressed in the year since. A number of users have repeated the unsourced claims in the proposal without providing any further evidence, and indeed have compounded these claims by accusing the wiki's most active contributor of creating a scowiki scenario, of having behavioral issues (again, the only thing cited was wanting to speak his language on its own Wikipedia), or of not speaking the language. One temp account has made ludicrous claims that Unicode staff and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol know the user's true identity and can prove he is a fraud.

Beyond the personal attacks on the wiki's most active user, the discussion contains ethnic stereotyping and other hallmarks of colonialist discourse about indigenous languages. Some have claimed that Navajo speakers are opposed to using the Internet, or even find it too difficult to use. Others have insisted that they are acting in the benevolent interest of Navajo speakers, while declining to take any steps to contact Navajo speakers, and ignoring comments that cite statements from actual Navajo speakers. When a system consistently favors the opinions of outsiders over those of the people in the ethnic group affected, that is one form of systemic racism. It's an obvious thing we should be on the lookout for in wiki closure requests, and it worries me that it's not something we have any apparent safeguards against.

At a minimum, I would call upon a LangCom member to put an end to this farce, close the discussion, and issue a general warning to those who made or repeated unsubstantiated claims in the discussion. But that only addresses the current problem. In the future, I would propose two changes to the wiki closure process:

• There should be a basic "sanity check" phase from LangCom before a closure request can start. If the cited reason is the wiki misrepresenting its language, LangCom should require either an expert opinion, or evidence that many fluent speakers hold this view, except in cases where it's patently obvious (e.g. all the wiki's pages are in the wrong language).
• LangCom members, or whoever they choose to designate, should play a more active role in moderating these discussions, particularly to remove personal attacks, to be clear with commenters about what kind of evidence LangCom looks for in closing a wiki, and to point out comments that appear to rely on stereotypes of the ethnic group who speak the language.

-- Tamzin^{[​cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 15:29, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

I agree with you at some point. New wikis are created with LangCom decision, why do we close wikis with public voting? I believe wiki closures should be disccused in this page. People may bring attention to dormant wikis here, and LangCom would decide. Joseph (talk) 16:52, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing attention to it. In fact, the decision about the proposal has long been prepared, but was not posted. I agree this is bad and needs to be done quicker. I am also sympathetic to the idea of a "sanity check". The policy already has something like it with the possibility of speedy closures of proposals. --MF-W 15:08, 3 July 2026 (UTC)

Request to approve Wp/wlx Wikipedia

Hello languages committee, it has been long since we sent the Wali Language experts for the Wp/wlx approval process. We have been active since July 2024. We requested it here. Please we humbly request you to kindly consider approving our Wikipedia. Thank you. Zakaria Tunsung (talk) 08:15, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Hello Languages Committee, the Wali Language Wikipedia has been active for so many months now with 5-6 active editors. We would like you to give us approval. Muhaideen Faiz Brichini (talk) 09:27, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

i support this appeal. The Wali Wiki and communiry has been very active for months now and needs to be looked at. ~~~± Yaw tuba (talk) 09:30, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

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)

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)

Requesting update on approval request of Malayalam Wikivoyage

Hello Language committee,

We had an approval request for Malayalam Wikivoyage initiated earlier. Could you please share an update on the request. There are 16 active contributors and 2 admins in this project. Also some community pages are created. So we are looking forward to become a real project. Please guide us about further actions.

Regards,

Ranjithsiji

Wikimedians of Kerala User Group Ranjithsiji (talk) 12:12, 18 July 2026 (UTC)