Re: Language policy agreement in the Norwegian Wikipedia community

Hoi,
There is a process for the start of new projects and for the start of new
language versions. This is a formal process and it does not involve the
voting of people. What it does involve is the existence of languages
recognised in the ISO-639-3. As such Norwegian, or the no /nor code is
considered a macro-language and does not qualify for a new project.

It is explicitly understood that by no.wikipedia.org we expect it to be
Bokmal.
Thanks,
     GerardM

http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Portal:No

2005/4/25 Bjarte Sørensen <[email protected]>

> Dear all,
>
> Most of you would be aware of some of the discussions that have occurred
> around Wikipedia in the Norwegian languages. Since the last round of
> discussions on this list, there has been a lot of internal debate, as
> well as what seems to be a fairly widely accepted agreement following
> voting.
>
> This e-mail intends to, after a brief recap on Norwegian language and
> wikipedia issues, take those interested through the latest development
> and will stake out the road ahead. It is also intended to inform the
> international community about the current agreement on no.wikipedia, so
> as to prevent misunderstandings in the future.
>
> Finally, we will mention an unfortunate reaction to the vote by a small
> number of users at the Norwegian Bokmål/Riksmål (no:) wikipedia who want
> to disregard the result of the voting and are planning to create a
> _third_ Norwegian wikipedia with the sole mission of mixing the contents
> of the two current Norwegian versions.
>
> == A short language history of Norway ==
>
> Spoken Norwegian ("norsk") (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "no") is in a fairly
> unique situation compared to most other languages of the world in that
> it has two widely accepted written standards, Bokmål (ISO 639-2 alpha-2
> code "nb") and Nynorsk (ISO 639-2 alpha-2 code "nn"). By national
> legislation they are both regarded as official written forms of
> Norwegian. In addition, many people still make a distinction between
> Bokmål and its precursor which still is in use, Riksmål.
>
> Briefly speaking, Bokmål and Riksmål are descendants of the Danish
> written language. Until the 1800s, Danish was the only widely used
> written language in Norway as a result of four centuries of union with
> Denmark. With increasing independence came a wish to norwegianise the
> Danish standard, with Knud Knudsen at the forefront for changing parts
> of the vocabulary and orthographics. Thus, Riksmål, and later Bokmål,
> resulted. These forms together are today probably used by about 90% of
> Norway's population, or somewhere around 3,500,000 people.
>
> Parallel to this development, a new written standard was created by Ivar
> Aasen. He travelled extensively throughout Norway, and based his new
> language, landsmål, on the grammar and vocabulary of dialect samples
> from around the country. This was later renamed Nynorsk. Modern Nynorsk
> differs significantly from modern Bokmål, and may be linguistically
> looked upon as as different (or as similar if you like) as Swedish is to
> Danish. For English or Dutch/German speakers, the differences may be
> likened to those between (Lowland) Scots and English or Low German and
> Dutch. Today it is estimated that about 500,000-600,000 people have
> Nynorsk as their first written language.
>
> More information about the Norwegian language history can be found in
> English, German, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the website of the
> Norwegian Language Council:
> http://www.sprakrad.no/templates/Page.aspx?id=653
>
> == A short history of Wikipedia in Norwegian ==
>
> The first Norwegian wikipedia started 26 November 2001 on the subdomain
> no.wikipedia.org. As most wikipedias, its contributor and article count
> started really picking up around the end of 2003. At the time, it
> accepted all written standards of Norwegian, although the amount of
> Nynorsk was minimal. There were already several debates about the
> feasibilty and appropriateness of keeping the two languages united on
> one Wikipedia. On 31 July 2004 a Wikipedia for Nynorsk was created.
>
> The creation of nn:, however, split the community at no: wikipedia. Many
> felt that given that Nynorsk now had its own wikipedia, no: should
> become a Bokmål/Riksmål Wikipedia only. Others disapproved and claimed
> that there was no need to change and that it should continue its
> language policy of accepting all and keep its interwiki link name of
> "Norsk".
>
> Nynorsk Wikipedia soon proved a success, as it within the next few
> months gathered several people who had felt uncomfortable in the
