If we provide production wiki access to 5 new languages, with or without Incubator

Out of curiosity, how does production access with Incubator work? Maybe I don't understand at all what "production wiki access" implies.
Also, is this really about "languages" and not "wikis" and only covers incubator wikis with a language and the language must have zero wikis in production so far?

In T376772#10213226, @Aklapper wrote:

Out of curiosity, how does production access with Incubator work? Maybe I don't understand at all what "production wiki access" implies.

It means getting a new wiki, whether or not the language in question already has an active test wiki in the Incubator.

Also, is this really about "languages" and not "wikis" and only covers incubator wikis with a language and the language must have zero wikis in production so far?

I don't really understand the question… It's ultimately about new wikis, but one of the core criteria is that the language doesn't already have a wiki, so which term to use becomes a bit interchangeable.

Ah, thanks! Looks like I wrongly assumed that a proposed Wikiversity in language xyz would have to start in Incubator, even if this language xyz already has a, say, Wiktionary wiki in production. Sorry for the noise!

July-September 2024 Updates

Over the course of the hypothesis work for the July-September 2024 quarter, the following was accomplished:

• Developed grouping and selection criteria for wikis to participate in the pilot. The criteria included metrics such as edits, new pages created, average number of monthly active editors, and time spent in the Incubator over the past 3 months. Minimum criteria were set: the wiki must be a Wikipedia, have at least 2 active editors and 30 edits in the last 3 months, and could be in either RTL or LTR language. Full details are available in this report.
• Created a measurement plan to track the progress of wikis in production infrastructure versus the Incubator. This plan includes primary and supplementary metrics, selection and evaluation methodologies: T367686
• Selected five wikis using random sampling from clusters with differing characteristics based on the developed criteria.
• Conducted outreach to engage proposed communities and their active editors, inviting them to participate in the experiment. Outreach efforts targeted venues where editors are likely to be active, such as the Incubator, Translatewiki.net project, and user talk pages.
• Worked closely with the Language Committee to gain approval for the experiment and graduate the selected wikis from the Incubator. The status of the five Wikipedias selected for this experiment was tracked here. Ongoing discussions with the Language Committee are documented in mailing list discussions.
• Presented findings and recommendations on language incubation and the hypothesis work at conferences such as Celtic Knot and Wikimania. These presentations emphasized the work on providing production access to wikis (WE2.2.3/WE2.2.4) and integrating addWiki.php into MediaWiki core (WE2.2.5). Recordings, slides, and Phabricator task links are available here: T369131 and T375917. The community feedback was positive, with discussions about the challenges of prolonged incubation periods for languages.
• Approved five languages through the Language Committee, and the intended approval for these proposed languages has been posted on Meta: Link to Language Committee post. These five languages are: Pannonian Rusyn, Tai Nüa, Iban, Obolo, Southern Ndebele.

Lessons Learned

• Expediting language approvals: One positive outcome from this experiment is that it has sped up the approval process for certain languages. For example, previous requests for approval for the Iban, Obolo and Southern Ndebele languages, which had stalled in the growing backlog or lost momentum due to community inactivity, gained traction as the project steering committee advocated for their meeting the experiment's minimum criteria.
• Human sampling required: While selecting wikis, human judgment was necessary to interpret the data accurately. Some examples: Ancient Greek (grc) showed increased activity but was excluded since it is not a living language. It was initially included in the sampling but removed based on expert advice. The measurement plan feedback indicated it was useful to exclude editors who are active across more than 5 languages, as they may not be tied to a specific language community.
• Community re-engagement:
  • Although there was initially no response from the Krio language community, outreach efforts led to the re-engagement of a contributor who had been inactive since 2015. This contributor resumed work on Translatewiki.net, creating an opportunity for further discussions around their participation in the experiment.
  • A contributor from the Southern Ndebele language community expressed deep appreciation for the initiative, saying: "I cannot put into words how precious a gift this experiment is to the South African editing community. We have advocated for this for 10 years, and to see this experiment happening this year is simply divine. I am looking forward to supporting the Isindebele Wikipedia even more going forward." Additional responses can be found on this talk page.

Five new languages added to Wikipedia as part of the experiment: Southern Ndebele, Pannonian Rusyn, Iban, Obolo, and Tai Nüa. Learn more in this blog post. These five languages represent millions of speakers across the globe.

• Southern Ndebele – Spoken by 1.1 million people in South Africa
• Iban – Spoken by 2.45 million people in Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia
• Obolo – Spoken by 318,000 people in Nigeria
• Pannonian Rusyn – Spoken by 20,000 people in Serbia and Croatia
• Tai Nüa – Spoken by 720,000 people across Central Europe and Southeast Asia