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Moving Lojban entries to the Appendix

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Voting on: Moving all Lojban entries from mainspace to Appendix space, e.g. rafsi#Lojban to Appendix:Lojban/rafsi. All Lojban translations in mainspace would also be removed, but Lojban could still be linked to in other contexts. Lojban would also be removed from the list at WT:CFI#Constructed languages.

Rationale: Lojban was never widely used, and has an extremely small corpus. The baseline grammar was published in 1997, and an incredibly small amount of durably archived material has been produced since then. The Library of Congress Online Catalog, in fact, does not even have books or periodicals in Lojban from three independent authors (one of the attestation criteria all Lojban words are subject to). Searching for books not listed there and written entirely in Lojban on Google Books has proved unsuccessful. Usenet also has very few results. Just because a constructed language is notable doesn't mean that we should necessarily have mainspace entries in it if those entries would nearly all get deleted at RFV were they to be sent there, and indeed we keep somewhat better attested languages like Klingon in appendix space as well.

Schedule:

Discussion:

Support

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  1. Support DonnanZ (talk) 17:36, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 18:19, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 18:33, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support --Per utramque cavernam (talk) 19:55, 28 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support - -sche (discuss) 05:43, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support —*i̯óh₁n̥C[5] 10:18, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 10:37, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support DTLHS (talk) 19:50, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support Prosfilaes (talk) 22:26, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support – I believe there's no way for us to maintain a decent collection of Lojban entries if we hold them to CFI, and I don't think it's a good idea to loosen the criteria for constructed languages, so sending Lojban to join Quenya, Toki Pona, et al. in the Appendix space seems like the least bad option. —Granger (talk · contribs) 23:08, 5 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support The choice here seems to be between deleting virtually all (if not actually all) Lojban entries on the basis that they don't conform to CFI, or keeping the entries in an appendix. Although Lojban is an interesting curiosity, it seems to me that very few people are using this constructed language, and even fewer are using it for communication (in spite of Yair rand's comment), so shunting the entries out of the main dictionary space might not be such a bad idea. This, that and the other (talk) 02:40, 6 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    There's another choice, to change Lojban to an LDL. Finsternish (talk) 09:14, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    True, but that is not part of "the choice here". (In any case I would oppose such a vote.) This, that and the other (talk) 10:57, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support, and hopefully ban one day all artificial languages on Wiktionary, even in appendices. --Vahag (talk) 15:45, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    ...even Esperanto? -Xbony2 (talk) 22:41, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I really thought you'd been around for long enough to know never to take Vahag seriously, even especially when he claims to be most serious. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 22:44, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Mmm. To him I say all natural languages should be banned instead. It would mean a lot less work for Wiktionary. -Xbony2 (talk) 22:50, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikiconlangtionary PseudoSkull (talk) 22:52, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Seriously, I don't want to see any constructed languages on Wiktionary. They clutter the space and get in the way of my etymological research. --Vahag (talk) 12:01, 11 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support --Tom 144 (𒄩𒇻𒅗𒀸) 22:59, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Support I support having lower attestation standards for languages which are or have been widely used but not widely used on the internet. However, I suspect that Lojban is better attested on the internet than in other communications. Daask (talk) 22:50, 14 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Struck as ineligible to vote. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:23, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support. Finally!!! --WikiTiki89 19:07, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support --Victar (talk) 16:10, 16 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  16. Support I oppose making Lojban an LDL. As I recall, the rationale for including constructed languages in well-documented languages was that otherwise we would open the floodgates to all constructed languages, which is not what we want to spend time working on. —Internoob 00:08, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Support. I've never understood why Lojban of all conlangs gets a pass into mainspace. I suspect it was grandfathered in somehow. It's also the only language where the headers use terminology from that language, which I argue is terrible for usability and intelligibility. If we are to keep it at all, put it in the appendix. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 22:37, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • CFI lists seven conlangs in mainspace, pretty much all of the constructed languages with ISO 639 tags that aren't fictional. I'd question some of them more than Lojban, like Novial and Occidental. The choice of words in the header is not relevant to the vote.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:26, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Re: CFI, fair enough. I'd note that Esperanto at least has native speakers. Re: headers, Lojban is a wild outlier in that regard, which I think is relevant -- our handling of it is so bizarre that it looks very strange in mainspace. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 06:26, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Support The second best option after deleting them all. SemperBlotto (talk) 06:31, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Support Though I do feel that some important points have been made regarding attestation criteria and the like for minor languages. In those cases, though, I'm more concerned about natural languages than conlangs. --SanctMinimalicen (talk) 21:26, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Support Jeuvke (talk) 15:08, 22 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    The above user only has 15 contributions as of this post, which makes them ineligible for voting per WT:VP. I struck and bulleted the vote because of this. PseudoSkull (talk) 15:25, 22 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

