Dear Mark Williamson, Lars Alvik, Andre Engels and Wolfram (who is getting a BCC of this message),
This is getting so old... <sigh> I agree with Lars Alvik that the no:/nb: Wikipedia is de facto Norsk (Bokmål). The user interface is about 100% percent Norsk Bokmål, the vast majority of the articles are Norsk Bokmål (with varying tendencies towards centrist Bokmål or towards "Moderate Bokmål"/ Riksmål). Few, if any, new articles are written in Nynorsk. I don't know what the proportions of existing articles are, but I suspect that well under 5% of the articles are in Nynorsk now.
nn: is being marketed as "Nynorsk Wikpedia". I am not sure what the consensus about name for the no:/nb: Wikipedia is. A couple days ago, I looked around for it, but could not find it. It doesn't really matter very much for this discussion what self-designation no:/nb: uses. Nynorsk Wikipedia has a seeming discrepancy of names between its marketed name (Nynorsk Wikipedia) and the interwiki link name (Norsk (Nynorsk)). It is extremely unlikely that having a similar discrepancy between marketed name and interwiki link name is going to have any adverse effect whatsoever on no:/nb:.
Whether Nynorsk or Bokmål or Riksmål (or Samnorsk or Høgnorsk, at that) is the good or bad "guy", the oppressor or oppressed, or the "relevant" or "irrelevant" one in whatever connection, seems to be a factor of very little relevance.
Interwiki link language names should first and foremost be precise and descriptive -- right...?
At present there is one Wikipedia with a Bokmål interface (for the record, the difference between "Moderate Bokmål" and Riksmål is, at most, a few dozen words with spelling differences of one or two letters) and almost exclusively Bokmål(/Riksmål) articles. This Wikipedia, which was established in 2001, is doing quite well -- right now, the article count shows 18,679 articles.
There is also one Wikipedia with a Nynorsk interface (which includes a few articles in Høgnorsk). It was started in July 2004 and has 3430 articles right now -- it is, in other words, also doing quite well.
Both these are predominantly written in an official form of Norwegian. Neither of the two is more Norwegian, and neither is less. Nynorsk corresponds most closely to the spoken language of the majority of Norwegian speakers, Bokmål is written by the majority of Norwegian speakers. Both are recognised as official languages of Norway. Both have a large body of literature on a high quality level. As such, they are both important, relevant expressions of Norwegian and should be treated with the tolerance, fairness and respect they both deserve.
The term "Standard Norwegian" (quoted by Andre Engels from a message from Wolfram to him) is a bit of a stretch: There is in fact (as already mentioned above) no single "Standard Norwegian", but *two*: Bokmål (including subsets like Riksmål, moderat bokmål and radikalt bokmål; and, to some extent, Samnorsk) and Nynorsk (including subsets like Høgnorsk, Midlandsnormal, Austlandsk, etc.)
To Wolfram's defense (since he doesn't subscribe to this list and hence can't defend himself directly on the list), it should be said that he does participate on nn: -- in editing, in debates, as well as in uploading files, and his contributions are as welcome on nn: as I hope that mine, and others' who also write primarily on nn: these days, are on no:/nb:... :-)
Lars Alvik (whose opinions and discussion manners I have learned to respect very much), wrote (03:10 03/03/2005 +0000):
Go for no:. Riksmål can be compared to bokmål as american english and english. Minor differences. As for Aftenposten it's in theory riksmål, but generally the articles is written in moderate bokmål.
As for me i would welcome a formalization of no: to just bokmål (and riksmål), but with bokmål as the dominant one, ie, all the categories in bokmål. (example Sør-Afrika instead of Syd-Afrika).
I agree almost 100% wholly with what Lars says here. It would by all likelihood be a major benefit for the no: Wikipedia to formalise its language as Bokmål, with the very closely-related Riksmål being accepted as part of this.
