Hello,
I think it is important to disclaim a few points here. GerardM's opinions do not necessarily represent the opinions of the subcommittee as a whole; therefore, please note that:
1. The subcommittee recommendation was to rename the alternative or 'classical' Belarusian wiki, and use the standard code for the standard or 'normative' Belarusian wiki. This recommendation did not include the closure of the alternative Belarusian Wikipedia. I'm not sure whether it was closed by decision of the board of trustees or by mistake. That is why the announcement on the normative Belarusian request page on Meta did not explain the decision: there was no such subcommittee decision we could explain.
2. The subcommittee has not had a serious discussion about nor reached any consensus on the idea of a Meta arbitration committee. Whether this is desirable or not is up to the community or the board of trustees, not the subcommittee.
Yours cordially, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
On 3/29/07, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) pathoschild@gmail.com wrote:
- The subcommittee recommendation was to rename the alternative or
'classical' Belarusian wiki, and use the standard code for the standard or 'normative' Belarusian wiki. This recommendation did not include the closure of the alternative Belarusian Wikipedia.
Nor is it closed; it lives at http://be-x-old.wikipedia.org/
On 31/03/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/29/07, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) pathoschild@gmail.com wrote:
- The subcommittee recommendation was to rename the alternative or
'classical' Belarusian wiki, and use the standard code for the standard or 'normative' Belarusian wiki. This recommendation did not include the closure of the alternative Belarusian Wikipedia.
Nor is it closed; it lives at http://be-x-old.wikipedia.org/
Living in a vegetative, comatose fashio, though. The database is locked.
On 3/31/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Nor is it closed; it lives at http://be-x-old.wikipedia.org/
Living in a vegetative, comatose fashio, though. The database is locked.
It shouldn't be. I'll try to figure out what's going on there.
On 3/31/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/31/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Nor is it closed; it lives at http://be-x-old.wikipedia.org/
Living in a vegetative, comatose fashio, though. The database is locked.
It shouldn't be. I'll try to figure out what's going on there.
Ah, apparently a misunderstanding; Brion thought a move to "be-x-old" was meant to imply that it is an archive of the existing Wikipedia. The "old" refers to the orthography, not the wiki.
I have asked him to remove the lockfile; both wikis should be editable now. Mind you, it might be a good idea to merge them, to kill one of them, or whatever. This is for the community to work out, and I'm not going to have us impose a preference for any solution.
For now, the only thing we have authorized the LangCom to decide is what the language codes for the respective versions should be if they are to be separate. *Not* to close or lock wikis. That is not within the authority of the LangCom.
On 31/03/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/31/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/31/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Nor is it closed; it lives at http://be-x-old.wikipedia.org/
Living in a vegetative, comatose fashio, though. The database is locked.
It shouldn't be. I'll try to figure out what's going on there.
Ah, apparently a misunderstanding; Brion thought a move to "be-x-old" was meant to imply that it is an archive of the existing Wikipedia. The "old" refers to the orthography, not the wiki.
I have asked him to remove the lockfile; both wikis should be editable now. Mind you, it might be a good idea to merge them, to kill one of them, or whatever. This is for the community to work out, and I'm not going to have us impose a preference for any solution.
For now, the only thing we have authorized the LangCom to decide is what the language codes for the respective versions should be if they are to be separate. *Not* to close or lock wikis. That is not within the authority of the LangCom.
Thanks for clearing this up. I think the unannounced lock was one of the main points of confusion and contention among the community.
2007/3/31, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
On 31/03/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/31/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/31/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Nor is it closed; it lives at http://be-x-old.wikipedia.org/
Living in a vegetative, comatose fashio, though. The database is locked.
It shouldn't be. I'll try to figure out what's going on there.
Ah, apparently a misunderstanding; Brion thought a move to "be-x-old" was meant to imply that it is an archive of the existing Wikipedia. The "old" refers to the orthography, not the wiki.
I have asked him to remove the lockfile; both wikis should be editable now. Mind you, it might be a good idea to merge them, to kill one of them, or whatever. This is for the community to work out, and I'm not going to have us impose a preference for any solution.
For now, the only thing we have authorized the LangCom to decide is what the language codes for the respective versions should be if they are to be separate. *Not* to close or lock wikis. That is not within the authority of the LangCom.
Thanks for clearing this up. I think the unannounced lock was one of the main points of confusion and contention among the community.
I am wondereing what has happened with all interwiki links which were pointing to the old version. As the old version was two times larger than the new one many interwiki points to the non-existing pages. Even the still existing ones sometimes point to nowhere as the old spelling of them is slightly different the new one. What is the interwiki code for old version? This especially affected Polish Wikipedia, as we have a lot of articles about cities and villages in Biellaruss, as well as the Biellarusian VIPs, but I expect many other Wikipedias are affected as well.
And again I am repeating my old questions. Did the LangComm contacted any experts from outisde before this decission was made, or just decided on the basis of short and probably biased discussion on meta?
Tomasz Ganicz schreef:
2007/3/31, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
On 31/03/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/31/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/31/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Nor is it closed; it lives at http://be-x-old.wikipedia.org/
Living in a vegetative, comatose fashio, though. The database is locked.
It shouldn't be. I'll try to figure out what's going on there.
