Last Friday Zhengzhu said to me that community at sr: should decide very fast (in one week) about implementation of his work on new Serbian interface which implements all standards of Serbian language. As it is too fast for voting on sr.wikipedia and as almost every Saturday at 20h (8pm) CET people from sr: have online meetings at #wikipedia-sr channel (Freenode network), I announced that we should talk about implementation of Zhengzhu's work there. Also, I saw that Angela is online and I called her to join us.
At 20h CET there were 8 sr: contributors, Zhengzhu and Angela at the channel. (I'll list sr: contributor down.) Before 20h one more user was online, but he had problems with Internet connection because of rain in France, one more didn't come because he was running at Belgrade Marathon. One more contributor came during the talk with Zhengzhu. After talk with Zhengzhu two more contributors came and participate in decision making. I asked other 3 more very active contributors about their opinion after that talk and I can guess (according to his writing at vilage pump) opinion for the last very active contributor. All of that will be explained in the rest of the message.
We were talking about one hour and half with Zhengzhu and some parts of his work became more clear to us. Another hour was passed until we articulated questions for voting and made decisions.
We had two questions: (a) To implement or not Cyrillic-Latin conversion at sr: and how to implement; and (b) to implement or not Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion at sr: and when.
a) According do possible solutions, we articulated for oppinions for the first question:
1. Not to implement Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
2. To have mixed Cyrillic and Latin wiki source. This solution is implemented on Chinese Wikipedia, but it is very strange for Serbian speakers: only bibliography and foreign names can be mixed in one text.
3. To have read-write Cyrillic and read-only Latin pages.
4. To have read-write for both Cyrillics and Latin. This oppinion had one note: If it is not possible to implement, we should use oppinion 3 as temporary solution, until complete 4 is possible. This solution also means that I can continue to talk with Zhengzhu about implementation.
Voting result was (order is: IRC nickname, user account at sr:, oppinion):
bonzo, [[sr:User:Bonzo]], 4 djordjes, [[sr:User:Djordjes]], 4 domatrios, [[sr:User:Domatrios]], 3 dzivdzan, [[sr:User:Dzivdzan]], 4 Dzordzm, [[sr:User:Dzordzm]], 4 kaster, [[sr:User:Kaster]], 3 Milan^Tesovic, [[sr:User:Милант]], 2 millosh, [[sr:User:Милош]], 4 Pokrajac, [[sr:User:Покрајац]], 4 Sasa^Stefanovic, [[sr:User:Саша.Стефановић]], 4 VKokielov, [[sr:User:ВКокијелов]], 4
Other active contributors, which I asked after the voting, said: [[sr:User:Ninam]], 3 [[sr:User:Горан Анђелковић]], 4 (he was disconnected before Zhengzhu came) [[sr:User:Обрадовић Горан]], 4 (he was running on Belgrade Marathon)
Other active contributors for which I can just guess what do they think: [[sr:User:Golija]], probably 4, maybe 3 (he was urged for introduction of Latin alphabet on the vilage pump at sr:) [[sr:User:Влада]], maybe 1, maybe 3 (he doesn't like Latin, as I think) [[sr:User:Ivan]], I don't know
This is the list of all very active users. Actualy, I think that contributors User:Domatrios, User:ВКокијелов and User:Ivan are not "very active" according to March statistics, but they are active part of community at sr:.
Results are:
A) According to voting on IRC: - oppinion 1 - 0 votes - oppinion 2 - 1 vote - oppinion 3 - 2 votes - oppinion 4 - 8 votes
B) According to all clear votes: - oppinion 1 - 0 votes - oppinion 2 - 1 vote - oppinion 3 - 3 votes - oppinion 4 - 10 votes
C) According to some possible votes: - oppinion 1 - between 0 and 1 votes - oppinion 2 - 1 vote - oppinion 3 - between 3 and 5 votes - oppinion 4 - between 10 and 11 votes
As oppinion 4 has clear majority, at least 10:6 against all other oppinions, community decided to introduce read-write Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
b) The second question was: to implement or not Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion. Some people had some reserves not to implementation, but to the time of implementation. So, they introduced two suboppinions inside of oppinion for implementation. Oppinions was:
1.a - To implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion now.
