My fivepence worth. I live in Kiev, so I have a bit of a closer POV on what's going on therem, hopefully it can help.
A number of wikis have problems connected with the existence of alternative scripts. I suppose a common official policy for such cases would help. As per experience with non-govt backed european minority languages, often the most suitable way out of the fight is: 1) have the interface in the most spread variant (which would be cyrillic, in this case) 2) have the articles that come in "other" flavours translated in the main script-space and the original page saved and referred to from the translated page. 3) allow all variants to exist simoultaneously on any discussion pages
This may help into giving space to everyone without compressing freedom of expression and local variants of the culture/script/grammar.
The problem with Belarus' is in that their wonderful language is in a pretty much decaying state, so it's a very small number of people taking care of it. These people often are politically radicalised, and may clash with each other. In this dynamic, a wiki may become "just another battlefield", which is something we should really avoid. I agree with Mark here. Maybe it could make sense to have three indipendent editions, yet the number of possible contributors is so small that I do wonder whether it makes any sense to do it (and it's something the three communities should decide themselves, in anyway).
In any case I urge you not to find an "ad hoc" solution for Belarus, but to address the problem of concurrent scripts as such in instead. I believe this is going to be a recurrent problem in many an endangered culture, and often it is going to be associated with local political tension. A neutrally "general" policy would be much easier to implement, than a direct involvment in the practical life of one single wiki.
As per making belorussian popular... sadly, it takes much more than this. Decaying languages do need to become "trendy" in order to be used by youth and be saved. Usually a clash in script policy is a very bad marker, as per the health of a language. And if belorussian was really used as much as statistics claim, nobody in his mind would have used a script that is not understood by anyone to make a nationalistically oriented political campaign...
As a matter of fact you can hear it mostly in the countryside, where it's hard to imagine that internet will get soon... No way for it to exist on TV, apart from some episodes a minor govt channel, and the youth in Minsk rates trendy to be "russian". That is, to use as many english words as they can, while speaking russian.
IMHO belarusian definitely is an endangered language, and should be helped out of its unpleasant situation as much as possible. In doing this a wiki has mostly one big function: it's a meeting place for native speakers to use the language, exchange and "save" information, and at least virtually live in a 100% belarusian environment, which is already impossible in reality. This is what a wiki can do for a language, any language. In exchange, wikimedia gets an indepth level of knowledge on local life/traditions/everyday problems that no foreign speakers will ever be able to put in. It's actually a fair deal, since this information can later be translated into other wiki editions and make its way to a mainstream public after having been collected and organized in its own original cultural environment.
Yet I would not expect a quick rise in the number of BY contributors just because we solve the script problem. These are very slow processes. Pretty much will depend on the marketing, but this is going to be a hard thing to do, if they wish to remain as politically neutral as needed by the general wiki policies. It really depends on their capability to involve the "normal" population, outside the radically oriented clubs. And, obviously, it heavily depends on the access to internet that can be granted to native speakers in the countryside, those who really still use the language in everyday's life.
My best wishes to them. It's a grand culture in a great land, and I personally do love the place. It's great canals there for a guy in love with boating on inland waters, and I really wish to get as much information as I can on the canal system connecting the EU to the Dnepr and the Black Sea :) Especially since I can personally read basic bielorussian (only in the cyrillic variant, though).
Bèrto
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Williamson" node.ue@gmail.com To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2006 3:15 AM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conflict re:Belarusan WP
The Belarusan language is spoken by 9,081,102 people worldwide according to the Ethnologue; in Belarus it is spoken by 6,715,000, or 65% of the population (most of the rest are native speakers of Russian, Trasianka, Yiddish, Polish, or Ukrainian).
In Belarusan schools, the Belarusan language is a cumpulsory subject for all students who wish to graduate, totalling on average between 75,000 and 100,000 per year (graduates).
The Belarusan language used in schools and by the government and by the vast majority of the Belarusan people is called Narkamauka, codified in the 1960s.
However, some Belarusan nationalists favour a return to the older Belarusan codified in the 1920s, called Tarashkievitsa. Some of the more radical nationalists also favour a switch to the Latin alphabet, called Latsinka.
Currently there is a fight on Meta between proponents of the official Belarusan and proponents of the alternative Belarusan.
By sheer chance, the proponents of the alternative style were the first to arrive at be.wikipedia, and all of the administrators there write in the alternative style, and the entire interface is written in it too.
New articles are supposedly allowed to be written in either variety, however the vast majority of existing articles are written in the alternative style. According to proponents of the official orthography, this makes it intimidating to newcomers, and they give that as the reason why the Belarusan Wikipedia is so small still.
You can see the entire debate here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Present_Belarusian...
Now, obviously the answer to such questions is generally "resolve within the community". However, in this case some people are claiming that the community leaders are acting improperly by deleting new articles in Narkamauka and then a few minutes later posting the same articles written in Tarashkievitsa. People also allege that policy on be.wp favours the alternative spelling over official spelling, and that it is not possible to change it without outside help because the admins at be.wp are a dictatorship.
In this case I think it is appropriate for the international Wikimedia community to get involved. Clearly a neutral third party is needed to evaluate the claims of both sides and make things right.
Mark
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