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(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2005/10/9, Arbeo M <arbeo_m(a)yahoo.de>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(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
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