Language proposal policy

Please review the full text of this page before submitting a proposal.

The language committee processes requests in accordance with the application procedure and prior experience with requests and projects. The committee can skip steps in the procedure if they consider a request to have already met the objectives of those steps. Proposals for projects in a language that already has a well-established project may be fast-tracked in this way.

The following requirements must be met by requests before they can be approved; although they can be met at any time before or after a request, we recommend fulfilling the basic requirements before making a request. If you need any help or have questions, please ask a committee member.

• Requisites for eligibility
  1. The proposal is to open a new language edition of an existing Wikimedia project that does not already exist (see the complete list of Wikimedia projects or the SiteMatrix).
  2. The language must have a valid ISO 639 1–3 code (search).

     If there is no valid ISO 639 code, you must obtain one. The Wikimedia Foundation does not seek to develop new linguistic entities; there must be an extensive body of works in that language. The information that distinguishes this language from another must be sufficient to convince standards organizations to create an ISO 639 code.

  3. The language must be sufficiently unique that it could not coexist on a more general wiki. In most cases, this excludes regional dialects and different written forms of the same language.

     The degree of difference required is considered on a case-by-case basis. The committee does not consider political differences, since the Wikimedia Foundation's goal is to give every single person free, unbiased access to the sum of all human knowledge, rather than information from the viewpoint of individual political communities.

  4. The proposal has a sufficient number of living native speakers to form a viable community and audience (Wikisource wikis are allowed in languages with no native speakers, although these should be on a wiki for the modern form of the language if possible).

     If the proposal is for an artificial language such as Esperanto, it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion (this requirement is being discussed by the language committee).

• Requisites for final approval
  1. There is an active test project on the Multilingual Wikisource (Wikisource only), Beta Wikiversity (Wikiversity only), or the Incubator (all other projects).

     A project must start on one of these wikis. This will demonstrate that there is sufficient community to build the project. If there is no valid ISO 639 1–3 code, the test project will provide some of the material to present to the World Language Documentation Center.

  2. There is a continuing effort to translate the MediaWiki interface into that language so that nobody is excluded from participating if they do not understand the English-language user interface. As a baseline, we recommend that you begin by translating the "most used MediaWiki messages". These are the messages that are of most importance to our readers. If a first project already exists and these messages have already been translated, we ask that you show evidence that localisation is continuing to be improved and maintained at a reasonable pace.
     • We ask that all localisation work is coordinated on translatewiki.net, so that the localisation will be available on all Wikimedia Foundation projects, not just the one you're active on. Another benefit is that MediaWiki as a product will provide better functionality for users of MediaWiki outside the Wikimedia Foundation. It is for this reason that we suggest that you translate the non-WMF extensions as well.
     • Localisation statistics are available which describe the current availability of translations for the MediaWiki interface into different languages. The group statistics at translatewiki.net have more detailed information.

• Read the above requirements. Requests that do not conform to the policy will be rejected.
• Make sure you have registered an account and are logged in on this wiki.
• Follow the steps explained at Language committee/Handbook (requesters) .

Users are encouraged to discuss whether it is a good idea to open the new language. 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 committee.

If the requirements for eligibility are met, the language committee should verify it as "eligible". This means that the committee can proceed with final approval at the point when the activity and localization requirements are met. The respective request page contains links to track progress on this.

The users should begin writing a test project on the Incubator wiki, the Multilingual Wikisource or the Beta Wikiversity (as the case may be) now, if they haven't already. At least five active users must edit that language regularly before a test project will be considered successful. You are encouraged to search for interested contributors yourself, as this may speed up the process considerably. Note that a project may be closed if there is little or no activity after it is created.

If all requirements have been met and a detailed investigation finds no unresolved problems, the language committee will notify the Board of Trustees of pending approval. If the board does not veto the decision within at least four days, the request will be approved and developers will be asked to create the wiki.

The number of users that support or oppose the project is irrelevant. When the wiki is approved by the board and opened, the header comment will be updated to reflect this.

Users are strongly encouraged to continue developing the test project while they are waiting for the wiki to be opened. This may accelerate the process. For Wikipedia proposals, the list of articles every Wikipedia should have may be useful. All pages developed as part of a test wiki will be transferred to the actual wiki when it is opened.

Ancient or historical languages

Only Wikisource wikis in ancient or historical languages are accepted, because there are no living native communities to use other resources. Where possible, such languages should be bundled with the modern equivalent (such as Old English with English), though that is not required.

Artificial languages

Yes, there can be wikis in artificial languages. There are already wikis available in Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Interlingue, Lojban, Volapük and Novial. See the relevant note under the prerequisites concerning fictional languages.

Number of speakers necessary

There should be enough speakers to form a viable community and audience. Whether a particular language qualifies depends on discussion.

Test projects

Anyone can create a test project at any time. For more information, see the Incubator wiki's main page and its manual.

• Community Draft of new Language Proposal Policy
• Requests for new languages
• Proposals for closing projects
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