One significant part of the reason why Nynorsk Wikipedia was established was that we wanted to be able to work in an environment tuned-in on Nynorsk as a written language. This is also very much what we have found to happen: Besides the basic fact-checking and debating of points of view, we have a strong emphasis on orthography, syntax, semantics and style.
I suspect that a change of politics on no: towards really focussing on Bokmål (in its variety) could have a similar effect, and it would very likely be a very good way of strengthening the Bokmål (widely defined) writing culture.
But whether the no:/nb: Wikipedia wishes to keep a few articles in Nynorsk or not, or what the no:/nb: Wikpedia is called is not really the main issue here, I think.
What the issue seems to be is more about what should show up in interwiki links.
I believe that the most precise and descriptive LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION in INTERWIKI links is "Norsk (bokmål)" -- not "Norsk" (because it is only one of two subsets that are officially recognised as "Standard Norwegian"), and -- and not "Bokmål", because this will be likely to cause confusion when users don't find the language under "N".
Whether this comes up by coding "nb:" or "no:" is not really important. It is the result that counts, right?
PLEASE NOTE that the question is NOT whether to call no:/nb: "Bokmål" or "Norsk". The question is whether interwiki links on the bottom left of the screen should display "Norsk (bokmål)" or just "Norsk".
It was suggested here earlier that no: be made a general "Norwegian" portal, and that nb: would be the primary code for the mainly Bokmål Wikipedia. That seems to be politically impossible in the current environment.
Maybe the most logical step in the current situation would be to change the display of the "no:" code so that it displays "Norsk (bokmål)" in interwiki links? That way, the interwiki links will be descriptive/factual: Norsk (bokmål) vs. Norsk (nynorsk), rather than prescriptive: Norsk vs. Norsk (nynorsk).
I will support such a modification wholeheartedly. If this happens, I am pretty sure that the Nynorsk wikipedia community will be as willing as anyone else to use the code no: exclusively if it displays a descriptive name of what no: de facto is.
Meanwhile, the use of a currently secondary interwiki code (nb:) is the only way to ensure logical interwiki links from Norsk (nynorsk) to Norsk (bokmål), and no matter how Wolfram feels about that, his argument that no:/nb: should decide their own name has as a consequence that nn: should decide how to build interwiki links on their own project.
Since this question involves many other parties too, I personally find this question ("Norsk" vs "Norsk (bokmål)") to be one that should be discussed and resolved in an open, democratic, respectful and transparent way here on wikipedia-l -- a forum which is there precisely to work on solving these kinds of issues... That means that we should stay factual and try very hard not to avoid loaded characterisations like "Nynorsk hater"/"Bokmål hater"/"language fanatic" and the like, or imprecise expressions like "Standard Norwegian" when Bokmål(/Riksmål) (only one out of two standard forms of Norwegian) is implied.
(When it comes to acceptance/non-acceptance of specific language varieties, that is a totally different issue that would be at least as logical to resolve locally to the extent possible.)
I wish that Wolfram, who plays a rather central rôle on no:/nb:, would participate here and join the open debate in the "Wikipedia spirit". The burden isn't really that big -- after all, one doesn't have to read every single message. But it is useful for all parties if central people are able to participate in debates about their "own" project when these discussions occur...
Respectfully,
Olve Utne
("User:Olve" -- bureaucrat of nn:, admin of no:/nb:, user on en:, sv:, da:, etc.)
___________________
Olve Utne http://utne.nvg.org
I believe we're mostly in agreement.
Perhaps I was a bit hasty in making such a characterisation of Wolfram.
However, this was based entirely on my perception of the message he left for André, talking of things like "standard norwegian" and advocating (as far as I could tell) the labelling of no: as Norsk on interwiki links with no parenthetical.
In my mind this is uacceptable. All remaining traces of Nynorsk in no: should be purged and moved to nn:, and Bokmål should be officialised as the standard used with the understanding that use of Riksmål is ALLOWED, although it is not the "official" medium.
