Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
Just for the same reason that we have seperate
Serbian, Croatic and
Bosniak Wikipedias. They consider their languages as being separate,
I recently visited Serbia and Croatia, and opinions there are divided as
to whether the languages are separate. The significant majority opinion
seems to me to be that they are not separate languages, but I did meet a
few people who argued that they are.
However, we had a Wikipedia meetup at Millosh's house, with Serbian
Wikipedians and the Croatians who drove me there, and they all
immediately and quite easily talked to each other without any difficulty
at all. Of course I did not understand a word, but it did not seem to
me any different from American and British English.
With Serbian/Croatian/Bosnia(n|k) there are significant other issues as
well, having to do with the fact that they just concluded a rather awful
war not so long ago. This complicates matters in a number of ways.
First, it increases the chance of major NPOV problems if people of
different views choose to work in different places rather than meeting
in the same place to try to achieve consensus. Second, it decreases the
chance of major useless flamewars if people who are still very angry
becasue of the deaths of loved ones can't find a way to agree.
There are additional complications, though, having to do with spelling
and script. I'm not an expert, but essentially there are 4 different
ways to write and... well, anyway, it is complicated.
The one thing I can say about this is that Wikipedians there are like
Wikipedians everywhere -- people of good will who seem to really care
about getting it right, and thoughtfully feeling their way forward in a
manner that attempts to be cognizant of significant opinions and
difficulties. I left feeling much better about the whole mess than I
thought I would. There are good people there, and they'll figure it out.
--Jimbo