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Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Interslavic

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submitted verification final decision

This language has been verified as eligible.
The language is eligible for a project, which means that the subdomain can be created once there is an active community and a localized interface, as described in the language proposal policy. You can discuss the creation of this language project on this page.

Once the criteria are met, the language committee can proceed with the approval and will verify the test project content with a reliable neutral source, such as a professor or expert.

If you think the criteria are met, but the project is still waiting for approval, feel free to notify the committee and ask them to consider its approval.

  • The community needs to develop an active test project; it must remain active until approval (automated statistics, recent changes). It is generally considered active if the analysis lists at least three active, not-grayed-out editors listed in the sections for the previous few months.
  • The community needs to complete required MediaWiki interface translations in that language (about localization, translatewiki, check completion).
  • The community needs to discuss and complete the settings table below:
What Value Example / Explanation
Proposal
Language code isv (SIL, Glottolog) A valid ISO 639-1 or 639-3 language code, like "fr", "de", "nso", ...
Language name Interslavic Language name in English
Language name medžuslovjansky / меджусловјанскы Language name in your language. This will appear in the language list on Special:Preferences, in the interwiki sidebar on other wikis, ...
Language Wikidata item Q148971 - item has currently the following values:
 Item about the language at Wikidata. It would normally include the Wikimedia language code, name of the language, etc. Please complete at Wikidata if needed.
Directionality LTR Is the language written from left to right (LTR) or from right to left (RTL)?
Links Links to previous requests, or references to external websites or documents.
Site URL isv.wikipedia.org langcode.wikiproject.org

Settings
Project name Vikipedija "Wikipedia" in your language
Project namespace Vikipedija usually the same as the project name
Project talk namespace Razprava Vikipediji "Wikipedia talk" (the discussion namespace of the project namespace)
Enable uploads no Default is "no". Preferably, files should be uploaded to Commons.
If you want, you can enable local file uploading, either by any user ("yes") or by administrators only ("admin").
Notes: (1) This setting can be changed afterwards. The setting can only be "yes" or "admin" at approval if the test creates an Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP) first. (2) Files on Commons can be used on all Wikis. (3) Uploading fair-use images is not allowed on Commons (more info). (4) Localisation to your language may be insufficient on Commons.
Optional settings
Project logo File:Wikipedia-logo-v2-isv.svg This needs to be an SVG image (instructions for logo creation).
Default project timezone Europe "Continent/City", e.g. "Europe/Brussels" or "America/Mexico City" (see list of valid timezones)
Additional namespaces For example, a Wikisource would need "Page", "Page talk", "Index", "Index talk", "Author", "Author talk".
Additional settings Anything else that should be set
Once settings are finalized, a committee member will submit a Phabricator task requesting creation of the wiki. (This will include everything automatically, except the additional namespaces/settings.) After the task is created, it should be linked to in a comment under "final decision" above.

Proposal

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The Interslavic language recently got the ISO 639-3 code: [1]. There is already a wiki in this language ([2]), so at the very beginning it could serve as a basis for the Wikipedia project (on CC-BY-SA license). Interslavic language has a very engaged and grown community consisting 20.000 people in 2022 ([3]), so there is a big potential for this project. --Wojsław Brożyna (talk) 09:36, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On the Ethnologue [4] and Glottolog [5] pages, when you write the code isv, it gives an error. Will this prevent approval? Władysław Krzywiec (talk) 09:54, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That shouldn't be a problem. Ethnologue doesn't "do" constructed languages at all, with the exception of Esperanto ("a language of Poland"). And Glottolog has its own code system, in the case of Interslavic: inte1263. IJzeren Jan (talk) 10:37, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, okay. I asked this because for example the language codes Pannonian Rusyn (rsk) and Montenegrin (cnr) have pages on Ethnologue and Glottolog, even Interglossa (igs) has one, but (isv) doesn't. Władysław Krzywiec (talk) 12:50, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, I just checked and Ethnologue doesn't have a page for the code (igs), but Glottolog does. Władysław Krzywiec (talk) 12:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

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In favour

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  • I've been waiting for Interslavic to get an ISO 639-3 code and in the meantime have been making small contributions to their wiki as I learn the language. Will be nice to be able to have interwiki links with all the other languages including Interlingue which is the one I usually contribute to. Also in terms of raw activity I would put it squarely in second place now after Esperanto. Interslavic is here to stay. Mithridates (talk) 16:32, 9 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interslavic fills a real political need for an interlanguage between people from different Slavic-speaking that isn't English or Russian. I don't natively speak a Slavic language, but I am learning Interslavic because in the UK we have Ukrainian refugees interacting with a significant existing population of Polish speakers, and there is a clear utility to being able to understand both communities better. It is clear that Interslavic is a notable development in intercultural exchange, just from the amount of growth it has experienced in the last few years alone. The award of an ISO 639 code is the last proof Wikipedia should need that this is a rapidly-growing community, and as such needs its own Wikipedia. --Medavox (talk) 21:52, 9 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sounds good! Interslavic is one of the most active newer auxiliary languages and probably the most active zonelang (auxiliary language for a specific language family or region). Its quasi-Wikipedia at Miraheze has already more than 460 articles, which is a good start, especially since some of them are amazingly well developed. All speakers of Slavic languages are at least potential readers, and the step to potential contributor isn't very high. So I think there's considerable potential here and say this'll be a nice addition to the Wikipedia family! Krissie (talk) 16:55, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The community is very active online. The language is designed to be intelligible to speakers of various languages, which makes it have even more potential in terms of readership. --Мурад 97 (talk) 17:34, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Being one of the original authors of the language, I can of course only support this proposal. Our current wiki is mostly focused on Slavic subjects, but I think the main value of an Interslavic Wikipedia would be the fact that it can offer comprehensible information about any subject that is not necessary represented in the editions in individual Slavic languages. Let me just add that part of the user interface has already been translated into Interslavic, it would be helpful if it could somehow be transferred to Wikimedia. And one other issue that will need to be solved is the alphabet: Interslavic uses both Latin and Cyrillic (about 70:30, I would guess), but we'll have to figure out how to handle that (by writing