1.b - To implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion after the implementation of Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
2. - Not to implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion.
Voting result was (order is: IRC nickname, user account at sr:, oppinion):
bonzo, [[sr:User:Bonzo]], 1.a djordjes, [[sr:User:Djordjes]], 1.a domatrios, [[sr:User:Domatrios]], 2 Dzordzm, [[sr:User:Dzordzm]], 1.a kaster, [[sr:User:Kaster]], 1.b Milan^Tesovic, [[sr:User:Милант]], 2 millosh, [[sr:User:Милош]], 1.a Pokrajac, [[sr:User:Покрајац]], 1.a Sasa^Stefanovic, [[sr:User:Саша.Стефановић]], 1.a VKokielov, [[sr:User:ВКокијелов]], 1.b
Before we articulated question, User:Dzivdzan left the room. As she said that she is for implementation before she left, but, also, she had some reserves to that implementation, her voice is assumed as 1.b (dzivdzan, [[sr:User:Dzivdzan]], 1.b)
Other active contributors, which I asked after the voting, said: [[sr:User:Ninam]], 1.a [[sr:User:Горан Анђелковић]], 1.a (he was disconnected before Zhengzhu came) [[sr:User:Обрадовић Горан]], 1.a (he was running on Belgrade Marathon)
Other active contributors for which I can just guess what do they think: [[sr:User:Golija]], I don't know [[sr:User:Влада]], I don't know [[sr:User:Ivan]], I don't know
Results are:
A) According to voting on IRC: - oppinion 1.a - 6 votes - oppinion 1.b - 3 votes - oppinion 2 - 2 votes
B) According to all clear votes: - oppinion 1.a - 9 votes - oppinion 1.b - 3 votes - oppinion 2 - 2 votes
As oppinion 1.a has absolute majority, at least 6:5 against all other oppinions, we will continue with implementation of Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion together with implementation of Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
IRC logs can be found at:
The first three parts in Serbian: (1) http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B... (2) http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B... and (3) http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B...
The fourth part is in English, after we called Angela to see results: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B...
Next steps
Today Zhengzhu and me were talking about implementation. He said that it is not so easy to implement our solution (because it has some differences with Chinese implementation) and that we should wait until June. Also, Zhengzhu and me agreed that I (and probably sr:User:Kaster) can continue with implementation of Serbian interface in MediaWiki. At least for the first time, Zhengzhu will check our code before it's implementation into CVS tree.
(And spell checker on Gmail doesn't work now :) )
Hi Milos,
What are the differences between Ekavian-Iyekavian? If they're relatively small, like spelling differences such as between US and World English, I think such conversion would be unnessecary and maybe even silly.
Mark
On 25/04/05, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote:
Last Friday Zhengzhu said to me that community at sr: should decide very fast (in one week) about implementation of his work on new Serbian interface which implements all standards of Serbian language. As it is too fast for voting on sr.wikipedia and as almost every Saturday at 20h (8pm) CET people from sr: have online meetings at #wikipedia-sr channel (Freenode network), I announced that we should talk about implementation of Zhengzhu's work there. Also, I saw that Angela is online and I called her to join us.
At 20h CET there were 8 sr: contributors, Zhengzhu and Angela at the channel. (I'll list sr: contributor down.) Before 20h one more user was online, but he had problems with Internet connection because of rain in France, one more didn't come because he was running at Belgrade Marathon. One more contributor came during the talk with Zhengzhu. After talk with Zhengzhu two more contributors came and participate in decision making. I asked other 3 more very active contributors about their opinion after that talk and I can guess (according to his writing at vilage pump) opinion for the last very active contributor. All of that will be explained in the rest of the message.
We were talking about one hour and half with Zhengzhu and some parts of his work became more clear to us. Another hour was passed until we articulated questions for voting and made decisions.
We had two questions: (a) To implement or not Cyrillic-Latin conversion at sr: and how to implement; and (b) to implement or not Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion at sr: and when.
a) According do possible solutions, we articulated for oppinions for the first question:
Not to implement Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
To have mixed Cyrillic and Latin wiki source. This solution is
implemented on Chinese Wikipedia, but it is very strange for Serbian speakers: only bibliography and foreign names can be mixed in one text.
To have read-write Cyrillic and read-only Latin pages.
