Hello,
I am Milos and I am bureaucrat on sr:
First of all, I have to tell you some introduction in our alphabet problems.
Until the second half of 19th century Serbs used only Cyrillic alphabet. (In the ancient history, Serbs was using Latin and Glagolic alphabet for a short time, but without stronger cultural consequences.) Between the second half of 19th century and the end of The Second World War, Latin alphabet was not used a lot; it was used by very small number of writers. After the end of WWII, strong cultural influence of Communist Party of Yugoslavia gave to Serbs active usage of Latin alphabet. During 1980's and 1990's Latin alphabet was used more often then Cyrillic (maybe 60%, maybe even 70%). Today, the situation is something about 50-50 with tendency of Cyrillic usage growth. In this moment we have very strong xenophobic movement. A lot of them are very active on Internet and on Wikipedia, too. They do not accept Latin alphabet as "Serbian". Even a lot of people use Latin alphabet.
I made voting for the question: Would Serbian Wikipedia has Latin pages too? Even the end of August is the end of voting for that question, I think that usage of Latin alphabet would not pass. Situation is 4:2 against and Serbian Wikipedia doesn't have a lot of active users (we have one or two new users which can't vote).
Even I use Cyrillic alphabet, I relies that usage of Latin alphabet is important for us: We have significant minority (about 50%!) of Latin users and if anyone starts to search on Internet, (s)he uses Latin alphabet, not Cyrillic (usually even without Serbian Latin letters). We have very ironic situation: If you type the name of one of Serbian 19th century writers, Radoje Domanovic (in Serbian Cyrillic: Радоје Домановић, in Serbian Latin: Radoje Domanović) in Google, you will get: (1) Cyrillic: Serbian Wikipedia is on the first place; (2) Any Latin: Wikipedia doesn't exists.
So, I think that we can do something like this: We can make secondary Serbian Wikipedia using secondary two-letters code for Serbian language: sp. It would not be "real" Wikipedia, because it should be used only for transliteration of Cyrillic Wikipedia (transliteration from Serbian Cyrillic to Serbian Latin is algorithmic, the reverse process is fuzzy). All of the pages on sp: should be "protected" and when someone writes something on Cyrillic Wikipedia, it should be transliterated to Latin, too. Also, all of users should be the same.
I think it is good solution because we would not have multiplication of work (such as we have now: Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias are using the (very, very) almost the same language). All of people would work on sr:, not on sp:.
Also, I have some notes to developers (if the request passes): about technical solution for that. It would not any consequence to Wikimedia's performances because it is (almost) row transliteration.
Best, Milos
P.S. For admins of the list: Delete my pending message from millosh@users.sourceforge.net because this message is the same.
millosh wrote:
So, I think that we can do something like this: We can make secondary Serbian Wikipedia using secondary two-letters code for Serbian language: sp.
Or, alternatively, you can create two pages for each article on the Serbian Wikipedia, one in Latin and one in Cyrillic, similar to the way the Chinese Wikipedia handles traditional and simplified characters.
Timwi
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 06:52:05PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
millosh wrote:
So, I think that we can do something like this: We can make secondary Serbian Wikipedia using secondary two-letters code for Serbian language: sp.
Or, alternatively, you can create two pages for each article on the Serbian Wikipedia, one in Latin and one in Cyrillic, similar to the way the Chinese Wikipedia handles traditional and simplified characters.
I think that would be even easier than on zh-* because they don't share many letters if any.
ciao, tom
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 06:52:05PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
millosh wrote:
So, I think that we can do something like this: We can make secondary Serbian Wikipedia using secondary two-letters code for Serbian language: sp.
Or, alternatively, you can create two pages for each article on the Serbian Wikipedia, one in Latin and one in Cyrillic, similar to the way the Chinese Wikipedia handles traditional and simplified characters.
I think that would be even easier than on zh-* because they don't share many letters if any.
Huh. Maybe my English is not so good... I said (or I wanted to say) that we (almost) have decision _not_ to work on Latin pages on sr: (i.e.: decision is that sr.wikipedia.org should not have Latin pages). I am trying to find alternate solution. Two-letters code "sp" is reserved for Serbian language so there is no code collision (sp.wikipedia.org doesn't exist, too).
millosh wrote:
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 06:52:05PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
Or, alternatively, you can create two pages for each article on the Serbian Wikipedia, one in Latin and one in Cyrillic, similar to the way the Chinese Wikipedia handles traditional and simplified characters.
