Andre, sh.wiki was locked because of inactivity, or at least that's the reason you listed.
So long as it is active, no matter how illogical its continued existence may seem, I don't think it would be wise to up and lock it.
Now, practically speaking, Serbian and Croatian aren't separate languages, rather they're regiolects (not quite dialects -- Serbocroatian *has* dialects, just that most are spoken in Croatia).
However, the events of the 90s created such deep divisions between the peoples of the region who previously would've thought it preposterous to suggest that they spoke different languages, that people slowly began to decide that they wanted to have nothing to do with Serbia, and so changed their languages, first in name and then in orthographical conventions and to a certain extent vocabulary, as well as emphasizing differences that already existed.
I think that, in time, the people of the region will be willing to share a Wikipedia, but that sh.wiki is currently not well-enough developed: it has just barely 1000 articles, and what sort of crazy person would leave a Wikipedia with over 10000 articles to work on a much smaller one?
If sh.wiki has more articles, I think a merger will be a more realistic possibility.
Similarly, the Minnan Wikipedia was so widely opposed when first requested that it wasn't created. However, when it demonstrated its viability offsite (as Holopedia), people began to see that it was alright.
I think that if the structure already exists, it will be quite a different decision -- "Should we use one WP or not, the only consequences being the people with whom we must interact?" will be the question, rather than the current "Should we move in with these other two groups to a small, undeveloped Wikipedia, when the Wikipedias we're at now have 5, 10, or even 15 times more articles?"
The conversion difficulties mentioned should also be solved soon, and when that infrastructure is in place as well, it will provide an additional layer of "oh, now that I see it in action, it's a better idea than I'd thought".
So currently, while they are redundant (we should have 1 WP rather than 4), having 4 right now means that in the distant future we may be able to have a single one. If you close sh.wiki, any hopes for that will become much less feasible.
Cheers Mark
On 12/10/05, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
2005/10/9, Arbeo M arbeo_m@yahoo.de:
Generally speaking, only opening all-new Wikipedias requires public discussion, prior announcement, voting or the like. Reopening a previously locked wiki is not a comparable process. Locking a wiki is only a temporary measure because of some specific reason, e. g. vandalism and it can be upheld only as long as that reason persists to exist. SH had been locked because of inactivity. As soon as there were people willing to edit it there was no alternative but to unlock it.
No, sh had been locked because it had been replaced by sr+bs+hr. It was unlocked because I was pressured to unlock it. I still think that my first decision was the right one. Let's put this simple:
EITHER Serbian and Croatian are the same language, and then we should not have separate Wikipedias for them, OR they are not the same language, and then we should not have a combined Wikipedia.
Doing both is silly. And that's about the weakest expression I can think of.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
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