everything in Latin and optionally transliterate it into Cyrillic, by allowing duplicate articles, etc.). IJzeren Jan (talk) 18:42, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the Serbian Wikipedia does the same so shouldn't be a stopper for Interslavic, I think. Though as far as I can tell it's all written in Cyrillic first, so maybe ISV would have to choose one or the other as you said. (Hopefully not though, I can't imagine it would be extremely hard to replicate what the wiki on Miraheze has done) Mithridates (talk) 07:25, 11 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Mithridates @IJzeren Jan Wikipedia in Serbo-Croatian is also relevant for this and you should check their setup. Zblace (talk) 05:02, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • A few words from an academic teacher. I learned to speak Interslavic four years ago. I teach digital technology at an arts-focused institution (university level) in Poland. Among the students, there are many people from abroad. The lectures are conducted in Polish. For many years, I have encountered problems with students from abroad understanding some elements, phrases, or even words. Polish language is complex and complicated for many of them, and moreover, it has many nuances that are unclear to non-Slavic speakers, which are difficult to grasp through some logical sequence. To explain the complexities of the Polish language to my students from outside Poland (Netherlands, Germany, France, China, Turkey, Sweden, etc.), I am using Interslavic language, which is logical, simple, predictable. Moreover, it has all the necessary features to rely on them to explain the nuances of Polish. The students are thrilled. The most common comment for the last four years has been: "This explanation is game changing! Now I finally understand...". I think it's an excellent recommendation for the language itself. Jarek fx (talk) 21:51, 12 May 2024 (UTC)Missing signature --Wojsław Brożyna (talk) 09:31, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Jarek fx interesting - will email you. Zblace (talk) 05:08, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Although I don't know Interslavic, I see it as the only ethnic auxiliary language that might work in the near future, since its intelligibility has been proved to work. - Iohanen (talk) 22:29, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed, it might work if its teaching were to be enforced by the state authorities in the targeted countries. But it's necessary to understand that there's a certain anti-culture and pro-utility ring to it, which is guaranteed to ruffle a lot of feathers. Also I think that the intelligibility claims are unreasonably optimistic. The level of intelligibility may exceed the initial low people's expectations and that's why they tend to be excited, but the language still isn't fully or even sufficiently understandable for the Slavic people without actually making some efforts to learn it. Being a competent Belarusian and Russian speaker, plus also easily understanding Ukrainian, I actually found it tiresome to listen to an Interslavic audio book longer than 5 minutes and there were ambiguities here and there. Ssvb (talk) 00:29, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I do agree with you in the fact that it is kind of anti-culture and pro-utility (I don't see it as entirely anti-culture, since they defend its use as a mean of communication between two completely different speakers), but I think its focus is not on replacing native languages, but helping people understand each other better, it'll not erase their culture nor advocate for it. I think you are to expect an audiobook to be tiresome in an ethnic auxiliary language, even I (a Portuguese native) feel tired after hearing English for some hours, I'd say this is mainly because you're not used to hearing it. The ambiguities are also to be expected since the speaker cannot guess the listener language and therefore has to use a more neutral language. Iohanen (talk) 00:06, 3 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Iohanen: A better comparison would be an English text with a lot of typos. One can surely understand it if the damage is not too severe, but deciphering it is still a mental burden and not a pleasant experience. Moreover, a certain percentage of words can't be deciphered at all and have to be guessed from context. That's what the Interslavic language looks like for a Slavic person, who didn't specifically study it.
    Now imagine that you are given a choice between 1) a heavily distorted English text with lots of typos and 2) a correct German version of the same text. Which of these two would you prefer? Additionally taking into account the existence of Google Translate and similar automatic translation tools. --Ssvb (talk) 07:05, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support this project, I see great potential in it. It is a very good idea. Renamed user 8a609eeb827a3735f69bcaaf562ec9bd (talk) 11:02, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I strongly support, good idea. --LiMr (talk) 08:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support --Venca24 (talk) 16:25, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong support - It's a viable language. What more do I have to say Wheatley2 (talk) 03:20, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong support - Aula Orion (talk) 16:55, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I support it, and here's why. Now I have to switch between Russian, Czech, Polish and other Wikipedias to find complete information on the topic of Slavic fantasy. I know that theoretically all the information on this should be on all these Wikipedias at the same time: Polish, Czech, Russian, English, but in practice this is not done. Actually Russian fantasy - on Russian, Czech - on Czech. I am seriously thinking about collecting all this together in a single Interslavic encyclopedia. Of course, you can say that according to the rules it should be on every Wikipedia, but for some reason it did not work out that way, let's see if it will work on the Interslavic Wikipedia? Another reason I want to mention. I hear complaints from people about the lack of neutrality in some parts of Wikipedia. I hear praise for Esperanto Wikipedia, I was told that it is more neutral than some national Wikipedias. I think that Interslavic Wikipedia will also reach a good level of neutrality, because it is a conlang that gather people from different countries and lifestyles. Of course, you can again say that we cannot create new Wikipedias just because of neutrality, every Wikipedia should be neutral anyway, but for some reason it did not quite work out that way, so let's see how it will be on the Interslavic Wikipedia? Finally, the most important reason for me. For us, Slavs, Interslavic is understandable without the need for prior learning. People of some small Slavic nations cannot have their own large Wikipedias in their native language since they do not have population enough, so they have small Wikipedies in their languages, and they use the English Wikipedia, but English is not easy for Slavs and this creates a barrier, and all other Slavic encyclopedias are much less understandable to them, than Interslavic. Only Interslavic sounds near native to all of us. For small Slavic nations, Interslavic Wikipedia is an excellent chance to get a large encyclopedia as close to their native language as possible and have a minimum language barrier when accessing information. At the same time, Interslawic Wikipedia will be convenient for all Slavs in general, and Interslavic also allows foreigners to easily learn it and get acquainted with Slavic. Plameniled (talk) 07:03, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Plameniled: If it's not a secret, which small Slavic nation do you personally belong to? I find your reasoning to be exactly backwards. The Interslavic language doesn't help the small nations, who already struggle building Wikipedia projects in their native languages, but is effectively intended to further drain their already relatively limited resources and promote extinguishing their languages in the long run.