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  1. Oppose — [ זכריה קהת ] Zack. — 13:09, 2 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose All or at least most of the Lojban entries documented thus far meet the criteria for... oh, Metaknowledge changed it. I'm not quite sure what defines community consensus on Wiktionary, but I recall past editors and I going by it and not having a problem with it. I don't want to claim to be a senior Lojban editor or anything, I haven't studied Lojban in years and have only contributed a small amount, but in my opinion those rules are closer to consensus than something else decided by an editor who hasn't done anything related to Lojban from what I know. Anyway, I'm sure it is understandable that I cannot vote to shelf (the way I see it) a section that I have spent a good amount of time contributing towards. Why shouldn't Lojban be in the mainspace? No, it's not used a ton, but neither is a good chunk of this wiki's 4000 or so documented languages. I don't advocate that every conlang some doofus made up be mainspace material, but I don't see the harm in Lojban being included. -Xbony2 (talk) 02:20, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Xbony2: I regret your misrepresentation of the facts. I did not change the criteria; since the early days of Wiktionary when the Criteria for Inclusion were established (long before I arrived here), 3 cites have been required for Lojban entries. Later changes reduced those requirements for most of those 4000 or so languages, but not for Lojban (again, based on votes that represent community consensus). I'm not going to argue the point any further with you, because you acknowledge that it's an emotional issue for you, but I felt it necessary to clarify this for other editors. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:54, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm disappointed but not terribly to be honest. But isn't... no, Lojban is in the well documented languages apparently. In my opinion Lojban would be better categorized as an LDL. Although, if you cracked open the Lojban IRC archive, you could probably get a lot of citations out of it, if that can be citable. -Xbony2 (talk) 03:46, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose I was going back and forth on this for a while, but after deliberation, I really don’t think this is the right choice. The rationale could equally well be served by categorizing Lojban as an LDL, and this would surely be more useful in serving the readers of Wiktionary, who would be able to easily find Lojban entries when they encounter words they want to look up. I’ve never been a fan of shunting words, much less languages, off to the appendix in general for that reason; it makes things more difficult/confusing for users (and so makes the dictionary less useful) with little real benefit. — Vorziblix (talk · contribs) 20:47, 4 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Oppose, per the points made in the previous vote on this. Lojban is a language, used for communication. --Yair rand (talk) 20:21, 5 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Yair rand: What evidence do we have that Lojban is actually used for communication rather than being a specification of something that hardly anyone uses? --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:49, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose, because it would be better to make it an LDL. Finsternish (talk) 09:12, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Oppose embryomystic (talk) 20:10, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Oppose "Not enough people use Lojban" is an even stronger rationale to include Lojban entries in mainspace in my opinion. Lojban specificity is also important for use in variety of fields, so we definitely need more Lojban translations and entries. Nicole Sharp (talk) 04:56, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Nicole Sharp: Including Lojban in the mainspace would require us to relax inclusion criteria for Lojban. What relaxation of inclusion criteria do you propose? And since "Not enough people use L" is not an argument for you to exclude a language L, how should we know which constructed languages to include using weaken criteria? --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:11, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • The only artificial language that I have personal experience with is Ido. I can say that many Ido words are often simply coined neologisms or borrowings from Esperanto, and often cannot be reliably sourced from written works outside of Wikimedia. Inclusion based on usage in written works is simply not practical for languages that do not have a large enough corpus. There are still many languages in the world that are not written at all in fact. We cannot just go around striking languages from Wiktionary simply because there are not enough writings in that language. No one is going to start writing in those languages either without access to the copylefted free open-source documentation that Wikimedia can provide. I think the best way to deal with this is probably to include a template for words in artificial languages that are not attested (due to a lack of a large enough corpus), so that readers of Wiktionary know that those translations are perhaps not as authoritative as others. For Lojban specifically, we have a small corpus within Wikimedia already: Lojban Wiktionary (726 entries with 2 active users), Lojban Wikipedia (1209 articles with 10 active users), and Lojban Wikisource (17 sources). English Wiktionary has 9 Lojban speakers and English Wikipedia has 85 Lojban speakers. Nicole Sharp (talk) 15:52, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Nicole Sharp: Does that mean that the English Wiktionary should use sentences present in Lojban Wiktionary and Lojban Wikipedia as evidence of use? Three uses in Lojban Wikipedia => include as Lojban in English Wiktionary? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:00, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • I would say that even a single use should be adequate for inclusion in English Wiktionary. The smaller the corpus, the more relaxed we need to be for inclusion criteria. Nicole Sharp (talk) 16:11, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • @Nicole Sharp: One use in Lojban Wikipedia => include as Lojban in English Wiktionary? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:16, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
              • If the language is rare enough, one use anywhere really. It would not be difficult either to quantify this as a formal Wiktionary policy, e.g. languages with less than X for the size of their corpus or quantity of their usage have Y relaxed conditions for inclusion of entries. Nicole Sharp (talk) 16:29, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
                • @Nicole Sharp: One use in a Lojban sentence anywhere on the Internet or offline, durably archived or not, in a discussion forum or elsewhere => include as Lojban in English Wiktionary? --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
                  • Sure. But I think it might best be approached with language-specific policies, with individual requirements being proportional to how rare the language is. For example, if you understand a (natural) extremely rare endangered language, you should be adding as many words as possible to Wiktionary to preserve the language, even if there is absolutely no documentation for these words other than your own personal experiences in hearing them in conversation. That would be an extreme example though. Nicole Sharp (talk) 16:44, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Nicole Sharp: Do you realize that criterion allows anyone to "create" Lojban on the fly, for the purpose of Wiktionary? With such criteria, if I want to "create" a new Lojban word, I will use it in a Lojban sentence in an Internet forum of choice, and that will automatically make sure it lands in en wikt mainspace. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:12, 18 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes. That is why I suggested adding a template for "unattested." I do that myself with Ido words sometimes, if for example a translation for a technical term does not exist. Like in a natural language, new terms often have to be coined or borrowed, especially for fields such as science. Nicole Sharp (talk) 15:51, 18 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    One use in a Lojban sentence is not enough. At least three different people have to use the word. Lojban isn't a language spoken in an isolated area in the jungle; all Lojban speakers that I know of use the Internet, and much of the conversation in Lojban is through the Internet. See https://korp.alexburka.com/. PierreAbbat (talk) 05:02, 20 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain

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  1. Abstain - We really should have a much shorter limit on the sources we can use (as discussed before) especially for less-attested languages such as this one. I've brought this concern back up on Daniel Carrero's talk page. So, I'm abstaining the vote in hopes that there will one day be more leeway to attest these sorts of entries. PseudoSkull (talk) 00:13, 1 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @PseudoSkull Those easier limits already exist, they just don't apply to conlangs. The problem with conlangs is that very many are made but few are used. ←₰-→ Lingo Bingo Dingo (talk) 14:40, 3 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Lingo Bingo Dingo It's true that very many are made but few are used, but there's some nuance missing here. Lojban isn't a never-used conlang and it's not a barely-used conlang; it's not on the level of Babm or some random conlang you find on the Internet. It has a large community of speakers for a conlang but simply lacks durably archived sources. Finsternish (talk) 09:18, 9 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Finsternish: How large is the community of speakers? Where can we verify the size of the community? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:22, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    There's not an official number of speakers or anything, but there is the somewhat centralized IRC/Slack/Telegram which you could visit perhaps. -Xbony2 (talk) 22:58, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Abstain The vote has already passed, but let me post an abstain anyway. What gives me pause is that Lojban has ISO code; not any old constructed language has one. And I am not very clear about the benefit of moving something to an appendix space; what it does is that it introduces incovenience, while the content will still be in Wiktionary database, accessible to readers. I am not sure what the appendix namespace does that a badge of shame in the mainspace stating the relaxed attestation criteria would not do. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:29, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    What are ISO's criteria for assigning a code to a language? There are many situations where we don't go by ISO codes. --WikiTiki89 13:46, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't know the criteria. My point is that having an ISO code is a constraint that prevents overflood of fringe constructed languages. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:43, 30 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Abstain The vote has already passed, but if it hadn't I would be opposed. I have some concern about a vote being made on an issue I care about, but I missed because of illness. I guess I'm glad I'm still here to be frustrated. Jawitkien (talk) 18:03, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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Invitations for English Wiktionary Lojbanists to comment: @Bradshaws1 @Brantmeierz @Chrishy @PierreAbbat @Robin Lionheart @Ruzihm @VladikVP. Nicole Sharp (talk) 16:06, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Vorziblix Done Done PseudoSkull (talk) 20:47, 31 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Not enough people use language X, so we should delete that language from Wiktionary" is a very dangerous precedent in my opinion. Wiktionary should be a place where words from rare and endangered languages can have a home, even if they are artificial. The fact that not enough people are using Lojban makes it even more important to make sure that the entries are kept in mainspace, and not vanished into an appendix. Also note that this is going to make transwikiing and/or wikilinking to and from the Lojban Wiktionary very difficult if Lojban is banned from English Wiktionary, and can over time eventually contribute to even less people knowing about or desiring to learn Lojban, due to having less web presence with Wikimedia. Nicole Sharp (talk) 05:11, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Should we also include words from a conlang I created today? It's as rare as it gets — zero speakers, and the only documentation is my notes. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 06:49, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I would say for artificial languages to firstly follow the same criteria for inclusion on English Wiktionary as for the Wikimedia Foundation. If it is significant enough to warrant its own Wiktionary subdomain (many many many languages do not!) then it should definitely be included in English Wiktionary mainspace. Languages that are not significant enough to warrant Wiktionary subdomains but are significant enough internationally to be recognized with their own ISO 639-3 codes should also be included. Klingon (ISO 639-3 tlh) is perhaps a major exception to this (not being included in Wikimedia subdomains) since it is a proprietary language (Loglan also falls into this category, which was the reason for the creation of Lojban), which can make it difficult to include in copylefted free open-source projects. Only a tiny handful of artificial languages have been recognized with their own ISO 639-3 codes, so this should not be an issue for Wiktionary. Nicole Sharp (talk) 15:21, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Nicole Sharp Do you mean "interlanguage linking" as opposed to "transwikiing"? I assume pages in the Appendix namespace can still be interlinked with mainspace pages on other language editions of Wiktionary. This, that and the other (talk) 09:08, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Decision