As a side note, the Northern Sami Wikipedia (the oft-neglected 3rd official language of Norway) is still floating in a state of near-nonexistance, the few existing articles being substubs created by a self-proclaimed non-fluent Swedish learner of the language. If I were in Norway, I would personally contact interested (as in, opposite of disinterested, not opposite of uninterested) parties. However, since I am not in Norway, I would like to encourage Norwegian Wikipedians to either contact the interested parties, or at least to tell any Sami friends they might have (or friends-of-friends) about se:.
Mark
On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 01:05:00 -0500, Olve Utne utne@nvg.org wrote:
Dear Mark Williamson, Lars Alvik, Andre Engels and Wolfram (who is getting a BCC of this message),
This is getting so old... <sigh> I agree with Lars Alvik that the no:/nb: Wikipedia is de facto Norsk (Bokmål). The user interface is about 100% percent Norsk Bokmål, the vast majority of the articles are Norsk Bokmål (with varying tendencies towards centrist Bokmål or towards "Moderate Bokmål"/ Riksmål). Few, if any, new articles are written in Nynorsk. I don't know what the proportions of existing articles are, but I suspect that well under 5% of the articles are in Nynorsk now.
nn: is being marketed as "Nynorsk Wikpedia". I am not sure what the consensus about name for the no:/nb: Wikipedia is. A couple days ago, I looked around for it, but could not find it. It doesn't really matter very much for this discussion what self-designation no:/nb: uses. Nynorsk Wikipedia has a seeming discrepancy of names between its marketed name (Nynorsk Wikipedia) and the interwiki link name (Norsk (Nynorsk)). It is extremely unlikely that having a similar discrepancy between marketed name and interwiki link name is going to have any adverse effect whatsoever on no:/nb:.
Whether Nynorsk or Bokmål or Riksmål (or Samnorsk or Høgnorsk, at that) is the good or bad "guy", the oppressor or oppressed, or the "relevant" or "irrelevant" one in whatever connection, seems to be a factor of very little relevance.
Interwiki link language names should first and foremost be precise and descriptive -- right...?
At present there is one Wikipedia with a Bokmål interface (for the record, the difference between "Moderate Bokmål" and Riksmål is, at most, a few dozen words with spelling differences of one or two letters) and almost exclusively Bokmål(/Riksmål) articles. This Wikipedia, which was established in 2001, is doing quite well -- right now, the article count shows 18,679 articles.
There is also one Wikipedia with a Nynorsk interface (which includes a few articles in Høgnorsk). It was started in July 2004 and has 3430 articles right now -- it is, in other words, also doing quite well.
Both these are predominantly written in an official form of Norwegian. Neither of the two is more Norwegian, and neither is less. Nynorsk corresponds most closely to the spoken language of the majority of Norwegian speakers, Bokmål is written by the majority of Norwegian speakers. Both are recognised as official languages of Norway. Both have a large body of literature on a high quality level. As such, they are both important, relevant expressions of Norwegian and should be treated with the tolerance, fairness and respect they both deserve.
The term "Standard Norwegian" (quoted by Andre Engels from a message from Wolfram to him) is a bit of a stretch: There is in fact (as already mentioned above) no single "Standard Norwegian", but *two*: Bokmål (including subsets like Riksmål, moderat bokmål and radikalt bokmål; and, to some extent, Samnorsk) and Nynorsk (including subsets like Høgnorsk, Midlandsnormal, Austlandsk, etc.)
To Wolfram's defense (since he doesn't subscribe to this list and hence can't defend himself directly on the list), it should be said that he does participate on nn: -- in editing, in debates, as well as in uploading files, and his contributions are as welcome on nn: as I hope that mine, and others' who also write primarily on nn: these days, are on no:/nb:... :-)
Lars Alvik (whose opinions and discussion manners I have learned to respect very much), wrote (03:10 03/03/2005 +0000):
Go for no:. Riksmål can be compared to bokmål as american english and english. Minor differences. As for Aftenposten it's in theory riksmål, but generally the articles is written in moderate bokmål.