    Now regarding your specific use case. Instead of "Russian, Czech, Polish and other Wikipedias" to find complete information on the topic of Slavic fantasy, you will have to deal with "Russian, Czech, Polish, Interslavic and other Wikipedias". Yes, one additional Wikipedia for you to deal with, while all the others won't magically disappear. This situation is perfectly illustrated by the well known https://xkcd.com/927 comic.
    As for "English is not easy for Slavs", this is very much debatable. Just look at the https://www.ef.com/wwen/epi/ stats and you will see that the Slavic people have a fairly good affinity for learning English. Learning English is surely difficult for the Asian nations, but such problem doesn't exist in the eastern Europe. Most of the modern educated people can communicate in English, but the older generations admittedly lag behind. While Interslavic is easier to learn, English has a tremendously better value. I'm not convinced that the cost/benefit ratio of Interslavic is good.
    And an additional factor is the automatic translation technology, which keeps rapidly improving nowadays, diminishing the value of the Interslavic language as a communication tool altogether. As for the other purposes, in my opinion, being a surrogate artificial language, Interslavic has no cultural value. --Ssvb (talk) 21:29, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I, on the other hand, think Plameniled makes a few very good points. The purpose of any Wikipedia project is to provide people with information in a language they can understand. It's as simple as that. And it is a fact that that information is often lacking. Let's take those fantasy writers as an example. We can often find extensive articles about them in the Wikipedia edition in the language they write in, but if they are mentioned in other projects at all, information is mostly short and often outdated. Same goes, obviously, for political parties, towns, churches, etc. My idea for the Interslavic Wikipedia is that it will contain the info that is relevant for an encyclopedia in a compact form, not more or less than that: no stubs of the type "Greece is a country in Europe", but not the entire monographs that we often see in the English edition either. If that information can be presented in such way that people can understand it without using translation software, then what's wrong with that?
    Furthermore, you seem to imply that Interslavic might cause some kind of braindrain among smaller languages. Well now, do you really think Sorbs, Kashubians and Rusinians will massively abandon their own wikipedias and start writing in Interslavic instead? Frankly, I think that allegation is completely unsubstantiated. People generally prefer to write in their own language — unless the information is already available in that language anyway, in which case they might elect to write it in another language. Besides, Interslavic Wikipedia is by no means meant to replace any other edition, just like Interslavic itself is not meant to replace any other language. It is merely intended as a means to make information accessible to a broader audience.
    What I am really hearing here is echoes of the argument: Learning that language and writing is a waste of time, let them do someting useful instead. But don't you think people should have the freedom to decide for themselves what they consider useful?
    As for your English argument... Well, due to my profession, here in the Netherlands I have been dealing with thousands of immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, mostly Poland. And I can assure you that only a tiny minority of them are able to utter more than just a few words in English. Even among educated people I know quite a few of them whose knowledge of English is bad or even absent. Besides, Wikipedia is not only there for educated people. Don't get me wrong: It's wonderful if people can speak English or whatever other language, and I am certainly not saying they should give up on it and take up Interslavic instead. But it's a simple fact that there are millions of people who don't. Instead of telling them to go and learn English, I'd much rather communicate with them in a language they don't have to learn first. IJzeren Jan (talk) 22:46, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    "the automatic translation technology, which keeps rapidly improving nowadays, diminishing the value of the Interslavic language as a communication tool" please, don't make off-topic. We are talking about writing articles in Wikipedia, not about communication in general. I can still understand the concerns that automatic translation reduces the usefulness of Interslavic in the field of information articles, but as for communication in general, which includes blogs, and news, and conversation, services with direct personal conversation, automatic translation will not solve these problems for a very long time, but this is not the topic of discussion, we are discussing only Interslavic and articles.
    "The Interslavic language doesn't help the small nations,... intended to further drain their already relatively limited resources and promote extinguishing their languages in the long run" Interslavic, in general, is useful for every Slavic nation, both small and large, because speaking Interslavic, which is 80% identical to our native language, we remain within the framework of thinking of our native language, and our creative resources do not leak out of these frameworks. I described it in more detail in another comment. (Of course, I understand that there are individuals for whom Interslavic does not suit and that is normal, but there are many people for whom it suits.) Anyway, here again you are moving on to too general topics, although we only need to discuss one encyclopedia. In any case, one encyclopedia cannot develop or diminish any language. This applies to both small languages and Interslavic itself.
    As for what you write, that Interslavic will not solve the problem of switching between dozens of Slavic Wikipedias, and that Interslavic will simply become another one of them, it is not a fact that this will happen. Everything will depend on the authors of Interslavic Wikipedia. What is the difference between an average Slav and a Interslavic speaker? An average Slav just sits in his local segment of the Internet. Unlike them, many Interslavic Speakers are very inclined to browse Slavic segments of the Internet, because thanks to their knowledge of Interslavic, they can easily navigate them. Therefore, a more plausible hypothesis is that the authors of Interslavic Wikipedia will try to aggregate information that is different in other encyclopedias, or having made an edit in their native Wikipedia, they will want to add it to Interslavic (and without any drain on resources from small languages). But how this will happen in life, only life itself will show. What I or you write is just a hypothesis, and life will show reality. Plameniled (talk) 07:49, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Against

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  • I hate to be “that guy”, but I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here. Pretty much every Slavic language has a perfectly good Wikipedia, or even multiple Wikipedias in the case of Serbo-Croatian, so what’s the point in adding a Wikipedia for an obscure artificial pidgin that hardly anyone uses? Interslavic hasn’t caught on as a bona fide lingua franca (and probably never will) so an InterSlav Wikipedia would go the way of every other non-Esperanto conlang edition— a tiny wiki used by a tiny group of hobbyists that has negligible benefit as a genuine learning resource. Dronebogus (talk) 09:28, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You are mistaken on several accounts here, and I'd really suggest you read a few things instead of showing off your ignorance. To begin with, this "hardly anyone" is at least 25,000 people in more than twenty different groups on the Internet, some of which use it for discussing subjects totally unrelated to the language itself. You can easily check these facts. Besides, you keep comparing everything to Esperanto, but whereas Esperanto is essentially the language of a worldwide club of hobbyists, Interslavic was never even intended to become the language of any community in the first place. Its primary purpose is one-way communication with people who probably don't even know what language it is. As such, it's being used by tour guides, in hotels, on websites, at conferences, by musicians from various countries and in an almost-Oscar-winning movie. It has the potential of reaching 250 million people who speak a Slavic language, and that makes it perfectly suitable for an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. That's also why your argument that Slavs already have their own editions is moot: in the Serbian edition you can find everything about Serbian politics, but hardly anything about Polish politics, for example. Esperanto Wikipedia is doing perfectly fine, nobody is denying that, but fact remains that it is of no use to people who aren't Esperantists. An Interslavic Wikipedia has the potential to become much more than that, and it's unfair to assume in advance that it won't. But ultimately, it's up to us to prove you wrong. IJzeren Jan (talk) 22:10, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I’d be glad to be proven wrong. I’m just being realistic, in that it probably won’t catch on as a Wikipedia. Dronebogus (talk) 09:36, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    How did you count 25,000 people and how many of them are actually competent enough to speak or post messages in Interslavic? If there are more than twenty groups, then was it possible for multiple accounts of the same person to be counted more than once?
