On 7/12/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
This means that should be general MediaWiki policy and it should not be used only on Wikipedias where communities are strongly against it. So, Names.php should be with small letters in the main distribution, but it should be changed for Wikipedias where communities are strongly against.
Millosh, with this you are making the assumption that it is correct orthography for all those languages -- including some you've probably not heard of, like Venda, Herero, and Chamorro -- and this is not the case. In some cases it is correct orthography, HOWEVER in others it is not. It should be on a case-by-case basis, rather than switching all to lowercase.
Obviously you know best about Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bosnian, but instead of changing all Wikipedias we should have a vote at each one, or find if it is correct orthography.
I heard that English speakers/writers write "English" with capital letter at the beginning and I didn't think to ask en: community to vote about that ;) (I am sorry if my English said that I think that small letters should be implemented for English, too :) )
I don't have an idea what is Venda or Herero orthography; but if the orthography says (and this is very simple if we are talking about standardized language) that they should write their language name with small letter at the beginning, it should be implemented in MediaWiki. If community says that they want to write with capital letter, Wikipedia should implement it with capital letter. And I think that this is very simple: MediaWiki default is the matter of orthography, Wikipedia is the matter of community (even it should not be).
If we are talking about non-standardized language, then community on Wikipedia should standardize language and then it is the real matter of community.
But... You should keep in mind that a lot of small Wikipedias have standardized languages. (last year Serbian Wikipedia was very small and Macedonian was existed only as "if you know this language, please start to write something", but both of languages have standardized language). And the relevant person who should be asked for what is right and what is wrong is not Wikipedian (who is probably programmer) but some linguist: in the cases like this we should ask some linguist from MIT, Harvard... specialized for that language. For example, out of developed communities, we should make some questionnaire for each language: (1) Does language X has standard orthography? (2) If language X has standard orthography, what is the right writing of the language name in this language? ... And to send it to a couple of universities. I am sure that we would get answers.
Of course, we can realize maybe a lot without asking any question; examples are: (1) Sicilian is not standardized, but follows Italian standard; (2) Klingon is not standardized, but follows English standard; (3) Esperanto has a lot of grammars so we can see what the rules are; etc. etc.
And, of course, it should be implemented in MediaWiki. For Wikipedias communities should be asked with the question like this: Interwiki links are not headings, but references. We found that your orthography says that the name of your language is written with the starting small letter; do you want to implement this in interwiki links or you prefer to leave interwiki links like they are now?
And to add to the list Macedonian and Slovenian (I am sure that they would agree about that).