Hello, A user on no: (I don't know whether he is active here on wikipedia-l or not, since he is only known through his pseudonym) has pointed out two main problems with starting to use nb: rather than no: for the mainly nb (i.e., Norsk Bokmål/Riksmål(/samnorsk)) wikipedia:

1) The interwiki links to articles on no: might not work anymore. 2) The search engine hits through Google and Yahoo might not work anymore.

Both Andre's and Mark's suggestions seem to take care of this problem.

I have another question, though:

Is it -- as yet -- possible to configure a Wiipedia in such a way that one can use the general search box so search in more than one language version? In other words: Could the parameters for the Scandinavian wikipedias (no-nn-sv-da) be set so that hits from all four wikipedias show up when clicking the "search" link? And, even better, can this be done for the "Search" function only, thus giving only a local hit when searching for a term using the "Go" button IF there is a local page with that name?

Hypothetical examples:

1) In da:, you enter "København" and click "Gå til" (Go). You get the Danish page "København". 2) In da:, you enter "København" and click "Søg" (Search). You get a list of hits, with the da: and no: articles and the Swedish København redirect to Köpenhamn. You do not yet get a nn: hit, since that article is not yet created. Alternatively (or additionally), you get the Swedish "Köpenhamn" page directly because of the interwiki links to "da:København" and "no:København". 3) In da:, you enter "Gamvik" in the search box and hit "Søg" (Search). You get, hypothetically, the no: and the nn: hit, since there is no da: page with this name. 4) In nn: you enter "København" and click "Gå" (Go). Since there is no page with that name yet in this still quite new Wikipedia, it defaults to a Scandinavian search and comes up with the no:, da: and sv: pages on top of the search result page. You also, obviously, get the usual question whether you want to create a "København" page in Nynorsk.

This option should probably be set as default. It should also be possible for logged-in users to unselect this option.

This would be a great enhancement; it would be a way of for all four (as yet) Scandinavian-language wikipedias to effectively provide more comprehensive contents, for the benefit of all its users; — and it would be a great incitement for each of the four groups to write lots of articles to make sure that there is an article for a direct hit in their own language as often as possible.

Other similar language clusters, like Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian (with some tweaking of the Alphabet issue), Czech/Slovak, Bulgarian/Macedonian(/Serbian), Finnish/Estonian, German/Plattdüütsch/etc., and maybe Faeroese/Icelandic (or the latter could join the Scandinavian cluster for this purpose if they so desire), may also benefit from such a solution.

Regardless of whether no: stays or moves to / gets joined by nb:, I think this would be a solution to consider for the best of all four Scandinavian language groups.

Best regards,

Olve

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Olve Utne http://utne.nvg.org