    Also rather than reading an Interslavic article, wouldn't it be better to just read an English article via Google Translate? The accuracy of understanding may be even better this way. Ssvb (talk) 06:30, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Nobody knows the exact numbers. All I can tell you is that the largest groups are on Facebook (20,800 members), Discord (8281), VK (2335) and Telegram (828 + 350). In other words, overlap has been accounted for. I can't really tell how many of these people have a certain level of proficiency, because I haven't participated in any of these groups myself for years now. Last time I checked, about one third of the members on Facebook were active participants. On the other hand, there are also people who don't do social media but still speak the language. So the honest answer is that I have no idea, but my best guess is that at least a couple of hundred people can speak and write it reasonably fluently. IJzeren Jan (talk) 20:05, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It is better to just read an English article via Google Translate? Google Translate translates well between major languages, for example between English and Polish, between Polish and Russian, I have heard complaints about translations into Macedonian, Slovak. Perhaps the translator is developing so well that these problems will soon be overcome, but why should we have only one method? Why should we have only an autotranslator? To increase reliability, why shouldn't we have Interslavic? Plameniled (talk) 09:17, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Plameniled: Yes, the quality of Google Translate isn't very good, but it's an old and already outdated engine. Today the competition is strong in this domain, the AI technology has emerged to provide a pretty solid foundation and even the Wikimedia Foundation has also joined this race: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MinT
    The bottom line is that the automatic translation is getting better, while the Interslavic language will be always inherently unreliable. --Ssvb (talk) 23:22, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think this is a dead end when we discuss the topic of Interslavic vs autotranslation. Autotranslator is able to translate not only from English, but from Interslavic to native language too. The question here is not about the autotranslator, but about the number of people willing to write in Interslavic. The incubator will show this.
    And, yes, autotranslation is getting better. The prognosis for autotranslation is favorable. But we must not forget that this is still a prognosis, until this happens, let Interslavik show itself. Plameniled (talk) 13:14, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Autotranslator can't magically do a high quality translation from Interslavic into other languages without initially learning the language from a large parallel corpus of texts. And such corpus of texts doesn't exist yet. --Ssvb (talk) 22:24, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Friend, if we talk about a world in which automatic translators work perfectly, about a world that does not exist yet, but where we will definitely come, then in this world the question of "who will read" will not be as it is now, because anyone can read via a translator, but the only question will be "who will write". Only those Wikipedias will exist that someone writes.
    And in the future world of automatic translation, all Wikipedias - English, Russian, Hindi and so on - we will all see automatically in our native language. This removes the question of "is it convenient for us to read". The only question left is "what motivates authors to write".
    Will they write in English Wikipedia and in other Wikipedias that are foreign to them? I very much doubt that most of those people who do not know English want to make edits to the English Wikipedia, via an automatic translator. An automatic translator does not motivate writing, it only motivates consumption. The process of creating the text and motivation is all tied to the native language, because our thinking itself occurs in the native language. What motivates writing is precisely the native language. And also Interslavic, because it contains 80% of the native language. And we will simply see in the incubator how many people are motivated to write. Personally for me, Interslavic motivate me to create, because while wrining in Interslavic, I still remain within the framework of thinking in my native language. English do not motivates me. So we will see it Inkubator. Plameniled (talk) 08:16, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    How many people from 25 000 Interslavic speakers are actually competent enough to write Interslavic Wikipedia and are willing to write? No one can know this, the Incubator and/or Medžuviki will show. Plameniled (talk) 09:25, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You love to be "that guy". It's not the first time I've seen you in projects that you want to shut down, for reasons like "nobody speaks these languages", "Wikipedia is not a place to preserve languages" and other nonsense. Why are you so toxic? Władysław Krzywiec (talk) 06:46, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Oppose I do not support this, this test is very suspicious. There are 2 renamed vanished accounts in the activity statistics, such coincidences do not happen, it is most likely one person under two accounts. It is necessary to check whether these are real people creating articles there or one person under different accounts. The fact that this project was recognized as eligible was premature and inattentive. Shumadan62 (talk) 16:54, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I felt quite surprised when these two active users suddenly vanished and had their accounts renamed and locked. I've no idea why that happened, but I agree that it's strange.
    The first one was Władysław Krzywiec, who first voted against but then apparently changed his mind and started contributing to the project, mostly by copying material from Medžuviki to the Incubator. That would explain those 484 edits, even though he doesn't seem to actually know the language. The second one (it took me some digging to find it) edited under the name Niko5645xd. He also did some copying from Medžuviki, but also wrote a few articles himself. Based on those, I'd say his Interslavic is not flawless, but nevertheless quite decent. For that reason, it doesn't seem likely that both are the same person. If anything, I can imagine that at some point a user decides to take on a different username and lock the old one instead of just having it renamed. If that's the case, I cannot see why there would be anything wrong with that.
