Politics sucks! But to really get me hot under my collar, it takes *language* politics ...

On linguistic grounds alone (alas!, I cannot demand that these were the only ones that count), there shouldn't be a cnr:wp.

Fwiw, Oliver

On 27-Dec-17 01:54, MF-Warburg wrote:

2017-12-27 0:33 GMT+01:00 Steven White <Koala19890@hotmail.com mailto:Koala19890@hotmail.com>:

The main thing that is urgent is that the Montenegrin community is
getting restless.


As to whether this should be approved (even waiting for an ISO
639-3 code), in principle I agree with MF-Warburg. But in
practice, it's a little hard for me to understand why there
shouldn't be a Montenegrin Wikipedia when there are separate
Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedias. If I were a Montenegrin
I would not be able to understand that at all.  If there were
still only one Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, I think we could make a
case for not creating any of the others. But from where we stand
now, how can we possibly say that separate Serbian, Croatian and
Bosnian projects are acceptable, but a Montenegrin one is not?

These separate projects were all created before Langcom and the current policy existed. They wouldn't be created today.

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------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Steven White
*Sent:* Tuesday, December 26, 2017 5:43 PM
*To:* langcom@lists.wikimedia.org <mailto:langcom@lists.wikimedia.org>
*Subject:* Montenegrin Wikipedia (URGENT)

I was going to hold off on this until the holidays are over, but
rather remarkably, unless somebody hacked the Library of
Congress's web site
<https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_changes.php>,
Montenegrin has been granted an ISO 639–2 code ("cnr"). This has
been in the air over the last month, and represents the first
addition to ISO 639–2 in over five years. The Montenegrin
community is jumping for joy, and I've just full-protected the
page Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Montenegrin 5
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Montenegrin_5>
on Meta because the discussion is getting out of hand.


If srwiki, hrwiki and bswiki didn't exist, we wouldn't have to
create this one, either. But I have to admit that I don't really
see any way we can currently justify not approving this project
(as "eligible"). My questions are, therefore:

  * Am I right about that?
  * Is LangCom willing to see this project marked as "eligible"
    based on an ISO 639-2 code alone?
  * The rules are that non-collective ISO 639-2 codes are supposed
    to be reflected in ISO 639-3 as well. So do I wait until this
    code is published by SIL?
  * If so, what happens if SIL does not take action?


Steven


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It was political.

On 28 Dec 2017, at 03:00, Steven White Koala19890@hotmail.com wrote:

From a purely linguistic perspective, it's hard to argue with any of this. And I don't have a skin in the game here; objectively, it doesn't matter to me if Montenegrin becomes eligible or not. Still, I would say the following:

Concerning MF-Warburg's comment: I fully understand that the others are grandfathered and wouldn't be created now. But the fact that they exist now means that the question about Montenegrin cannot be considered in a vacuum, either.

Concerning Jan's comment: I hear you. But to extend your analogy, the Irish are looking for an Irish English wiki because every time an Irishman tries to bring a different POV to articles about Ireland on the British wiki, s/he is being shot down. (Pretend it's 1975, or 1922, and the example is more trenchant.) Also, this whole issue of language secessionism doesn't really exist in English, so to make that comparison is only partially valid.

I do think we need to hear from Milos on this subject.

Let me add: On the Meta discussion page, I'm about to allow the discussion to reopen, with a focus on really two questions only:

• The principal question is whether or not Montenegrins actually have "free, unbiased access to the sum of all human knowledge" on the current projects. What they keep suggesting is that they don't: Serbian POV dominates, and Montenegrin POV is given short shrift. I am going to ask the Montenegrin advocates to prove that with concrete examples. But if they do so, then either (a) NPOV is going to have to be enforced from the outside (if that's even possible, but thereby violating normal practices of project autonomy) or (b) we're going to have to allow the Montenegrins to have their own project. • The second question: It's really quite remarkable in a way that the Montenegrins got the Library of Congress to make the first change to ISO 639-2 in five years. I'll grant that was probably just a political victory. But I'm going to invite the Montenegrin community to share any new evidence that they may have that may have changed LoC's mind, and could change ours. Maybe there isn't any new evidence. But if there is, we should be open to it.

Steven

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I can see four good reasons for NOT creating a Montenegrin Wikipedia:

1. Standardised Montenegrin is practically identical to Standard Serbian, except for a few words spelled differently. In addition, there is a Wikipedia in Serbo-Croatian as well. There is no way that Montenegrins would actually NEED such a project to have access to encyclopedic information.