Ah, apparently a misunderstanding; Brion thought a move to "be-x-old" was meant to imply that it is an archive of the existing Wikipedia. The "old" refers to the orthography, not the wiki.
I have asked him to remove the lockfile; both wikis should be editable now. Mind you, it might be a good idea to merge them, to kill one of them, or whatever. This is for the community to work out, and I'm not going to have us impose a preference for any solution.
For now, the only thing we have authorized the LangCom to decide is what the language codes for the respective versions should be if they are to be separate. *Not* to close or lock wikis. That is not within the authority of the LangCom.
Thanks for clearing this up. I think the unannounced lock was one of the main points of confusion and contention among the community.
I am wondereing what has happened with all interwiki links which were pointing to the old version. As the old version was two times larger than the new one many interwiki points to the non-existing pages. Even the still existing ones sometimes point to nowhere as the old spelling of them is slightly different the new one. What is the interwiki code for old version? This especially affected Polish Wikipedia, as we have a lot of articles about cities and villages in Biellaruss, as well as the Biellarusian VIPs, but I expect many other Wikipedias are affected as well.
And again I am repeating my old questions. Did the LangComm contacted any experts from outisde before this decission was made, or just decided on the basis of short and probably biased discussion on meta?
Hoi, The pywikipedia bot has a program that allows you to change strings .. so you can replace "[[be:" with "[[be-x-old".
As to your question, the situation was stark and obvious. The official orthography was not accepted. Now the be code does stand for Belarus. The current situation is however not really acceptable. Both wikipedias should integrate. The current situation with two projects is horrid it will result in two biased projects.
Thanks, GerardM
2007/3/31, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Tomasz Ganicz schreef:
I am wondereing what has happened with all interwiki links which were pointing to the old version. As the old version was two times larger than the new one many interwiki points to the non-existing pages. Even the still existing ones sometimes point to nowhere as the old spelling of them is slightly different the new one. What is the interwiki code for old version?
The pywikipedia bot has a program that allows you to change strings .. so you can replace "[[be:" with "[[be-x-old".
That won't do, because the MediaWiki software does not recognize be-x-old: as a language code. Thus [[be-x-old:Test]] will be a red link to [[be-x-old:Test]] on your own Wikipedia, not an interwiki link to be-x-old.
2007/3/31, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Tomasz Ganicz schreef:
2007/3/31, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
On 31/03/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/31/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 3/31/07, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
> Nor is it closed; it lives at > http://be-x-old.wikipedia.org/ > Living in a vegetative, comatose fashio, though. The database is locked.
It shouldn't be. I'll try to figure out what's going on there.
Ah, apparently a misunderstanding; Brion thought a move to "be-x-old" was meant to imply that it is an archive of the existing Wikipedia. The "old" refers to the orthography, not the wiki.
I have asked him to remove the lockfile; both wikis should be editable now. Mind you, it might be a good idea to merge them, to kill one of them, or whatever. This is for the community to work out, and I'm not going to have us impose a preference for any solution.
For now, the only thing we have authorized the LangCom to decide is what the language codes for the respective versions should be if they are to be separate. *Not* to close or lock wikis. That is not within the authority of the LangCom.
Thanks for clearing this up. I think the unannounced lock was one of the main points of confusion and contention among the community.
I am wondereing what has happened with all interwiki links which were pointing to the old version. As the old version was two times larger than the new one many interwiki points to the non-existing pages. Even the still existing ones sometimes point to nowhere as the old spelling of them is slightly different the new one. What is the interwiki code for old version? This especially affected Polish Wikipedia, as we have a lot of articles about cities and villages in Biellaruss, as well as the Biellarusian VIPs, but I expect many other Wikipedias are affected as well.
And again I am repeating my old questions. Did the LangComm contacted any experts from outisde before this decission was made, or just decided on the basis of short and probably biased discussion on meta?
Hoi, The pywikipedia bot has a program that allows you to change strings .. so you can replace "[[be:" with "[[be-x-old".
As to your question, the situation was stark and obvious. The official orthography was not accepted. Now the be code does stand for Belarus. The current situation is however not really acceptable. Both wikipedias should integrate. The current situation with two projects is horrid it will result in two biased projects.
But the true is that there is around 4 million people who really speak Belarusian as their mother tongue and vast majority of them are using old version. It is true that the new version is tough in schools in Belarus, but this country is really strange in terms of language, as the Belarusian is a minority language in Belarus. Vast majority of people, including president of this country and most of goverment officials does not speak Belarusian and they prefer Russian. Even most of the Belarusian law acts are curently originaly writen in Russian. In Minsk in 2006 only 15% of students of primary and secondary schools decided to learn Belarusian as it is not obligatory subject in schools. So, the question is what really matters in this case? Is it important which version of language is though in the govermental schools in the country, where only minority of people use this language or rather which version is prefered by majority of people really using this language? I ask again - did the LangComm checked which version is used by majority of people for whom Belariusian is their main, mother tongue? You could for example ask for this experts from US or German universities, who specialize in history and current state of this language.
Wikipedias are not country located but language oriented. If they would be country located the be Wikipedia should be writen rather in Russian than in Belarusian, or it should be bilingual with majority of Russian speaking users...
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