    In any case, I haven't seen any sign of abuse on their part. And frankly, I don't see what's there to be gained from making a lot of edits first and then locking one's account, as it will probably mean that their contributions won't count anymore. From that point of view, your accusation of sockpuppetry makes no sense. Even in the hypothetical case that both locked accounts turn out to be one and the same person, how would that invalidate the project as a whole? For the record, ca. 300 new articles that have been written since August/September, and only four of five of those were added by the accounts in question. IJzeren Jan (talk) 22:50, 7 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, maybe I'm wrong, but I generally assumed that not only these two accounts belong to one person, but all the accounts that wrote articles in this project are written by one person, maybe two. Shumadan62 (talk) 19:39, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I fail to see why we should care what someone who puts on a cloak of anonymity to assail one project assumes.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:03, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Honestly, I can't see how one person could manage to write all of those articles in the alloted time. The Miraheze version has a bunch of articles made by different accounts, and there are hundreds of those accounts, if not thousands. I kind of fail to see how all of those accounts would belong to a single user. Doubts are okay, but in this case, they seem rather unreasonable. Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 23:21, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Speaking of accounts versus people, I'll note that with three edits on all Wikimedia projects combined, all against this Wikipedia project, this clearly isn't your only or main account.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:45, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What? Seriously? Is this trolling? Medžuslovjanin (talk) 19:10, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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  • I knew this was coming when I saw Interslavic got an ISO 639 code. I'm sort of concerned that it has a danger of becoming more like Europanto than a coherent interlanguage once it hits the general audience of Wikimedia, but that's not really my problem.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:32, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, I am fully aware of that risk. But isn't that a problem that goes for many smaller language editions as well? In any case, it will require quite some good monitoring. Fortunately, by now there are plenty of people proficient at speaking and writing Interslavic and willing to take up the task. Mistakes can be fixed, but texts that have little or nothing in common with the grammar and dictionary of Interslavic will of course be deleted. To be quite honest, what I am more afraid of is an overload of oneliners of the type "X is a town in Y". IJzeren Jan (talk) 20:29, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I get that Interslavic is the only really viable constructed auxiliary language besides Esperanto, but how seriously is it really taken? Is it like Novial where anyone who speaks something in the relevant language family can understand it, but almost nobody actually uses it? Is it like Esperanto itself, being purely a linguistic subculture that is never spoken or written in a naturalistic context? Or are there actual serious uses outside of hobbyist circles? Dronebogus (talk) 03:34, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It's a language designed specifically for all Slavic people to understand it. There is a large number of people speaking and using the language, and intended usage is not only to allow people of different Slavic nations to speak between each other more fluently, but also to provide people a unified content they can read or hear. One of the proposed usage is tourist sightseeing guide speaking, providing informations about the cultural heritage in Slavic countries. It could be an alternative to the standard English language being used in a lot of sightseeing trips specifically for all Slavic tourists, where the sightseeing guide gets paid for this position (a normal job). This is also an opportunity for employers to provide employment for abroad citizens, without the need to use English by both parties. There is also literature in this language. Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 14:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Could you provide links to sources discussing this? Dronebogus (talk) 10:46, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Esperanto is linguistically much worse than many other international auxiliary languages. Interesting that you want to close down other international auxiliary languages Wikipedias and agitate for Esperanto. Ido, Interlingua and Interlingue are used by large communinties. There is a rich literature and active magazines. I think your real intention is to eliminate the competitors of Esperanto, which is quite dubious motivation. Valodnieks (talk) 16:25, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Whatever "linguistically much worse than" means, Esperanto is the only conlang Wikipedia that simply is a useful and used encyclopedia. You can cast aspirations at other users, but only speakers of Ido, Interlingua or Interlingue consider themselves competitors of Esperanto. Speakers of Esperanto tend to consider English a competitor, and non-conlangers tend to think only in terms of languages like Spanish, English and Chinese.--Prosfilaes (talk) 14:41, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    "Esperanto is the only conlang Wikipedia that simply is a useful and used encyclopedia"
    If that is true, then we do need another language that will fill in the void. Also Interslavic was never intending to compete with Esperanto. Interslavic is designed to be intelligible for all Slavic nations without the need to learn the language. And as a native Czech speaker, let me tell you that I do understand pretty much everything. Whatever words I do not know, I can guess from the context, and that's something you won't get from Esperanto. If you want to understand Esperanto, you have to learn that language. It was intended to be used as an alternative international language, but failed at the core concept. While it had the same idea as Interslavic, the authors failed to realize just how much diverse Romanic and Germanic languages are from each other. However if you look at Slavic languages, you'll find them really similar. English speakers find it difficult to distinguish Western Slavic languages from the Eastern ones. Interslavic highlights these similarities. Where Esperanto failed, Interslavic may succeed. Granted, it's not on the international level of Esperanto, but at least if your native language is Slavic, or you know one of the Slavic languages, you won't have much difficult time to understand Interslavic. Speaking or writing, you of course will have to learn the language. Plus, learning Interslavic may make it easier for you to learn any other national Slavic language, because you'd have the basis for it already. I don't know how Esperanto can help you learn English, German, French, etc. It's a fundamentally different language. Esperanto tries to mix between Germanic and Romanic languages, and Germanic and Romanic languages are very far away from each other ín terms of intelligibility. Even Germanic languages alone are very different from each other. English and German languages have very different grammar. Romanic languages are more similar to each other than Germanic languages, but still very diverse in grammar. French isn't much similar to Spanish for example. And if you want to compare between Romanic and Germanic languages, very different. And that's where Esperanto fails. Nobody wants to learn a full blown language just so you can understand it. English is already fairly well established international language. Esperanto is cool for linguistic enthusiasts, but that's about it. Interslavic on the other hand may help foreing speakers to better socialize with Slavic speakers without them having to learn English or other language. There is a real potential for Interslavic to help people. Esperanto is only accepted because it's internationally well recognized, but realistically speaking, it has no real use outside the Esperanto speaking community. Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 21:20, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Interslavic is mostly relying on Czech as source. As all Slavic languages are mutually understandable to a certain level the question is whether you need a constructed interzonal slavic language. For speakers of other language groups Interslavic is not really easier than any other existing slavic language. Macedonian and Bulgarian for example nearly dropped completely the case endings for substantives. Grammar in Interslavic is much more complex in this field. The problem for the Wikipedia of Interslavic will be to have enough people who really write in Interslavic and not mix it with their native or preferred slavic language. I checked the dictionaries of Interslavic in internet and I do not find them really complete, but of course you can form words easily of existing slavic languages. Anyway Interslavic has a well established community and so I do not oppose a Wikipedia for Interslavic. Valodnieks (talk) 22:39, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You are wrong about one thing here: Interslavic is not relying on Czech anything more than on any other Slavic language. I have actually seen Russians criticising Interslavic for being "too similar to Russian", or Polish for it being "too similar to Polish". It also depends on who is writing: Interslavic written by a Russian is bound to be slightly different from Interslavic written by a Pole, Croat or Bulgarian, just like there are differences between American and British English. That's even part of the design. Of course, contributions in some kind of improvised half-Polish/half-Russian, written by people who don't really know Interslavic, won't be acceptable, but a few mistakes here and there can always be corrected. That's normal for any language, I'd say. As for the dictionary, Interslavic currently has ca. 18,500 unique words, but don't forget that there are tons of "virtual vocabulary": a person writing an article about speleology won't need to think twice about the word for it. Besides, the principles for coining vocabulary are laid out pretty clearly, so anyone could do what the dictionary team is doing. IJzeren Jan (talk) 23:13, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Nobody wants to learn a full blown language? Surely Interslavic shouldn't have an ISO code if it's not a full blown language. Esperanto is currently used between people of all native tongues to communicate. Interslavic has no use outside the (currently much smaller) Interslavic community, except as a pidgin Slavic language. It won't help foreign speakers socialize with Slavic speakers; why learn Interslavic when you can learn the language of the people you're talking to, or a world language with a body of literature. (And anywhere I could use Interslavic, any problems getting by in Russian would be political, not linguistic.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:40, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And the Esperanto Wikipedia is probably of more use than Interslavic would ever be; there's possibly some speaker of Rundi (and Burundi is apparently one of the top ten Esperanto speaking countries) who would be forced to depend on the Esperanto Wikipedia, but most people who speak a Slavic tongue have a perfectly good Wikipedia in their native tongue, with the exceptions of Silesian speakers (who speak German), Sorbian speakers (who speak Polish), and speakers of some Serbo-Croatian languages/dialects (who speak Serbo-Croatian.) The Slavic world is all rich enough to have enough Internet connectivity to have decent Wikipedias in their native languages.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:52, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What I wanted to say is that a language that is designed for international communication, where the listener needs to know that language to understand it, is what makes it difficult to work with. Esperanto has the issue that it's only usable for people speaking Esperanto. It's not really similar to any other national language. Surely, it's based on Romanic languages, but it has so many differences and tries to mix in Germanic languages as well, and that doesn't work. Interslavic has only one branch of languages in mind, which is Slavic languages. And that means it will work. Yes, it is a full language, but to understand it, you only need to know one of the Slavic languages at the near-native level. If you want to learn a language which would enable you to speak with Slavic natives, Interslavic is a pretty good choice for you, as you don't have to decide wether you'll learn Russian or Serbian for example. It's simply based on all existing national Slavic languages. If you learn Esperanto, you can only speak Esperanto to those who speak Esperanto. Romanic languages speakers might understand you to some limited extent, but won't be able to make out what you're saying. Esperanto is that different. Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 07:44, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Interslavic has definite educational utility as “Slavic lite” for language students. But that doesn’t mean it needs a Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia; not every language automatically deserves a Wikipedia because has a number of speakers above zero and a valid language code. Dronebogus (talk) 09:40, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I must disagree. First of all, number of speakers is way beyond zero, it's not a negligible number by any means. It's even got attention from press, which is something that's definitely worth mentioning. Second of all, would you speak the same about national/native languages that are endangered (number of native speakers are dwindling)? Endangered languages are worth saving, it's part of the cultural heritage of the mankind. Say there are just a few hundreds native speakers of some native language left, and numbers are slowly decreasing. Are you saying that they don't deserve Wikipedia in their language because their numbers are simply not big enough? Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 15:54, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    25,000 sounds like a lot, but it’s still less than the entire population of my hometown, which is pretty small. As for native languages, I personally don’t think they need a Wikipedia edition either simply because there just aren’t enough speakers to maintain it properly— look at Cree Wikipedia for example. Dronebogus (talk) 09:40, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, but it's not like Interslavic needs a Wikipedia edition. It has been there for over 350 years without one, so it's not like Wikipedia is paramount to its survival. But I'm sure a Wikipedia edition in Interslavic can be helpful to a lot of people. And if you think 25,000 is too little to make it, then you might consider that this number is growing constantly; a mere five years ago it was only some 6,000. Still more than Interlingua and Ido together, and both are nevertheless able to have reasonably decent Wikipedia editions. IJzeren Jan (talk) 19:26, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Of course I’m going to point out that Ido (basically an ausbau form of Esperanto) and Interlingua shouldn’t have Wikipedias either. The landscape has changed since those wikis were formed— I can tolerate them being grandfathered in, but we don’t need any more IAU/conlang wikis IMO and should ban them like we did with new ausbau languages. Dronebogus (talk) 12:15, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Would you ban an Esperanto Wikipedia? Because that's arguably also a conlang wiki. Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 01:03, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It is, but I just said that I can tolerate them being grandfathered in; and even though I think there are good reasons to close other conlang/dead/obscure language wikis I would never argue to close a huge, high-quality wiki like EoWiki or Latin Wikipedia even if they’re arguably kind of intrinsically silly. Dronebogus (talk) 05:33, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    P.S. I'll also add that Interslavic Wikipedia is important in that sense that if you want to show something to Slavic people, you can actually share a single link pointing to a language they will understand. It is a viable alternative to English in that sense that Slavic people won't have to learn English to be able to communicate with the speaker. And speaker of this language will have the basis to understand Russian for example. And believe me, Russians have real difficulties speaking English. I know that first hand, I've met some of those. Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 07:51, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Why can’t I just share a link in Russian then? Dronebogus (talk) 09:41, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Will people in Czechia understand it if you share it for them? Will people in Croatia understand it? Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 15:47, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No, but if you’re talking to a Czech or a Croat wouldn’t you just link to the Czech or Croatian Wikipedia? What situation would you encounter someone who you know is a Slav but aren’t sure from where? Dronebogus (talk) 09:41, 4 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Why did you assume they'd be targetted individually? Of course if I'm gonna target them individually, I'd use a link to Wikipedia in their language (if the article is at least available there). But if you're targetting a group that consists of multiple people all from different Slav nations, would you rather share a single link for everyone of them to visit, or would you share links in respective languages they speak? Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 01:07, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I guess? Still seems kind of obscure even if I can think of situations where it might occur. Dronebogus (talk) 05:34, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Not only Silesian speakers (who speak German), Sorbian speakers (who speak German) Serbian speakers (who speak Polish), and speakers of some Serbo-Croatian languages/dialects (who speak Serbian) have low access to an encyclopedia in their native language. There are also not big countries, for example, Slovenia, Macedonia, which may have encyclopedias in their languages, but do not have a sufficient population to make their encyclopedias large. I talked to a Macedonian and he said that he switches between the Bulgarian and Russian Wikipedia since macedonian sourves are not large. I talked to a Slovenian and she said that they have to teach their children English to a fluent level, otherwise there is low access to information. And these are not the only small countries. Interslavic is the only language that is as close to them all as possible, this is a chance for small nations and countries to have a potentially large Wikipedia in a language they understand, only Interslavic has minimum language barier for them. Plameniled (talk) 08:51, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd begin at the ISO code request, which actually contains links and mentions of some content and literature in Interslavic language. It's mostly translations of well known literature from various Slavic countries. Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 11:52, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Interslavic is also a good place to start. Lots of information can also be found here. IJzeren Jan (talk) 12:22, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interslavic seems to meet requirements laid out on Language proposal policy. Real-world usage, publications in the language, a reasonable degree of recognition are all there, both within and outside the conlang world. Interslavic is a major constructed language and probably the most viable (contemporary) zonal auxiliary language. Being highly intelligible to Slavic speakers from the get-go, its potential readership exceeds that of many other Slavic-language Wikipedias, while also being easier to pick up and learn than other Slavic languages to eventually contribute with satisfiable fluency (up to proofreading and further corrections by other editors). On the basis of diversity of regions of origin of its contributors, it is likely to contain more content about Slavic-related topics than individual Slavic-language Wikipedias (including but not limited to e.g. politics as previously mentioned). –Vipz (talk) 22:10, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have noticed that some of the discussion here has been about the language itself, rather than the criteria of its eligibility. For instance, how intelligible it is to speakers of certain other languages, or is it too similar/reliant on to Czech. I am not here to provide my opinions on these matters, but rather to stress, that none of these should matter in the context of making a final decision, as they have nothing to do with eligibility criteria. The second issue would've mattered if there was an argument about the language-dialect problem. There is no such problem with Interslavic really, which is why it got the ISO code. So once again, I call to disregard irrelevant comments when making the final decision. --Мурад 97 (talk) 13:15, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I cannot speak on behalf of other nations, but so far as I've seen, Interslavic is easily interceptible by Western Slavic people as well as Eastern Slavic people, and also Southern Slavic people. If I should be specific, then Polish people understand it well, Serbians understand it well, Ukrainians understand it well, Russians understand it well, and Croatians understand it well, aside from Czechs (and Slovaks). So intelligibility of other nations is fairly well maintained. As per if it would be eligible to become a full Wikipedia, then I have to stress that there is already fairly extensive wiki in existance over at Miraheze, posing as an unofficial Wikipedia clone. It's got number of articles already, and many of them are good quality. I think isv WP will do just fine. Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 08:28, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    We are basically in an agreement with you here. The only thing is that I don't understand why intelligibility is even a part of the discussion on this particular page. --Мурад 97 (talk) 10:37, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Incubator

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  Note: Import of isv.miraheze.org to Incubator requested on incubator:Incubator:Import requests#Wp/isv. –Vipz (talk) 04:26, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As noted above by Wojsław Brożyna, Interslavic already has a wiki outside Wikimedia space at https://isv.miraheze.org/, founded seventeen years ago to serve as a Wikipedia clone. It has a working transliteration mechanism, several other modules, and much of the user interface has already been translated to Interslavic. At present, it has 470 articles, most of which are fairly decent in size. In the meantime, however, Interslavic has also been added to the Incubator. While I am not saying there's anything wrong with that, I also notice that people have started copying articles from our own wiki to the Incubator manually. And that is NOT a good idea, because that way their entire history (in some cases going back to 2007) is lost. Hence, please allow me to ask two questions:

  1. It is really necessary to go through the Incubator stage, or would it be possible to treat the wiki at Miraheze as a valid alternative? Unless I am mistaken, a similar thing happened in the case of Toki Pona. Once isv.wikipedia.org has been approved and created, it will be easy to import everything from Miraheze, including page histories.
  2. If that won't be possible, would it be possible to import the contents of isv.miraheze.org to the Incubator, including modules, user interface, etc.?