2. Political POV issues should never be a reason for splitting off projects. We are already stuck with two Wikipedias in Belarussian and four in Serbo-Croatian, a fifth one just to satisfy a different POV is not going to be of any use to anybody. Besides, there won't be any POV issues when it comes to articles about planets, maggots or the political system of Burkina Faso, so the whole POV problem should not affect not more than, say 0.1% of the entire content of a decent encyclopedia.

3. It is actually quite a waste that people, instead of having one large encyclopedia, should be working on four or five small(er), incomplete ones. This may be nice for editors, but not for the public coming to Wikipedia for information.

4. To provide a Montenegrin Wikipedia with content, it is very likely that articles will be massively imported (by hand or by bot) from its sister projects, especially the Serbian one, which will probably lead to copyright problems. If this won't be done, the project is likely to remain small and largely limited to articles written from a Montenegrin POV. In neither case such a project will be of much use to anybody.

Cheers, Jan

2017-12-28 4:00 GMT+01:00 Steven White Koala19890@hotmail.com:

From a purely linguistic perspective, it's hard to argue with any of this. And I don't have a skin in the game here; objectively, it doesn't matter to me if Montenegrin becomes eligible or not. Still, I would say the following:

Concerning MF-Warburg's comment: I fully understand that the others are grandfathered and wouldn't be created now. But the fact that they exist now means that the question about Montenegrin cannot be considered in a vacuum, either.

Concerning Jan's comment: I hear you. But to extend your analogy, the Irish are looking for an Irish English wiki because every time an Irishman tries to bring a different POV to articles about Ireland on the British wiki, s/he is being shot down. (Pretend it's 1975, or 1922, and the example is more trenchant.) Also, this whole issue of language secessionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_secessionism doesn't really exist in English, so to make that comparison is only partially valid.

I do think we need to hear from Milos on this subject.

Let me add: On the Meta discussion page, I'm about to allow the discussion to reopen, with a focus on really two questions only:

• The principal question is whether or not Montenegrins actually have

"free, unbiased access to the sum of all human knowledge" on the current projects. What they keep suggesting is that they don't: Serbian POV dominates, and Montenegrin POV is given short shrift. I am going to ask the Montenegrin advocates to prove that with concrete examples. But if they do so, then either (a) NPOV is going to have to be enforced from the outside (if that's even possible, but thereby violating normal practices of project autonomy) or (b) we're going to have to allow the Montenegrins to have their own project.

• The second question: It's really quite remarkable in a way that the

Montenegrins got the Library of Congress to make the first change to ISO 639-2 in five years. I'll grant that was probably just a political victory. But I'm going to invite the Montenegrin community to share any new evidence that they may have that may have changed LoC's mind, and could change ours. Maybe there isn't any new evidence. But if there is, we should be open to it.

Steven

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That is undeniably true. To be precise, Montenegrin is Ijekavian Serbian written with two additional letters, but that's all. Basically, Montenegrin articles could easily be imported from the Serbian Wikipedia by means of a bot.

It's like we already have separate Wikipedias in British English, American English and Australian English, and now there should also be one in Irish English.

Best, Jan

2017-12-27 1:34 GMT+01:00 Michael Everson everson@evertype.com:

It’s true. This language is as far as anyone knows identical to Serbian according to the classification we currently use. It is not certain that there could be a Monenegrin Wiki that would differ in any meaningful way from the Serbian one.

...

On 26 Dec 2017, at 22:43, Steven White Koala19890@hotmail.com wrote:

I was going to hold off on this until the holidays are over, but rather

remarkably, unless somebody hacked the Library of Congress's web site, Montenegrin has been granted an ISO 639–2 code ("cnr"). This has been in the air over the last month, and represents the first addition to ISO 639–2 in over five years. The Montenegrin community is jumping for joy, and I've just full-protected the page Requests for new languages/Wikipedia Montenegrin 5 on Meta because the discussion is getting out of hand.

...

If srwiki, hrwiki and bswiki didn't exist, we wouldn't have to create

this one, either. But I have to admit that I don't really see any way we can currently justify not approving this project (as "eligible"). My questions are, therefore:

...

  • Am I right about that?
  • Is LangCom willing to see this project marked as "eligible"

based on an ISO 639-2 code alone?

...

  • The rules are that non-collective ISO 639-2 codes are supposed

to be reflected in ISO 639-3 as well. So do I wait until this code is published by SIL?

...

  • If so, what happens if SIL does not take action?

Steven

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