To have read-write for both Cyrillics and Latin. This oppinion had
one note: If it is not possible to implement, we should use oppinion 3 as temporary solution, until complete 4 is possible. This solution also means that I can continue to talk with Zhengzhu about implementation.
Voting result was (order is: IRC nickname, user account at sr:, oppinion):
bonzo, [[sr:User:Bonzo]], 4 djordjes, [[sr:User:Djordjes]], 4 domatrios, [[sr:User:Domatrios]], 3 dzivdzan, [[sr:User:Dzivdzan]], 4 Dzordzm, [[sr:User:Dzordzm]], 4 kaster, [[sr:User:Kaster]], 3 Milan^Tesovic, [[sr:User:Милант]], 2 millosh, [[sr:User:Милош]], 4 Pokrajac, [[sr:User:Покрајац]], 4 Sasa^Stefanovic, [[sr:User:Саша.Стефановић]], 4 VKokielov, [[sr:User:ВКокијелов]], 4
Other active contributors, which I asked after the voting, said: [[sr:User:Ninam]], 3 [[sr:User:Горан Анђелковић]], 4 (he was disconnected before Zhengzhu came) [[sr:User:Обрадовић Горан]], 4 (he was running on Belgrade Marathon)
Other active contributors for which I can just guess what do they think: [[sr:User:Golija]], probably 4, maybe 3 (he was urged for introduction of Latin alphabet on the vilage pump at sr:) [[sr:User:Влада]], maybe 1, maybe 3 (he doesn't like Latin, as I think) [[sr:User:Ivan]], I don't know
This is the list of all very active users. Actualy, I think that contributors User:Domatrios, User:ВКокијелов and User:Ivan are not "very active" according to March statistics, but they are active part of community at sr:.
Results are:
A) According to voting on IRC:
- oppinion 1 - 0 votes
- oppinion 2 - 1 vote
- oppinion 3 - 2 votes
- oppinion 4 - 8 votes
B) According to all clear votes:
- oppinion 1 - 0 votes
- oppinion 2 - 1 vote
- oppinion 3 - 3 votes
- oppinion 4 - 10 votes
C) According to some possible votes:
- oppinion 1 - between 0 and 1 votes
- oppinion 2 - 1 vote
- oppinion 3 - between 3 and 5 votes
- oppinion 4 - between 10 and 11 votes
As oppinion 4 has clear majority, at least 10:6 against all other oppinions, community decided to introduce read-write Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
b) The second question was: to implement or not Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion. Some people had some reserves not to implementation, but to the time of implementation. So, they introduced two suboppinions inside of oppinion for implementation. Oppinions was:
1.a - To implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion now.
1.b - To implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion after the implementation of Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
- Not to implement Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion.
Voting result was (order is: IRC nickname, user account at sr:, oppinion):
bonzo, [[sr:User:Bonzo]], 1.a djordjes, [[sr:User:Djordjes]], 1.a domatrios, [[sr:User:Domatrios]], 2 Dzordzm, [[sr:User:Dzordzm]], 1.a kaster, [[sr:User:Kaster]], 1.b Milan^Tesovic, [[sr:User:Милант]], 2 millosh, [[sr:User:Милош]], 1.a Pokrajac, [[sr:User:Покрајац]], 1.a Sasa^Stefanovic, [[sr:User:Саша.Стефановић]], 1.a VKokielov, [[sr:User:ВКокијелов]], 1.b
Before we articulated question, User:Dzivdzan left the room. As she said that she is for implementation before she left, but, also, she had some reserves to that implementation, her voice is assumed as 1.b (dzivdzan, [[sr:User:Dzivdzan]], 1.b)
Other active contributors, which I asked after the voting, said: [[sr:User:Ninam]], 1.a [[sr:User:Горан Анђелковић]], 1.a (he was disconnected before Zhengzhu came) [[sr:User:Обрадовић Горан]], 1.a (he was running on Belgrade Marathon)
Other active contributors for which I can just guess what do they think: [[sr:User:Golija]], I don't know [[sr:User:Влада]], I don't know [[sr:User:Ivan]], I don't know
Results are:
A) According to voting on IRC:
- oppinion 1.a - 6 votes
- oppinion 1.b - 3 votes
- oppinion 2 - 2 votes
B) According to all clear votes:
- oppinion 1.a - 9 votes
- oppinion 1.b - 3 votes
- oppinion 2 - 2 votes
As oppinion 1.a has absolute majority, at least 6:5 against all other oppinions, we will continue with implementation of Ekavian-Iyekavian conversion together with implementation of Cyrillic-Latin conversion.
