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One extremely common question I am asked is "What do I need to do to get my test approved?" The general answer to that question can be found on Meta at Language proposal policy. There are two specific requirements stated here:
- There must be an active test community.
- In practice, this means at a minimum that for at least three consecutive months, and then continuing until approval, there must be at least three registered editors making at least ten edits each on the test.
- There must be progress in translating the interface on translatewiki.net.
- In practice, for the first project in a language (usually Wikipedia), this means translating the entire MediaWiki (most used messages) group, as well as enough additional messages within the MediaWiki core group so that it is at least 13% translated overall. That is the figure that triggers the activation of an interface language on the Wikimedia projects.
- For subsequent projects in a language, LangCom wants to see further progress in translating MediaWiki core and other MediaWiki message groups. For specific projects, messages specific to extensions used on those projects should be completed.
One thing that is decidedly not found there is a hard minimum number of pages necessary for approval. There are reasons for this:
- Quality matters. We don't want people chasing numbers by creating a lot of stubs that are of little to no real use. It's far more important to create pages with real content, links and references than to create a lot of stubs.
- Participation matters. Language Committee is interested in making sure the community is big enough and active enough to maintain and grow the project after it is approved and exported into its own subdomain. That is a different goal from simply getting a project approved. It would be too easy to give a fixed goal—say, 750 pages for a Wikipedia—have a whole lot of people come together to reach the fixed goal, and then have them leave when the goal is met. We want these projects to be sustainable.
Still, I can appreciate that it can be frustrating not to know where you stand. And it can be especially frustrating to have met the activity and interface translation requirements, take your project to LangCom, and have LangCom say "You're not ready yet"—especially when LangCom then won't tell you what you need to do about it. So I want to provide some advice to try to help. Note that this represents my opinion, not fixed policy. And note that this does not replace the two requirements shown above, nor final language verification, nor any other requirement listed at Meta.
One reason I am doing this right now is that there are 13 tests that fully meet the "active test community" requirement (or that I expect to meet it by the end of February 2018). Most—not quite all—have also met the interface translation requirement. Yet only two of them (at most) are approvable:
- Gorontalo Wikipedia is awaiting final language verification.
- Pashto Wikivoyage is borderline too small, but it's getting close.
- Montenegrin Wikipedia and Nyungar Wikipedia have particular issues that their communities are aware of.[1]
For all of the rest of the projects, the projects are too stub-heavy (mostly) and/or they are simply too small.
Start at en:WP:STUB for a definition of a "stub article", especially for Wikipedias. English Wikipedia is a well-developed project, and we could potentially be a little more easygoing here. But if your article is only 1–2 sentences long, up to no more than one decently written paragraph, then it's a stub—even if it contains infoboxes or navigation templates. Remember that part of the evaluation that will happen is that some LangCom member will come looking at your project and look at 10–20 random pages. If the pages look like stubs, then they are stubs. Pages need to have real content—some length and some references—in order not to be thought of as stubs.
It's hard for me to give a hard number on this. But I'm inclined to tell you that a project should have a maximum of 20–25% stubs to be approvable, and preferably less than that. Certainly if your test is more than half stubs, don't even bother asking LangCom if you're ready. If you have more than about 25% stubs, your community should really consider not creating more stubs. Instead, your community should start trying to flesh out the pages it already has.
As I have said in a couple of other places here, it's better to create fewer good articles than a lot of stubs. Still, if your test project has only 50 pages, it's simply going to be considered too small, even if they're the best articles in the world. So you do need to get page counts up, preferably by writing quality pages. But how many?
I looked here at what Wikipedias have been created since 2014. And I then looked at the size of those projects now (here). And what I saw is that in most cases, those projects all have 900 mainspace pages or more—some a lot more. So I would say that's certainly a place to start for most Wikipedias. If you have fewer than 500–600 pages, don't even bother asking yet.
- There are some exceptions. Atikamekw Wikipedia, for example, was created with about 150 mainspace pages. This language is an indigenous language of Canada, and Wikimedia Canada has explicitly committed to supporting this project and encouraging its growth over the coming years. We therefore felt comfortable approving it, as we are confident of its health over time.
- Projects that are approved while much smaller generally have a similar background story, making us comfortable approving them "early".
Other projects don't need to be quite as large. See m:Wiktionary, m:Wikivoyage, and similar pages for the other projects. Figure that if you are as big as the third-or-fourth smallest project there (that is open and has content[2]), you're probably ok. If you're much smaller than that, you will have a problem. Ping me privately if you have a question.
References
- ↑ That is also true of Sakizaya Wikipedia, but that project also has the "too-stub-heavy" and/or "too small" problem.
- ↑ ...and preferably was created after about 2008, so that it's not a "grandfathered" project
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