I think that would be even easier than on zh-* because they don't share many letters if any.
Huh. Maybe my English is not so good... I said (or I wanted to say) that we (almost) have decision _not_ to work on Latin pages on sr: (i.e.: decision is that sr.wikipedia.org should not have Latin pages). I am trying to find alternate solution. Two-letters code "sp" is reserved for Serbian language so there is no code collision (sp.wikipedia.org doesn't exist, too).
We perfectly understood what you meant. You want an automatic conversion from Cyrillic to Latin. That's fine. But what I'm saying is that you don't need a separate sub-domain for this. You can set up a bot that does it on sr.wikipedia.org, so that you will have both Latin and Cyrillic pages on the same wiki.
Timwi
You say that I work against the decision of community... Scripts are not the problem, I understand functions of bots. The problem is decision of community, and this is not to work in Latin alphabet on sr:.
-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Timwi Sent: Sunday, August 08, 2004 10:46 PM To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for the second Serbian Wikipedia
millosh wrote:
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 06:52:05PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
Or, alternatively, you can create two pages for each article on the Serbian Wikipedia, one in Latin and one in Cyrillic, similar to the way the Chinese Wikipedia handles traditional and simplified characters.
I think that would be even easier than on zh-* because they don't share many letters if any.
Huh. Maybe my English is not so good... I said (or I wanted to say) that we (almost) have decision _not_ to work on Latin pages on sr: (i.e.: decision is that sr.wikipedia.org should not have Latin pages). I am trying to find alternate solution. Two-letters code "sp" is reserved for Serbian language so there is no code collision (sp.wikipedia.org doesn't exist, too).
We perfectly understood what you meant. You want an automatic conversion from Cyrillic to Latin. That's fine. But what I'm saying is that you don't need a separate sub-domain for this. You can set up a bot that does it on sr.wikipedia.org, so that you will have both Latin and Cyrillic pages on the same wiki.
Timwi
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millosh wrote:
You say that I work against the decision of community...
No, I didn't.
The problem is decision of community, and this is not to work in Latin alphabet on sr:.
You keep using the word "work". This suggests to me people don't want to have to *write* articles in Latin script. Perhaps you could clarify this. By any chance, do you mean that the community of Wikipedians on the Serbian Wikipedia don't want Latin-script articles on sr at all?
Timwi wrote:
You keep using the word "work". This suggests to me people don't want to have to *write* articles in Latin script. Perhaps you could clarify this. By any chance, do you mean that the community of Wikipedians on the Serbian Wikipedia don't want Latin-script articles on sr at all?
The question is complex and some of them will say "I don't want to work because it needs too much of time" (which is not true, of course), and some of them will be clear and say "I don't want Latin script at all". In both cases, they do not want Latin script at all!
Ray Saintonge wrote:
This is puzzling. If nobody wants a Latin alphabet version than why are we even bothering with this conversation?
If a significant minority wants to have a Latin version, then a majority vote against that should not be an excuse for restricting the rights of the minority. It appears that the technical means are available that will allow the two versions to co-exist in one project.
In this moment we have voting result 4:2 against usage of Latin script (and without any chance for change of result) with clear xenophobic message: Cyrillic script is the only Serbian script! (In real life, we have 50-50 usage of Cyrillic and Latin script; and Latin script is not used only by "significant minority"; it is very significant minority...)
I didn't ask for another Serbian project because I had not looked into another solutions. Usage of scripts is very hard political question in Serbia and I would like not to translate that political war into Wikipedia. I was thinking and thinking and secondary Serbian project (as I described) seems like the most reasonable. Yes, it may looks like wasting of resources; but, believe me, consequences are:
1) If we say that sr: has to have Latin script pages against the decision of majority on sr: we would have: a) Wikipedia will be marked as "anti-Serb" institution (English Wikipedia has mark because of wars about pages about Kosovo etc.); b) I will not have community support anymore because I did something against the will of majority.
2) If we make sp: as alternate project, it will be treated only as my caprice without any really bad consequence to other things.
millosh wrote:
You say that I work against the decision of community... Scripts are not the problem, I understand functions of bots. The problem is decision of community, and this is not to work in Latin alphabet on sr:.
This is puzzling. If nobody wants a Latin alphabet version than why are we even bothering with this conversation?
If a significant minority wants to have a Latin version, then a majority vote against that should not be an excuse for restricting the rights of the minority. It appears that the technical means are available that will allow the two versions to co-exist in one project.
Ec
millosh wrote:
You say that I work against the decision of community... Scripts are not the problem, I understand functions of bots. The problem is decision of community, and this is not to work in Latin alphabet on sr:.
Hello!
You mentioned that the vote is 4:2, but that there are not many users. Can you give us the overall vote totals (not just the ratio)? If it is exactly 4 to 2, is that really enough people to be making such a controversial policy?
Perhaps the time is not ripe yet to make such a decision.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
You mentioned that the vote is 4:2, but that there are not many users. Can you give us the overall vote totals (not just the ratio)? If it is exactly 4 to 2, is that really enough people to be making such a controversial policy?
Perhaps the time is not ripe yet to make such a decision.
Serbian Wikipedia doesn't have a lot of active users. Also, there are some new users without right to vote for that question. I don't think that we will have much better situation at the end of August, when voting would be closed.
millosh wrote:
Also, there are some new users without right to vote for that question.
Does this mean you are explicitly excluding certain users from the vote? Wouldn't that be unfair?
I am a long-time contributor to the English Wikipedia, but have never used the Serbian one. Will I be allowed to vote? I think I should be, and my vote would be that Latin and Cyrillic script should coexist on the same Wiki.
Timwi
Timwi wrote:
Does this mean you are explicitly excluding certain users from the vote? Wouldn't that be unfair?
I am a long-time contributor to the English Wikipedia, but have never used the Serbian one. Will I be allowed to vote? I think I should be, and my vote would be that Latin and Cyrillic script should coexist on the same Wiki.
I closed group of members which can vote to users which had opened account on sr: until 18th July (the initial day of voting). I did it as prevention of mass subscribing and voting... I think, if you opened an account until that day, you can vote...
There is one possibility: I see that there are some users (I think the most of them are stewards) on sr: which can vote... (But, don't ask people from former Yugoslavia to vote such as Romanm; it is not good idea.)
I don't know... I don't know a lot about what is usually on Wikipedia. I just translated voting for the question about case sensitivity from Meta. If you make good explanation about that (your identity is known and you are long-time contributor on en:), I think it would be OK.
millosh pravi:
There is one possibility: I see that there are some users (I think the most of them are stewards) on sr: which can vote... (But, don't ask people from former Yugoslavia to vote such as Romanm; it is not good idea.)
I don't recall that I voted on this issue on sr: (I see it as an internal affair between the article writers and target population). ?
On Tue, 10 Aug 2004, Roman Maurer wrote:
millosh pravi:
There is one possibility: I see that there are some users (I think the most of them are stewards) on sr: which can vote... (But, don't ask people from former Yugoslavia to vote such as Romanm; it is not good idea.)
I don't recall that I voted on this issue on sr: (I see it as an internal affair between the article writers and target population). ?
I just said that I understand your position and that is better that you nor others Wikipedians from former Yugoslavia don't vote for that question (political and similar shit reasons). In comparation with you, voting of other active Wikipedians is OK because I think that noone Wikipedia is private property of some small community.
Milos
Timwi wrote:
millosh wrote:
Also, there are some new users without right to vote for that question.
Does this mean you are explicitly excluding certain users from the vote? Wouldn't that be unfair?
I am a long-time contributor to the English Wikipedia, but have never used the Serbian one. Will I be allowed to vote? I think I should be, and my vote would be that Latin and Cyrillic script should coexist on the same Wiki.
I don't edit on sr, so I wouldn't expect to have that right there. English has had its own restrictions on certain things where a person would need some number of edits, or some amount of time before editing. I suspect that that's what's going on in their project.
Binding votes only make things work. 33% is a significant minority. We have Wikis for languages with far less credibility. Votes in this situation thend to impose the "tyranny of the majority". A better approach is to have both sides recognize the rights and desires of the other, and try to accomodate them.
I think that most of us non-Serbian speakers would vote like Timwi. Not having separate British and American version for English was a very positive early decision.