Any help in the matter will be much appreciated! Thanks, IJzeren Jan (talk) 18:06, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, I'd love to ask @Jon Harald Søby that why they enabled incubator:Wp/isv for contributions. Shouldn't this thing be reviewed carefully? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 08:06, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm certainly not saying enabling incubator:Wp/isv was a bad idea. Once Interslavic at last got its ISO 639-3 code, it was to be expected, because many people have been waiting for this for years. But since our Wikipedia clone at Miraheze already has a working infrastructure and quite some content, it would be best to import all of it to the Incubator first and take it from there. It's just that I have no idea how complicated it would be to import 500 articles, 1700 Wikimedia texts, talk pages, etc. That's why I was wondering whether skipping the Incubator could be a possibility too. IJzeren Jan (talk) 17:11, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@IJzeren Jan According to current Incubator policy, constructed languages are only permitted for testing if their RFLs are judged eligible, where here, it isn't yet. Also for such languages to be eligible, there must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion. Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 21:37, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you sure about that? All I read at incubator:Policy is that a valid ISO 639 code is required, plus the following sentence: "You can start a test language of the projects mentioned above, regardless of whether you have a request at Meta[1], though it is recommended to ask first for confirmation through the page Incubator:Requests for starting a test[2]. It is not required to have a proposal at Meta, but without one, your test will not be able to get an own wiki." I am of course familiar with the sentence you quote, but unless I am gravely mistaken, it as a condition for having a Wikipedia edition, not for having a test project in the Incubator. And by the way, there are quite a few languages on the Incubator that don't even have a request at Meta, or had their request rejected. The way I understand it, the verification process by the LangCom, work in the Incubator and work on Translatewiki.net can go parallelly. IJzeren Jan (talk) 23:02, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. By the time the language is accepted on Translatewiki, we could have a working infrastructure on Incubator. Just for a note, there is already a request on Translatewiki for adding the language, and it even has a corresponding Phabricator request and Gerrit patch made. Polda18 (talk • my contributions) 12:16, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As Interslavic speaker, I support the idea of an Interslavic Wikipedia and Incubator, but I myself feel like it will be reasonable to contribute if it has transliteration between Cyrillic and Latin, like on Medžuviki, and, what is even more important for me, if it had a system of mutual verification of comprehensibility (so called in Interslavic "verifikacija razumlivosti"), which even Medžuwiki does not have, but which is available on the creative Interslavic server, for example. Unfortunately, I am not a programmer and I do not know how to implement translirations and comprehansions banners in the incubator myself, if programmers may promise it, I will be glad to contribute to the articles in Interslavic. I will be glad for these opportunities, thanks in advance. (PS Why is a verification system is important? The number of people willing to write in Interslavic is much greater than the number of people willing to correct other people's comprehensible errors (this is demonstrated by the projects I've seen). Therefore, on particularly important resources, such as Wikipedia, you simply cannot publish incomprehensible texts in the hope that someone will correct them. Instead, there should be a banner on the every new text that the text is awaiting verification of understandability by Western, Southern, and Eastern Slavs. When the text has been read by a Southern Slav and he understood it, he can remove 1 banner that the text needs verification of understandability by Southern Slavs. And so on. Moreover, for such checks it is not necessary to know Interslavic, the main thing is to be a native speaker of the Slavic language and it is very simlple and do not take many time to verificate understandability. Once again, this works on a creative server and is not as difficult as I describe it). –Plameniled (talk)
Thanks for sharing this important bit of information about the practical implications and for explaining that something spoken or written in Interslavic by one person isn't really guaranteed to be understandable by another Slavic person. This necessity of verification by Western, Southern and Eastern Slavs in order to rephrase the text until it becomes actually understandable, demonstrates the practical fitness of the Interslavic language for its mission or lack thereof.
In one of my older comments, I already shared my own experience of listening to an Interslavic audio book. My conclusion was that the actual Interslavic language intelligibility is greatly overrated. And if we take a random rural strictly monolingual elderly Slavic person, then I suspect that such person would have had even more difficulties than me. --Ssvb (talk) 00:14, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Plameniled: As of yesterday, the transliteration engine from Medžuviki has been implemented in the Incubator: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/isv/Glavna_stranica. As far as I can see, it is working properly. The only thing is that you'll have to switch to the "old look" (Vector Legacy 2010), because in the new one (Vector 2022) it doesn't show yet. Cheers, IJzeren Jan (talk) 22:55, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
thank you, I'll be there in my free time.
What's the strategy now: do we write new articles in Incubator or on Medžuviki? Plameniled (talk) 13:03, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good question. Well, now that basically everything is working here in the Incubator, I think we can safely move here and close or freeze Medžuviki. IJzeren Jan (talk) 00:10, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As for the intelligibility thing: we actually have a project going on for that. Problem is only that intelligibility is extremely individual: one Pole claims to understand 99%, another Pole only 40% or so. There are many factors that play a role here, not only intelligence or education, but also willingness, patience, etc. It also depends on who is writing or speaking, and how. That's what makes it very difficult to determine the intelligibility of a word, especially without context. But we do our best. IJzeren Jan (talk) 23:06, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not very difficult to measure intelligibility more or less objectively. Just pick a random English article from Wikipedia. Translate it into Interslavic. Make a quiz with a bunch of true and false statements about the content of the article. Set a reasonable time limit. In this setup, the percentage of correct answers determines intelligibility. Compare intelligibility of the Interslavic article versus the original English article + Google Translate. Actually do this with two different articles, so that each participant is given one Interslavic article and one English article.
Regarding the wide 40% to 99% intelligibility range among the Poles. People cant be trusted to subjectively self-assess their own level of intelligibility. For example, the Russians tend to claim that they understand Ukrainian fairly well and many of them are dishonest about this for ideological reasons. And there's also the Dunning–Kruger effect. --Ssvb (talk) 08:15, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
thank you for your reply. I have to mention smth (and then I will explain why): it took me a long time to read the reply: I didnt got 1 sentence, and went to Google Translate, but it translated incomprehensibly, so I had to manually transfer your text to GPT, ask GPT to rewrite it more clearly and in shorter sentences, and then translate it.
It showes how I suffer in Wikipedia. I have B2 in English, but even with this level I regularly suffer in the English Wikipedia. And Interslavic is a way out for people like me. I understand that it was hard for you to listen to the Interslvic audiobook - but please understand that without Interslavic people like me deal with English Wikipedia. It is more harder than Interslavic.
For people like me, it is easier to read Medžuviki even without the “ intelligibility banners”, than to switch between GPT, Google Translate and Simple English Wikipedia.
The idea of "intelligibility banners" does not at all mean that Interslavic is overrated. "intelligibility banners" would be usefull even in Wikipedia in my native language, because sometimes the wording is very unclear. I'm not even talking about the English Wikipedia.
The regular Wikipedia has "banners", as I see, a "banner" that informs lack of neutrality in artickle, or that it has not been verified - these "banners" say that it is possible to make it verified and neutral, and not that it is incapable of being verified and neutral. similarly with the idea of “ intelligibility banners”. Unfortunately, as stated in the following comment by another user, it is not yet clear how to implement these intelligibility "banners", because the banner can be removed by a person who, due to his linguistic talent, understands the text very well, which the average person would not understand. so my proposal needs to be postponed. success can be achieved in some another ways. Plameniled (talk) 12:52, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a native English speaker. It can't be ruled out that there might have been something wrong with my comment. On the other hand, I can understand Interslavic, but can't post comments in Interslavic at all, so the Interslavic language won't be able to improve our communication. Your eventually successful usage of GPT just showcases the power of the state of the art language AI models. These AI models are also used by the modern automatic translation services. And I already mentioned that Wikimedia Foundation also works on their own solution for automatic translation: https://translate.wmcloud.org/ (you can try it). --Ssvb (talk) 08:32, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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