Scríobh Lars Alvik
Sorry mac, but you can't ignore the fact that bokmål is written by the largest share of the norwegian population, around 90-80%. If no: could be a serverside redirect to nb: but with a portal frontpage, sure i would go for that, but i don't think it's technicaly possible.
I disagree. I do not have Norwegian, but I think the fact that 90% of the country speaks a particular language is irrelevant as far as what subdomain it is allowed to reside on.
Let me illustrate. Let us say that rather than seperate ga: (Irish) and gd: (Scottish Gaelic) subdomains being set up, a single subdomain had originally been set up, which we will call :gx. This was meant for the "Gaelic" language. There might be some justification for this, some dialects of Irish are somewhat interintelligble with some dialects of Scottish Gaelic. Now, the ratio of Irish speakers to SG speakers is, according to the en.wikipedia articles, about 4:1 (260,000 vs 59,000) - roughly similar to the ratio of bokmål to nynorsk speakers, from what I understand.
Now, given the logic that you're attempting to use in the no: situation, we would simply let "gx" remain the named the "Gaelic" wikipedia, but only allow Irish articles there, because after all, it is the language spoken by the largest share of the Gaelic-speaking population. This probably looks, and quite rightly so, ridiculous to those who look upon the situation from outside. Yet, this is the "solution" that you're proposing for the no: wikipedia.
I think the fact that most Norwegians prefer bokmål should be irrelevant. If 99.9% of Norwegians spoke it, it's still cannot exclusively claim to be "Norwegian", and I think that it's ridiculous that it should get the reserved domain for that language. Personally, I think the #1 solution would be:
no: Portal page to :nb and :nn. Links to article pages here redirect to :nb nb: Wikipedia bokmål nn: Wikipedia nynorsk
I can't see how anyone would have a problem with this. Anyone who types in "no" can get to their preferred variety with a single click, and there is no language confusion or feelings of unfairness on either side.
Regards, - Craig Franklin