----- Original Message -----
From: "Yury Tarasievich" <yury.tarasievich(a)gmail.com>
Now, folks, as your attention was already drawn to the
issue, I guess we could benefit from some third party mediation.
I would support what you propose in BE: from inside the community, I am more
doubtful as per an external intervention. Not meaning that I totally oppose
an external intervention, I am just asking myself what will be impact of it
on such a radicalised situation.
I agree with you that the best way to definitely kill a weak culture is to
break it in pieces. Most people sart to find the language as "vulgar" and to
attach a sort of moral judgment to it (like: those who speak it never will
have a good social position, etc). At this point the community of people
defending the language restricts to those who have a somewhat "political"
vested interest in it, and obviously different sectarian "churches" are
born, with the attached implication of even stronger moral-like judgments
attached to this or that way to speak/write the language. And yes, this is a
deadly grip. So I understand and support your concern to keep all the
language flavours toghether. I guess this should be the goal for any
intervention.
The problem is in that if we get directly involved in the BE: internal
affairs this is going to be read as a political victory of one side on
another. My proposition hence regards ONLY the formal side of the
intervention. I propose not to start a judgement on BE itself, but to
produce a general mandatory policy for a wider set of such cases. That is,
the situation IMHO does require a third party intervention, but it must be
made in the softer possible way. Policies should ensure that wikis are not
used as a means of political propaganda from EITHER side. The aim of a wiki
is to ensure an instrument for speakers of a language to work with it, and
nothing else.
Bèrto