As for me i would welcome a formalization of no: to just bokmål (and riksmål), but with bokmål as the dominant one, ie, all the categories in bokmål. (example Sør-Afrika instead of Syd-Afrika).
I agree almost 100% wholly with what Lars says here. It would by all likelihood be a major benefit for the no: Wikipedia to formalise its language as Bokmål, with the very closely-related Riksmål being accepted as part of this.
One significant part of the reason why Nynorsk Wikipedia was established was that we wanted to be able to work in an environment tuned-in on Nynorsk as a written language. This is also very much what we have found to happen: Besides the basic fact-checking and debating of points of view, we have a strong emphasis on orthography, syntax, semantics and style.
I suspect that a change of politics on no: towards really focussing on Bokmål (in its variety) could have a similar effect, and it would very likely be a very good way of strengthening the Bokmål (widely defined) writing culture.
But whether the no:/nb: Wikipedia wishes to keep a few articles in Nynorsk or not, or what the no:/nb: Wikpedia is called is not really the main issue here, I think.
What the issue seems to be is more about what should show up in interwiki links.
I believe that the most precise and descriptive LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION in INTERWIKI links is "Norsk (bokmål)" -- not "Norsk" (because it is only one of two subsets that are officially recognised as "Standard Norwegian"), and -- and not "Bokmål", because this will be likely to cause confusion when users don't find the language under "N".
Whether this comes up by coding "nb:" or "no:" is not really important. It is the result that counts, right?
PLEASE NOTE that the question is NOT whether to call no:/nb: "Bokmål" or "Norsk". The question is whether interwiki links on the bottom left of the screen should display "Norsk (bokmål)" or just "Norsk".
It was suggested here earlier that no: be made a general "Norwegian" portal, and that nb: would be the primary code for the mainly Bokmål Wikipedia. That seems to be politically impossible in the current environment.
Maybe the most logical step in the current situation would be to change the display of the "no:" code so that it displays "Norsk (bokmål)" in interwiki links? That way, the interwiki links will be descriptive/factual: Norsk (bokmål) vs. Norsk (nynorsk), rather than prescriptive: Norsk vs. Norsk (nynorsk).
I will support such a modification wholeheartedly. If this happens, I am pretty sure that the Nynorsk wikipedia community will be as willing as anyone else to use the code no: exclusively if it displays a descriptive name of what no: de facto is.
Meanwhile, the use of a currently secondary interwiki code (nb:) is the only way to ensure logical interwiki links from Norsk (nynorsk) to Norsk (bokmål), and no matter how Wolfram feels about that, his argument that no:/nb: should decide their own name has as a consequence that nn: should decide how to build interwiki links on their own project.
Since this question involves many other parties too, I personally find this question ("Norsk" vs "Norsk (bokmål)") to be one that should be discussed and resolved in an open, democratic, respectful and transparent way here on wikipedia-l -- a forum which is there precisely to work on solving these kinds of issues... That means that we should stay factual and try very hard not to avoid loaded characterisations like "Nynorsk hater"/"Bokmål hater"/"language fanatic" and the like, or imprecise expressions like "Standard Norwegian" when Bokmål(/Riksmål) (only one out of two standard forms of Norwegian) is implied.
(When it comes to acceptance/non-acceptance of specific language varieties, that is a totally different issue that would be at least as logical to resolve locally to the extent possible.)
I wish that Wolfram, who plays a rather central rôle on no:/nb:, would participate here and join the open debate in the "Wikipedia spirit". The burden isn't really that big -- after all, one doesn't have to read every single message. But it is useful for all parties if central people are able to participate in debates about their "own" project when these discussions occur...
Respectfully,
Olve Utne
("User:Olve" -- bureaucrat of nn:, admin of no:/nb:, user on en:, sv:, da:, etc.)
Olve Utne http://utne.nvg.org
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