On 11/14/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: - 100.000 of inhabitants of Montenegro claim chat their native language is Montenegrin. - They don't want to work on Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias. - It is reasonable not to wait ISO to formalize Montenegrin language and not to wait to incorporate those people in Wikimedian projects. They have the same rights like others. ("Bosnian Wikipedia is made because it would be unfair to have Serbian and Croatian Wikipedias and not Bosnian." -- I think that Andre Engels said so.) - Their Wiki project (http://wikii.itam.ws/index.php/Glavna_stranica) indents to be an encyclopedia, not POV fork. (I am sure that their Wiki(pedia) will have POV pages, but this is usual not only to small Wikipedias.) Maybe we could make "virtual Mongenegrin Wikipedia" based on conversion engine on Serbian Wikipedia (also, Montenegrin Wikipedia should have the same Cyrillic/Latin conversion engine), but we didn't finish Ekavian/Iyekavian engine. (Or, optionally, we can still work on it, but then we need a help.) And about vandals: The group of vandals are the same group which is indefintely blocked on Serbian Wikipedia and which makes to us a lot of problems.

What I want to know is -why- they don't want to work with the Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias. If they could work together, it'd introduce multiple viewpoints and thus help achieve Neutral Point of View (and numerous arguments, and potentially nationality-related nastiness). Communication is the key. They should hear each other out. On 11/14/06, Mark Clements <gmane(a)kennel17.co.uk> wrote:

--- James Hare <messedrocker(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yes, they should collaborate, I agree. But nationalism is a key factor in the Balkan. Especially when it's nascent, and when it covers unclear ethnic or linguistic identities. Just like new converts to some religion tend to be more fanatic than the old ones. And that applies to all, not just ex-Yugoslav. Dpotop news:2505d1590611140554r3b97d040s21207d25d5b25d36@mail.gmail.com http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com

Hoi, Yes I have read this message. The problem is in many ways intractable. It is also very reminiscent of several issues that we have had before. It often happened in the past that a project was "approved" to have a project. In the case of the "Siberian" language it lead to an immediate backlash. This is however not an isolated problem. This is not good. Another thing that is really deplorable is that some insist that they can and should be allowed to roll their own Wikimedia Foundation language codes. The current crop of our codes does not adhere to any Standard codes (like ISO-639 or IANA language subtags). Brion asked me at some stage to check our current list of codes and indicate where they do not comply with standards. To do that I have received the other day the information necessary to do that. When there are no codes for a specific code under the standards mentioned or where I cannot make out what they should be, I learned some of the procedures needed for the four standard organisations that apply to languages, dialect and orthographies. I hope this will lead to two things; identification where our codes are problematic. What to do with the codes that are manifestly wrong is another matter. The second thing is that it will strengthen the argument that we should never ever come up with our own codes. We should be good as it helps to integrate our work in the best practices of the Internet and the languages industry. Thanks, GerardM Guillaume Paumier wrote: