Wikipedia-l January 2010

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

9 participants
5 discussions

Language policy agreement in the Norwegian Wikipedia community

by Bjarte Sørensen

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]]

10 years, 6 months

Office hours this Friday, October 9

by Cary Bass

Hi everyone, This Friday's office hours will feature Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal Counsel. If you don't know Mike Godwin, you can read about him at <http://enwp.org/Mike_Godwin>. Office hours this Friday are from 2230 to 2330 UTC (3:30PM to 4:30PM PDT). Mike will also be taking the following Thursday from 1600 to 1700 UTC (9:00AM to 10:00AM PDT). The IRC channel that will be hosting Mike's conversation will be #wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC client, you can always access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning. Go ahead. -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

12 years, 2 months

hello friend

by TANMAY SARKAR

hiiiiiii friends

12 years, 8 months

please remove me from list. thanks.

by Daniels, Emily (PBIG Atlanta, GA)

Emily Daniels Private Banking and Investment Group at Merrill Lynch 3455 Peachtree Road | Suite 1000 | Atlanta, GA 30326 ((404) 231-2443 Ê(404) 890-7825 * emily_daniels(a)ml.com www.pwa.ml.com/WileyTeam <http://www.pwa.ml.com/WileyTeam> The information provided is from sources we believe to be reliable but is not guaranteed. Merrill Lynch considers your statements and confirmations to be your official record of account activity. All references to investments include an offer to provide additional information. Please review prospectus before making investments. Third party research is available upon request. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CAUTION: electronic mail sent through the Internet is not secure and could be intercepted by a third party. For your protection, avoid sending identifying information such as account, Social Security, or card numbers to us or others. Further, do not send time-sensitive, action-oriented messages such as transaction orders, fund transfer instructions or check stop payments, as it is our policy not to accept such items electronically. This message w/attachments (message) may be privileged, confidential or proprietary, and if you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender, do not use or share it and delete it. The information contained in this e-mail was obtained from sources believed to be reliable; however, the accuracy or completeness of this information is not guaranteed. Unless specifically indicated, this message is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of any investment products or other financial product or service, an official confirmation of any transaction, or an official statement of Merrill Lynch. Subject to applicable law, Merrill Lynch may monitor, review and retain e-communications (EC) traveling through its networks/systems. The laws of the country of each sender/recipient may impact the handling of EC, and EC may be archived, supervised and produced in countries other than the country in which you are located. This message cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free. References to "Merrill Lynch" are references to any company in the Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. group of companies, which are wholly-owned by Bank of America Corporation. Securities and Insurance Products: * Are Not FDIC Insured * Are Not Bank Guaranteed * May Lose Value * Are Not a Bank Deposit * Are Not a Condition to Any Banking Service or Activity * Are Not Insured by Any Federal Government Agency. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Attachments that are part of this E-communication may have additional important disclosures and disclaimers, which you should read. This message is subject to terms available at the following link: http://www.ml.com/e-communications_terms/. By messaging with Merrill Lynch you consent to the foregoing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------

12 years, 8 months

About the feature requests

by Javier Garcia

Hi, i think i have found the page to requesting features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_feature_requests And here the categories are describe: What types of categories are there? Different parts of Wikipedia use different schemes for organizing articles into categories. The main types of categories used are: * *topic categories* -- categories of articles relating to a particular topic, such as Category:Geography <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Geography> or Category:Paris <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Paris>. * *list categories* -- categories of articles on subjects in a particular class, such as Category:Villages in Poland <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Villages_in_Poland>. * *list-and-topic categories* -- categories which are combinations of the two above types. * *intermediate categories* -- categories used to organize large classes of subcategories, such as Category:Albums by artist <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Albums_by_artist>. * *universal categories* -- categories used to provide a complete list of articles which are otherwise normally divided into subcategories. * *project categories* -- categories used mainly by Wikipedia's editors for project management purposes, rather than for browsing. A common type is *stub categories*, which contain short ("stub") articles in a particular field. You can help build Wikipedia by expanding these stubs into longer articles! My proposal is this: for the articles related to a software application, would be great to create a template for the data that is common for all languages like version number, date of the lauch of the last version, kind of license, etc.. My question: in what category should i add this proposal? Regards Javi

12 years, 9 months

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Wikipedia-l January 2010