IRC logs can be found at:
The first three parts in Serbian: (1) http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B... (2) http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B... and (3) http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B...
The fourth part is in English, after we called Angela to see results: http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B...
Next steps
Today Zhengzhu and me were talking about implementation. He said that it is not so easy to implement our solution (because it has some differences with Chinese implementation) and that we should wait until June. Also, Zhengzhu and me agreed that I (and probably sr:User:Kaster) can continue with implementation of Serbian interface in MediaWiki. At least for the first time, Zhengzhu will check our code before it's implementation into CVS tree.
(And spell checker on Gmail doesn't work now :) )
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On 4/26/05, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Milos,
What are the differences between Ekavian-Iyekavian? If they're relatively small, like spelling differences such as between US and World English, I think such conversion would be unnessecary and maybe even silly.
Let me try again... :)
1. You can write a lot of text in any standard English without knowledge what is this English; almost always you would know is text in Ekavian or Iyekavian during the first sentence.
2. Official Orthography of Serbian Language (Pravopis srpskoga jezika) is written in two variants: Ekavian and Iyekavian.
3. Official language in Serbia is only Serbian. But, according to Montenegro's constitution, official language is Serbian Iyekavian. I think the same situation is in Republic of Srpska.
4. Around 20.000 lexemes was affected by this process (with around 150.000 word forms; Serbian language has inflection).
5. From the primary school to the university, people from different parts of Serbian language area learn different standards. There are much more Ekavians then Iyekavians (if we are talking only about Serbian language area: more then 8 millions of Ekavians and less then 2 millions of Iyekavians). Serbian Wikipedia is dominant Ekavian, but we should try to give articles in minority standard, too.
6. Let imagine such situation:
We have six persons. The first is from Belgrade (Serbia, speaks Serbian Ekavian), the second is from Podgorica (Montenegro, speaks Serbian Iyekavian), the third is from Banja Luka (Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, speaks Serbian Iyekavian), fourth is from Zagreb (Croatia, speaks Croatian, which is also Iyekavian), fifth is from Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina, speaks Croatian, which is also Iyekavian) and the sixth is from Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina, speaks Bosnian, which is also Iyekavian).
Persons from Zagreb (cro-iyekav), Belgrade (ser-ekav) and Podgorica (ser-iyekav) would have some (but, very very little) problems to understand some words which is spoken by person from Sarajevo (bos-iyekav) because those words have Turkish origin. Persons from Belgrade and Podgorica would have less problems then person from Zagreb because there are some Turkish words which is used in speech in Serbia. But, all of that problems are very very small. Persons from Mostar (cro-iyekav) and Banja Luka (ser-iyekav) would not have any problem to understand person from Sarajevo.
Persons from Sarajevo, Belgrade, Banja Luka and Podgorica would have some problems to understand person from Zagreb (for example, Croatian language has Slavic names of months, Serbian and Bosnian have Latin names of months).
But, if any of Iyekavians send mail in Latin alphabet to the person from Belgrade about usual things (how they feel, about weather, etc.), person from Belgrade would have a lot of problems to recognize who was that person by origin/location. Maybe person from Banja Luka listen Croatian radio or television, maybe person from Podgorica does the same... Maybe person from Mostar listen Serbian or Bosnian radio or television, maybe person from Zagreb, too.
However, they can understand each other a lot better then they understand Slovenians or Macedonians or Bulgarians. I think that you have more problems to understand my English then we have to understand each other :)
7. As I said before, if you think only in formal way, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia should be only one. And people from those Wikipedias should not care if the article is in Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian variant.
But, there are "some problems in communication" between Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks and we can't have one Wikipedia. Also, there are some cultural differences. And inside of Serbian speaking people, there are some cultural differences, too. As a person who speaks majority variant I have to think about minority and their needs.
P. S. I am just waiting the time when people from Montenegro would ask for their own Wikipedia ;)
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