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I assume all Lojban entries should be moved to Appendix:Lojban/title? DTLHS (talk) 02:21, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Right, as it says above. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 02:32, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Also, to preserve the edit history, pages with only Lojban can simply be moved to the appendix. What about pages with more than one language? Is there a way to split a page while preserving the history on both parts? DTLHS (talk) 02:34, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think so. The edit summary should say where the text has been copied from, though, so that the history of the original page can be browsed if needed. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 06:51, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That is an established solution, but I'm not convinced it's a good solution; what happens if the original page gets deleted or moved for some reason?--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:43, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm curious -- is it at all possible to clone a page? It's not available anywhere I can find in the UI, but it seems reasonable enough to think it might be technically possible somewhere. That would suit cases like this, where we need to essentially split a page, and we want both daughter pages to have the same history up until the split. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 04:20, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt it's possible to clone pages, because each revision has its own ID, and cloning it would mean it exists in two different places, which is impossible. Theoretically, it could be possible to split pages, since it is possible to merge them. --WikiTiki89 15:01, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible to split page history, it is an incredibly painful process which we should avoid. The SOP on Wikipedia is just to include an edit in the history of each page indicating either when content is split away or when the source of a page is from elsewhere. I am also pretty certain that "cloning" is not possible, since the structure of the data wouldn't seem to support it. - TheDaveRoss 13:52, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@TheDaveRoss: Is it by selectively deleting certain revisions, then moving the page, and then restoring the revisions on the old page? I feel like even if we did that, it wouldn't actually be that useful. So yes, just mentioning where things are moving to/from in the edit summary should be enough. --WikiTiki89 13:59, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, exactly that. I double checked and it still works, and it is still painful. - TheDaveRoss 14:11, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
IMO that's too unlikely to worry about, but if it came up, then the admin deleting the mainspace page could do so by merging it into the Appendix page, or moving it to the associated talk page and blanking it but keeping the history there (with the move summary being visible upon accessing the NS:0 page), and if anyone noticed that a page had been deleted without doing that and needed the history, they could ask an admin to undelete it and do one of those things. If you want to be the one to spend the effort to do this, you could even move such pages to NS:0-talkspace (if empty) or Appendix-talkspace now, and then paste the non-Lojban content back into the mainspace and the Lojban content into the Appendix-space, with an edit summary saying which talkpage to see for the history. The talk pages, in turn, would/should never be deleted, because they would have a valid reason to exist, not just to record that page history (presumably underneath a blanked revision), but also to host whatever discussion led to the NS:0 page being deleted. But I would just rely on the approach of "in the rare event that you need to see the history of a page and it's been deleted, ask an admin (to restore it and move it somewhere)". Because this could theoretically already have happened with any of our pages — a user could edit a new page saying, as I sometimes do, "move content from foo" or "copy wording from foo" or something, and then, theoretically, foo could be deleted — but can anyone point to a case where it has happened? - -sche (discuss) 16:14, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It's not "needing the history"; it's "providing the history is how we provide attribution under the Creative Commons license". It's fulfilling our obligations correctly, not just shrugging.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:37, 3 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Pages moved and translations removed. Two module errors came up: Appendix:Lojban/A, Appendix:Lojban/Unsupported titles/Full stop. DTLHS (talk) 06:23, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@DTLHS Lots of broken links on pages like Appendix:Lojban/luj and Appendix:Lojban/raf. This, that and the other (talk) 15:19, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@This, that and the other: That's because someone used {{l|jbo|pluja}} as the parameter of {{jbo-rafsi of}}, which is insane. The solution is to add a |t= parameter to {{jbo-rafsi of}}, which I have now done. —Mahāgaja (formerly Angr) · talk 17:40, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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