Ec
Thomas R. Koll wrote:
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 06:52:05PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
millosh wrote:
So, I think that we can do something like this: We can make secondary Serbian Wikipedia using secondary two-letters code for Serbian language: sp.
Or, alternatively, you can create two pages for each article on the Serbian Wikipedia, one in Latin and one in Cyrillic, similar to the way the Chinese Wikipedia handles traditional and simplified characters.
I think that would be even easier than on zh-* because they don't share many letters if any.
I suppose this all depends on there being a reversible one-to-one relationship between the two versions of Serbian.
Ec
On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 15:28:36 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I suppose this all depends on there being a reversible one-to-one relationship between the two versions of Serbian.
This is possible, to the best of my knowledge.
Some sounds which have one letter in Cyrillic have two letters in Latin, but AFAIK those two-letter sequences always map to that one Cyrillic letter, to the translation is unambiguous in both directions.
Cheers, Philip
Philip Newton wrote:
On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 15:28:36 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I suppose this all depends on there being a reversible one-to-one relationship between the two versions of Serbian.
This is possible, to the best of my knowledge.
Some sounds which have one letter in Cyrillic have two letters in Latin, but AFAIK those two-letter sequences always map to that one Cyrillic letter, to the translation is unambiguous in both directions.
Except, of course, when you have foreign words and names to deal with.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
Philip Newton wrote:
On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 15:28:36 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I suppose this all depends on there being a reversible one-to-one relationship between the two versions of Serbian.
This is possible, to the best of my knowledge.
Some sounds which have one letter in Cyrillic have two letters in Latin, but AFAIK those two-letter sequences always map to that one Cyrillic letter, to the translation is unambiguous in both directions.
Except, of course, when you have foreign words and names to deal with.
Question: how is the Belarusan Wikipedia dealing with Lacinka and Cyrillic?
Ralesk Ne'vennoyx wrote:
Question: how is the Belarusan Wikipedia dealing with Lacinka and Cyrillic?
At the moment, be.wikipedia.org is pretty inactive. The few users who are working on it ([[be:User:EugeneZelenko]] and [[be:User:195.50.4.174]] today) use Cyrillic only. [[en:Lacinka]] says, "Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent independence of Belarus some groups have advocated reviving the Lacinka alphabet, but as of 2004 very few people use it."
Timwi
On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 12:26:26 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
Philip Newton wrote:
On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 15:28:36 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
I suppose this all depends on there being a reversible one-to-one relationship between the two versions of Serbian.
This is possible, to the best of my knowledge.
Some sounds which have one letter in Cyrillic have two letters in Latin, but AFAIK those two-letter sequences always map to that one Cyrillic letter, to the translation is unambiguous in both directions.
Except, of course, when you have foreign words and names to deal with.
I suppose so, though I believe both Serbian and Croatian usually "transliterate" foreign names, so "George Bush" becomes "Dz^ordz^ Bus^", whether in Latin or in Cyrillic Script.
Cheers, Philip
Philip Newton pravi:
I suppose so, though I believe both Serbian and Croatian usually "transliterate" foreign names, so "George Bush" becomes "Dz^ordz^ Bus^", whether in Latin or in Cyrillic Script.
AFAIK only Serbian does that, both in cyrillic and in latin script. Croatian says "Georg Bush" while Serbian says "Đorđ Buš".
I suppose so, though I believe both Serbian and Croatian usually "transliterate" foreign names, so "George Bush" becomes "Dz^ordz^ Bus^", whether in Latin or in Cyrillic Script.
AFAIK only Serbian does that, both in cyrillic and in latin script. Croatian says "Georg Bush" while Serbian says "Đorđ Buš".
Actually, we say Džordž Buš, not Đorđ Buš... One more thing: Croatians just write "Georg Bush", but say the same as in English ;)
Some foreign names are transcribed, some are not. Usually, we do not transcribe technical abbreviations (BGP, SMTP, POP, WWW, etc.), but we do that with cultural (DNA is in Serbian DNK, because acid in Serbian is 'kiselina'). GNU is the same in English and in Serbian, but GNU FDL is "GNU-ova LSD" or "Gnuova LSD" (Free Document License in Serbian is "Licenca za slobodnu dokumentaciju").
It is possible to have "group page". For example, page "BGP" would have just links for BGP in Cyrillic script and BGP in Latin script.
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