> (mainly) Bokmål environment at no:. The name displayed in interwiki
> links became "Norsk (nynorsk)" (languages are not spelt with upper case
> in Norwegian). To date it continues to be one of the fastest growing
> wikipedias, with a steady article increase, now at over 6000 articles
> and >50 editors with more than 10 edits since arrival.
>
> == Votes ==
>
> The issue of no:'s language policy has come up time and again, and a
> vote was held in March ([[:no:Wikipedia:Målform]]) as to which policy to
> adapt. Independent of the method of the tally (whether or not to include
> new contributors etc.) there was a majority for switching to a
> Bokmål/Riksmål only language policy (50% for Bokmål/Riksmål, 43.2% for
> Bokmål/Riksmål/Nynorsk/Høgnorsk, and 6.8% for the official variants
> Bokmål/Nynorsk only).
>
> Following this result, there is now going to be a vote on which
> interwiki link name will most appropriately reflect the current language
> policy of no:. The result of this vote will most likely be either "Norsk
> (bokmål)" or "Norsk (bokmål/riksmål)".
>
> Understandably, there has also been a debate as to whether the subdomain
> should change from "no" to "nb", as this is the correct representation
> of Bokmål according to ISO 639-2. However, there is some resentment
> towards such a move and currently a general acceptance in letting the
> Bokmål wikipedia stay at "no". The alternative some have suggested is a
> server-side redirect from "no" to "nb", in the same way that "nb" today
> is a server-side redirect to the equivalent page on "no".
>
> == Summary of the problem ==
>
> Unfortunately, a small group of users (who all write Bokmål/Riksmål) are
> ignoring the results from the vote, and are claiming they want to
> re-establish a wikipedia for all written standards of Norwegian. They
> claim they have been in touch with people centrally in Wikimedia
> (developers? stewards?) and that they have so far received positive
> comments. With this email, we would like to state the fact that there
> have been no official decisions about creating a third Norwegian
> wikipedia containing both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it is merely an unofficial
> initiative from a small group of users which started a sign-on list at
> [[:no:Bruker:Norsk_Wikipedia]]. A spontaneous list with signatures
> against this activity was immediately created at
> [[:no:Wikipedia-diskusjon:Fellesnorsk]]. The process of creating a third
> Norwegian wikipedia has not gone through a voting process in any of the
> two existing Norwegian wikipedias (no: and nn:) and can not be
> considered as a decision by the Norwegian Wikipedia community.
>
> We believe the creation of a third wikipedia under the Wikimedia
> foundation would have a serious and unfortunate impact on the existing
> wikipedias in Norwegian, no: and nn:, and would undermine Wikipedia's
> reputation in Norway. This being said, we are all for extensive co-
> operation between the four Scandinavian language wikipedias (including
> Swedish and Danish), as evident by the recent creation of
> [[:meta:Skanwiki]], the Scandinavian meta-pages, and the use of featured
> articles from neighbour wikipedias.
>
> == Conclusion ==
>
> Hopefully, this letter will help people better understand the
> complicated language situation of the Norwegian Wikipedia community, so
> as to give a background on which discussion can take place on this list
> in the future, such as the inevitable debate following a possible
> request for a re-establishment of the common (and third!) Norwegian
> Wikipedia.
>
> >From the community of no.wikipedia.org and nn.wikipedia.org,
>
> Bjarte Sørensen [[:meta:User:BjarteSorensen]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on
> nn:)
> Lars Alvik [[:no:User:Profoss]] (Administrator/bureaucrat on no:)
> Øyvind A. Holm [[:no:User:Sunny256]] (Administrator on no:)
> Onar Vikingstad [[:no:User:Vikingstad]] (Administrator on no:)
> Jon Harald Søby [[:no:User:Jhs]] (Administrator on no:)
> Chris Nyborg [[:no:User:Cnyborg]] (Administrator on no:)
> Guttorm Flatabø [[:no:User:Dittaeva]] (Administrator on nn:)
> Gunleiv Hadland [[:meta:User:Gunnernett]] (Administrator on nn:)
> Jarle Fagerheim [[:nn:User:Jarle]] (Administrator on nn:)
> Øyvind Jo Heimdal Eik [[:en:User:Pladask]] (Administrator on nn: and no:)
> Kristian André Gallis [[:nn:User:Kristaga]]
> Vegard Wærp [[:no:User:Vegardw]]
> Nina Aldin Thune [[:no:User:Nina]]
> Thor-Rune Hansen [[:no:User:ThorRune]]
> Claes Tande [[:no:User:Ctande]]
> Arnt-Erik Krokaa [[:no:User:AEK]]
> Rune Sattler [[:no:User:Shauni]]
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
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